The Archer is In

There it is, my first bruise from Archery class! It'll be a beauty tomorrow, that's for sure!

So, it turns out that I'm just a beginner, that understanding how and why things work isn't enough. It's going to take practice, practice, practice before I can aim consistently. Heck, tonight I had trouble finding my own eye and face! All these new things to do! Do them in order, do them consistently...well, I have my work cut out for me! 

But what a hoot! Part of me dreads the learning experience, because a former employer of mine once declared that I made the most ingenious mistakes of any employee he had ever known. That nobody in their right mind would dream of making the kinds of mistakes I make.

And he was right. I do make trouble for myself, and I think the operative phrase in his sentiment is "in their right mind..." 'Nuff said.

So I'm partly dreading whatever ingenious mistake I'm going to make in archery class. However, I've also been working really hard on being a positive person, so I'm just going to push that thought to the back and work hard at getting used to using a bow.

One really funny moment happened tonight - I had taken off my finger guard and stuck in my back left hand pocket. My back right-hand pocket was covered by the belt I was using to hold the quiver.

So when I next picked up the bow, I put on the "dragonne" (it's a string that holds the bow on your hand so you can't drop it). So then I tried to reach my back left pocket with my right hand. It didn't work. I had to ask the instructor to pull my finger guard out of the pocket for me. Everyone found it quite amusing. They found it even more amusing when I did it again, the very next time we picked up our bows! I was less than impressed. Boyfriend told me to not remove it, then I wouldn't get into that mess. But it gave the class a laugh.

Better, to my mind, was the two arrows I shot that landed touching each other. I was the last person in the line to shoot my arrow, so everyone was watching, and there was a collective gasp and some kind soul exclaimed "Robin Hood!" Everyone laughed, the instructor told Boyfriend to watch out, and I felt great for 20 seconds...till I couldn't reach my finger guard in my back pocket again...

It was a great first experience!

Buns of Steel

A few weeks ago, I came home to something funny.

Now, you understand, when I lived with Hubby, I came home to something funny on a regular basis. Hubby never minded a good joke, even if it was on him, and he was always up to something, so it was usually pretty easy to find a way to make fun of him!

Boyfriend, on the other hand, is much harder to make fun of. He's a very serious man. Oh, don't mistake me, he has a great sense of humor. But he doesn't use it against me, or against anyone else. And he plans and plans and plans so that everything is calculated before he begins a project.

Hubby...well...he plans, but differently. Like the time he planned to put his snow tires on rims. Without the right tool. In the livingroom. The livingroom, I might add, which we had just paid to have painted. (The blog on that adventure is called "Would a Jury of my Peers Convict me," and I think you know, the answer to that question is a resounding "NO!"

But I digress.

When Boyfriend comes home, like me, the first thing he does is get into his cozy-wozies. However, on this particular occasion, he was still dressed, even though by my calculations he'd gotten home an hour before me.

As I pulled off boots and coat, he began explaining to me that there was something new in the bathroom, that he had had to go out and buy after he got home.

A new toilet seat.

Why, you ask, did we require a new toilet seat? Badly enough to keep a man dressed in his work clothes?

Turns out, when he sat on the seat, it had cracked.

I could of course phrase this in a more embarrassing way: Boyfriend cracked the toilet seat!

Ha ha ha ha ha!

I said, did you have to replace it? could we have lived with it? But no, it split, and then it snapped shut on his poor, unsuspecting bottom!

So he had gone out and got another one. (This particular model is one of the pricier ones, because both the lid and the seat close slowly and silently.)

So, because it takes me awhile to come up with "zingers," it was late in the evening when I finally burst out laughing and said what I wish I had come up with immediately.

I said, "Is this some new kind of martial art? I mean, I've heard of people breaking wooden boards with their hands or feet...I've never heard of anyone breaking them with their bums!"

Boyfriend's eyes closed to slits as he declared, "I have buns of steel."

I smiled and said, "No, you're a practitioner of Kung Poo."

(No egos were harmed in the production of this blog: Boyfriend was happy to be so immortalized. Yes, I asked him!)