KiKi's birthday, antique rings, Jenny dresses a window, finally football and bye-bye summer

Kristina's birthday was last week! Happy Birthday, Ki!

I missed it.

Seriously - I subscribe to birthdayalarm.com and STILL miss birthdays. I don't know what it is! It's a block on my part - not yours. Ki was in Chicago so she was having fun, but a Happy Birthday text or something would have been nice I'm sure. The day she returned I did text over a fun Happy Birthday message to which she replied: "Thanks, but it was yesterday."

Sigh. I tried.

Anyway, since she was gone from home on her birthday, we'd planned to have a post-real birthday celebration at our house when she returned. I'm all about stretching the birthday fun as long as possible, WHO'S WITH ME? I think my record is four weeks. Anyway, I got my Betty Crocker on and made this cutie-pie cake (ooh! oxymorons are fun!)

monogramed cake! seriously, a two-layer, itty-bitty cake surrounded by cuppy cakes. adorable squared.

Next, she was plied with gifts (I have to buy my friends! Seriously, I forget birthdays, what else I got to go on?):

ha ha! she's regifted this to me twice.

real present - she liked it much better as you can see.

happy birthday to you! you live in a zoo! you look like a monkey and you smell like one too! and mannyyeee mooooooreee!!!

whoopsie, candle went out...

yeaaaa!!! (look, i'm actually clapping and you can totally tell i'm saying "yeeeeaaaaa!!!") i'm so easily amused. thank god.

Amanda and John came over for supper that night too. Now, I'm not much of a hostess. I'm more of a "there's beer in the fridge" kinda gal. However, if you come to my house and it's time for you to go I will stand on my deck and wave to you until you leave (unless it's raining. I mostly don't then because everyone says, "are you nuts, go back in the house." I probably would otherwise). I dunno - it's a thing. We even refer to the deck as the "waving porch."

I'm also not much of a jewelry wearer either. I was digging in my Gran's jewelry box (she died several years ago and it was given to me, nothing illicit was going on PROMISE!) and found an antique wedding band a few weeks ago. I assumed it was my great-grandmother's and put it on because it was a simple band and I don't like my jewelry catching stuff or having to clean stones often, so plain and simple is fine with me. It was a smidge too loose, but no biggie. I love my wedding set (Tommy's grandmother's stones in both bands that he had reset, LOVE special stuff like that) but it's a pain to clean, so I usually just wear my Gran's plain gold band that she always wore. She was widowed twice; she married again when I was three to Steinie who was a widower himself.

So I'm waving goodbye to Amanda and John. This wedding band, which again I assumed was my great-grandmother's (or something - I wore it to remind myself to ask my mother about it the next time I saw her) and the ring flies off my hand and lands in the yard.

I panic. It's dark, but I ask Tommy and the birthday girl to come out and help me look. They are very sweet and they both do, but after about 15 minutes I realize it's futile and call off the search for the night.

The next day, I give myself 15 minutes to look in the daylight. Nothing.

Same with the next. Nada.

Tommy mentions a metal detector, so I posted on Facebook that I'd lost my great-grandmother's ring and did someone have access to a metal detector. Within a few hours, I had two offers! Yea, FRIENDS! I contacted the first responder, Rob Cash (friend from high school who I had not seen since high school - literally) and we hooked up via a Friday night happy hour and two cool things happened: Tommy got a new buddy and I got access to a metal detector (I already knew Rob was cool).

Please check out Tommy practicing for his next career as a beach bum:

no shirt and everything. me likey.

beep! beep! beep! my job was to look in the grass when it beeped. and take pictures.

Obviously, I did my job well because:

i found my ring! i found my ring! i found my ring!

I put it on, went inside and put Gran's ring on top (which fit) so it wouldn't slide off again. I was bound and determined to find out about the ring after spending so much time looking for it. Now, here's the funny part of the story - when Tommy and I returned the metal detector to Rob, I had the ring off and noticed something.

It was engraved. It said "LEROY VANDETTA 1933"

OMG! Vandetta was Steinie's first wife!

Next thought:

OMG. Vandetta's husband's second wife's granddaughter is wearing her wedding ring.

Hm. I did think it was cool that I'm wearing together the rings of both women that Steinie loved so much. I bet they would have been friends if they'd had known each other. Anyway, no worries - Steinie and Vandetta had no children but Mama's contacting his nephew and asking if he and his wife would like the ring back. In the meantime, I'm enjoying wearing both rings and thinking about them the three of them.

Next, in the "who do you think you're kidding?" department:

jenny, i know you dressed this window. you can't lie to me.

Jenny only wears black pants and sells a lot of clothes to ReRuns. I know she's responsible. Trust me.

me and mrs. chris hussar enjoy fellowship at the tailgate. do you see the girl behind amy? in the brown? back to you? i totally eyeballed her and am going to steal that look next game i'm at. i have a brown dress, orange sash and coordinating headband. don't worry. i already told her i'm ripping her look and to not look surprised when she saw me next week. she said it was cool, she'd be wearing the same outfit and maybe we'd get our pic took together or something. awesome.

aw, how sweet! inside the stadium a whole banner dedicated to granddaddy neyland.

the running through the t. i know i've seen this fairly regularly throughout my life, and i know i will get ribbed to no end admitting this... um.... this makes me tear up. EVERY. TIME. it's better than disney world.

at the game, i fell in love with big red, the mountain topper, or the mountaineer or whatnot. seriously, no joke, he cracked me up the whole game. it was such a ut runaway victory i stopped watching around the middle of the second quarter and just paid attention to big red. i asked two wky fans about him for more info. they concur. he's funny. at one point, a cheerleader threw a pompom at him and he ate it and then threw it up. i'm cracking up right now... i tried to get a picture with him, but we left third quarter and he didn't show up the whole quarter. don't worry. big red and i got a future....

I love football. Ish. When I started working in the Blount County the sports editor recognized my writing prowess *cough*modesty*cough* and asked me to go out on a limb and write an article a week in the sports section about football with a "woman's perspective." Well. I did. They didn't like it. It seems that they actually wanted me to write about THE GAME.

The audacity.

I told them that when they paid me to write, I would write about the game; until then - this is what you got. They never asked me back again.

Only one of the stories got filed electronically, and here it is.

Next, bye-bye summer.... siiiiigghhh... I'm gonna miss you. Hey! I know! Let's usher you out in STYLE.

rock on. the boys went to a concert on sunday night and amanda and i went to a par-tay-hey.

it was a mad men party. check out these cute outfits! i didn't wear vintage, but i rocked it, nonetheless. i'm not in this picture so stop looking for me.

here i am! cutie me, cutie amanda! i'm drinking fancy wine from a jelly jar! pure t class, all the way, ya'll.

amanda and our hostess, gina. gina ran the kiawah marathon this year so i am working on her to be my knoxville marathon buddy in 2010. boo-yah!

lookit! a megan and a megan! a rarity. this is the third megan (besides myself) that i know.

Next, I grew another head:

oh no! i'm a monster! hahaha kidding - that's a 'double the fun' sitch there if i've ever seen one!

That's it for now, kids. Do whatcha want, and dig whatcha do! Peace out, yo!