Our worlds are colliding! If you are a frequent visitor to our blog, you know that we often participate in Erica‘s writing community, Yeah Write Me, and we love making lists for Stasha‘s Monday Listicles. Well, our last post was written in response to the Yeah Write Me prompt: “What is the most annoying sound you have ever heard?” And this week’s Monday Listicle topic is 10 Sounds That Drive You Bonkers.
What?? You don’t hear the explosions? Whatever. Anyway, we are going to continue the theme of our post Of Ringtones and Beepers (Go ahead and read it, we’ll wait. It’s only 499 words thanks to Erica) and focus this list on the telephone.
10 Telephonesque Sounds That Drive Us Bonkers
Do kids even recognize this is a phone?
1. Erin’s ringtone. (You REALLY need to read our other post.)
2. “The mailbox is full and can no longer accept messages at this time. Good-bye.” Erin’s voicemail message for over 7 months now. And counting.
2. “Mom, Mom, Mommy, Mom, Mom,” revving up the second your ear touches the receiver when just 45 seconds before they were happily destroying the linen closet.
4. A busy signal. It is the 21st century after all, who doesn’t have call waiting? We have been denied the flying cars and silver jumpsuits, can we at least not have that berp, berp, berp in our ears?
5. The stupid call waiting beep when you have been on hold with the pediatrician’s office for 30 minutes. You know if you switch over, THAT will the moment the nurse picks up.
6. On-hold Muzak. And worse yet, staticky Muzak.
7. The sound of a smartphone screen cracking.
8. The sound of a teen searching for his or her lost cell phone. We would describe it as a cross between a tornado and a bellowing water buffalo.
9. The sound of our cellphones ringing the second after our home phones quiet. Blowing up her phones makes Ellen feel punchy. Erin is a little more understanding. She realizes the person on the other end of the line does not know she is sitting in her fuzzy slippers, sipping Diet Coke, and screening calls.
10. AUTOMATED PHONE MENUS! “Press 1 if you are sure we don’t give a shizz, press 2 is you think we don’t give a rat’s tuckus,… press 87 if you are now inspired to throat punch a bunny wearing our company t-shirt.”
“Erin, we only have another hour to work before preschool pick-up, could you turn that blasted cell phone off?”
“Sorry, but no, Ellen. The Bazaar is on Friday and I have to put out the fires, grease the cogs..”
“Spare me the clichés and please, please spare me from that grating ringtone.”
“Who lugied in your latte? I like it. But really, it’s not like you have to deal with the hand-wringing volunteers on the other end. So suck it up, Buttercup. What do you care?”
She was right. What did I care? It was a new age/zen crap stanza, but was it really the sound of the panpipes that was driving me bonkers? Truly, it probably wasn’t the tune that bugged me so much as the fact that it was an evil lie! That thing was detonating constantly, and there was NOTHING zen about 97.9% of the calls.
“Erin, to be fair, it may be conjuring up flashbacks from my OB/GYN intern year.”
“I’m feeling a swirling spiral taking us back in time.”
“Well, since you asked…”
It was a particularly bad night on call that had me bouncing between the ER, labor and delivery, and the oncology ward. In fact, there were laboring women lined up in the hallway waiting for empty rooms.
“Did you do your residency in Calcutta?”
“Baltimore. Anyway…”
Then the beep came from Unit A. I had just left Unit A. I hefted the beeper in my hand and took a deep breath….
“Breathing is good.”
…and hurled my beeper like I was the geeky girl in a gym class dodgeball game trying to teach the popular girl with the perfectly winged back hair a lesson.
“Like? Weren’t you actually that nerdy chick?”
“Erin, are you grasping that you have already chafed my irritation level to an eight? Can I finish? Anyway…”
My beeper lay smashed at my feet. Relief was my friend for half a doctor-just-did-what second. Then, Abject Panic pushed her rudely aside. As I sweated through my scrubs, I was convinced that an old lady was coding on the oncology floor. Never mind that the code beeper was still snugly clipped to my pocket; Panic is a deceiving witch like that. I scooped the pieces up and rushed to the front desk. The nurse slapped surgical tape, rubber bands, and a doughnut into my open palm.
“Wait, a doughnut?”
“The nurse liked me.”
“Okay MacGyver, did it work?”
I had barely snapped the last band in place and wiped the chocolate from my mouth when I was rewarded with a stirring of life from my patient: mew, mew, mew. It worked, but my beep was transformed into a kind of sick mewling. But that distorted “waa, waa” actually made me feel satisfied, like vengeance was mine.
“So I guess it’s not your ringtone, but what it represents.”
Sometimes I don’t know if you or Steve told me something because you two sound the same in my head.
Ellen: Yeah, I’m not sure what to say about that. Good thing I like your husband, Steve, or I might just be disturbed.
Erin: Just know it explains why I don’t use your many rolls of designer duct tape to seal up your pie hole.
Ellen: Anyway, beside sharing space in Erin’s head, we also share a penchant for decorating birthday cakes for our babies.
Erin: Since this week’s Monday Listicle over at Stasha’s blog The Good Life is “Birthdays,” we decided to share a few of the more inspired creations.
Ellen: The topic was picked by the funny and fabulous Robbie over at Fractured Family Tales. She loves all things sock monkey so swing on over and check her out.
Erin: So without further ado…
The Cakes
Steve’s Cakes
We’ll start with Steve’s cakes. His family owned a Carvel Ice Cream Store, so he has some real deal skills.
1.
Steve decorated this freehand for one Star Wars loving little boy
2.
How cool, I mean hot, is this cake?
3.
Deliciously creepers!
4.
Rubble never tasted so delicious.
Ellen’s Cakes
How memories are made
Ellen’s skills are purely amateur, but she does make her own marshmallow fondant. Her family also has a lovely tradition where the birthday girl gets her own mini cake to eat by herself…without a fork. Don’t worry. The guests get their very own saliva free cupcakes. Ellen is sanitary like that.
5.
The personal cake tradition dates back to the girls’ first birthdays, but this was the first cake where Ellen branched out with decorating. Ellen must bake multiple cakes for each party, but she does it with joy. And sprinkles. Lots of sprinkles.
6.
The mud is actually delicious fudge. In case you were worried.
7.
Who doesn’t think this is adorable?
8.
Flamingo Cake 1
9.
Flamingo Cake 2. We weren’t kidding about the multiple cakes.
10.
Why yes that is a Polly Pocket and we’re glad to see you.
Bonus!
This is Ellen’s most recent birthday cake: Coca-Cola Cake. It is not decorated elaborately, but it is chocolate heaven. This chocolate buttercream is going to be Ellen’s go-to frosting. You may be not be lucky enough to come to our parties, but we are kind enough to share the recipes.
It was a lovely Girls Night Out. Good restaurant, good libations, and great friends… until someone brought IT up.
The Spark That Burned Girls’ Night Out to the Ground
Ellen: The conversation was bubbling along. Everyone was laughing. News was being exchanged. Then someone said, “Did you know Andy Griffith passed away last week?” And YOU said. . .
Erin: “I can’t stand Andy Griffith.”
Ellen: And then there was silence.
Erin:For about HALF a second. Before everyone lost their ever-loving minds on me. It was as if I had said “Why, yes, those jeans really do make you look fat”. I would never say that by the way, but the reaction might have been less hysterical if I did.
Ellen: But peacemaker that you are, you DID proclaim Opie to be a stupid name as a follow-up statement.
Erin:That MAY have dumped gasoline on the fire. Listen people, it rhymes with Dopey! It can’t just be me.
Who knew that Andy Griffith was gonna be the guy who turned me into a social pariah? I can’t believe this was the second group of people to lose their minds on me about our buddy from Mayberry.
Ellen: I CAN’T BELIEVE you brought it up again after you nearly reduced your friend’s July 4th party to an emotional maelstrom of rending garments and gnashing teeth.
Erin:It was like I had spit on the flag and apple pie.
Ellen: Just to clarify she did NOT spit on the flag OR apple pie. Focus your hate mail on the topic at hand: The Andy Griffith Show.
Goober and Erin have communication problems
Erin:I MAY have pushed everyone to the brink when I said, “If he wasn’t already dead, I would shoot him myself.”
Ellen: What in the name of Goober is WRONG with you?
Erin:You know how when a Great White Shark senses blood in the water and just starts snapping its jaws at everything. The group outrage frenzy might have made me react a little more strongly than I would have liked. Or it could have been the Whiskey Sour Slushes.
Ellen: This analogy might be more accurate if the shark actually bites its own butt. You shot yourself in the foot not once, but TWICE with Barney Fife’s revolver. This is really hard to do considering he had only one bullet.
But on this night, I had your back. I agreed with you because I always found the whole show, well, patronizing.
Erin:Exactly! We both grew up in small podunk towns. Heck, when I was a little girl I lost my chicken in the grocery store and we barely got home before the phone was ringing with a helpful townsfolk wanting to return it.
Ellen: Wait. Are we talking about a real chicken or pre-packaged?
Erin:Neither. It was a stuffed animal lovey.
Ellen: Okay, because if you had lost a live chicken in a public store and had a neighbor call to return it, we could just end this discussion right here. You would have total rights to bust on Mayberry until the cows come home.
Erin:But since that is not the case, we decided to do a little research to see if our disdain is misplaced. It has been decades since either one of us was force-fed an episode. We’re stirring pots based solely on the aftertaste this silly show left in our mouths before we were even able to drive down Main Street.
Erin:And quite frankly waited in anticipation to be proven correct.
Erin:The conclusion? I have been outcast because people can’t handle the truth!
Ellen: Golllll-y, I hope y’all didn’t actually watch that video because it was just as sexist, podunk, and patronizing as we remembered.
Erin: In the episode, a traveling British valet…
Ellen: On a bike no less..
Erin: ...bumbles into Mayberry and causes a vehicular accident.
Ellen: Translated—The Brit’s wrong-side-of-the-road cycling causes a beater truck to smash into empty crates. At 5 mph. Causing “damage” to the primer paint job.
Erin:He does not have the cash to pay for the damage, so Andy has him come to his home to work off the debt.
Ellen: What is more American apple pie than making someone your INDENTURED SERVANT!?! Ever heard of due process, Matlock?
Erin:So blundering misunderstandings ensue and the indentured servant overhears Barney and Andy talking about him…
Ellen: Like 12 year old girls. Wait, that is insulting to 12 year old girls.
Erin:Well, it’s definitely not icon worthy behavior.
Ellen: The Englishman skulks off, Andy chases him down, and, I swear, talks to him like he is one pancake short of a stack to convince him to come on back to his house.
Opie doesn’t need our love
Erin:This is a man he left Dopey home alone with for two entire days.
Ellen: It’s Opie. Listen, Ron Howard lost his childhood to this show. I feel uncomfortable busting on him.
Erin:I think he’s okay. He’s had some achievements since then.
Ellen: True. Well, one positive revelation we had is that Don Knotts is freakin’ hilarious.
Erin:Maybe he’s the reason we didn’t puke on our TV trays when we were forced to watch this malarkey.
Barney’s face says, “I’m a comic genius.” Andy just looks mean.
Ellen: So, I’m just going to say it, and I’m probably going to regret it: Erin was right.
Erin: We are standing firm that The Andy Griffith Show is not sacred and is fair game to be ridiculed.
Legal Department: The views expressed in this post are solely those of Ellen and Erin and not those of the entire Sisterhood. There is full expectation that the Girls’ Night Out dog pile will continue in the comment section. Carry on.
Ellen: So what did you do this weekend? Because it certainly wasn’t finishing the blog post I jetted over to you 16 days ago.
Erin:Steve and I painted a room. Together.
Ellen: Forgiven! I love decorating. What do think of the color?
Erin:Um.
Ellen: Um, What!?!
Erin:I think it looks great, but Steve thinks it looks the same.
Ellen: The same as what? Cut to the chase.
Erin:It’s Wheeling Neutral, but Steve stands that is SameAsEveryOtherRoomInOurHouse.
Ellen: Well, Wheeling rolls off the tongue better but what color is that?
Erin: It’s a neutral.
Ellen: Yeah. But is it white, brown, gray, what? Is it warm or cool?
Erin:I DON”T KNOW!
Ellen: O-kay. So how do you pick colors, Ray Charles?
Erin:By name.
Ellen: So if the most perfect gray was named Breadmold and gray the color of corpse toes was named Dolphin Tail, you would pick?
Erin:Dolphin Tail.
Ellen: So maybe you should just graffiti the names on your walls since you are more English 101 than Design 200. What do you think of the color?
Erin:I love it! But Steve won’t stop rolling his eyes.
Ellen: Because?
Erin:Well, he thinks it looks like FamilyRoomSisal.
Ellen: Is it?
Erin:Oh no, it’s darker than Sisal. To which he said, “Well, then it’s DiningRoomHarvestWheat.”
Ellen: Oh.
Erin:But it’s not. It’s lighter than that. More like BackPorchEnglishToffee.
Ellen: (laughing) You have a problem.
Erin:Well, I have been burned before by color. You remember!!! The night before Deacon”s christening we painted the family room what I THOUGHT was a lovely shade of sage but turned out to be mint. The paint was still wet as my tears dripped into my paint bucket.
At least I didn't trot my mint green out into public. I kept that shizz behind closed doors.
Ellen: That WAS awful! But why don’t you just embrace that neutrals soothe you and take a can out of the garage. So your house matches.
Erin:Well, my friend Chris The Interior Designer mentioned Wheeling would really pop against my pretty new shelves.
Ellen: And you didn’t realize it was exactly the same color that you already had?
Erin:First of all, it’s not EXACTLY the same—it’s slightly darker. Second, and no judgment please, I didn’t even know what it was until I got to Home Depot. Chris KNOWS things. She’s a PROFESSIONAL. She is GIFTED! So I went with it, because my minty scars run deep.
Ellen: It’s time for a little “Know thine self.”
1) You are highly impressionable
2) You are not, as they say in the biz, “comfortable with a color wheel.”
3) You like the calm of neutrals
So just pick a shade already and stick with it. I’m tired of the hand-wringing.
Erin:Steve mentioned something like that.
Ellen: You have mentioned that Steve and I share some common traits.
We love Nora Ephron and mourned her passing with everyone else. Therefore, we were touched when Deborah at Mannahatta Mamma asked us to honor Nora’s list of What I’ll Miss/ What I Won’t with our own for this week’s Monday Listicles on Stasha’s blog The Good Life. Deborah is a great writer so treat yourself with a trip to her blog. It is one of our favorite places to visit.
So even as I enjoy my great summer reads and swim with my kids and generally enjoy my summer, my thoughts are never far from the fall and the big change that’s coming.
I haven’t ever had a kindergartener without another baby at home. I haven’t been without a little buddy close on my heels for 15 years. I don’t really know quite what to feel, so I am just being philosophical about it. Ellen, who is also experiencing her own big changes as her girls enter high school and middle school this year, has agreed to help me. While I wax nostalgic, she is going to give me the reality check I sorely need. Hopefully, this will help me avoid holing up under my covers the first week of school.
Things I Will Miss:
1. Preschool Productions. There is nothing like an uncooperative angel to move me in unexpected ways.
Ellen Reality Check: These productions generally involve the sewing/gluing/repairing/conjuring of costumes, usually at the last minute. All this costuming must be squeezed around baking the 20 dozen cookies needed for the reception. The bonus is you get to take your little angel home immediately after he has been sugared up at the aforementioned reception.
2. Dressing Up. They may still do it a little once “big kid” school starts, but capes and swords and boots are the wardrobe of preschool.
Ellen Reality Check: Oh please, I know your kid. The caped crusader outfitting is not going to stop. You’ll still have Wolverine as your side-kick at the grocery store (if you’re not smart enough to do your shopping while he is in school, that is).
3. The freedom to explore and strike out on our own during the week. We will still go out and do it, but there is less time now.
Ellen Reality Check: That is sad. Wait, I’m supposed to counterpoint. How about you won’t have to squeeze working out, blogging, grocery shopping, and cleaning into a three hour time slot each day. You won’t have to choose between exercising and showering anymore. Your blogging partner says, “Yippee!”
4. Little things. Star Wars guys, Lego mini-figures, army men, Trash Pack Guys, Squinkies—you name it. If you can clutch more than one of them, Eddie loves them unconditionally. He will still play with them, but his little clutches won’t be all over the house all day every day. Sniff.
Ellen Reality Check: I’ll finally be able to walk around your freakin’ house without impaling my foot. And by the way, you do realize school is only about 6 hours? He has oodles of time before and after school to wreak his havoc on your abode.
5. Day trips after preschool. There was just something so special about having that little extra alone time together.
Ellen Reality Check: For real? You’re a great mom, but did you really go tip-toeing through the tulips every day after pick-up? Go train for your half marathon already, geesh.
Final Ellen Reality Check: I may or may not have gone back to bed, curled into the fetal position, and pulled the covers over my head for a solid month after I put my youngest on the bus for kindergarten. You’ll never know because the evidence was destroyed in the honey badger incident of 2011. Well, at least Erin has blogging to ease her pain.
Click on over to Monday Listicles to check out the other great posts. This week should prove to be a good one.
Where are we going? Who gives a reserved room away? Dang, that’s a lot of pigeons. Is this porter going to drop dead hauling our luggage over this bridge? Who knew all of Europe plays in Venice on the weekends (certainly not Barb the Travel Agent)?
These questions crashed in my head as we uneasily followed our decrepit porter with his back hunched, his seventieth birthday a distant memory, and his hat borrowed from an organ grinder monkey.
One hour earlier, we had arrived in Venice at 6pm on a Friday night to find our room released. Apparently, our paid reservation only guaranteed a two minute check-in window.
So I pulled out my smartphone, consulted TripAdvisor, and found the perfect room on the Grand Canal…not! This was 1995. Siri was a gleam in Steve Job’s eye. We were at the mercy of travel agents, language barriers, tour books, and weasely desk clerks.
Instead, I turned to the universal language that makes men quake: sobbing. In two shakes of a Parmesan canister, the porter grabbed our luggage and hobbled out the door. The clerk grinned smarmily, clapped his hands, and proclaimed, “We possesses just de place from you.”
Rule number one of international travel? Follow your effin’ luggage. So against all reason, we followed those bags over three bridges, into an alley, through a steel door, up two flights of steps to a triple locked apartment door. All I can say is that we were young, invincible, and had NO FREAKIN’ CELL PHONES.
Methuselah dropped our bags and shuffled out of our lives. The dust motes swirled manically in the fading sunlight as I dashed through the serial killer inspection checklist: under the bed, behind the shower curtain, in the closets. We were sharing the apartment with three eerily empty suitcases, but no discernible bloodstains. So I did what anyone would do: I called dibs on the shower.
My husband cried bullshit on the entire situation, put on his armor à la shining, and went to find us a new room armed only with his utter lack of Italian.
Once my gallant knight triple locked me in (I mean who else could possibly have keys?), I stripped down to wash the dust of a thousand civilizations from my being. Twilight fell as I lathered up…and the lights died as the water turned frigid. Then keys turning in the locks. Naked wet panic is a beast all its own transcending geography. This Psycho remake was almost complete.
Quaking with sudsy fear, armed AND covered with only a throw pillow, I felt my heart leap as the door burst open to reveal…my husband. Shining with pride. He found a room with this view for us.
Distant view of the Grand Canal was much better than hanging around to find skeletons stuffed in the air shaft
We hustled back to the cacasenno desk clerk where my Italian grew some coglioni and his understanding grew by leaps and bounds. Pocketing our refund, we bid him “Arrivederci!” smiling as the collective groan of a thousand serial killers echoed throughout the piazza.
Look at what pumpkins we were. Perfect serial killer bait.
Last week Ellen was vacationing in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Meanwhile, Erin was living the good life in a beach cottage on the Potomac River in St. Mary’s County, MD.
We spent the week before together with our girlfriends and their kids in Janes Island, MD. Quite frankly, we have been traveling fools.
So we were quite happy when the lovely Stasha of Monday Listicles asked us to make a list answering questions. This seems right up our alley and completely doable with our toes in the sand and drinks in hand.
So, without further ado, here are our answers.
Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, and find line 4. What is it?
Ellen: Reading One Day by David Nicholls off of our beach bag reading list. Very good read! “sceptical mum and dad, and set out in the mini-bus as if heading out on some great cause…”
Erin: I am loving The Sense Of An Ending by Julian Barnes so much that I wish we had added it the list above or our other beach bag list. “Do you dance to it? Here? In your room? By yourself?”
How many times a day do you say Hi?
Ellen: A LOT this week. Even some holas. I’m friendly on vacation when there isn’t an old man harassing me like here.
Erin: I am almost friendly to a fault. Probably more times than I should. I have no crazy meter.
Erin: 8 years of Catholic school. I was also a candy striper in high school.
What do you think about the most?
Ellen: This week I was focused on my hubby. Does a marriage good.
Erin: Right now, I can’t stop thinking about how quickly time is moving. My oldest goes to college in three years, and my youngest starts kindergarten in the fall. Feeling very philosophical to avoid feeling anxiety over impending college or sadness over my baby being all grown up.
How many keys are on your keyring?
Ellen: 8, only two of which I use. Three of them are just there to use as weapons because I have no clue what they unlock, start, or secure.
Erin:6, but I have 10 other non-key things attached to my key chain to make it big enough so I won’t lose them.
What was the last thing you bought?
Ellen: Kayaking/ziplining adventure.
Erin:The second curtain panel for my daughter’s window. Is this where we play “Whose life is more fun”?
Are you growing anything these days?
Ellen: Tomatoes, carrots, basil, eggplant, squash, cucumbers, cantaloupes, mint, rosemary, thai basil, cilantro. I wish I could grow avocadoes so I could make my own guacamole completely from scratch. Hmmm, guess I would need a lime tree too.
Erin:A spider plant. It is the only thing that has half a shot. And even then it’s still looking a little sketchy.
Kinda ugly but hard to kill. Erin's kind of plant.
What is under your bed?
Ellen: Blissfully under my hotel bed: NOTHING! At home in the real world: a dust bunny ranch crammed between ski clothes, purses, old college notebooks, and our emergency escape ladder.
Erin: Photo albums, weights, magazine articles (collected manually BEFORE Pinterest and never discarded), gift wrap, and more. I suspect this is where the other sock halves go to hang out.
What is most important in life?
Ellen: The people. MY people.
Erin: Family. Whether it’s the one I was born into, married into, or made (including those friends who have crossed over), family is number one for me.
What is the strangest word you used this week?
Ellen: Tostones (plantains). Actually more delicious than weird.
Erin:Snozzcumber. I am reading The BFG by Roal Dahl to my little boys and giant-speak is pretty crazy.
Our worlds are colliding! If you are a frequent visitor to our blog, you know that we often participate in Erica‘s writing community, Yeah Write Me, and we love making lists for Stasha‘s Monday Listicles. Well, our last post was written in response to the Yeah Write Me prompt: “What is the most annoying sound you have ever heard?” And this week’s Monday Listicle topic is 10 Sounds That Drive You Bonkers.
