This should answer all of your questions about why I am so ... far from the norm

So I was talking on the phone to my mom the other day and in the middle of one of my stories, Mom starts making this, " pht phhhht bl phhhhhhht pleh pleh I though they plehh phhhht ... I thought they were giving ... phtttt pleh " sounds on the other end of the line.

Me: Mom? What are you doing? You thought they were giving you what?

Mom: Phhht, blpht pleh I thought they were pht pley giving me something to eat

Me: What? You thought who was giving you something to eat? What did they give you?

Mom: A bar of soap

[A full 45 seconds of guffawing laughter follows before I can muster the strength to continue. ]

Me: Where are you Mom?

Mom: I'm at the mall

My father then gets on the phone to clarify what happened. Dad says, "You know those Organic Salt of the Earth Kiosks that are always passing out lotions samples? We pass one and they have this tray full of two inch BLOCKS of soap, and your mother takes one and pops it in her mouth like candy."

Incidentally the people that work at those booths are always foreign. I can only imagine how impressed they were with the American way.

My mother will herein be referred to as the soapeater.

And as a side note, my dad wouldn't give my mom any money to go get something to eat (to get the taste out of her mouth) because she already ate.

But he got a sandwich.

There are days when i wish I could tell student stories

I stay away from this topic even though my kids make me really, really laugh. I just don't want to inadvertently offend anyone. But today, I read an essay "about me" that just cracked me up. Something about that she "no longer had any pets because they had all been murdered with rubbing alcohol or left in another country" and that in a list of her favorite things to do she included "spilling things".

she's like the daughter i never had. a divine force has brought us together.

Because obviously, this is the logical conclusion

A wonderful friend of mine here really makes me laugh. She makes me laugh, unlike I have probably laughed since I was 12 and we thought it was downright hilarious to make animal noises in the cafeteria. And after a year of Katie eating the cracker part of my ritz peanut butter sandwhich crackers, Emily pointed out to Katie that I had already licked the peanut butter off of the crackers. Now that really was funny. I'm not really all that clear on why we thought those animal noises were so great though. I think I did the monkey sound. It's all kinda fuzzy now. It is becoming more apparent by the day just why I was just so insecure.

Anyway, my friend and I were out walking the other day and this car was inching along behind us like it was going to pull into the driveway that we were about to cross. Isn't that always the case? Well, it didn't pull in there, and it continued to inch along behind us, so my friend turns her head 180 degrees around and immediately EXCLAIMS

and I do mean exclaims ...

"Hey there's a dog driv- !!!!

[Short pause]

... oh my God I'm so embarrassed!!!"

In the midst of my FITS of laughter I was able to see the dog. Sitting in their owner's lap. Not driving.

10 points and a pat on the back if you live in Columbia and you know who said this.

Keep quiet and no one gets hurt.

Yesterday a friend of mine offered to give me some hostas that her parents had brought her. We have a particularly shady backyard and have a hard time getting anything to grow well. Fortunately, hostas seem to like it. After church, Dr. J and I went to retrieve the hostas (because I was too lazy to go and pick them up on Saturday like I said I would and watched hours of Veronica Mars and the Olympics instead).

Returning home with 5 hostas riding in the backseat the conversation went something like this:

Dr J: So what are we going to do with the hostages?

Me: [bursting fit of laughter]

Dr J: Fine, alright, how do you pronounce it?

Me: Hossssss-tas. I think we outta tie em up, blindfoldem and put em in the garage.

Dr J: It must be my Colombian nature

Hostas crying in high pitched squeals from the back: Let us go! You have no right to keep us here! You'll be sorry!!