Awkward Moments Define My Life: College & Love Edition

Have you ever desperately tried to impress someone and you end up leaving the opposite impression?

It happens to me all the time {but then I might be the only one}.

Back in my college days of yore, while I was dating my Mr. Wonderful, I vividly remember trying to impress his cool and newly married friends, *The B's*

Now, if you knew me back then I was a little more...um, abrasive, sarcastic, uncouth--you know, honest, direct--but in the scary way.

I so desperately wanted to fit in with his married friends and make a good impression on them (especially since our relationship was so new)

that I tried my best to be sweet and kind and good and funny--

unfortunately I wasn't all that great at doing that!

One night, the B's so graciously made us dinner and I engaged Mrs. B in small talk about food and what not and learned that she was making strawberry short cake for dinner--

I love strawberry shortcake and decided to share a "funny" story with her about something I'd experienced over Thanksgiving break---

"Yeah, so I was like totally at my Aunt's house and she was making whipped cream, like you are, and she did THE MOST DISGUSTING THING I HAVE EVER SEEN SOMEONE DO TO WHIPPED CREAM!!!"

Mrs. B sweetly asked, "Well, what was that?"

"WELL, she put powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar in the whipped cream and it was DISGUSTING! Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous as powdered sugar in whipped cream!??!"

Mrs. B replied, "Why, yes--I just put some in mine."

Oy. I wanted to run right out the door and head for the hills--instead I tried to nonchalantly play it off as if I were joking.

Too bad I wasn't any good or convincing as a nonchalant "i take it all back and then some" joker.

Somehow she forgave me and we ended up as friends

-but I'll never forget the effects of trying too hard to entertain a new friend--

it just gets you into trouble.

And I'll never judge a whipped cream again.

Scouts honor.

Awkward Moments Define My Life: Peg Leg

Ah--Picture this--mid 90s and wayyy too late for it to still be cool--

Little Shelly, 5 feet tall with short permed, teased, dyed hair, coke bottle glasses, shiny metal braces and some totally awesome high rolled pegged pants.

I have no idea what I was thinking but for some reason I was totally enamored of all these fashion faux pas years past their prime (if not a decade past).

I blame it on the homeschooling--I was sheltered people--
Livin' on a hill

Spinnin' in the fields Sound Of Music style

Spendin' all my time with books, grassy meadows and the radio

{Inheritin' all of my Aunt's 80s clothes}

It wasn't until highschool when a "caring" "friend" pointedly asked:

"What's the deal with your pants? Are you expecting a flood or something?"

that I changed my ways....

Thank goodness for the mean ones--sometimes they are the only ones who can smash those rose colored glasses and shine the brightly glaring beacon of honesty onto the travesty of my bad bad sad sad

taste.

The End.

Awkward Moments Define My Life: Mommy Edition A.K.A. My face is still red...

It's time for another scintillating installment of Awkward Moments--this one brought to you by A and it just happened last night so the embarrassment factor is still going strong.... Ah, children--you've changed me forever--I'll never be cool again.

High off of my successful concert viewing night with M I decided to do the unthinkable and take both girls to Mr. Wonderful's last full concert at a local church (just a mile or so from the home). I scrubbed and brushed and dressed and tidied them (and me) up and off we went! We got to church just 5 minutes before the service was to start and I raced up to my husband and asked where the nursery was so that A could play. A was REALLY looking forward to playing in a "new nursery." She loves new nursery. I love new nursery because it gives my toddler joy and anything that gives her joy gives me JOY (and a few minutes to myself!). He wasn't sure so he asked a student, who wasn't sure, so he asked the student's mother who proclaimed, "Well, our church doesn't have nursery Sunday nights!'

And then my world came crashing down.

And then I told A and HER world came crashing down.

It wasn't pretty.

But service was just starting so I figured I could make due with the one small packet of fruit snacks I brought for her and M's one toy to entertain them both during the service. Mr. Wonderful brought his students up to sing and I told A--"See, you don't need nursery--we can watch Daddy and the big kids sing!"

This is when she decided that she wanted to watch them close.

REAL close.

She edged to the corner of the pew (along the wall of the church) and started to walk up the aisle. I caught her gaze and mouthed, "NO!" So, she sheepishly came back. Whew! Crisis averted. I mean, with one super duper wiggly baby in my hands I really didn't have a free one to wrangle a toddler--especially one that can throw a mean hissy fit when she doesn't get her way. Luckily it didn't come down to that and she sat next to me. Until....they started to sing "her song."

A spends a lot of time with Mr. Wonderful and his kids and knows most of their choir songs. She says they are "her" songs to sing and loves to sing with them! A's eyes lit up and she told me she was just going to look at the kids. She walked to the far end of our very long, very narrow pew (towards the center aisle). She gazed at me with a sheepish look. And then, THE GRIN. The grin that says, "Well, Mama, I hope you know I'm going to really embarrass you right now!" And boy did she.

She smiles and then took off up the center aisle. Walking quickly up to Mr. Wonderful and all of his singing students. Up the WHOLE church as we were in the far back pew. Up in front of 150 people--many whom I knew, worked with, taught and strangers of course. Up past the 15 other kids her age who were sitting quietly and well with their parents. Right up next to the piano where she stopped gazing at her father who was oblivious to her presence but assumed she was there as the kids were laughing out loud while they were trying to sing.

Ah. That took my pride down a notch--let me tell ya!

I finally edged my way to the inside of the long, narrow pew--holding my wiggly little baby who wanted to crawl and roll away from me. And I sat there. Frozen. It felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds. I knew there was no way I could walk up the center aisle with my wiggling baby only to grab a toddler who would probably scream bloody murder and completely ruin the song. So I sat. And I looked around at a lot of faces that were looking back at me--all of those faces were saying, "huh, I wonder what she's gonna do about this?"

And I had no idea.

Until a strange man came up to me and asked if I wanted him to get A for me. I said yes all the while thinking--she'll never go with a strange man she doesn't know. Ah. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

He walked up the aisle, whispered something to A, scooped her up and brought her back to me (she was frozen in fear the entire time) where she promptly melted to the floor and started weeping and gnashing her teeth about wanting to sing with the big kids.

I comforted her the best I could with the wiggly baby in my arms and convinced her to come and sit down with me (luckily she stopped crying before the song ended so not everyone heard her). She listened quietly for a while as M continued to bash me with her head looking for an escape. I finally decided to take A to the bathroom for a diversion when an old lady saw me and took pity and opened up the nursery for me. I hurriedly explained that I never would have brought both of them by myself if I had known they didn't have nursery on Sunday nights and she replied...

"Well, we don't have nursery but all of our children always just sit perfectly still and listen."

Thanks. Thanks so much.

Never again I say! Never again! Will I take them both by myself to wrangle and to wrestle. I'll be calling ahead from now on to find out if there is nursery! Yikes. My stomach seriously still hurts just thinking about it. I don't think I'll ever be the same.

Awkward Moments Define My Life: Student Teaching

Just to prove that I'm not the only one with awkward moments...

Picture this: It was the winter of 2000-2001.
I was just beginning my student teaching in Jamestown Ohio.

I was excited.

I was nervous.

I was terrified.

All of these, but mostly terrified!

I arrived at school my first day and the teacher (a young, handsome man) explained my schedule to me--that I would at first observe and take on classes one at a time...

So that first day, I sat in the back of the room and waited for the student's to come in.

My teacher headed to the front of the room 1 st period.

Introduced me.

Collected homework.

Began a very serious discussion on The Great Gatsby and

sat down

kind of

well, actually he sat on the edge of his stool which

loudly

crashed

and smashed him onto the floor.

I don't think I've ever seen a man's face take on quite that shade of red before.

I couldn't look at him for a week

and that stool

well, that stool was pushed to the corner and I never ONCE attempted to sit on it

for fear of a repeat performance.

The end.

p.s. One of my favorite moments in all of my New Jersey life happened in someone's Audubon kitchen.

It was halloween.

There were pumpkins involved...

But it's not my awkward moment to write about.

Maybe someday she will....=)

Awkward Moments Define My Life:Junior High Edition: A.K.A. Puppy Love

Way back a million years ago, when I was home schooled (7-9 grade), my family had a farm and my father ran a Maple syrup business. Every March we would make our rounds to all of the large Maple trees we could find and tap them, collect the sap, and boil it away until it became the most beautiful, delicious, golden maple syrup.



This maple syrup was so delicious it has ruined me for life! Aunt Jemima makes me gag (literally) and even the "real" maple syrup you find in the store doesn't compare in the least to the beautiful syrup my father made. Maple syrup is graded on a scale from light amber to dark amber and what you see in the store is the dark amber stuff--but at the beginning of the season the first sap (for some reason that I can't remember) turns into the lightest, almost clear syrup and it is delicious and like nothing you've ever tasted. One thing I really admire about my father is that even though he doesn't stick with a "passion" for long (card, stamp, coin, bottle collecting, bike racing, kayaking, mountain climbing, and more) he ALWAYS does EVERYTHING with the utmost attention to detail, and with an approach based on hours of research and study. But, I digress...



So, this maple syrup was more than enough for one family to use so we sold it at a local farmer's market. My mother and I would get up at the crack of dawn to drive the hour to Syracuse to set up our booth of Pure NY Maple Syrup for sale. We always did really well since (and I can say this without bias) our syrup was the best at the market. It was fun to go to the Farmer's Market and see all of the crafters selling their wares and the Amish selling their food and the farmer's selling their produce--it was a veritable melting pot of all types of people from all walks of life and I'll have you know we even saw a few celebrities (local newspeople) there.



It was a big deal.



It was also real boring sometimes. We would get there sooooooo early and it was soooooo cold and it was quiet and a little lonely until the big crowds came later in the day so I would bring things to occupy myself with.



My favorite thing to occupy myself with was my puppy Q.T. He made his first appearance at the farmer's market not long after we purchased him (the most beautiful little shih tzu in the land) and he was my pride and joy. Along with Q.T. I brought my friend Trudy from church. After I helped my mom set up the syrup table Trudy and I took a walk around the market with Q.T. and talked girl stuff and giggled and did all those things that 12 year olds do. And then, I spotted them. Two of the cutest, tallest, oldest boys at my Christian School. (I was home schooled but attending a Christian school once a week for gym class/friends/etc). They were selling apples and saw us walking by!



It was terribly exciting.



We looked their way, squealed and hightailed it out of there (in that order). We spent the rest of the morning talking about how dreamy they were and hoping they would "find" our table so we could exchange glances (you know, the way 12 year olds flirt). The boys eventually did walk by our table once and smile and wave and keep walking (ahhhh). That was enough for a little while but then we decided we would go look for them again. We took Q.T. and headed off to find them and once we did we smiled and they were laughing at us and we weren't sure why. Well, all I had to do was look down to where they pointed and see that Q.T. was doing a doggy number 2 all over the front of their vending area. AHHHHHHh! Angst Alert! It was so embarrassing and we even had to high-tail it to the ladies room, procure paper towels, come BACK to their stand and clean up all the poop. It was like totally gross.



Humbled and degraded my friend and I walked back to the maple syrup table--determined not to show our faces in public again. Lo and behold those boys came back to our table to *blush* talk to us. We were so excited. Until, they started to look at us funny. And laugh. Again. And all I had to do was look where they were pointing. Again. And I saw that Q.T. had just barfed all over my sweatshirt. Seriously. All over it AND in front of the boys. It was horrible.



Luckily it was time to clean up and head back home and not surprisingly Q.T.'s first appearance at the farmer's market was most definitely his last. I never saw the boys there again either. Life just has a way of putting all of the most remarkably embarrassing events together all at once. I think it's what keeps us humble.

Awkward Moments Define My Life: College Years

Time for the next installment of Awkward Moments--I had actually forgotten (repressed) this one until this morning when it popped into my head while I was exercising!

So, Cedarville was a strange new land and I was a gregarious, overly-confident, adventure seeking freshman with purple hair and a new freedom away from home. During my freshmand year I remember running up and down the sidewalks with my friends singing songs loudly and skipping (little did I know I would see those people the next year and think disdainfully, "urgh, freshman!"). We did everything and lived every second to the fullest! We were so totally not going to miss out on the big event of the winter quarter--T.W.I.R.P. week. T.W.I.R.P. = The Woman Is Required To Pay--this is supremely important b/c that means the GIRLS had the right to ask out the BOYS--it was a school sanctioned event!! And believe me, in a Christian school with a bunch of scared boys you HAD to ask a boy out to get a date (or so I thought =-).

My friends and I spent HOURS planning who we would ask! We went through the pictures online of all the boys at school, thought about the boys in our classes...the boys on the sidewalks, the boys in town--just boys in general until we came up with our list:
Patty was going to ask Jason Malone (THE head student pastor and BIG stuff on campus)
Rachel was going to ask Greg Fleury (a cute boy who lived in the same dorm as our friend John)
Diane was going to ask...well, I can't recall who she was going to ask--but believe me, she was going to ask someone--that Diane LOVED her some boys!!
Michelle was going to ask Eric (I don't know his name).

Oh. My. Word. I was 18, fresh off the farm and thought he was sooooooooo dreamy. It didn't matter that we didn't have classes together, we had never formally met and he had NO idea who I was. I knew who he was and that was ALL the mattered =)

So, we asked out the boys with varying results--Patty didn't get the date with Jason (he had a girlfriend), Rachel god the date with Greg but we had to double with some boy whose name I don't remember--we dressed like twins--it was SUCH a disaster!! Diane asked her boy and didn't get the date and with this blazing track record I decided to call my boy.

However, I didn't have the guts.

So, being the good friend that she was, Diane decided she would intervene and called this boy for me, pretending to be me and asked him out!!!! Well, later that day she came and told me what she did and what he said (no!) and I figured that was the end of it. It wasn't....

Fast forward 2 years!

I was sitting at the lunch table with my friend Jenny Lynn and she took me to sit with her music friends. Sitting at the table of music friends was the boy who was roommates with Eric during my disastourous twirp invite. Worse still, he KNEW who I was! Apparently they had looked up my picture when Diane called pretending to be me and found out who the crazy girl who asks out complete strangers was. He remembered this and started to grill my IN FRONT of my friends about why I asked Eric out etc...

I was MORTIFIED! I told him all about how it was Diane but he didn't believe me! He kept saying, stop lying! You know you did it! This went on foreverrrrrrrrrr--like for an hour until I got up and left the lunch table! From then on everytime he saw me on campus he would laugh at me! It was humiliating! Now everyone kenw my dirty little twirp secret. Urgh.

Oh. My. Word. I so totally never asked out (or had a friend ask out) a boy like ever again.

Awkward Moments Define My Life: Junior High Edition

Picture this--I had just hit the trifecta of early 90s adolescence: short, badly permed hair, huge plastic framed glasses, and gleaming, silvery braces. For some unknown reason I had an over-developed sense of high self esteem and thought I was HOT stuff.

Easter time came around and I had a little money to burn for a fabulous new Easter dress so I went shopping at the Deb (like, the coolest place ever!). I scoured the racks until I found it--it was beautiful! lovely! grown up! It was a knee lenth, creamy colored, shoulder padded, button down the front-ed, short sleeved vision of a gown. I was in love with THAT dress! It didn't matter that it cost $30 (3 months worth of babysitting money) and wasn't on sale, I HAD to have it. I forked over my hard-earned dough and brought my new, fabulous dress home.

Finally, after what seemed like months, it was Easter and time to wear my awesome new dress! I still remember getting ready that day (I had to be like 12 yrs. old) and being SO EXCITED to go to church where hopefully my crush would be to see how devestatingly gorgeous I was. I walked into church and immediately received compliments and was feeling like, so totally awesome, when loudly (of course) and in front of all my peers in sunday school class (and MY CRUSH of course) a well-meaning but unfortunately loud English lady said--"OH MY GOODNESS! What is all over the back of your dress?" She followed that query with the most embarressing sentence uttered to me in all my life--"Is it THAT time of the month?" In her defense she DID whisper this, unfortunately she whispered it to my mother so everyone could hear...

I was devestated! I ran to the little girls room and took a look at my dress which was covered on the back with a thousand flecks of red something. Apparently my brothers and I had been eating red candy in the backseat of the car, which had flaked onto the seat and then embedded itself in my gleaming ivory dress.

Eventually I took the long walk back to my Sunday School Classroom, enshrouded this time in my mother's floor lenth coat.

Urgh. I'm still twitching...

The good news is I lived through that day. The bad news is that the dress was dry cleaned and it lived through that day too and I went on to wear it many a time.

I'm like, so totally glad that Junior High is so like totally far in the past...

Awkward Moments Define My Life: The Mommy Edition

I'll never forget the first time I took A to the mall...I was one of those Moms who are totally green around the gills and had NO idea whatsoever at all and not even a little bit what I was doing nearly all the time.

She was just a few months old and as cute as can be, if not a touch cranky, and I had her strapped into one of these contraptions: Mind you, this is not a Baby Bjorn $200 front carrier--this is a $14.99 Target Special carrier that did the job but wasn't high on comfort or luxury.

Anywho, my Mother and I sauntered around the great Carousel Center Mall and stopped at a make up counter to pick up some supplies. Of course, this wasn't a dimly lit, back corner kind of make up counter--this was Clinique all full of bright lights, white uniforms, white EVERYTHING for that matter... My Mother looked down at the ground horrified and said, "Michelle, watch out! Someone spilled coffee here!" Sure enough, I looked down and there was brown splotches everywhere--the Clinique counter, the Clinique Stools, the Clinique Floor...

Ew, Gross! What kind of person spills coffee and doesn't clean it up?!

And then I looked a little more closely at the splotches...and at my skirt...and my shirt and my darling sleeping baby who had just had explosive diarrhea for the first time, in the mall, at a brightly lit make up counter, on the brightly lit makeup counter and all over me...

Cheeks flaming I ran to the nearest bathroom and peeled A out of the front carrier (no small feat) and then proceeded to peel off all her clothes--somehow she had pooped all over everything--through no less than 15 layers of clothes--she was wearing two onesies (I was a new, crazy mom after all, exact outfit pictured here by the way), jeans, socks, diaper, coat, snugli carrier...AHHHH and of course there were no back up clothes in my diaper bag.

I sure learned my lesson that day!

I finally got her all cleaned up and cleaned myself up (because at this point the baby was crying and ya'll KNOW what this does to a breastfeeding mother in a light colored shirt, needless to say it wasn't pretty) and placed my now angry, barely clothed, sock less baby in the Snugli and made my way back down past the counter b/c that was the only route out of that particular department store.

Urgh, fortunately the ladies were uber nice and gave me free make up since they felt so sorry for me but I will never again think of Clinique, front carriers and coffee without cringing...

Awkward Moments Define My Life: College Edition

One of my most embarrassing displays took place on one of my first dates with Mr. Wonderful. We had done a lot together with groups of friends but had just started seeing each other solo so for me, there were a lot of nervousness that got in the way of any sophisticated feminine wiles.

You see, Mr. Wonderful KNEW I was a klutz--it truly is a miracle that I can walk and talk at the same time--often, even that doesn't work out for me. (I'll never forget meeting one of my best friends, Rachel, at college--I knew we were perfect for each other when on the long walk to Chuck's, the dining hall, we walked into one another about 50 times and tripped over nothing at least twice a piece..but I digress).

I had made a mess out of, around and near him countless times--there was the first time I took my friends to his new apartment and told them in no uncertain terms to be VERY careful and I proceeded to spill an ENTIRE glass of orange juice all over his new couch, coffee table and floor. There was the time I dropped a whole chip's worth of salsa on his new shoes at church and the worst time of all occurred, of course, in a very public place.

It's actually one of my favorite pre-baby places to go--my beloved Barnes and Nobles. We would go there often on dates and sip mocha coffee (me) and tea (him). We would pick out tons of magazines and talk about anything and everything. Well on this occasion I grabbed a rather hefty stack of writer's journals, art magazines, and of course a glamour and cosmo... I was happily sipping my coffee when I decided to rearrange my magazines and accidentally (of course) knocked my entire cup of steaming hot mocha coffee all over his KHAKI pants, light colored shirt, my shirt, the whole, table, all the books and magazines, the floor...etc...

I was mortified....and so was he I'm sure (although he was far to nice to do anything except stare at me with his mouth hanging open for a bit). I'm sure he was thinking that I was a total nut job but luckily I was just foxy enough for him to decide it wasn't a big deal =-)

The rest of our date included the following activities:
*using a rain forest's worth of napkins to clean the mess
*the purchase of $50 of magazines which wiped my bank account clean
*me apologizing profusely and often
*me crying in front of him for the first time about the $50 magazines/books which were completely sopping wet with coffee
*walking around in public with coffee stained clothes
*going to do laundry since his clothes were completely chocolatemoacha-fied and since most of my clothes were too
*laughing

It was horrible but I'm sure it's a date neither one of us will EVER forget.

Like it's 1994...

...Anyone remember curly hair and straight bangs? Well, I'm bringin' it back baby! ha!

Awkward Moments Define My Life: The High School Edition

I'm sure you can all think back to a time (or in my case, many times) where things just didn't go your way. It seems to me, that the things that stick most clearly in my mind are always those horrible moments that you just plain want to forget--it's all the good stuff that I have a difficult time remembering! Thus begins my new series: Awkward Moments Define My Life...Enjoy!

Installment 1 (a shorty but a goody):

During my high school years I was part of a travelling singing ensemble called Reflections. It was comprised of a group of girls (nearly all of them in the same grade as me) and met a few times a week for rehearsals and performed a few Sundays each month at area churches.

One of the "best" parts of being in ensemble was the super cool new outfits we were given to perform in (and when I say super cool I mean utterly horrendous even for 1995). Here is a picture of a similar dress--basically a maroon potato sack with long sleeves and the ultra-flattering t-length design...yikes.

The day after Mrs. Fuller, our director, had taken our measurements we had rehearsal. I was running a little late and got there after everyone else and when I entered the room my teacher was staring at me as if she were aghast--I figured this meant I was in trouble for being late--I can only wish that were the case... She continued to stare, eyes popping out of her head, mouth agape, until she proclaimed loudly and in front of all my peers--

"WHOA! Michelle! I better recheck your measurements--it looks like I should have ordered you a MUCH bigger size!"

This still evokes an internal CRINGE to this day...Fortunately no one commented on her outburst but I was mortified! Thanks Mrs. Fuller, public humiliation is always the gift that keeps on giving!