Mildly Entertaining Stories

Chapter 1

Last week was Homecoming week for the high school. The seminary throws an annual Homecoming BBQ and invites the entire student body and faculty for the event. It takes a lot of planning and it is exhausting to do, but the kids look forward to free lunch outside on the grass with the band playing. 

I visited the grocery store a week in advance to make the order for a thousand hot dogs and buns, bags of chips, and all the other stuff we would need. I spoke to the grocery manager, Ryan, who wrote everything down and promised to get to work on it.

The day before the BBQ, I visited the store again to verify that the order would be filled in case I needed to travel to The Big City to pick up whatever I would be missing. I asked for Ryan, but a manager named Brian arrived to meet me. "Oh, I'm sorry," I said, "I spoke to Ryan last week."

"Ryan is...no longer with us," Brian said, and the way he said it made me a little worried for Ryan. 

"He also didn't leave us any notes about your order," he continued.

Well, crap. Screw Ryan!

Fortunately, Brian was a rockstar and managed to put together our order in under twenty-four hours. The next morning, I drove my big car, The Beast (because it growls when you press the accelerator), and Brian and another kind employee helped me load up thirty-two boxes of hot dogs, ten pallets of buns, seventy bags of chips, cups, condiments, etc. It barely fit into my car, but we Tetrised it all in.

After I delivered the food at the seminary, the guys started cooking hot dogs to be ready when first lunch started. They cooked and cooked and cooked and just couldn't seem to make a dent in the number of hot dogs we had. First lunch came and went and second lunch came and went, and we were urging the students to stuff themselves silly with hot dogs. Take another! Take ten!

After second lunch and cleanup, we stood, exhausted, in the copy room/kitchen and stared at the twenty-eight boxes of hot dogs that we still had. How in the world did we not cook a thousand hot dogs? What were we going to do with the leftovers? Donate them? Freeze them? Where would we store them? 

Then we started doing the math: each box contained thirty-two eight-packs of hot dogs, which meant each box contained two hundred and fifty-six hot dogs. Wait. Given that Brian had given us thirty-two boxes, that meant we had eight thousand hot dogs! Brian had given us a thousand packs of hot dogs, not a thousand hot dogs, but he'd only charged us for a thousand hot dogs! Brian was probably wetting his pants!

I called the store and spoke to Brian. Until we spoke, he hadn't realized his mistake, but when he worked through the math and exclaimed, "I gave you a eight thousand hot dogs!" I heard someone start laughing really hard in the background. He graciously accepted the return of the remaining boxes of hot dogs, which solved our dilemma and his. 

Chapter 2

During the BBQ, one of our students attempted to pull too sharply into a parking spot and scraped up both the side of her car and the bumper of the teacher's minivan next to her (this wasn't the minivan of one of our faculty; we allow high school teachers who work in the portable units next to the seminary to park in the visitors' section of our parking lot). The student was in tears, of course, this being her first accident. The high school's resource officer was called, and he made a police report as the student and the teacher exchanged insurance information.

Today, that teacher was in our building to use the bathroom, and one of our faculty asked her how her minivan repair was coming along. 

Well, she said, the bodyshop had called her husband and told him that they couldn't fix the bumper because of the previous damage to the car. This was mystifying, as the car was only a year old when they bought it from a used car dealer, and Carfax had no record of any insurance claims for accidents for that vehicle. Upon further investigation, the mechanics found that the van had been in a major accident, which had crumpled the floor of the vehicle. Obviously not wanting to report the accident to their insurance, the previous owners had attempted a terrible DIY fix. They'd pounded the floor flat again and then used sealant to reattach it to the frame, not welds! They had also failed to disclose any of this to the dealer who bought the car, and the dealer must not have seen the damage (I'm really hoping the dealer didn't just lie to this teacher). Because of the shoddy fixit job, the frame and the floor were beginning to rust, loosening the already precarious connection, which meant that, in the event of even a minor accident, the teacher's small children could have been in serious danger. 

While finding this out because of a little fender bender might have saved all of them from serious injury or death--which the teacher acknowledged as a very shiny silver lining--they were now facing an $8000 repair bill to get the vehicle safe again. The student only sideswiped the van, so insurance won't pick up the tab beyond the cost of replacing the bumper. The teacher's husband is a lawyer, so he's trying to figure out a way to get the dealer to pay up, maybe. $8000 is still cheap compared to the cost of buying new or even finding another used car, but it's a big chunk of change if you weren't prepared to spend it on a car quite so soon. 

Chapter 3

Husband was asked to do a little acting presentation to the children of the Primary in our stake. The theme was Gathering the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and Husband would play a man from colonial American times who had time-traveled to the present to explain the meaning of a standard, as in "rally round the standard of the cross." He already had a really good colonial costume (I made the knee breeches years ago, just to brag a bit), so I wrapped a blank book in leather to represent his journal, and he wrapped the end of a staff with a leather strap to be a walking stick. He used the walking stick as a prop to act out his story of being in battle, both as a sword and a standard. He also brought along one of his wooden flutes, which he played for the kids.

Husband had to find sport socks that didn't have logos all over them.

To say it was a rousing success is an understatement. He played the part so well and told the story so realistically that many of the children were convinced he had actually time traveled. Husband is an excellent storyteller. I remember many nights when the kids were little when he would tell them bedtime stories that had them laughing so hard they cried. 

Chapter 4

I was able to get an appointment with a gynecologist who specializes in bio-avaialable hormone treatment and thyroid disorders. I'm now the proud owner of two pellets of sub-dermal hormone treatment that will start the process of getting my hormones back in balance.

My blood test showed that in most ways I'm pretty healthy despite the weight gain of recent years. What is very out of whack, however, is my testosterone. That surprised me. I know women produce a small amount of testosterone, but I didn't realize that so many of my symptoms of fatigue and other things common to perimenopause could be caused by low testosterone. My testosterone is around 62 nanoparticles/deciliter when it should be in the high 200s (for men, normal testosterone range is between 800 and 1200 nanoparticles/deciliter). The doctor inserted a 185 mg pellet of testosterone and a smaller pellet of less than 6 mg of estradiol (she didn't want to overdo the estrogen/estradiol until I'm fully menopausal) into the skin of my hindquarters after giving me a little local anesthetic. I should start seeing results in three to five days, with my energy beginning to rise significantly. In six weeks, I will have another blood test to see how it's going, and that will determine what pellets she will use in three to four months. I'm very much looking forward to having energy, not least because it will make losing weight so much easier when I'm not absolutely exhausted all the time.

Having already done a lot of reading up on hormone replacement therapies, I am very enthusiastic about bio-available pellets versus cream or shots or any type of synthetic HRT. Pellets seem to produce the most stable results, and while they are pricey and insurance won't pay for them, it's worth the cost for me. Husband agrees.

Chapter 5

Elannah is on the waiting list for a nail tech class at the local technical college. She asked to do my nails yesterday, and I agreed so she could get some practice. I've never had fake nails before, and I never, ever let my nails grow beyond my fingertips because it interferes with playing the piano or typing. She did a good job, but I'm not loving the length. I might have her shave them down more.

Click, click, click, click.