So, Kyle’s been telling me for a long time that I should “sit in” on his blog and make “guest posts,” so I thought I’d post this here, seeing as he apparently missed this story. So, without any further adieu, I give you:

The Attention-Grabbing Grapefruit: A Sociological Adventure
(…or, “Everybody Wants to Be a Good Samaritan, Especially When It’s Easy.”)

Last week, Kyle, Papa, and I went shopping at Costco. If you’ve ever been to Costco, you know that the highlight of the experience are the loads of good samples… unfortunately, I burned my tongue on some cajun chicken pasta penne stuff, which pretty much ruined the remainder of my sampling. I hate it when that happens!

We also had hot dogs there for lunch — two dogs split among us three, a perfect amount. As we left the eating area, I saw a little puddle under our cart. I looked at the underside of our cart but saw no broken bottles or anything, so I figured it must have been from someone else…

Wrong. As we were loading up the car, we discovered that we had a leak after all. It was the grapefruit! One of the fruit at the very bottom was rotting, and leaking grapefruit juice! I didn’t want that thing in the car, but it was at the very bottom so it would’ve taken a while to get it out, so Papa put it on the roof! I protested at first, because a) I was afraid it’d fall off, possibly leading to an accident, and b) I knew we’d get honked at by lots of “good Samaritans” notifying us that we “forgot” to load up our fruit. But, we did it anyway.

As I was backing out, looking over my shoulder, the person in the car behind me started waving frantically. I recognized her from my improv class, so I waved back. Turns out I didn’t know her after all; she was just waiving frantically to draw our attention to our roof. Someone else nearly said, “you’ve got a bag of fruit on your roof.” We said, “we know!” and cheerily drove off. We hadn’t even left Costco and someone honked at us a few times. I gave a thumbs-up but they still honked. Such concern!

Driving along River street, an SUV pulled up beside us and the passenger said, “you’ve got fruit on your roof.” “We know!” A few blocks later, more shouting and honking… “We know!” It was so funny! (I nearly titled this blog post “We know!”) One person even got out of their car (at a red light) and told about the fruit through our window. “We know!” For the last few blocks we didn’t get any honking or anything, but I loved watching people in the opposite lane as I passed them, especially those waiting in an intersection… heads slowing turning, jaw slowing dropping, eyes widening… and then I passed them. lol! Beautiful!

My friend, upon hearing the story, remarked that the little citrus was probably suffering from self-esteem issues — being a rotten fruit, after all — but causing all the ruckus must have made it feel very important!

It’s not that I haven’t tried to dance (Well, reluctantly at least). Before today, I had one other introduction into dancing, African dancing. Pa encouraged both Luke and I to go. He said that it would help us “loosen” up. Well, First going in, I could see that 90% of the people there were ladies and the other 10% were a little. . . not that there’s anything wrong with that. Aside from that, they were all “peace-y.” Now, I like my peace as much as everybody else, but when the dance teacher explained a dance move to the class by saying, “imagine you are pulling back an arrow. . . an arrow of love.” I groaned. Who am I, Cupid?! As you can see, it wasn’t a good start.

Being that I had some mental rigor-mortis happenin’ there, it didn’t help that the dancing was extremly intriquite and technical. What was worse than that was it costed fifteen bucks! So, that was my first dance class. It probably would’ve gone a lot better if I had thrown back a couple o’ shots of Cazadores to loosen up.

1) You can only dance with women. I mean I like the ladies as much as the next gal but what’s wrong with dancing with men?!? I mean, during the spin/twirl thing, I accidentally almost untied my partners dress with my thumb (where are you supposed to grab to hold on anyway?). I mean, you wouldn’t accidentally untie a man’s dress, right? (and if there were men with dresses, I sure wouldn’t be dancing with ‘em)

2) At this dance there were fewer women than men so I only got to dance one out of three dances. Luke managed to get in the first dance, I jumped in the second, and neither of us got in the third.

Rules, rules, rules. Why does everything need rules!?

So, after too much waiting, I left when Luke went to the can.

It was pretty easy to trim ’cause we had new saw blades so it cut easy. The branches were very long and shot out far. They were also kinda bouncy. When cutting the really long ones, I had to wait for the cars to pass before cutting it off. A couple times, there were a few harrowing moments (lawsuit wise). I was halfway through cutting a big one when, halfway through (which I believe I already mentioned), It broke off. Fortunately, there was a branch below that was going parrallel to it so it was fortunate that it was right below it. So, it was balancing on the branch and I was holding the butt of it so it wouldn’t fall. Once the car passed, I pushed it off the branch and it started to go into the road but it bounced back to the curb.

Anyway, after getting it pretty manageable, we noticed that or neighbor’s rose bush/tree (it was pretty high) was getting tangled in our bamboo so I went up and tried to take out the part that was going into our property but it was hard ’cause not only was it tangly, there were massive thorns on ‘em and I didn’t have gloves on. I cut off a big chunk which was a bit of a mistake. I tried to pull it down (’cause the rose branches were right above me. But it was stuck on bamboo and itself. I got the pole pruners to sever the little ‘uns which would hopefully loosen it a bit to bring it down. After getting a few pieces off, I swept ‘em to the side and went back to prune more. Then *snik!* Up went a 1/4″ thorn into my toe! That was annoying! Why don’t people plant the thornless kind!? I tell ya, when the barefoot look comes back into style, roses will be much less popular.

Anyway, I finished the rose tree and then cleaned off my foot. It felt fine after a while.

You see, on Mondays and Fridays, we have a tradition of biking down to the beach to do our yoga and Tai Chi. Afterwards, we have a swim. It’s turned into a ritual for in order to get hot cocoa at marinis, we have to dive in the water.

Ok, back to the story. Since it was 42 degrees out and there was a chilly breeze, we weren’t sure if we were gonna bike down to the beach and do all that stuff. Well, I don’t know how but somehow, we decided to go. Boy, it was chilly outside! The bottoms of my feet felt like the heat was being sucked right out. Normally, when we go out, my feet feel fine but it was especially cold today. Anyway, we got our bikes out and rode to the beach.

When we got to the beach, we locked up our bikes and headed out on the sand. It was quite windy. We went to our usual spot by the big boulders and the cliff hoping the wind would be less there. It wasn’t (which wasn’t a problem of course). I was wearing a swiming shorts, shirt, vest and a warm windbreaker/jacket. I could feel some of the wind but none of the sun (even though it was chilly, the sun was out which was warm). I took off my upper clothing. The wind was much colder (since it was hitting my chest) but it was a bit better ’cause the sun was wamer.

After Yoga, we were getting ready to do Tai Chi (by starting Tai Chi). I noticed that the tide was out and the on the other side of the rocks, there was a little mini-beach that was usually covered by the ocean but was visible now. I decided to skip Tai Chi and check it out. Since the tide was out, I could get 3/4 of the way there without getting wet. Then I went in and had to go around the cliff. The water was rougher by the cliff than it was in more open part of the beach where we normally go. I had to walk slowely and carefully ’cause there was a lot of big slippery rocks in the sand. The water didn’t feel like a hot tub, let me tell you.

Anyway, I got to the beach and checked it out for a short time. I saw that there was a cave that went in a ways. I was worried that the tide would come back in again so I didn’t stay too long. Going back seemed easier than going there. After I got out of the water, it was pretty cold. I ran back (which dried off a lot of the water) to my jacket and towel and all and dried off. My hands were the coldest. After drying off and bundling up, we walked back to our biked and proceeded to bike along the wharf to Marinis. It was nice biking along the wharf ’cause the wind was at our backs so it wasn’t as cold and wasn’t hard to bike.

When we got there, we ordered a coffee and two hot cocoas. The coffee was piping hot so we all took turns wrapping our hands around it. We got back to normal tempature in there. Afterwards, we stepped outside and the wind was there to greet us. We got on our bikes and biked home. It was much harder biking home ’cause the wind was against us.

When we got home, we ran a bath. I was the last one to call “dibs” so I had to wait ’till the end but it gave me time for a preliminary warm up.

Finally, bath time! Whoo! It was worth the wait! Piping hot! So hot, it felt cold!

At Lulu Carpenters, we were serriated by some Happenin’ Blues. We got in touch with the New Year’s Spirit by getting some piping cider. Mine was boiling hot but fortunately, the guy Luke was playing with took a break so I came in on a few songs. After that, when I got back to my chair, the cider cooled off enough to drink pleasently. Plus, I finished my beverage just as the last song was sung. (Good timing if you haven’t guessed)

Afterwards, we came home just in time for Seinfeld. After that, it was 11:00PM so we had an hour to kill. We passed the time watching a whole string of The Twilight Zone’s.

30 seconds before 12:00AM, I couldn’t decide which channel to watch to see the ball drop. I first went to Fox but the “Live” sign wasn’t on so I thought they weren’t gonna have it so I went to CNN but that was showing New Year’s in Las Vegas. Anyway, At 3 seconds ’till 12:00AM, I heard some fireworks go off outside at the clocktower (I guess someone’s clock was a little out-of-sync). After looking outside, I went to FOX and saw that it was live and I missed the ball dropping! AH!!! Well, I went to the kitchen and dropped an orange on the floor and that got the Ball Dropping out of my system.