It’s Not As Bad As It Sounds

Do you ever have moments that make you realize that if a stranger overheard your conversations, or read your emails or text messages that the best you could hope for would be for them to think that you’re some kind of lunatic?  Or that they would think you’re probably a truly horrible person?  Or does the autocorrect on your phone ever make it seem like you desperately need to rethink your life choices?

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve realized recently that, taken out of context, some conversations and messages portray me in a very bad, or at least very bizarre, light.  I’ll give you a list, and then explain them a little later in the post.

1.  “I think our official position is that we are very Pro-Chuck.” My sister, Gabrielle, to me.

2.  “Thank you for locking up the kids.” Nick to me.

3.  “Do not eat the blueberry bagel.”  Text from a co-worker to the entire office.

4.  “They hate you.  You’re the keeper of the hell hounds.”  Gabrielle to me.

5.  “What, you can’t live without us for two minutes?”  Me to my boss.

6.  “Don’t forget to put the boiling acid on the dogs.” Me to Nick.

7.  And the autocorrect one: When we went on vacation in March Nick’s mom stayed at our house and took care of the pets.  I sent her a few texts on the way home telling her how smoothly trafficking was going.

So at this point I’m pretty sure my sister sounds maybe a little bit insane.  Nick and I sound like animal and child abusers, and it sounds like I used to work with a bunch of bagel thieves, but probably got fired for smarting off to the boss, and have pursued trafficking as a new career choice.

Here are the perfectly innocent explanations:

1.  My dad has a friend, Chuck, who we haven’t met yet.  My mom wanted to invite Chuck along on a weekend visit to Gabrielle’s house.  Gabrielle suggested holding off until we meet him when it won’t involve spending an entire weekend with a stranger.  She thinks we’ll like him, and it sounds like he’s a good friend to my dad.

2.  We do not have children, at least not the human kind.  We typically refer to the pets as the kids.  We recently had some work done on the house, and I put the dogs in one bedroom and the cats in the other bedroom to keep them out of harm’s way.  I sent Nick an email telling him, and that was his response.

3.  We don’t steal food in my office.  It’s actually the best place I’ve ever worked as far as lunches, etc not disappearing from the fridge.  One of my co-workers had picked up bagels, mostly for our office, but a few for people in other departments.  Some were a random assortment up for grabs, but the blueberry one was a special request from someone in another department.

4.  Gabrielle has six cats, who aren’t used to dogs.  We almost always take the dogs with us when we go stay with her, so we don’t usually see much of the cats while we’re there.  She says the cats think of them as the hell hounds.  I spent a weekend with her a few months ago, but left the dogs home with Nick.  I still didn’t see much of the cats.  Apparently they think I always come with “hell hounds”.

5.  For the most part, we’re fairly relaxed in my office.  We’re also a two county/two office operation.  The boss’s main office is in the other office.  That particular day he had been in the office I’m in, and called less than two minutes after he left.  He was still in the parking lot, and thought my comment about not being able to live without us was amusing.

6.  Duke and Chuzoo are on Revolution for their monthly flea and heartworm prevention.  If you’re not familiar, it’s topical and is applied between their shoulder blades.  It doesn’t hurt, burn, or sting your skin.  Believe me, I’ve gotten enough of it on myself over the years to be able to say that from a place of experience.  Duke is pretty good about it.  Chuzoo is not.  He carries on like we’re torturing him.  We’ve started referring to it as the boiling acid because of the way he carries on.  I didn’t really have a good picture to go with this post, so I’m including one of Duke and Chuzoo, just to show that they’re fine.  I also think they look cute in it, and you can’t really go wrong with a cute dog picture.

7.  Autocorrect.  Isn’t it fun?  I blame some of the more horrible ones on work.  My phone takes “traf” and turns it into “trafficking”.  Every single time.  Most of the time I catch it and change it, but I was in a hurry trying to text Nick’s mom on the way home.  Fortunately, she knows where I work, and we get along well.

So what about you?  Were you ready to break out the pitchforks when you read through my list? Have you taken part in any conversations that could have sounded pretty awful to a casual observer?