Who Nose?

          Doggone it, I’ve got skin cancer on the tip of my nose!  A couple of weeks ago I went in for a biopsy of a tiny little bump that looked like a blister. I thought I might be turning into a unicorn or a narwhal. A friend from church said I’d probably just had my nose to the grindstone. Naturally St. Bob suggested that I’ve been lying a lot.

          The biopsy left me wearing a little Bandaid for a month.  Bob said to tell everyone I’ve enrolled in clown school, and then say, “Did you know there’s a thumb tack in those red noses?”

          Son Brandon was completely perplexed.  “Skin cancer? You? That would be like hearing you have cirrhosis of the liver.”  Indeed. I am not only the last person who would want a drink, but the last who would lie in the sun or forget my sunscreen.

          But now the results are in, and I’ll have to have surgery. Of course, since I wrote a musical comedy about Bob’s prostate cancer, he says now he needs to write a musical about my nose.  “I could totally do the lyrics for that,” I said. “Do you have any idea how many words rhyme with nose?” 

          And of course when I texted the result to the kids, autocorrect chose the word “basil sale” instead of “basal cell,” and even offered a lovely emoji of the herb.  That’s right, I’m growing basil on the tip of my nose.  You’ve heard of hydroponics, right? How about sinus-ponics?

          All I know is that the next time I’m tempted to say, “It’s no skin off my nose,” I’ll stop and think.  Oh, yeah.  It is.

Stay inside, out of the sun, and read my books!  You can find them all right here.       

Well, Shoot!

Get ready for the best (worst?) auto-correct story you’ve heard.  And of course, it happened last week to St. Bob.

          First, the setting.  At our church’s recent semi-annual General Conference, it was announced that, in every congregation, the two main men’s groups would now be combined, with a new presidency.  That meant releasing both previous presidents, their counselors, and secretaries.  And much of this task fell to men like Bob, who serve on the High Council.

          So he began contacting the various men to let them know he’d like to meet with them to do this. As part of his text, he dictated into his phone, “I’ll release you this week,” before requesting a convenient time.

          I was across the room, not really listening, when I heard him shout, “No! No!”  Yep. Yep.  He had already pressed “send” before checking his message, and it went out as “I’ll really shoot you this week.”

          And we can all see how “release you” can become “release-shoo” to an iphone’s ears, right? Soon “really shoot” becomes its choice and away you go.

          Bob called the guy right away and they both cracked up over his gaff.  But then the guy said, “Do you know what line of work I’m in?”

          Bob did not.

          “I’m in law enforcement,” he said.  But of course.

Have you seen my YouTube Mom videos?  Check ‘em out here.  There’s even one for how to apologize.

A Snowball Fight of One

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess that you don’t know many people who have blogged about Hostess Snowballs.  And even fewer who have blogged about them twice.  So I think I’m sort of making history.

Or at least I’m making bunny cakes. A couple of weeks ago, for Easter, I made my usual bunny cakes.  Here’s what they look like, nothing the Food Channel would gasp over, but an endearing bit of family tradition:

And every year it’s an ordeal to find the “bunny butts” or tails.  Hostess Snowballs must be an endangered species, because I typically hunt high and low before I can find some.

This year St. Bob came to my rescue and offered to go out and find them while I was greasing the pans and beating the batter.  (These cakes are simple to make—you just put two halves of a round cake together and you have the bunny’s body.  Each cake recipe makes two bunnies.)

Except the first store where Bob looked didn’t have the snowballs.  Nor did the second store.  Nor did the third.  But St. Bob is a saint, after all, so he would not give up.  Luckily, the fourth store had some green ones.  Unluckily Bob had no green ones as he had left his wallet home.  He asked the clerk if he could buy them with an app on his phone, but she had no idea how to work this.

By now he’d been gone well over an hour and I was wondering what on earth had kept him so long.  I had no idea the tenacity of my husband, hobbling all over town on his replaced knee. Finally a store manager helped him electronically purchase the absolutely essential finishing touch for the bunny cakes and he returned, the victorious warrior.

But he also made me promise to order these a week ahead of time, next year.  Done and done.

Speaking of ordering, have you ordered any of my books, yet?  Waaay more fun than chasing around town for Snowballs.

           

Trash Talk

          When it comes to Spring Cleaning, the Hiltons go big or go home.  Actually, we’re already home.  And we didn’t really plan to go this big.

          St. Bob ordered a trash bin so we could throw out my ancient potting bench, a garden lattice, some old lumber, and who-knows-what from the garage.  But when it arrived it was three times the size we expected.  It barely fit on our driveway.

          I posted it on Facebook, announcing that my new Easter basket had arrived and I hoped the Easter Bunny would fill it with chocolate.

          Naturally, Bob joked that we could use it as a swimming pool, and we immediately imagined all of us floating on inner tubes, waving to horrified neighbors, for a White Trash Christmas card photo.  Maybe some water could even leak out the sides for an added touch.

          But before we could actually implement this brilliant idea, Bob was hurling bags and boxes into the container, and in no time it was about half full. See? That makes me an optimist.

You can read my books while floating in a pool or not.  Check out all 25 of them here.