Joe and Mel

The school where I teach is in an old shopping mall. The mall manager is named Joe. He's in his early 60s, and he makes me miss both of my grandfathers.

Joe is in several grown-up Boy-Scout organizations like the Shriners, or maybe the Elks Club. He takes his wife square dancing on Friday night, and gives the teachers here free tickets to the Tonginoxie rodeo.

Usually Joe wears grey slacks and a Miller Security button-down short sleeve work shirt and black dress shoes, but today he came in wearing plaid golfing shorts and a white tank top.

With the dress shoes.

"Gonna be hot today," he told me.

Joe likes hearing stories about my life, and since we didn't have any students in yet, he pulled up a chair and I found all of our pictures on Josh's blog Flickr site.

Mel stopped by shortly after Joe did. Mel is the mall maintenance guy, who likes to grumble about the new mayor, the potholes in the parking lot, the worn out belt on the vacuum cleaner, and his kids who "just don't got no sense some of these days."

Joe and Mel stayed for an hour looking at pictures.

They argued about whether Josh looked better with or without facial hair, whether Anna and I looked alike or not, and which wedding picture they wanted a copy of to hang in their office (they finally decided on the one where we're putting gas in the RAV, still wearing our wedding clothes).

I showed them the pictures from our trip to the Topeka Zoo...Mel said, very seriously, that he had never liked giraffes, because they looked like they were "up to something."

Good times.

Cat & House - 2; Josh & Sarah - 0

It stormed all weekend in Kansas City, leaving us with a sopping wet yard, but fortunately a dry basement. I like thunderstorms and wish we had a bigger front porch to watch the wicked lightning and pounding rain.

Our cat, however, does not like storms. His tail gets all fuzzy, a la Calvin's buddy, Hobbes. On Saturday night, I was awakened by the simultaneous sounds of a crazy loud crack of thunder, Josh shouting in pain, and the cat scrambling out the door to find a safe hiding spot.

Scared by the thunder, Rio had used Josh's leg as a launch pad to leap off the bed, leaving behind four distinct puncture wounds and three deep scratches. Ouch! I'm not sure Rio felt all that bad about it...check out Rio's expression in this picture: Guilty as charged, Your Honor!

Score: Rio - 1; Josh - 0

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The second injury of the weekend occurred when I was getting ready for bed on Sunday evening. Our house is pretty old and occasionally quirky, one of those quirks being the 71.5" (5 feet 11 1/2 inches) bathroom door, compared to standard 80"(6 feet 6 inches) or 84" (6 feet 10 inches) interior door heights.

So I was hopping around the house (don't ask...I just like to hop sometimes. Anna knows...I think it started when I lived with her in Sioux Falls).

Anyway, I brushed my teeth, and then hopped out of the bathroom, straight smack up into the door frame of our previously mentioned tiny bathroom door. Now I'm almost 5' 9", and I'm a pretty good hopper, so that's a whole lot of hop-power slamming the top of my head into a wooden door frame 3 inches above me.

I saw stars.

I crumpled to the floor, swearing and sobbing at the same time. I felt like a moron.

Josh quickly got the bag of popcorn kernels from the freezer for my rapidly-rising goose egg and fixed a big mug of medicine that was equal parts rum and sprite, with a little lime juice.

Oh, the headache.

I quickly didn't care that the combination of the thunderstorm and a worn-out VCR tape had only picked up the audio from the TAR finale, with little broken snatches of video. I didn't even care that Eric and Pink won, and they're like my least favorite contestants ever, being a dreadful combination of "that guy" and every girl who lets herself get dragged along through life by that guy.

Josh put me to bed and made me swear off hopping, at least until we move to a different house with people-sized doorways.

Score: House - 1; Sarah - 0

Z O O !

For Josh's birthday, my parents took us to the Topeka Zoo. Josh's favorite animal was this little tamarin.


Mom and Sarie in the rain forest jungle.











Two little monkeys up in the tree.