Pictures Worth a Thousand Tears

Last night we were honored with the presence of some of my old friends who I don't get to see very often.  Prior to my life with Gllen, my friends Christen and Andy and I had a weekly dinner club... where every Tuesday night, Andy would cook for us, and we'd sit around laughing and eating the whole night.  We had a good run at this dinner club, but as usual, life takes its twists and turns and we couldn't expect it to last forever... Andy became a father, Christen moved out of state, and I started dating a Gllen.

I pretty much lucked out - I found my own live-in-chef who makes me delicious meals, makes me laugh and in general keeps my spirits up.  Everyone should get to have Dinner Club forever. So, I was really excited to see my old gang, and introduce Gllen to the people who I spent a few formative years in my twenties with.  They have good stories to tell.

Gllen is a good listener - he doesn't usually interrupt a story.  So he absorbed a LOT of chatter about the good old days.  At one point he told the group, "It was really interesting to hear that story unfold. Pretty much all I heard was, 'That was the WORST night of my life.... did you WRITE that poem?' and whatever happened, it sounds amazing."  I really enjoy seeing life through the Gllen Lens sometimes.

The highlight of the evening was when we gathered back at our house for some late-night drinks and decided to play a board game... Gllen's new favorite game... Telestrations.  It's basically like pictionary combined with a game of telephone. Anyway, this game, without fail, makes Gllen laugh so hard that he CRIES. I think we all did.  But Gllen's laughter is so genuine, so joyful, that you can't help laughing when he does.  He was sitting next to Amanda, one of our guests, and drawing and cracking up so hard at his own art that he would get Amanda giggling, which in turn makes me laugh and it was went around in circles from there.

My favorite Gllen drawing from the night was his rendering of the word "cuddle".  I present it to you here... the more I look at it, the more I am amazed. I've blacked out the word so you can play along and make your own guess... to reveal the answer, simply highlight the blacked out text.

And for fun, here's one more... the secret phrase is "water off a duck's back".

Picture Time

Last week, Gllen and I went to an open house at my sister's new office. They were showing off their new digs, and hosting a little party. Gllen and I were sitting with my sister, in the conference room with all the food. The president of Lynette's company saw us and decided to snap a picture. Gllen was in "being polite" mode, so he was not able to do his normal hand-in-front-of-face or scrurry-out-of-the-frame moves that he usually employs when a camera pops up. The picture was taken, and I felt proud of him for being so compliant.

Fast forward to later when we are driving home in our car. Gllen starts to laugh and tells me, "I saw the funniest thing." He starts to laugh harder, and it was almost a full minute before he could gain his composure enough to tell me what it was. "It was when we were getting our picture taken. This lady was at the food table and dishing up a meatball. One of the meatballs falls off her plate and rolled under the table." He guffaws, "She started looking around for it. But there was a really long table cloth, so she couldn't see it. But it had rolled under the table, and I could see it from where I was sitting."

He starts to laugh again, practically foaming at the mouth, he's so amused. "But we were having our picture taken. And it was taking forever. So I just watched this lady searching around for like three minutes, trying to find this meatball. All the while, I'm looking right at it. But I couldn't shout, 'Your meatball is over here.' because the picture might be taken. So she finally gave up, and sorta looked around, hoping no one saw what happened. BUT I SAW IT!"

He has me giggling by this point, and we make each other laugh harder. He tells me, "So, I sat there just watching and laughing to myself. So if the camera had worked right away, they would have gotten the most smiley picture of me there has ever been taken."

I burst out into my own guffaws. "OMG, my parents were probably looking at you and wondering how this random person taking a picture can get you to smile, but you never smile for them!"

We dissolve into giggles again. Gllen tries to image what my parents are saying to each other on the way home. "Why does he never smile in our pictures?"

Apparently, all you need is the Comedy of Meatballs.

Gllen = Mean

Yesterday, I don't know how it happened, but I stepped right on top of a giant rock and fell to the ground in the middle of the street. I scraped my knee and my hand. Gllen was right there next to me and didn't even lift a hand when he saw me tumbling over.

In fact, he stood there laughing at me as I picked myself off the ground and checked my damaged knee. I shot him an evil look, and he laughed harder. I whimpered and frowned. Gllen chuckled more and said, "What is wrong witih you? You fall all the time!" and then burst into a new round of laughter.

"You know," I admonished, "a good boyfriend would at least help his girlfriend up or ACT concerned. You're such a jerk."

Still sputtering with laughter, he looked me in the eye and replied, "Girlfriend... What don't you understand about comedy?"

I spent the rest of the day trying to trip him.