Tova's Totally Awkward Tuesdays

(I'm posting this Monday evening, because scheduling the posts to appear on Tuesdays hasn't worked for me the past few weeks, and I know that some of you night owls like to get your posts in during the wee hours of Tuesday morning, when I will definitely be sound asleep.)

A few weeks ago, I shared a Totally Awkward story about how I pseudo-stalked this guy, Kevin, at summer camp. In case some of you were still wondering why Kevin didn't fall madly in love with me, I just remembered another awkward Kevin moment. It's seriously kind of amazing that I'm married, with all of the guys I managed to drive away.

This particular incident took place during one of the three summers in my early teens when I was madly in love with Kevin - I'm pretty sure it was before the summer where I used up an entire roll of film snapping off blurry, unrecognizable photos of him. As I mentioned on the last TAT that featured Kevin, my cousin Hannah attended summer camp with me. We are three months apart in age and have always been super close. We both had our quirks, and since mine have been featured in dozens of awkward posts, let's focus on hers for a second: Hannah is the youngest of four kids - four boys, to be more precise - so she was something of a tomboy, very outgoing, could be very silly, and liked to play practical jokes. Usually, it was funny. Sometimes - like when you were trying to eat - it wasn't quite as funny.

A typical meal with Hannah at summer camp might involve spit balls, loosening the top of the salt and pepper shakers so that the next unsuspecting user would end up with a pile of salt on their plate, and random items dropped into your drink the second you looked away. If you were actually hungry, trying to eat while shielding your food and drink from flying shrapnel could be a bit much.

One day at lunch, Hannah, Mae and I had strategically positioned ourselves at a table with a very good view of Kevin and his friends. Hannah was particularly wound up that day, so in between sneaking glances at the boys, she was putting salt and pepper on mine and Mae's plates, dropping things into our drinks, eating our chips, and generally making it hard to concentrate on the most important part of lunch, which was boy-watching, of course.

Finally, I had had enough. I picked up my large glass filled with Sprite (and green beans, courtesy of Hannah), and dumped it ALL over her lunch. And then I looked up... to see Kevin... the man of my dreams... staring at me like I was a psychotic toddler. I'd been trying to catch his attention all week, and naturally the moment he actually looked at me happened to be the exact moment that I decided to drown Hannah's lunch. I was easily embarrassed at that age, anyway, but being caught acting hideously immature by my crush turned my face even more shades of red than normal. Since he was at a different table (and since I was painfully shy around boys), I couldn't even explain to Kevin that I was just giving Hannah back the green beans she'd dropped in my Sprite.

To her credit, Hannah helped me clean up the mess (I'm sure the cafeteria staff wanted to strangle us), and then we made a hasty retreat from the cafeteria. And this, my friends, is just another reason that Kevin managed to avoid falling in love with my womanly charms.

Ok, share your own awkward moment by entering a link to your Totally Awkward blog post in McLinky below! Don't forget to link back to my blog from yours so that everyone can play along!

Tiny Clothes and a Big Purse

On Monday, I bought a plane ticket, which is agonizing of course, because there are all these rules, like "If you try to cancel this ticket even one minute after you buy it, even if it's because you got run over by a truck, and your house burnt down, and there's a tornado bearing down on your car at this exact second, and you need a refund because you need every extra penny for truck-injury-repairing surgery, a new house, and tornado restoration services, we will not give you back any money, and we will charge you an extra $250 for even attempting to cancel your reservation. Also, don't even think about spelling your own name wrong, because the airline's penalty for a plane ticket name change is death."

But the thing that I'm all riled up about right now is how much they charge you for baggage. After I went to various travel sites and all of the various airlines' websites to find the lowest price for a ticket, I realized that I had to revisit every site to see how much they charge for checked baggage. Because prices vary from about $15 to $25 for just one bag (each way). So, if you pick one airline because their price was $10 cheaper and then you have to pay $50 for your baggage to come on the trip, too, it kind of defeats the purpose. It used to be that every airline gave you two checked bags for free and then charged you for extras. Then it was one free checked bag per person. Now, most major airlines charge you to check any baggage at all. That's annoying enough as it is, but it gets worse.

On some airlines, you are charged not only on how many bags you're bringing, but also on how much each bag weighs. So, on a US Airways flight for example, you pay $20 for your first checked bag, unless it weighs over 50 pounds, in which case you pay $70 each way. For your second bag, you pay $30, unless it's over 50 pounds, in which case you pay $80 each way. Obviously, they're charging you these exorbitant amounts because of the bad economy, fuel costs, etc, but the thing I'm annoyed about at this exact moment is this - the premise is that the heavier the plane is, the more fuel it's going to use, so the more it's going to cost, right? But... they don't weigh the passengers! So, they can't possibly have an accurate idea of how much the plane weighs, because they don't know how much everyone in it weighs. So, let's say I bought a plane ticket for $200. If I take my 123 pound self onto a plane, and I bring two checked bags, each of which weighs 51 pounds (because I would totally be that unlucky), I'm going to pay $500 to have the plane cart 225 pounds on a round trip flight. Meanwhile, if a 350 pound NFL linebacker flies round trip on the same flight, for the same ticket price, but because he's a guy (and let's be honest, the average guy typically packs less than the average girl), he only has one 25 pound carry-on bag, he pays $200 to fly 375 pounds round trip, while I pay $500 to fly 225 pounds round trip. It's like the story problem from hell!

The long term solution is for us all to write angry letters to the airlines. I'm not saying that they have to weigh the passengers - I'm just saying that weighing luggage is completely useless and arbitrary if they're not going to weigh the passengers. And also that $50 to bring clothes with you on your trip is exorbitant, and it's pretty unfair to charge me more if the combined weight of me AND my luggage is less than the weight of the guy next to me.

My short term solution to this problem is - as this post's title states - tiny clothes and a big purse. I'm going to the beach with my sister, so I feel like it's possible to pack a week's worth of bikinis, shorts, sundresses and tank tops into a carry on bag and a big purse. Can I do it? I think I can, but stay tuned to find out! (Although, when I was in bed, about to fall asleep last night, I suddenly jolted awake when I realized that I can't bring my gigantic hair dryer and diffuser with me if I don't bring my typically enormous suitcase. Sigh. Luckily, my flat iron is small, so I guess I'll just have straight hair all week - which will be challenging when I'm by the ocean...)

Tova's Totally Awkward Tuesdays

Welcome, one and all, to another Totally Awkward Tuesday, courtesy of yours truly. You'd think that, having done this since December of last year, I would've run out of awkward stories to tell about myself, but so far, I haven't. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...


Like always, you - yes you! - are invited to share an awkward story on your own blog, link back to my blog from your own, and then share the link to your awkward post. Then, we can all read each other's most awkward moments and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.


This week, my awkward moment took place when I was in high school, which as far as I can tell, is pretty much a universally awkward time for everyone.


When I was in high school, I attended a very fantastic church youth group. Every year, the youth group competed in a nation-wide talent competition-type-thing. There was singing, instrument playing, acting, writing, art, and all sorts of other fun stuff. I always participated in the drama portion of the competition (because in high school, I was nothing if not dramatic) and also various singing competitions (solo, duet, group, praise band, etc). Vocal solos were one of the favorite categories for all of the girls, and any female who could carry a tune (and many who couldn't) would agonize for months over the perfect song to choose for her vocal solo in the annual competition. It was a pretty big deal for us at the time (which indicates that we didn't yet have many real issues to worry about.) You could either sing a capella, with live musical accompaniment (ie, a friend who could play piano), or to a recorded accompaniment on cassette or CD. Recorded background music was typically the way to go, since it was easiest, and you didn't have to ask your accompanist to practice with you thousands of times until they eventually grew to hate both you and the sound of your voice.

There was a Christian bookstore in my town that had a great selection of backup tapes, so every year, I would go to the store to pick out my song. The backup tapes were in a corner of the store, and set up next to them were several cd/cassette players with headphones where you could listen to the music in peace and quiet, and decide which song you wanted to buy. The headphones were something like this -

- designed to keep noise out and the music in so that everyone else didn't have to listen to all of the songs you were playing 14 times in a row to decide whether or not you liked them.

So, this particular year, I went to the store like I'd done for two or three years before, picked out a few tapes, and then sat down at one of the cassette players to pick a song. I popped the first cassette into the player and slipped the headphones on, and the music started to play very, very quietly. I turned the volume up, but the music was still too quiet to hear, so I turned it up a little more. I kept turning it up, but it was still much too quiet, so I finally cranked the volume knob ALL the way up, as high as it would go. I could finally hear the music, but not nearly as well as I should've been able to, so I made a mental note to tell a store employee that the headphones were defective. As luck would have it, though, the employee approached me first - I'd been sitting there with my headphones on, listening to the music for about a minute, when a salesperson tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me, you have to turn your music down - you're disturbing all of the other customers."

I took off the headphones to hear her better, and that's when I heard the music blaring from the player I was listening to. My headphones were not plugged in. I'd been sitting there, wearing noise-canceling headphones and wondering why I couldn't hear anything, while everyone else in the store wondered why on Earth I thought it was appropriate to blast music at uncomfortably high volumes while everyone else was trying to shop. Needless to say, I made my decision on which song to buy very quickly that year.


Ok, so what's your awkward moment? Blog about it, make sure to link back to my blog from yours, then include a link directly to your Totally Awkward Tuesday post in the exciting new MckLinky box below!

My husband is so freaking hot.

An hour or two ago, Mr. Darling and I were at the grocery store. We were standing in one of the checkout lines, getting ready to pay for our groceries, when I noticed a crowd of people. "Mr. Darling," I said, "there's a woman lying on the floor!

Very calmly, Mr. Darling handed me the groceries he was holding, and walked quickly over to the crowd of people. He introduced himself to a store manager who was standing by the woman, and said "Hi, I'm Dr. Darling. Can you tell me what happened here? Has anyone called 911?" Then, he was on one knee by the woman, holding her head in one hand and checking her pulse with the other while he instructed a woman who introduced herself as a nurse to open the woman's purse and look for ID and any medications. She passed him some prescription bottles, which he looked at quickly and then said, "Ok, she's on (name of some medication which is apparently used to treat seizures); she's had a seizure." He continued kneeling there, talking to the woman and assessing her vitals, while I shook so hard that I almost dropped the groceries.

Everything about it was just so... sexy! (Well, I mean, not the fact that the woman had a seizure. That was unfortunate. But she came out of it relatively quickly and refused to get in the ambulance, so she seemed ok.) It's just that Dr. Darling is so calm and in control and... hot! Despite not being involved in the situation in any way, I was shaking in my flip flops, while Dr. D acted as if finding a woman lying on the floor while shopping was an everyday occurrence.

After the ambulance arrived, Mr. Darling and I left. The store managers and the paramedics all thanked him profusely for stopping to help, and I felt so proud of him that I was genuinely concerned that I might explode. In the car, I just stared at him like he was some kind of super hero. I kept saying, "I think I'm slightly in awe of you" and "You're so hot." I just love that he is so calm and in control. He's the complete opposite of me.

(If you're ever in an emergency and have to choose between having either me or a wild pigeon there to help you, choose the pigeon, because at least maybe you could tie a note to the pigeon's leg so that it could bring someone helpful to you. I'm terrible in emergencies. I think it's genetic, because my sister is also awful in emergencies. Once, when my sister had guests over for dinner, her toaster oven caught on fire, and instead of using the fire extinguisher that was literally three feet away, she ran all over the whole house yelling that there was a fire. Luckily, her sister-in-law put out the flames before the entire kitchen went up in smoke. It's for the sake of people like us that grade-school students are made to practice the "stop, drop and roll" technique in case they ever catch on fire. Because I guarantee that, were I ever to find myself on fire, my first instinct would be to run screaming through a field of hay or something.)

Anyway, I got to see my doctor in action today, and it was amazing. If you ever have an emergency near us, you're in good hands - Dr. Darling can save your life, while I look around to see if there's a pigeon handy.

Dr. Darling, unemployment, and a bow tie

Yesterday, Mr. Darling (along with every other new resident in the country) started his residency! I'm so excited and proud that I can barely contain myself! I made him wake me up before he left for work (at 5:30 am) so that I could take his picture on his first day (which made him feel like he was in elementary school all over again). Since it was 5:30 in the morning, I didn't notice the flashing message on my camera that said "No Memory Card," so my camera pretended it was taking pictures, and when I woke up again four hours later, I realized that I had no pictures of Mr. D on his first day. *Sigh.* Oh well - these things happen, I suppose. I took his picture when he got home, so that'll just have to do.

So, I'm currently unemployed. It's weird. Sometimes, I'm a fan of unemployment (I get to sleep in and do whatever I want, whenever I want.) But it also makes me feel kind of... listless and unproductive. I haven't been unemployed in at least nine years, so it's a strange feeling. I plan to get a job when the summer is over, but I'm in a friend's wedding this month, I have plans to visit my sister, and Mr. Darling and I will be visiting his family, and I didn't think it would work for me to get a job and then say, "Oh, by the way, I'll need to take three weeks off." It probably wouldn't have gone over very well.

The other thing to consider is that Mr. Darling's schedule will be a bit crazy. It'll be different every month - sometimes he'll work more "normal" hours on Monday through Friday, and other months he'll work nights and weekends. So what I really, really don't want to do is get a job with a strict schedule that might mean I hardly get to see my husband. Right now, my ideal job is to be a substitute teacher, but I don't know yet if that's going to work... cross your fingers for me!

In the interest of making money and having a flexible schedule, I took an "independent contractor" position as a sample-passer-outer in a grocery store last week. Honestly, it was humiliating. Passing out samples wasn't actually too bad. The horrible part was the uniform. I had to wear a tuxedo shirt and a bow tie, and let me assure you - I did not look cute in them. At all. If I could've passed out the samples while wearing normal clothes, I would've been fine, but please explain to me why cross-dressing is considered professional looking. You'd never expect a guy to wear a ballgown while he was working (well, maybe... if his job was cross-dressing), so why is a woman expected to wear a tuxedo shirt and a bow tie? I looked like an idiot. I did it once, but I'm probably not going to do it again... unless we are in dire need of money. (The weird thing was that some guys actually hit on me while I was wearing that outfit. Maybe I have a cute head, because everything else looked ridiculous.)

If one of you would like to pay me to blog, I'd be much obliged. Otherwise, you can look forward to hearing about my job hunting.