I Submit For Your Entertainment Occasions On Which I Was Even More Awkward Than Usual

1. On our way home from the pumpkin patch, we stopped at the grocery store to grab a few things so I could feed the kids tacos while they were painting their pumpkins. When we were in line to pay there were fridges with drinks and I told them to grab some if they wanted. Jackson mumbled something and Eve said "well get it" and he said "no, it's okay". I asked what was going on and she said he likes Mountain Dew but didn't want me to buy one. I told him to grab a bottle because I hadn't had any since I was very little and couldn't remember what it tasted like.

So we all had a small cup. Fun fact, regarding Steph's comment on that post - Mountain Dew doesn't have caffeine in Canada. Bonus fun fact: I just looked this up to make sure I was right, and I may be wrong - it looks like since 2012 Canada has sold a caffeinated version of Mountain Dew, and I don't have the bottle so I don't know if we drank caffeinated stuff or not. Anyway, I liked it. It's kind of like Sprite but better - more overtly lemony or something. It's a disturbing colour, though. I don't like drinking day-glo blue gatorade, and neon green Mountain Dew doesn't feel quite right to be ingesting either. 

So anyway, yesterday I was at the grocery store in line again, and I looked at the drinks fridge and texted Jackson "now I'm in the grocery store line jonesing for a Mountain Dew. I blame you." He texted back "Lol. Also, had to Google what 'jonesing' meant". I went to text some variation of "uppity whippersnappers", got confused, tried to text "goddamned youngsters", but started typing "fucking youngsters", accidentally hit send and realized I had just texted my daughter's friend the work "fucking" all on its own.

Awesome.

2. So working in the office taking attendance: I have to take the calls off the attendance line. The messages are often too quiet, garbled, the speaker has an accent, and it is often, VERY often, well night impossible to understand what name I'm supposed to be writing down unless I already know the kid's name, which is sometimes but not often enough. So I write down what I can gather and check it against the system. Usually I can track down who is absent. Occasionally I get it wrong, and end up calling some poor parent saying "can you specify why Cordelia is absent today?" while the parent panics because Cordelia isn't actually absent, and then I have to apologize and double check that Cordelia IS in class, and call the parent back, and then retrace my steps to figure out that actually Cecilia is absent, not Cordelia, and it's all very awkward.

3. For a few weeks in the summer, I started pulling out all our old photo albums and boxes of photos trying to get them organized and get rid of multiple copies. I had big plans to make one box and one album for each of the kids to have when they got their own place. I found albums online that had spaces for both vertical and horizontally oriented photos, which made me very happy because it bugs me when you have to twist an album or your neck around to view some photos properly. I got quite a bit done, but then of course life intervened and I got stuck and now the albums and boxes are out in the living room piled on a table glaring balefully at me every time I pass them.

I did have a great time looking through all our old photos, though, and when we left to drive Eve to Hamilton, I grabbed an envelope of photos that were of Matt's old grad studies group, because I knew we'd be seeing his former supervisor.

We had a lovely lunch with the supervisor and his wife, who also worked with that lab group, and then as they walked us back to our car I remembered the photos. I pulled the old-style photo-store envelope from the glove compartment and handed it to Dr. M. He took out the photos and started flipping through them, his wife looking on. We were all smiling and laughing and feeling old and reminiscing and then suddenly I remembered that that wasn't the only photos in that envelope and went "oh god, wait, I...." and reached out to grab them .......

just as Dr. M. flipped to a picture of me on my wedding day. In my wedding underwear. 

Awesome.

I mean, it wasn't life-ending. It was pretty respectable as underwear goes, and I was younger, and this was a picture that one of my bridesmaids snapped in full view of all the other bridesmaids, so not exceedingly scandalous, but still, FORMER PROFESSOR. ME IN MY UNDERWEAR, in a photo that I not only let him see, but HANDED TO HIM.

They took it pretty well. We haven't seen them again, or asked to, and it's possible they will politely decline all further contact. I was going to take a pic of the envelope to show you where I had written "McMaster/ pre-wedding" or whatever, but I just realized it's still in the glove compartment of the Rav. Which is currently at the garage getting winter tires on, where any Tony Graham employee might happen upon it.

Awesome.

They're hiding their trauma well

Tune in tomorrow when I will try really hard to provide an underwear-free post.