Category Archives: Funny/Cool Stuff

Yay! Knott’s Berry Farm Again!

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I opened up my Gmail, saw the email that was waiting for me, and did a little happy dance.

On behalf of Knott’s Berry Farm, we are inviting a few “mom & family bloggers” and social media addicts, and their families, to enjoy the opening day of Knott’s Soak City on Sunday, May 20, 2012.  Be one of the first families that begin Summer of 2012 with great waterpark fun…

Yaaaay!  More free fun!

I immediately clicked open Gmail calendar, created the event, blocked out the whole day, and sent an invite to The Bean’s email address.

Twenty minutes later, I got a response:

Maybe?!

What the heck?

MAYBE?!  “MAYBE” to my free, all-expenses paid trip to Knott’s Soak City that I earned through the sweat of my blogging?  “MAYBE” to a fun-filled day at a water park that had a lazy river and a wave pool?  MAYBE to letting the boys enjoy a kiddy splash zone?  They were even going to prepare and serve us a free lunch a lunch—food, that I didn’t have to cook OR pay for!  MAYBE?

I immediately created another event and sent him the invitation:

“Becky is mean ALL day long to The Bean for not agreeing to go with her to Soak City”

Fifteen minutes later after I invited him to the new event, I received this notice:

Thaaaaat was more like it.

Everything seemed to be going perfectly until I realized:

Oh.  Crap.

I have to wear a bathing suit, don’t I?

Oh, double crap.

I have to go bathing suit shopping.

Seriously, is there any female over the age of 11 who actually likes to go bathing suit shopping?  If she says yes, she’s lying.  I’m still crossing my fingers that those 19th century head-to-toe bathing suits come back into style. 

I would totally rock one of those cotton, full-length babies.

Also, I like the fact that it would hide my mayonnaise-white legs.  You know, as a half-Mexican you would think I would have dusky, tawny gold skin, but nooooooo.  Apparently “absurdly pale” is a dominant gene.

By the way—Portland?  I can’t wait to meet you.  Rumor has it that you are full of people who are just as white as I am.  Do you have any idea how exciting this is to me? 

Anyways.  Moving on.

As dumb as it sounds, trying to find time to go bathing suit shopping is actually taking a bit of scheduling.  In addition to The Bean being in finals this week, we have a vaguely-realistic goal of trying to get the entire house packed up by Friday.  The moving trailer is dropped off this upcoming Tuesday the 22nd, The Bean graduates on Wednesday 23rd, and the trailer is picked up and shipped off to Portland on Thursday the 24th.

It is very, very busy in our house right now.

Earlier this afternoon, while driving down Pacific Coast Highway in the middle of Newport Beach, The Bean and I played juggle-the-schedule over the phone. 

As I crawled my way homeward in the slow traffic, I saw something that caught my eye.

Actually, it wasn’t something – it was someone.

This someone was a she, and she was GORGEOUS.

Seriously, Orange County, the scale is from 1to 10, not 1 to 15.

She was so perfect it was hard to peg her age – 20s?  Early 30s?

It wasn’t so much that she had the perfect body (which she did), it was the fact that she looked like she just stepped straight out of a commercial, or a movie, or some kind of high-class photoshoot.  Her outfit, her hair, her incredible mile-long legs balanced elegantly on high wedge heels… As she bent through the window of her spotless Mercedes convertible, reaching for something for something on the passenger seat, the soft, elegant folds of her skirt blew playfully in the wind.

Dude, I definitely don’t bat for the other team, but even I was craning my neck over my shoulder to get a second look.

As traffic pulled me past I happened to glance down and took stock of myself:

  • Size 14 Kohl’s skirt – slightly wrinkled.  Still covered in a small amount of cat hair from this morning.
  • Strangely-colored neon blouse that emphasized the pudgy tops of my arms.  Hey, what can I say… it was the first thing that jumped out at me when I raided my mom’s closet this morning (Note to self:  PLEASE, for the sake of your self esteem, PLEASE do some laundry tonight.)
  • Walmart “shoes” – I use the term “shoes” loosely.  They are sensible, unattractive, and were the cheapest shoes they had on sale at Walmart.  When you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel at Walmart, you know you’re sporting high fashion.

Feeling fat, frumpy, and vaguely overwhelmed, I heaved a heavy sigh into the phone.

“What’s wrong?” asked The Bean.

“You know,” I said bitterly.  “If you would just make tons of money, let me stay at home, and hire a nanny for the boys, I could spend all day at the gym, hire a professional trainer, and look absolutely smokin’ all the time.”

There was a brief pause, and I could tell The Bean was trying to figure out the proper response.  I’m sure between my tone,  the subject matter, and my absolutely ridiculous complaining, his little internal warning system was on full-scale alert.  DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!  DANGER, DANGER! Anything you say will probably be the wrong thing!

“Well, yeah.  But then again, if I were to go to prison and pump iron for two years, I’d probably come out all ripped,” he quipped.

I laughed out loud, and felt my tension ease.  +10 husband points for the perfect answer.

“Yeah, you’re probably right, Bean.”  I gave another laugh, then continued, thinking out loud.  “You know, I’ve never understood why they do that.  Why feed them healthy food, and give them work out equipment?

“Exactly, Becky.  After two years pumping iron, I’d probably look like that hamster off of Family Guy.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jA3vg4AMyg]

I laughed again, and felt the last of my pity party melt away.  “You know, what they really ought to do is feed prisoners really fattening foods – like, every Tuesday is Twinkies Tuesday…. or Thursday is Thirsty Thursday – all you can drink weight-gainer ice cream shakes, with endless sodas – none of the diet ones, either.  Think about it – when they got out, if they decided to act out, they’d be so fat they really wouldn’t have the cardio capacity to do anything that bad, or run very far from the cops.”

I could feel myself getting on a roll – I was really onto something here.

“Think about it, Bean.  Instead of giving stocking the prisons with weight rooms and dumbbells, we could give install big TVs and order all the good shows.  Then we could get them all hooked on shows like Prison Break or Dexter.  They’d only have the weekends to do criminal activity – when  their buddies tried to get them to go out and rob a liquor store on Thursday nights, they’d be all, “Nooo!  I can’t!  I’ll miss Grey’s Anatomy!“

“Forget TV, Becky.  If you really want to solve the problem, get them all addicted to World of Warcraft.  You’d never seem them out of the house again.:

And that, dear readers, is why I still have no idea when I’m going to squeeze in bathing suit shopping before Sunday. 

It’s because The Bean and I single-handedly solved the  problem of repeat offenders, thus solving the issue of overcrowding in prisons.

You’re welcome.

Worst. Advice. Ever

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I just stumbled across a website with the worst “how-to” advice I’ve ever come across when it comes to horses. I’m pretty sure it’s just one of those weird ad-directed sites, but still.

It starts off decently enough…. although it’s kind of obvious English isn’t the writer’s first language:

Eventually it is the dream of all horse owners to ride on them but if you have aggressive horse, it becomes a frustrating problem for you to ride on it. Here in this site I am going to share some valuable tips and tricks for successful horse riding with you. These tips can be a part of your horse riding training as well. You have done your best to ride on your horse but you failed? Don’t worry! I am here to guide you in the best way to make your horse cooperative with you.

Oh, PHEW. They’re here to help me with my aggressive horse. Let’s dig into the handy advice!

“Friendship is All You Need.”

Say wha-aa–a-at? You know, my old thoroughbred Jubilee and I were great friends. Fantastic friends, even. But you know what? That didn’t stop him from spooking and trying to fling himself backwards off of drop offs every time he freaked out. Maybe we weren’t as good of friends as I thought…

“Friendship is all you need. First of all you and your horse must be compatible and comfortable with each other. Having horse is not enough. For this you will have to be a pet lover. This is the way you can have your horse ears picked, bright eyes and working well with you while you are thinking of horse riding. It is also necessary that your horse feel safe and comfort when you ride, stays calm in other animals and is bombproof.”

I love how they emphasize the pricked ears…. and then just kind of gloss over the rest, and throw “Have a horse who is bombproof” in there. Well, yeah, I guess that would help, wouldn’t it? And wait… where did this bombproof horse come from? Weren’t we dealing with an aggressive horse, just last paragraph?  Does anyone else feel like someone skipped a few pertinent steps somewhere?

Moving on.
 
“Be comfortable: Avoid wearing jeans or tight clothes while you are on riding because you can slip from the horse back.”

Well, duh. I mean, everyone knows that you wear loose yoga pants while riding, right? I have to admit, this bit of advice was kind of helpful. To think, the only thing that stands between me and Olympic rider status is the fact that I have been wearing jeans while riding.

“Squeeze your thighs to start riding and your horse will move on. You can scoot in the saddle to tell your horse that you want to move now.”

I’m getting a great mental image of someone “scooting in saddle” to try to urge a balky horse forward. I don’t know about you, but I’d pay good money to see that.

“Just know about leg or rein guide of your horse and have some practice with it to know whether your horse can follow leg commands or slow or turn with the rein.”

I can’t decide if this is the most down-to-earth or the least helpful advice I’ve ever read.

“Stop riding is not a hard task. Just pull on the rein to stop the horse. Pat the horse on neck and shows your happy feeling after it stops.”

I find it’s kind of helpful to break out into song after “pull on rein” to stop my horse. It helps me display “happy feeling” a little better.

And last but not least:

“Remember, your relationship with horse is most important to enjoy successful riding on it. You must trust it to make it obey you.”

It’s kind of like pixie dust, but with horses… just think trustful thoughts, and you and your horse are just seconds away from being the next Stacy Westfall!

I’d send you guys the link, but this is probably one of those sites that fills your computer with adware and viruses, just for clicking on it.

In other news……

Did you all see what Mugs mentioned in the comments of today’s post?  A Mugwump Bloggers Clinic with her and The Big K, some time in 2013?  In Montana?!  A whole weekend spent learning how to scoot in the saddle and helping me to display my happy feeling to my horse…all of this, packed in with getting to meet other bloggers and hanging around in freakin’ MONTANA?  (Yeah, sorry, I am kind of obsessed with Montana.)   I don’t know about the rest of you, but I kind of want to start packing my best “non-tight, non-jeans” clothes into a suitcase right now.

Dear Oregon/Washington peeps:  Hi.  I don’t know you guys that well yet… and I don’t even have a horse yet…. in fact, I don’t even live there yet.  That said… who wants to buddy up and trailer together?  Anybody?