An Open Letter

Dear BJ's Wholesale Club,

I fully understand your purpose of having club cards so only members can experience your incredible discounts. Not just anybody should be allowed to buy 100 Solo cups for only $7.99. Perks like these should certainly be maintained for only those who take the time to apply for a membership, awkwardly get their picture taken, and then carry around that little plastic card in the case of a wholesale emergency. The point is, I totally understand your 'members only' policy.

That being said, ARE YOU KIDDING ME that I need a death certificate in order close someones membership?! You are neither a bank nor a government agency nor one of the many, many institutions that I would expect to have provide a death certificate to. You sell Nerd Ropes at like 5 cents a pop but you want me to bring you a death certificate to prove that I'm not willy nilly cancelling my family member's account?

Puh-lease.

All the best,
K. Fahn

P.S. In other (completely related) news, you provide perhaps the best tailgate shopping ever so thank you in advance for what is sure to be a delicious, well supplied weekend.

P.P.S. This household may never have to buy toilet paper or paper towels again so thank you for taking that off my shopping list for, well like, forever.

A Morning in the House of God

I had to go to church this morning. Not to, you know, go to church but to count the weekend's offering. In my partial employment I've picked up another gig in part-time accounting. OK, not really; it was a one time thing, but I was really good at it. My accounting skills are not the point here, the actual trip to church is. It should be noted I haven't been to church in about 4 and a 1/2 years. With the exception of a few weddings, not for a service or a funeral or a holiday, nothing. Needless to say, I was a little nervous going there. I mean, House of God here people, not really something you screw around with, even if you don't so much believe. Not saying I don't believe, not saying I do, I'm just saying, don't want to take any chances.

So here were my thoughts on the way to church:

• Am I appropriately dressed? I mean does this Tommy Hilfiger polo make me look like a skank? Tommy Hilfiger by its very definition is the opposite of skanky right? Maybe I should change? Are turtlenecks OK when it's 60 degrees outside? No? OK, we're going with the polo.
• Can God hear me listening to this music? If so, does he care about the content? Like the songs that came on the radio were Britney Spears' 'Three' and Jimmy Buffet/Alan Jackson 'It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere'. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think threesomes and binge drinking at all hours of the day are things you're supposed to think about in church. Should I find my old Carrie Underwood CD and put on some 'Jesus Take The Wheel'? No? OK, we'll just listen to some commercials, don't think they can get me in too much trouble.
• I curse like a freaking sailor. What if I accidentally start screaming out expletives in the middle of the building? Not that I walk around randomly screaming out the f-word but what if the case of Tourettes I didn't even know I had suddenly appears right now? Will I just immediately spontaneously combust? You are an adult, a grown woman, you can keep yourself from saying nasty words for the hour and a half you are going to be in this building. That and I'm not even sure spontaneously combusting humans are a thing.

I survived. I wore the shirt, no one called me a whore. I listened to what I wanted to in the car and was not struck down in the parking lot. I did not say one word that was unholy while in the building. I consider this to equal one very successful day.

All that being said, you can probably count on me spending the remainder of the day binge drinking, screaming swear words during the Pens game, and laughing at Youtube videos of people falling. That's just the charm of me.

Crazy Stuff Happens While You Post

Well it's official. We're pregnant. And by 'we' and 'pregnant' I of course mean, the freaking bird laid eggs and we will officially be having 2 little baby robins here shortly. I wanted to take a picture like that last one to show you these eggs. I took that first picture by nudging the screen in my bedroom window out of the way, using the zoom on the camera, leaning out, and click. So to get a picture of the eggs I tried to do the same thing.

SUPER FAIL.

Well super fail only because I had to try a second time. I got a perfectly fine picture which you can see. No you can't fully see both eggs but hey, I never claimed to be Ansel Adams here. Last night I decided I had to get a better picture.

Naturally I decided this at 11 o'clock at night. Therefore, naturally, I knocked the screen out of the window at 11 o'clock at night. Did that happen any one of the numerous times I did this during the day when it would have been super easy to walk downstairs and carry it back upstairs and fix? Nope. Only in the middle of the night when it's super weird (and scary, there are birds living there) to be climbing through the bushes and when creating a racket putting the screen back is not good. So now my screen is sitting quietly on the back porch. It should be noted I did retrieve and put it there last night. This is my real house, not Beta Kappa Phi. (Is that a real thing? If so, I mean no ill will I'm just stringing together the 3 Greek letters I know.) You can't just leave a screen laying in the lawn like a bunch of animals.

UPDATE: In the time it took me to write this post not only did I put the screen back in but, a third egg got laid, and a HUGE (seriously, HUGE) bird came and cracked all the eggs open! No more baby birds chirping! All that being said, no I'm not just sitting at my window watching what happens, I'm just peeking out the window every time I stand up. Or whenever I hear a chorus of birds in the tree. Or just every couple of minutes because it feels super dramatic now.

Yeah I know, I might have a problem...

For the Birds

I have a bird thing. I hate, hate, hate them. It all started at Sea World when I was 5 which is a story I may or may not have shared so if I haven't here's the really watered down version: dolphin feeding, fish, seagulls, terror. After that, there were the birds that nested in the vent above the stove in our house in Pittsburgh. Little pieces of their nest would sometimes fall through onto the stove. Ewww.

After that there was college, better known as The 724. At The 724 some birds nested in the vent of our 2nd floor bathroom. My bedroom was right above that 2nd floor bathroom. Which meant every morning, like 6am morning, momma bird would come back to throw up food into her babies mouths. And if you've ever heard what baby birds sound like while they're waiting for food, you know what I'm talking about: It. Is. Painstaking. For hours you would be kept awake listening to those stupid little birds chirp. Eventually we had to get the landlord involved. The not watered down version of this story would probably make people really uncomfortable (and possibly get other people in trouble) so let's just say, it got taken care of.

Next, there has been the ongoing issue of the robins and the windows. (When I say ongoing I mean like 2 years ongoing.) For the last 2 years, every spring, robins start crashing into our windows. I mean, full force, flying as hard as they can into our windows. They bounce off, since, you know, you can't fly through glass, and just kind looked confused for a minute. They then proceed to do this over and over and over and over, without ever getting smart enough to realize what they're doing is really freaking stupid. Some Internet research led us to figure out the birds seem to think it is another bird facing off with them so they fly into the window to start battle. They are too dumb to realize that it's just their reflection so: They just. Don't. Stop.

Want to know what the solution to that little problem is? Printing out giant pictures of owls and other big scary birds and taping them to your windows. Because while robins are not smart enough to not run into windows over and over again they are smart enough to avoid printouts of paper owls.

There was a blue jay in the tree outside my window yesterday. It caught my eye because it was a blue jay. I'm used to stupid robins running into my windows. I walked over to the window in time to see a robin chasing it out of the tree. You get three guesses why this robin was so concerned. The beginnings of a nest are in this tree.

What's going to happen to that nest? I don't know yet. But I'm fairly certain the answer starts with the word: DESTROY.

So I Guess I Am 6.

Mom actually did it. She actually hid the Easter baskets. Guess who took the longest to find hers?

This girl.

Want to know what was in those Easter baskets that took me 10 minutes longer than everyone else in the family to find?

DVD's.

And by DVD's I mean Toy Story 2 and Shrek.

All this makes me feel way better about the big birthday coming up. You really never actually have to grow up. And I apparently have the DVD collection to prove it.

At Least I'm Not A Six Year Old. Well...

As you may or may not know, this Sunday is Easter. In this family Easter celebrations are very small. And honestly, those celebrations have very little to do with, you know, the reason Easter is really celebrated.

Preparations include not eating meat on Good Friday. Only Good Friday. That's how we did it growing up, that's how we do it now. Only when we were growing up, we actually, you know, went to church during the Lenten season. Now we pretty much just don't eat meat that one time and call it...well, we don't really call it anything. We really just kind of pick that day and don't eat meat.

Like everyone else on the planet, we follow up this deprivation with a giant ham on Sunday. Because there's no way to reward yourself for being good that one day like a huge piece of pig.

The point is, we don't really celebrate Easter. But we do have Easter baskets. Even the Easter's I didn't come home while I was in college, I would get a package with plastic eggs full of Jelly Belly's, Snicker's eggs, you get the idea. And if we are home we get a literal basket with the pastel, plastic grass in it and everything.

All 3 kids are going to be home for Easter this year. I asked if Mom could hide the Easter baskets so we could search for them like when we were kids. This was not a joke. How fun would an Easter basket hunt be?! Yes it can be noted, we are 19, 21 (a week shy of 22), and 24 (a month shy of 25). But seriously, are you telling me you wouldn't have fun with a good old fashioned basket hunt?

Two days after I made this suggestion Mom in passing said, "Do you think you guys are too old for Easter baskets?"

My response? "You realize you're asking the child who a few days ago asked if you would hide her basket so she could find it right? You know, like someone under the age of 10?"

Mom: "Right. Nevermind. ... So, what do you want in your Easter basket?"

If I wake up on Sunday and these baskets are hidden: It. Will. Be. Epic.

The Blood Line Continues to Never Disappoint

So the little brother won Beer Fest '10. We all know how Mom felt about that. This past Sunday the 4 of us attended a Penguins game in Pittsburgh. The Igloo is being torn down this year and it was our little family's final hoorah. Our farewell to a historic place. A place we hold very dear to our hearts.

Naturally, in what is apparently true Fahn fashion, this involved a few beers.

With a Mom to drive me back to Buffalo and a little brother to drive S back to State College, the 21 year olds took advantage and toasted the Pens. This led to a few encounters that may have proven Mom right about how it's difficult to be proud of the beer funneling, keg standing, and flip cupping.

First 2 rounds were on me. (First paycheck put to good use!) Round number 3 was on S. As we were getting ready to get round 4 (our last one, we aren't that bad) S looked to me and said, "I think I'm going to ask Mom for money to contribute to our drinking fund!" And thus she promptly turned to Mom and literally said, "Hey Mom, want to contribute to our drinking fund? We need a twenty!"

Rolling her eyes, Mom went into her wallet, handed us $25, and asked us to get her a water. At the close of the period we got up to go to the restroom and then get our beers. Mom decided to come with us. Naturally, the guy at the beer stand looked at us and as he began to pour said, "2 Bud Lights?" Naturally, Mom rolled her eyes and responded, "Yep, of course they want 2 Bud Lights but they also need a water this time. As you could probably guess, the water is not for them."

As we walked back to our seats she looked at us and said, "So you guys pretty much make friends with whoever is serving the beer everywhere you go don't you?" After a moment of pondering the only real answer we could come up with was, "Yep."

So, maybe she has a point, but: shouldn't she also be proud that we're like really, really good at making friends? It's not like everyone gets remembered by the beer stand guy. We were special.

Or maybe we were just frequent fliers....

UPDATE: Mom came home today with a bottle of Jameson so we can take victory shots (there was nowhere to take them after the game) this weekend when the the kids come home for Easter. At least we know we totally get it from somewhere.