Sleeping In for a Change

Barb can never sleep in.  She is envious of me being able to sleep in and get a lot of rest.

 

So this past Sunday morning, she woke up.  She looked at her iPod.  It said 8 o’clock.  She was so happy.  She had slept in.

 

She went out to the kitchen.  She noticed that the clock on the coffee machine was wrong.  The clock on the microwave was wrong too.

 

Then she realized it was Daylight Savings Time.  She hadn’t slept in.  It was just the clock on her iPod had changed.

What I Wanted to See

Barb was playing a pickleball tournament on Saturday.  She got home early in the afternoon.  The girl's team at the college was playing a doubleheader.  It started at 1 pm.  So I decided to go to the second game thinking it would be starting at about 3 pm.

 

When I arrived at the game, I looked at the scoreboard and saw it was in the first inning.  My friend from the park, Kenny Ronco was sitting in his lawnchair watching the game.  I walked up to him and asked, "Who won the first game.?" He said, “This is the first game.”  I was confused.  I asked him, “What happened to the 1 o’clock game”.  He said, “This is the 1 o’clock game”.

 

Then finally I looked at the scoreboard again.  It said it was the seventh inning.  The score was 9 to 6.  I guess when I walked in I saw what I was expecting to see not what was really on the scoreboard.

Useless at Communication

My sister wanted to send Julia, Laura and Sarah St Patrick’s Day cards.  She asked me for Laura and Sarah’s address.  I said I had Sarah’s address but I didn’t know Laura’s address.  I said I would email Laura to get her address in Halifax.

 

So I sent an email.  I didn’t know what to title the email.  So I titled it “I Don’t Know Laura’s Address” and sent it to Laura.

 

Laura replied quickly.  She said she thought it was a cute title to the email.  She included her new address.  So I forwarded Laura’s email to Daphne and Barb.

 

Barb got the email.  She didn’t read the email right away.  She just read the title “I Don’t Know Laura’s Address”.  She said she didn’t know Laura’s address either.

 

Much later she read the email and found out that it was a reply from Laura with her address included.  She asked me why I didn’t tell her I had Laura’s address.  She thought I was useless at communication.

My Man

Every day at softball there are four teams playing two separate games.  There are four of us driving together.  So some of us are always finished before the others.

 

Usually, my team is last to finish.  One day my team was finished early.  I walked to Bill’s car and waited for his game to end.

 

When Bill came, I got in the front seat.  Gary said, “There is a Combat bag lying behind the car”.  I said, “Oh that’s mine”.  So Gary put it in the trunk.  It was good he did because Bill didn’t know it was there.  He would have backed up right over it.  Brian said “Ivan usually has his man take care of his bag”.

Bam Bam has a Problem

Barb plays the game of pickleball hard.  She doesn’t worry about the short game or the finesse shots.  She simply bangs the pickleball with all her might all the time.

 

The guys at pickleball call her Bam Bam.

 

However, Bam Bam has a problem.  She keeps breaking her pickleball paddle.  She has broken three already this winter.  Fortunately, the company that makes them takes them back and replaces them with new ones.  They say there must be a fault with the paddle but I think it just the beast of Bam Bam.

Maintenance Fans

The park has a number of maintenance men who fix things around the park.  They were having a meeting in the community center while Barb was down at the community center with the quilting club.

 

Their meeting broke up just as Barb’s quilting ladies were getting ready to pack up and leave.  The maintenance men yelled over to Barb to congratulate her on her pickleball gold medal.  Barb figured that they must have seen her picture on the park’s website.

Pickleball Drama

Barb and her friend Barb D. won gold at the women’s pickleball tournament.  To make it to the finals, they had to beat a team from out of town who were cheaters.  They would miss a shot and call it out.

 

One time they called a shot out, Barb looked at the judge strangely and said did you see that.  He agreed with Barb that it was definitely in.  These ladies had all kinds of dirty tactics.  To break the momentum, they would ask the referee what the score was when they already knew the score.  One lady even faked a leg cramp to take a break during a bad time.  This shook up Barb and Barb D.  Fortunately, they were able to beat these ladies to reach the finals in which they won gold.

 

The next day Barb was playing mixed doubles and her friend Barb D. was watching and cheering her on against one of the cheater ladies.  After Barb’s team won, the cheater lady got into Barb  D’s face and told her she was a poor sport.  Barb D. shot right back that she at least she wasn’t a cheater.

 

Later, Barb saw the cheater lady surrounded by her supporters literally crying about losing and being treated so badly.

Missing Prize

Canada Day is celebrated at the park on March 1^st.  They had a potluck dinner where we had to bring our own plates and silverware.  We played a game of passing around a little flashlight while music played.  The person who held the flashlight when the music stopped got to take it home.

 

Barb won the flashlight.  When we were leaving the community center, Barb gave me the flashlight because she didn’t have any pockets in her pants.

 

We got home. I did the dishes and threw out the bags we brought the dirty plates and silverware home in. 

 

Later Barb asked me where the flashlight was.  I said I didn’t know.  I thought I might have put it in one of the bags we brought home but I didn’t get up to look for it.

 

Barb dug out the bags in the garbage and searched for the flashlight.  She got her hands all dirty from the garbage but it wasn’t there.

 

Then I looked in my pocket. I found the flashlight.  It was in my pocket all the time.

A Good Thing

I usually sleep in while Barb usually gets up early.  That means Barb is often tired before me in the evening.  She often goes to bed and leaves me up working on my computer.  By the time, I come to bed Barb is asleep.

 

One night Barb was in bed but strangely she wasn’t asleep yet.  I finally turned out all the lights and came into the bedroom.  Barb said "Aren’t you going to turn off the radio?"

 

The radio was so normal to me I didn’t notice that I had left it on.  It was a good thing Barb was still awake when I came to bed because surely she would have woken in the night and would have had to get up to turn off the radio.

A Thousand Little Pieces

Barb was moving my pants that were on the chair in the corner of the bedroom.  When she picked up my pants, all my little pieces of paper I keep in my pocket fell on the floor behind the chair.

 

I cut up 8 by 11 paper into 8 little rectangles.  I keep them in my back pocket in case I have a bright idea I need to remember.  I also keep a Bic pen in my front pocket to write with.  I find it quite useful.  In fact, I am writing this blog post from one of my little notes right now.

 

However, Barb thought I didn’t need quite so many little pieces of blank paper at the same time.  She thought I wasn’t going to have that many bright ideas at the same time.

A Not Quite Perfect System

Barb likes to have a smoothie in the morning before she plays pickleball.  She has a Magic Bullet to blend the fruit and yogurt and juice into a nice thick drink.  She also has five cups that fit on the Magic Bullet.  I told her she should make up five smoothies at a time.  Then leave them in the fridge. That way, she wouldn’t have to make a new one every morning when she might be in a rush. 

Barb thought that was a great idea.

 

She buys all different types of frozen fruit by the bag and keeps them in the freezer. She also buys quite a few green bananas at a time and lets them ripen.  One day I noticed she hadn’t made smoothies for a while because the bananas were over ripe.  When I sat down to have breakfast, the over ripe bananas were on the shelf beside the kitchen table.  There were fruit flies all over the place.

 

I guess the system isn’t perfect.

 

Another Battery Problem

I noticed my watch was running slow.  Barb said she would go to Walmart to get me a new battery but when she left the house we both forgot about my watch.

 

Later that night, I was having a Skype chat with Stan.  We usually chat from 8:30 pm to 10:00 pm.  For some reason, we were late getting started.  I was waiting for him to get online and he was waiting for me to get online.  Actually we were both online but couldn’t see each other.

 

Finally after 15 minutes of waiting, I phoned him.  He said his end was working because his son had been able to see him and connect.  So I restarted my Skype and finally I could see him.  We wasted 15 minutes through a lack of communication.

 

During the Skype conversation, I was looking at my watch to check the time.  I thought it was time to go because my watch said 10 pm.  I forgot that my watch was slow.  We had run 15 minutes over our time.  Stan didn’t seem to mind.

 

Afterwards, I reset the time on my watch.  Since then, it has been working fine.  I don’t have to change the battery.

Noisy Charger

Our golf cart is powered by electricity.  It has five big new car batteries under the seat.  We have a charger we can plug into the outlet on the side of the house.

 

Barb usually drives the cart beside the house on the neighbour’s grass and then through the gap in the trellises in front of the car to where the outlet is.

 

Today she drove up and parked the cart.  She plugged in the charger and it started to hum as usual.  So she went in the house for the evening.  Usually the humming stops when the cart is fully charged.

 

In the morning, the charger was still humming.  The cart looked charged.  So Barb didn’t know what to do.  Finally, she decided to unplug it.  The cart was still humming.  That was when she realized that the cart had been parked in reverse the whole time it was charging.

Handy in an Emergency

One of the guys from the park who plays softball came up to me today and said he had to talk to me.  He said he had a bicycle he didn’t need.  It was a fairly big.  So he thought it would fit me.  He also sees me walking around the park in the afternoon.  So he thought I might like to do some cross-training.

 

He said he would check that the tires were okay and if they were, I should come over and pick it up.

 

A couple of days later, I walked over to his house.  He had the bike ready for me.  I gave it a little ride around the block and then thanked him and rode home.

 

The bike was in pretty bad shape.  The tires were bald.  The wheels were rusted.  But I kept it.  Barb didn’t want any of the neighbours to see it.  So she hide it behind the car against the wall of the house.

 

One Wednesday morning, I was supposed to drive the guys to softball.  I often drove on Wednesdays because Barb plays pickleball at the park on Wednesdays and doesn’t need the car.

 

Barb took the golf cart down to play pickleball before I left.  I got ready to leave but I couldn’t find the car keys.  They were not on the hutch beside the door where I usually see them.  I looked around. Then I panicked.  The guys were waiting for me to pick them up.

 

So I quickly hopped on my bike.  I rode down to the tennis courts where Barb was playing pickleball.  I asked her where the keys were. She said she left them on the patio shelves.

 

I was able to ride my bike home and find the keys.  Then I picked up the guys and never told them about my panic.

What to do When Someone Doesn’t Pick Up

Barb was getting picked up by her friend Barb Zeeman for pickleball this morning because I needed the car to drive the guys to softball.  Barb didn’t think Barb Z. would be able to find our place in the park.  So she decided to drive the golf cart to Meredith’s house at the end of the road and then walk to the gate to meet Barb Z. there.

 

She phoned Barb Z. to let her know  she was going to meet her at the gate.  However, Barb Z. didn’t answer.  So she left a message.  Later she phoned again.  Again Barb Z. didn’t answer.  So Barb left a message.  Barb kept phoning and leaving messages.

 

Finally, Barb Z. showed up at the gate.  Barb explained how she was trying to get in touch with her.  Barb Z. said she doesn’t put her phone on in the morning, especially while she is driving.  When Barb Z. checked her phone she had six messages from Barb.

More Slapstick

I was packing to go to Orlando for a fastball tournament.  I put all my clothes in a suitcase.  Then when I picked up the suitcase to go, all my clothes fell on the floor because I hadn’t done up the zipper.

 

The next weekend I was packing to go to another fastball tournament in Orlando.  I put all my clothes in a suitcase.  Then when I picked up the suitcase to go, all my clothes fell on the floor again because I hadn’t done up the zipper again.

 

I think I have finally learned my lesson but we will have to wait until next year because there are no more tournaments in Orlando this winter.

Morning Comes Early

Barb and I like to read in bed at night.  However, Barb simply opens the book and falls asleep.  I will often have to wake her up to turn out the light when I put away my book and want to go to sleep.

 

I was away one weekend for a fastball tournament in Orlando.  Barb told me while I was away she had fallen asleep while reading and left the light on as usual.  However, when she woke up she thought it was morning because it was so bright in the room but it was still the middle of the night.

Then and Than

Barb can never remember which word should be used ‘then’ or ‘than’ when she is writing an email or a text message.  She is always asking me which it is.  I thought it was funny because I thought it was obvious.

 

Then Barb read a Facebook link with a list of commonly made grammar mistakes.  In it, they said that it was quite common to confuse ‘then’ and ‘than’  So I guess it is not as obvious as I thought.

Where’s the Beef

We use our little barbecue a lot.  We are very thankful to the previous owner of the house who gave us a flood lamp to hang over the barbecue in the evenings.  It gets dark here long before we get around to making dinner.

 

When we are barbecuing Barb takes out the steak in the afternoon to defrost.  She puts it on one of our middle sized plates and leaves it on the counter.

 

Tonight she picked up the plate to take it out to barbecue and then got distracted looking for something else.  So she put down the plate and the steak.

 

When she remembered she was going out to barbecue, she couldn’t find the steak.  She searched and searched.  How could she lose a steak when she just had it a minute ago?

 

Finally, she found it on the plate on her ironing board in the dining room; an obvious place for it.