31 and holding - Birthday #1

Last weekend was birthday weekend for me, so I thought I'd share a few of the things we did.
First off was Friday night bingo and bowling. Seriously.

I had no idea that people still regularly played bingo. Our group of 12 got there late, dressed like freshmen in college (yes, that was the costume code), and struggled to find a seat quietly while trying to catch up on all the numbers we'd already missed on the first card.

Bingo lesson #1: You have to bring your own bingo marker. They charge $1.50 for them at the hall.

From 31st Birthday

Bingo Lesson #2: You apparently don't just have to get "bingo" anymore. For the first game, when we had no idea what was going on, RL got an actual bingo right away, and ran up to the front to show the lady calling the numbers. No bingo, you have to make the letter "P" on your card. The next one was a musical note or something. Confusing.

From 31st Birthday

Bingo Lesson #3: They kept saying something about a "pickle bar" and everyone in our group thought that meant there were actual pickles for sale. Pickles are actually like scratch tickets that you can buy for a dollar. Weird.

Bingo Lesson #4: You have to be very, very quiet. We actually got shushed once, even though I was very proud of my friends for keeping it to loud whispers. Apparently the two times the woman calls it, the video of the ball coming up, and the two boards that flash the number are not enough for the bingoers. Must have total silence.

From 31st Birthday

Bingo Lesson #5: The only people that win are the ones that have like a gazillion boards in front of them. We only had one board. None of us won. Not even Q, who had a lot.

From 31st Birthday

By the end, we were all ready to go (my friend Tim even said something like, "I think I'm dying a slow death" in the middle of a game). Off to the bowling alley next door! We magically got three lanes together, I was not the worst bowler, and there were cupcakes. Awesome.

From 31st Birthday

Cold conversations

So somehow in the last few days I managed to get a cold. Yesterday I spent the majority of the day sitting on the couch, watching movies, and using more Kleenexes than I have used in all previous life colds combined. I filled up buckets of sopping wet tissues (seriously). RL just looked at me with feigned sympathy and said:
I wonder if you took all the snot you got rid of today and put it in a pool if you'd be able to swim in it.
Me: Ew. Probably not. Maybe Little could swim in it. I can imagine her doing the backstroke.
RL: Really? I imagine her as more of a front stroker.
Me: Meow! Stroke. Meow! Stroke.
(If only she knew the entertainment we got from imagining her doing ridiculous human things. Like swimming in snot.)

Later RL was playing with my belly button and was threatening to tickle me when I said:
Listen! I'm very vulnerable right now!
RL: Hmm, interesting.
Me: Watch it mister. One fierce blow and you'll have snot all over you.
That seems to have discouraged him for awhile.

I woke up this morning and could miraculously breathe through my nose. I wasn't sure I was going to sleep at all since the snot faucet just would not turn off, but somewhere in the middle of the night it slowed to a drip. (I think it was the swig of Nyquil at 3am, followed by the Kleenex I stuffed in the worse nostril, just to make sure I didn't drip all over the pillowcase.) RL had already been awake for awhile when I woke up, and told me that he had been listening intently to my breathing to see if it was actually my nose I was breathing out of. What a sweetheart.

So I've taken pretty much every cold drug under the sun, including this homeopathic thing called Oscillococcinum, which, I found out, is made from dilution of dissolved Barbary duck livers and hearts. Apparently they only need one duck to make enough to serve the world for a year, but don't you think they should tell you that this is not a vegetarian product?!?

Anyway, the nice people at Pharmaca said it was the best thing for colds and flus, and I'd only need to take it for two days to start feeling better and meanwhile I could take all the other western cold remedies I wanted (because this "works on a whole other level" the lady told me). So I figured that the duck was going to die anyway to cure other people's flus, and I had already taken half of it by the time I figured out it was animals, so I might as well finish it. I am a bad vegetarian.

But thank goodness for Kleenex with lotion. I mean, seriously.