This time we'll skip the pictures

This weekend was filled with a lot of memories, mostly of the embarrassing kind. Saturday was James J. Hill Day—a small-town family event, filled with food, fun and the 24th annual dachshund races. Garrett and I met up with my good friend Julie and her 11-year-old son Wyatt to watch the wiener dogs hoof it. When there was a break in the action, Wyatt took Garrett's hand and led him around to pet the little doggies. Julie and I were chatting when I heard off in the distance, “Yo-toy!!! Yo-toy!!!!” (Yo-toy in Kazakh roughly translates to “I see your underwear.”) I turned around and saw Garrett standing in front of this woman. From her back, it looked like she was only wearing a bra and the shortest of shorts. Garrett was about one arm's length from her, pointing at her chest. Finally, I got a glimpse of her and the "girls"—-we’re talking Pamela Anderson here. I grabbed Garrett, but she seemed to be throughly basking in the “male” attention. Then Julie threw out this little zinger, “I bet those make great toys for someone,” which made me nearly pee my pants.

The next day we were over Suzanne’s house. (Warning: if you’re eating, you may want to skip this paragraph.) Garrett needed to go #2 in the worst way. The upstairs bathroom was occupied, so we headed to the lower level. The bathroom is across from Mike’s (Suzanne’s hubby) home office. Let me paint the full picture by stating that Mike is a super neat freak, so I quickly explained that Garrett needed to use his bathroom to take care of business. No sooner did Garrett's little butt hit the toilet seat when a rather loud noise erupted. (It's hard to believe that a sound that loud could come from such a little body.) Mike was taken a back at first, but then laughed it off. I closed the door to keep the “noise” down. Since Garrett is very capable in the bathroom department, I went back upstairs. Five minutes later, there was a loud, “Suzanne, get the plunger!!!” Unfortunately, she beat me down there and was rewarded with a pungent smell. (You know how they say you can handle your child’s poop, but not someone else’s? It's true.) So I got to work with the trusty plunger, but I'll be the first to admit that I’m not very skilled in this area. I started working it, but after the first flush I neglected to remove the plunger from the drain, so the water had nowhere to go but up. Thankfully Suzanne yanked on it just as it was about to hit the rim. At that point, I was laughing on the exhale and sucking in the bad fumes on the inhale. It was pure Seinfeld through and through.

Then last night, Garrett was on the verge of dropping a jar when I blurted out, “Gil, watch it.” (Gil is my ex-husband from many, many moons ago.) Bob gave me one of those looks. At least I didn’t call him Gil. But I do have another story about that, which I’ll leave for another time. I think this has been enough embarrassment for one post.