I like Rap too.

So last night my mom and I went shopping. One of our destinations was Payless. We "Oooo'd" and "Awww'd" for quite some time and headed to the registers with our 5 pairs of awesomely adorable shoes (3 were mine-guilty!). We were in a goofy mood, and throwing out lame jokes. The cashier was nice and we joked with her, asking if she could give us the BOGO discount, even though it wasn't currently BOGO season. She said no, but agreed to give us the AAA discount because we were so awesome. I was rung up first, followed by my mama. We had each gotten the same pair of sandals, but I got blue and mom got black. When the cashier scanned the black pair and they came up $19.99, my mom said "Oh, but hers rang up $12.99...?" the woman said "Yes, but hers are the blue ones. The black ones are more expensive because they are more in demand" we were still giggly and goofy and so my mom blurts out "That's Racist!!" Mom, myself and the Hispanic cashier burst into laughter and I'm still laughing as I turn around and stare into..... the not so laughing faces of three African American ladies. They were standing there, hands on hips, lips pursed, and eyebrows raised. My smile disappeared and I searched their faces for any sign of building violence. I began to try to channel my 14 year old fighting, expelled from school, angry self- in case this was going to come to blows. I wished I had worn more protruding rings. I imagined myself pleading with them "But the black ones were MORE money! Everyone WANTS them!" I was slowly backing towards the door trying to pull mom with me. Then the freakin cashier asks for our mailing address to send coupons. Oh crap. Now they're gonna know where we live and come kill us. While mom prattles off our addy, I started dancing around trying to distract their attention. Trust me- me attempting any dance would distract even the most focused. The ladies seemed to not have moved at all. We finally left the store and I eyed the parking lot cautiously clutching my blackberry in case I needed to call 911. We were not followed and so far have not been murdered in our home. So I'm sure their reaction was probably all in my head. In fact, the women might actually have been mannequins....but you never know.

P.S. How do you know when you're in a recession? When you park next to a Jaguar in the Walmart Parking lot!

The Devil went down to Dodger Stadium

Last night I went to a Dodgers game. They were playing the San Francisco giants. The last two times these teams played each other, someone got stabbed and someone got killed. So I was on red alert as far as pissing people off. I cheered for both teams, smiled with glee as I did the wave (actually-the wave really does make me happy!), and I made sure I didn’t bump into anyone. If someone by their own fault happened to bumped into me-I apologized profusely and offered them $5 for their trouble. The game was going great and all was well……….. except for the two devil boys sitting behind me. These kids were about 10ish, and all night they were jumping around and screaming trying to catch the beach balls and whacked them around. They ended up getting them around 57 times-no joke. I wished I had a pair of scissors so I could turn around and stab it every time they got it. They were pissing everyone off. This guy one row in front of me turned around to them and said “You guys paid $85 a seat to play with a beach ball?” Ha-ha. The ushers weren’t allowed to take the balls away from people and pop them, but if a ball goes to them, they have to pop it. There was this sweet adorable boy about 9ish sitting two rows in front of me, who the whole game was turned around looking at them with envy and trying to catch the ball himself. He never got it and his poor little face was just heart-broken. I made it my mission to get that freakin ball away from the devils spawn and hand it off to my lil sweetheart. About this time, revenge came to the devils in the stupidity of two 10 year old brains. They decided when they caught the balls; they’d let the air out of them and re-blow them back up. Are you with me? These were balls that they themselves did not bring or originally blow up. We had no idea where these came from or whose mouths had been on them. DISGUSTING!!! So I smiled with pleasure (no-actually I gawked with shock) as these boys placed their mouths on the blow part. At one point one of them said “Dude, we’re gonna get Swine Flu!” I wanted to turn and “No ship Sherlock! And you’ll probably get Herpes too!” But they continued on. I should probably tell you one of their Dads was sitting two seats away from them, and could care less what was going on…..freakin LA parents….so anyways the end of the game was coming and I had yet to get a ball for my angel boy in front of me. Finally the devils left early, and lo and behold! A beach ball fell right next to me! I picked it up and heard my angel say “Oh, me, me, me!!” I turned with a smile and handed it off to him saying “Here you go Sweetie!” (I was ready to adopt him!) Everything happen so fast then… my boy set the ball down, took off his glowing halo and white robes reveling red horns and a red spandex jumpsuit!! What the?!?! He grabbed the ball, banged it on the rail in front of him yelling out “Hey over here!” to the nearest usher. The usher walked over towards the ball the boy held out to him. When the usher was 2 steps away from grabbing it, Satan turned and smacked the ball directly into the face of the woman sitting one rows and two seats to the left behind him. I mean SMACKED it DIRECTLY into her face. I. Could. Not. Believe. What. Had. Just. Happened. There were no words. All I was able to do was murmur “what…? what…?” How this hidden devil deceived me! The woman was PISSED and stared at Lucifer. She had no words either. In fact, no body anywhere was saying anything. The boy had turned back around, his dad turned red and within 5 minutes-they were gone. I sat there thinking how ironic it was that I had come to the game prepared to protect myself from the adult psycho fans and LA gangsters, when I should have been on the look-out for the tween delinquents! Thank goodness for the fireworks at the end of them game, to take my mind off how close I’d been to Beelzebub and probably death all night…....oh-giants won.

Five Kay

On Saturday, I did a very noble thing. I did a 5k for the Let It Be Foundation- a foundation that supports local families with children with life threatening illnesses. I went with three awesome and hilarious women: Camille Knecht, Katie Knecht, and Rachel Knecht. It’s fun already, right? I know. A bonus was the promised pancake breakfast at the end. We stumbled to Chino Hills High School around 7:15 am all smiles. After I cut in front of a couple guys to get my shirt, we lined up for the kick off, or send off….whatever-the start. But of course we had to have opening ceremonies where the children of the benefit stood in front of us. They played John Lennon’s “Let it Be” in remembrance of the children lost. Ummm…not a dry eye in the group. Next thing we knew, there’s a peppy blonde up on stage in full Jane Fonda gear (actually I couldn’t see her, but I’d bet she was) screaming into her headset that we should stretch. I kinda leaned to the side, raised my arms in the air, stomped the ground, and clapped my hands a few times. I imagine I rather looked like I was getting to sumo wrestle. Then- Bam!! The race was on! No it wasn’t. We weren’t even timed. So the Knechts and I kicked it into gear and off we went. The first 1k was easy peasy and I thought it was hilarious that we were actually crossing streets. Cars were lined up waiting for 400 people to frogger their way through intersections. It was a bad day to be driving in Chino Hills. My apologies if you were one of those cars. In between 1k and 2k was a decision. If you went left, it was an easier, less strenuous course. If you went right-you had a challenge. The Knechts and I, being raised to always CHOOSE THE RIGHT, went for the hardcore course. We meandered along a rocky path alongside beautiful golf course. How nice! I was still smiling at this point. All the sudden, the ground dropped out from under us and we found our “strenuous course”. We started baby-stepping/ sliding down a 40 foot drop straight down. When we got to the bottom of that, we had to climb a 40 foot hill straight back up. And this continued about 5 more times. What were we thinking? We should have gone left with the strollers! Of course they’d keep the babies safe, while we were trying not to Jack and Jill ourselves on loose gravel and dog poop. But we are totally awesome and made it out unscathed. Well, unscathed at the time-my calves have subsequently had 37 strokes since then. The next 2k’s were winding through the streets in Chino Hills, and we entertained ourselves by bursting into spontaneous song of “Let it be, let it be! Whisper words of wisdom, let it be!” Okay well actually just Camille did that. We hit a point where we curved along beside some houses and through a field of some sorts. As we entered the field, we passed a sign that said something along the lines of “Beware: there are wild animals in here that are not afraid to eat you”. Oh happy day! We did not encounter anything wild; however I did spy suspicious rustling in the bushes. I wasn’t afraid because I had Katie and Rachel with me, who I hear, have started using actual wooden nunchucks in their nunchucks class. I don’t know about you-but I’m not messin’ with that. And I dared that thing rustling in the bushes to. In our last 1k we all realized that our fingers had tripled in size. All the blood and water in our bodies found its way to our phalanges to shape them into tasty looking sausages. We found a solution and raised our hands in front of us surgeon style to drain the fluid. In order to not look so silly we’d occasionally raise them in the air alternately to make it look like some sort of exercise. I’m pretty sure we still looked silly. We finished the 5k and were delighted (pissed) to see we still had to walk another half mile to a crosswalk to get across the street and back. Then we hit the “last stretch”- the place where they had the music blasting and about 50 cheerleaders in full uniform with pom-poms and girl scouts cheering us on to the end. We ran that part (haha) and through the finish line. It felt amazing and we were ready to do it again! Just kidding-we wanted our pancake breakfast! We high tailed it to the breakfast, where we encountered this sign:

(that’s me standing under it with my medal! Woowhoo!). Anyways, it’s been a while since I attended high school, but I didn’t remember body size segregation. We wondered where the Skinny Student Entrance was. And how very apropos (thank you, Emily) we had to enter here to get to our pancakes, bacon, and butter. The breakfast was amazing, and disappeared from my plate in literally 3.5 minutes. I had a wicked fun morning with the girlies, and can’t wait to do another one. Who wants to come next time?