Darla Stories

A few more things I thought were funny:

*Well, for starters, we came home Wednesday night and there were homemade brownies at our front door. They were in a cute pan with a sticker tag on top. It read:

Paula Deen’s Yummy Brownies
Love, The Carters

Problem is, I had NO idea who the Carters were. That however did not deter me from trying one (delish- apparently whoever the Carters were, they could definitely cook!). Bill told me to hurry and blog about it since I might keel over at any moment - eating a strangers food and all. He seriously said, after I took the first bite, “you are such a risk taker.” And maybe it’s true…maybe I did put my life on the line for a little chocolate, but it was such good chocolate. He wouldn’t let the kids have any until he determined if I was going to wake up the next day. I did in fact wake up and everyone, including risk averse Bill, took Brownies in their lunch. In fact, once I figured out who the Carters were I was planning on becoming very close friends - no telling what else they could bake!

(*Bloggers note: OK, so I racked my brain all Wednesday night trying to imagine who would do such a nice thing for me. I couldn’t come up with anyone. So, I called my neighbor who can tell you anything and everything you want to know about any neighbor on any given day any time you ask her. I kid you not. So I called my friend who shall remain nameless and said…“Do we know anyone in our neighborhood with the last name Carter?” Of course she immediately knew who it was….the sweet family from 2 streets over who bring their daughter to swing on the pogo swing hanging from a big tree in our front yard several times a week.

Now, I visit with the mom…often. In fact, I consider her a good friend. I just didn’t know her last name (remember, I’m not detail oriented.) Now I’m a little sad though because my new BFF, with the last name Carter, has her house up for sale. I hope whoever buys her house can cook!

*Wednesday morning was just like any other at our house. Bill tosses the newspaper up to the front door as he leaves. Once the kids go to school, I open the door, grab the paper and sit down to read it…at least I used to…it’s been busy the last week or two around here. Every now and then, if he comes back in the house, he’ll bring the paper and set it inside the front door. Today he came back in and sure enough, there was a paper inside the door.

I sat down to read it and noticed something funny about the headline. It said “March comes in like a Bear” and talked about the stock market tumbling. I thought that was weird because I could have sworn that Bill had mentioned the night before that the Dow went up nearly 700 points. (I thought maybe Bill got his facts wrong - never mind that part of his job is to track his companys stock…). The next story I read was about a teenager who had gotten lost in the woods and was found 24 hours later. They rescued the boy last week and I assumed they were telling his “story of survival” this week. Then I turned to page 2 and saw a story that I read on AOL last week.

This, I thought to myself, is why the big papers are going to go out of business. This is such old news….I got it over the Internet a week ago.

And then it dawned on me……wait…..I think this IS old news. Looked at the date and sure enough….Tuesday, March 3. Now this is where MOST people (myself not included) would think they picked up an old paper. But not me. Nope, I thought (I swear this is true) that the Houston Chronicle had accidentally printed last weeks newspaper and delivered it to it’s million plus subscribers. I felt awful for them. I thought “this is going to make national news….a mix up this bad will be so embarrassing for them.”

I figured they already knew but thought I’d call anyway, just to confirm. After I got the phone, I walked to my computer (which is in a new spot in the living room just inside the front door) to look up the circulation departments phone number. Just as I walked through the hallway, something outside the window next to the door caught my eye. Yes, you guessed it. TODAYS paper.

For the life of me I don’t know why I didn’t think I was reading an old one. When I called Bill (laughing my head off), he said before I got very far into the story…“Darla, that was an OLD paper.” Apparently he had gotten tired of seeing it in it’s plastic sleeve somewhere in the house and tossed it by the front door. I guess he wanted me to either read it or toss it.

It’s been tossed now….I didn’t read anymore of that paper…you know what they say….no news is good news.

OH, and I just remembered this one. Remember when I told you that there was more to the Costco story where I bought a whole case of green beans? Well, we had our old Suburban then and sometimes the door didn’t close very well. Which turned out to be a problem when I turned out of Costco that particular day into a VERY busy intersection with my car loaded with water bottles, green beans… and enough food for an army. Somehow when I pulled out, the door swung open and groceries started flying everywhere…and I do mean everywhere.

My middle school daughter, upon hearing about it, said “you left the food, right?!” Oh no. Stopped traffic…food’s not cheap you know.

I cleaned up that entire road of my grocery mess and even retrieved the water bottles that had rolled into the ditch. I just kept smiling and waving and holding up my hand (cop style) to tell the cars to stop. The whole time I was thinking…you know…. all these people are going to go home and say…“you aren’t going to believe what happened to some lady coming out of Costco today.” As you know, it’s just a day in my life.

Lastly, I found out this week that my blog was selected to be in the “Magazine Monday” section (p.123) of a really cool on line magazine called SeriousLife. You HAVE to see the irony that something I wrote would go into something called serious life. Now granted, there are days I write serious stuff, but a lot of it…well, not so much. To their credit, they selected a more serious post of mine to feature. But, this web-a-zine is very cool….you just click a button and it turns the pages for you. You can check it out at www.seriouslife.com.

3:00 PM today marks the beginning of Spring Break for the Houston crowd. I’ll try and leave a post or two, but we are heading out somewhere. We still have a few hours to figure it out.

Have a great weekend!