This One Time...10-Year-Old Boys Hit On Me At the Pool

Today Jake and I headed to the pool on this sunny Saturday afternoon. As we are enjoying the water, I look up and see this kid standing by the side of the pool watching us. I don't think anything of it until I catch him looking again...once...twice...three times.

"I think that kid is watching me," I tell Jake.

This kid who is yes, probably 10—at most 12.

The next time I see him, he makes eye contact, blows two kissy faces my way, and jumps into the water to join his friends.

The next 15 or 20 minutes then include these three little boys blowing kisses my way and making the Taylor Swift hand heart—with the occasional wink thrown in. Jake and I try to do our own things and not pay attention, but at one point Jake just kisses me—you know, to claim his territory. They got a kick out of that—with some oooOOOOOoooo's and then some encouragement like, "Hey, you're on the Kiss Cam" and "You can do better than that!"

At this point we are in the middle of the 6-foot-deep water, so of course they can't get anywhere really close to us. (Granted, I can't really hang out there by myself either, but I've got a tall husband to hang onto to keep me from A—drowning and B—exhaustion from treading water.) But these boys enjoy hanging out by the side and keep watching us.

So we swim back to the middle of the pool when they are distracted and are there for maybe 5 minutes when they get OUT of the water looking for us and then start getting into our area. Jake dives us underwater where we sneakily head back to the deep waters and then sneak out to sit on our towels.

No more than 5 minutes later, these boys are as close as they dare get making their faces and signals. The initial boy is now WAVING ME OVER. Really, boy...really? I wave him off, shake my head, and put on my "don't bother me look" complete with sunglasses, hat, headphones, and book. Boys, do you realize I could be your mother?

And that was my day at the pool.

P.S. I am definitely NOT married to a 10-year old. I snapped some stalker model shots of my hot husband when he wasn't looking. Luckily, I don't think he reads my blog. We'll see if I hear anything about this later...

Oo-la-la! 

The One Time...I Made My Sister's Halloween Costume

"This one time" should actually be a many time experience, but today we're focusing on Halloween in 2000.

My family was not the type to buy Halloween costumes. I still think store-bought costumes are lame and lack creativity. I'm all about piecing things together, working with what you have on hand, sewing things if necessary, or utilizing thrift store finds.

So back in 2000 (I was 14, Susie was 12), Susie and I discussed our costume ideas for the year. We sorted through our family costume box and looked at what fabric our mom had on hand.

We found this purple felt and decided that Susie would be a wizard! How would we make this happen? Well, we had two pieces of fabric. The large piece would work well as a the cape. I don't think I even had to cut it. I very simply lined the collar and create the loop for the sparkly rope to tie through.

The skirt. Again we were pretty lucky on the size of the fabric. It was easy to sew a seam up the side, put an elastic in the waist and cut a zig zag edge. And finally the hat.

Hello poster board. I glued it together to make a cone (and stapled it to make sure things stayed put). Then we glued on the extra fabric scraps. I remember we didn't exactly have whole pieces of fabric to cover the entire hat so we had to make things work. We used the shiny stars (cut out from scraps of school supplies) to cover any seams.

The BEST part of this story is that I barely finished all of this by Halloween. The next problem?

I still didn't know what *I* was going to do for a costume.  I ended up throwing together a very makeshift Pippy Longstocking costume. It was less than excellent. It was actually kinda lame. Oh well, at least Susie's costume was cool. And we used that costume a couple more times over the years, plus for some school spirit activities when my first high school's colors were purple, red, and silver.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This One Time...I worked at Build-a-Bear

When I was a junior in high school, I landed a job working at the one and only Build-a-Bear Workshop.

A brand new store was opening in the mall near where I lived in Virginia and I was one of the original staff brought on for the store opening. I remember the interview included a lot of personality questions and random things like asking what animal I think I would be. I'm fairly certain I said something about being a butterfly and something about being social and friendly.

I worked there for over a year, and I think one more Christmas break. It was a great job for me as a high school student and I still get a little nostalgic when I walk by a store.

These pictures are from our Bearacademy Awards Party when we celebrated being open for a year. In addition to my one year of service and "Great 'Be There'" recognition, I also got the "Most likely to become a Britney impersonator" award. Because, yes, when I was younger and very, very skinny,  people would often randomly tell me that I look like Britney Spears. (Like stop me in bathrooms or get people to take pictures of us together random.)  I've never seen the similarity.  :-)

  

This One Time...We Had a Garage Sale in The Rain

This one time my sister Susie and I decided to have a garage sale. This was in the middle of May when I had just moved, and she was about to move. We both had quite a few things to get rid of and decided that the work of a garage sale was worth it...plus we thought we'd have fun! (Yea, we are kinda crazy like that. 

Well the morning of the planned garage sale (I guess technically it would be a yard sale) turned out to be quite cloudy—with what looked like very high chances of rain. 

We decided to go ahead with our plan anyway. 

I had printed tons of signs with cute phrases like "A gal's dream yard sale" or "Scrapbooking supplies galore" or "Come one, come all" and, uh, "Yard Sale." 

I taught a Zumba class that morning at 8 am, so Susie and I met up early to get everything ready and hang up the signs, and I took off while Susie held down the fort. Our set up quite literally turned out to be a fort. 

The rain definitely came. And it was quite a chilly day. 

All of our stuff ended up huddled together under a large tarp. 

We didn't sell MUCH that day. But I had fun. And I'd probably do it again...and hope for better weather. 

The "This One Time" series is a new thing I'm doing to share some random stories and experiences from my life. One of my projects this past week has been to go through and organize a lot of old pictures and documents. That project inspired this series.