Monday Memories: A Veritable Buffet of Memories!

Hello!  It's late, late Monday evening, so I say this still counts as a Monday Memories entry.  :-)

After a big party with our families at our house to celebrate little Knolan's upcoming first birthday I have spent the bulk of today successfully ignoring the remaining dishes in the kitchen, doing only the bare essentials to keep my children alive, and avoiding getting dressed for the day.  I almost made it through the whole day in my PJs until I got a burst of energy at 5:00pm and decided that I would take Kaycie out to the back yard until Knolly woke up from his nap.  In hindsight, I probably could have worn my jammies... it's not like my neighbours haven't seen me in them before! 

Anyway, after a big day of doing nothing (and feeling guilty about it too... why is that?  I work my butt off round the clock most days and on the one day I decide to give myself a rest I'm finding myself feeling guilty!), I figured I had no reason that I couldn't squeeze in some blogging time.  So... here I am! 

I've been meaning to write about several particular memories, but never seem to be able make them fill a whole blog post because I am fuzzy on the details.  Then I had a brainwave and decided I could just share an abbreviated version of each memory and slap them all into one master post!  Genius!  I think they will still be funnier in my mind than I could ever make them in writing, but I'll still have a giggle putting pen to paper, so in the end it's all good.  And as I share these memories, if anyone of you out there reading these happen to know me and can recall more accurately what happened in each case, I'd be glad to know so that I can update my notes for posterity.  :-)

1.  My Brother and the Witness Protection Program:  I remember one time one of the kids in the neighbourhood was giving my brother - who was probably about 9 at the time - some serious hassles.  I am, as I warned you above, kind of sketchy on the details, but I seem to remember that my brother and his friends built a go-kart one day, and this neighbourhood kid had come by and stolen it, or wrecked it, or something like that.  Anyway, those details are not important.  The part of this story that will stay with me for eternity was the moment right after I found out all the details of what happened.  It was when I came across my brother standing in our driveway, livid and frantic about this go-kart.  He was explaining to me in rapid-fire style how this neighbourhood kid had messed with his go-kart.  He was using wild hand and facial gestures.  He was furious.  He was also a sweet little boy who had been slighted and I wanted more than anything to be there for him.  To be the reliable older sister who took him seriously and righted the wrong.  As he wrapped up his summary of the situation, and completed his closing commentary on go-kart-gate, he looked at me and with the most serious and indignant look on his face loudly stated, "... and I have a garage full of witnesses to prove it."  And with that, he dramatically punched in the code to our garage door opener, and the garage door opened to reveal about 10 kids all standing there with their arms crossed over their chests all gangster style.  It is the single greatest memory that I have of my brother.  For a moment, I was so in awe of how he had coordinated this awesome reveal... and then I can't be sure, but I likely burst out laughing. 


2.  Sanctuary! Sanctuary! (extra geek points for anyone who recognizes this Simpsons reference):  I remember I was standing out on our front lawn and I think my sister and our babysitter Valerie (or was it Stacey? I hope it was Valerie because I know she reads this blog!) were there too.  Anyway, I was probably about 10 at the time, and my sister and I had been good friends with a couple of guys in our neighbourhood for years and years.  On this particular day, we were just standing around on the lawn when we happened to look down the street and we saw our two friends come tearing around the corner on their bikes with a look of fear on their faces that would make you think that nothing short of Godzilla was hot on their trail.  The two of them sped their bikes up on to our lawn and basically doubled over with exhaustion.  I seem to remember something about my sister's favourite pen getting broken being part of the explanation of what came next, but it doesn't really matter.  What matters is that as the two of them were frantically trying to tell us in between wheezes and gasps for air what was going on, we all heard shouting and a thundering noise that got louder and louder, and looked up just in time to see a huge, angry, screaming mob of 10 year old boys also come tearing around the corner.  And when I say mob, I'm not talking about 4 or 5 kids... these two friends of ours had managed to anger a serious amount of kids!  Like dozens of kids!  I recall the mob coming to a stop at our property and that there was lots of shouting and fist shaking going on with our babysitter sort of stuck in the middle.  Unfortunately, I can't say that I remember what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure our babysitter would have been justified in asking my parents for a raise after that!


3.  The Head Angel Ruins Christmas:  I remember one year for our elementary school Christmas concert I was picked to be the head angel - entirely because I was the tallest girl in our class.  One day, during our dress rehearsal, me and the choir of heavenly angels were hiding in our places behind the giant projector screen waiting for our big reveal.  As we were waiting, I got a little chatty - as I am VERY prone to do.  I was chat, chat, chatting away and kind of forgot where I was and put my one hand on my hip and the other hand out to lean on the wall.  Except it wasn't a wall... it was the projector screen.  And I completely fell off of the bench I was standing on and pushed the screen forward and knocked over the GIANT Christmas tree that our custodian had spent an entire day putting up.  I really pride myself on keeping this blog family friendly and swear-free, but I must say... I got in a s***load of trouble that day.  :-)

4.  The Pickle Bomb:  Late one night while I was in university, I was sleeping soundly when I realized that there was a bomb in my room that needed to be contained and subsequently diffused.  I dutifully sat on the bomb - thankfully it had a warning alarm that had woken me - and waited for the right moment to attempt to diffuse it.  Then I heard a muffled voice coming from my rear screaming, "Kirsten!  Kirsten!"  It was only then that I was able to partially wake myself up from this bizarre sleep walking episode and realize that I was sitting on my phone and my sister (who had just called me) was screaming through the phone trying desperately to get my attention.  Once I was able to wake up enough to realize what I'd done, I knocked a whole wall full of pots and pans off their hooks while stumbling into walls doubled over with laughter trying to explain to my sister what had just happened.  What made the whole thing more hilarious was that I had a giant pickle phone at the time.  It basically looked like this:

Aaaannnddd.... I think I'll end there.   Ending this post on a pickle bomb just feels right, somehow.  :-)