Welcome to the club part II

One of the quirks I tease Steve about (besides bachelor-style cooking of course) is his tendency to over-explain situations. He's a friendly guy, which is one of his best qualities, but sometimes it leads him to let complete strangers in on a little too much detail.

Once, we were out at a nice dinner and couldn't finish our meal. We both had to get a to-go box and our plates must have looked basically untouched to our waiter. I probably would have said something like, "We weren't as hungry as we thought we were." But Steve, not wanting this man we'd never seen before and will probably never see again to think we didn't like the food, narrated our entire afternoon, including feeding times.

"...and we were really hungry earlier, so we had some sandwiches, and then ended up coming to dinner sooner than we thought..."

Like I said, friendly. He knows the look you get when you've over-explained though. The one that says I'm not really sure why you just told me all that, but I'm too polite to comment about it. And when he gets the look, he invariably turns to me and says, "I over-explained, didn't I?"

A little.

Well, today at work I resolved a minor billing discrepancy that I had mentioned to my boss earlier. I walked all my paperwork down to my boss's desk and proceeded to explain to him exactly what the error had been and how it had been resolved. When I finished and looked up from all my show-and-tell material, the look was unmistakably present.

"Um...that's fine...I trust you to do your job..."

Translation: "I really don't need to know every tiny detail of what you do every day. 'It's resolved' would have been fine and then I could have had those 5 minutes of my life back."

Yup. I have to say though, if it's between being being constantly hovered over (as in my previous work situation), or occasionally getting the look because now I'm trusted with *gasp* my actual job, I'll settle for the latter.

Welcome to the club

Steve used to have a job that involved being on the phone a lot. Apparently, people used to mistake his name for "Pete" rather frequently. I thought this was funny, but secretly thought he probably mumbled or something.

Last week, I was ordering some flowers over the phone. When we got to the part about what the card would say, I told the sales lady what the text should read and then "With love, Steve and Kate."

"Pete and who?"
"No no, Steve and Kate."
"Oh, Steve, short for Steven. OK. Steve and who?"
"Steve and Kate."
"Steve and Pete?"

Um...maybe he wasn't mumbling.

Faux Pas

Yesterday was my cousin's birthday and we had a li'l' family celebration today. When we bought his present, Steve and I decided to hedge our bets and get a gift receipt. So I was feeling so considerate and prepared when he pulled it out of the wrapping paper and when he looked confused by the accompanying paperwork, I just said (maybe a bit smugly) -

"It's a gift receipt."

But he still looked confused and handed it to me across the table.

"No, I think this is..."

The actual receipt. With the "you saved..." line circled and everything.

Whoops.

Next year I am definitely crimping my hair (and maybe not on Halloween)

My friend Nicole often lists one of her interests as "putting myself in awkward situations." I respect that (for more on why awkward is good - something my husband says I should know plenty about, judging by my junior high school photos - see my previous post). In the interest of following Nicole's example, I decided to wear my Halloween costume to work today. So I put on a football jersey from my husband's office wall (remind me to address the brave new world of decorating with a BOY in the house later), painted black lines on my cheeks and borrowed a Steeler's hat.

We're allowed, but it's not super common to dress up at work. I guess it's been a while since I was in an appropriately awkward situation because I had forgotten how refreshing and dang FUNNY it can be to watch people try to figure out what to do with you. Also, I should mention that there are a large number of employees from non-Halloween celebrating countries in the office. I'm pretty sure no one prepped them for the American oddity that is Halloween. Anyway, some of the reactions to my costume were as follows:

1. Awkward glance in my direction. Quick glance at the floor. Awkward glance #2 in my direction. Studied examination of the floor tile while quickening pace significantly.
2. Our department's administrative assistant (dressed as a pirate) noticed another employee start to come toward us and then veer away. She asked if he needed anything. He said, "Uh, no," and then scurried (that's really the best word I can think of to describe it) in the opposite direction.
3. "Go Steelers!"
4. More awkward stares - I love these because you can tell the starer can't decide if they should comment on your getup or just pretend it's normal for a 5'5" girl to wear an XL sized NFL football jersey to work (seriously, I was swimming laps in it on my lunch break).
5. "You should wear some Ben-Gay." I was totally lost on this one. I have no idea if that was a blanket sports reference or if Troy Polamalu endorses it. Either way, I don't think Ben-Gay is really something you wear, is it?

OK, so maybe I dressed up because last night I realized that this was about to be the first Halloween since birth that I didn't get all costumed up, and that was just one step farther from childhood than I cared to be. It was a valuable experience in awkwardness nonetheless.