sandy and beachy.

Ah, the many facets of Sandra! Well, three of them, anyway.

Thing 1: Stupid.
I was eating dinner at Josh's dad's place the other week. It was an every-man-for-himself, make your own taco salad situation. There were all the basic necessities of taco salad: ground beef, nachos, lettuce, refried beans, cheese, tomatoes, thousand island dressing. Wait, what? The thousand island was apparently a selection of Josh's dad, and the rest of us looked askance at the way he liberally poured it on what had been a perfectly good taco salad until then. He said, "There was a taco stand in Eden that made taco salads with thousand island dressing." I laughed, because I thought that was a great way to defend food quirks. Me, I like cottage cheese on my pancakes with syrup, so I can just scoff at naysayers with "There's an Waffle House in Eden that serves cottage cheese on their pancakes." Also, the image of Adam and Eve in the garden, surrounded by all God's creatures, beautiful fruit trees, and a lone taco stand is amusing. Then Josh told me that his dad had grown up in the small town of Eden, North Carolina. And then I just felt stupid.

Thing 2: Pretty.
A small family with three sons lives in the apartment next to mine. The boys range in age from about eight to thirteen and are often hanging out in the parking lot outside the apartment building. The littlest one talks to me sometimes. I drove up from a trip to the grocery store last week and they were all standing in the parking space next to mine. As I got out, the little one said quickly and loudly, like he was just going to burst open with the information, "My big brother is thirteen, and he likes you!" To which the big brother replied, "Do not!" So the little one clarified, "Well, he thinks you're pretty." The big brother's response to that was "Nuh-uh! That's a bunch of bullcrap!" I really don't think I'd heard the word "bullcrap" since I was thirteen. It's nice to see that neither eight-year-old nor thirteen-year-old boys have changed much since I was that age.

The trouble was that I couldn't think of anything to say. I wanted something that would handle the situation calmly, making me come off as cool and saving the thirteen-year-old from embarrassment. But I couldn't come up with anything, so I just smiled, tried not to laugh, and brought my groceries into my apartment. My impulse was to giggle and blush, thinking, "Someone thinks I'm pretty." Looks like I haven't changed much since I was that age, either.

Thing 3: Bitchy.
Dave, at my office, likes wordplay. He is ridiculous with his puns, and though some are better than others, I have to admire how quick he is with them. I seem to have more appreciation for that sort of humor than most at my office, so apparently, I'm a dork, too. He also likes to make up poems and songs and things. I sent him a website once where some group was compiling an online dictionary where all the definitions were limericks. I'm pretty sure Dave's productivity went way down that day.

Dave was grumpy with work-related stress today, and so I encouraged him to make up mean limericks about the people who were pissing him off. Unfortunately, those people have names that don't rhyme with much (We happen to work with a very irritating guy named Nebuchadnezzar). Even though I am nothing but charming, he apparently decided to attack me with his rhyming rapier. He sent the result to me (note that the rural Southern pronunciation of "Nietzsche" would rhyme with "peachy"):

For David, life was not peachy.
He felt as morose as a Nietzsche.
He had, at the sea,
this epiphany:
What's Sandy, quite often, is beachy.

The lesson here is that you can get away with calling me a bitch if you are clever about it.