Jamaica

I went on a vacation to Jamaica with my dad, my former coworker David, his wife, and my cats. When we got there we decided to go to the beach, so we all put on our swimsuits and headed out.  I had accidentally brought a lap swimming suit instead of a regular suit and when we got to the beach, David's wife wanted to know why I hadn't brought a cuter swimming suit to wear.  I went back to the room to find something different to wear and when I got there, the maids were going through all of our bags looting our stuff.  I started yelling at the cats for not protecting our stuff, and I shooed the maids out of the room.  Then as I was looking for something else to wear I realized I had only brought two outfits for the trip and a whole bunch of hooded sweatshirts.

Then my phone rang and it was my coworkers Mike and Brent, telling me that they were on their way to Jamaica for a work convention with another coworker, Amy.  It turned out they were staying in the same hotel that we were, and when they got there, Mike had a meeting so Brent and Amy wanted to go to dinner with my dad and I.  When we got there, Brent decided that he wanted us to take him white water rafting the next day, so I told him where to meet us.  Brent and Amy never showed up though, so I took my cats to go find them.  We got in the car and started driving around West Des Moines near the corner of Mills Civic and 50th, but they were nowhere to be found.

The silver boxes

I was in my high school gymnasium with my dad when suddenly I realized that we were surrounded by tiny silver boxes that seemed to have some sort of electrical current running through them.  I knew at that moment that we were in grave danger because the boxes were going to explode, but my dad wouldn't listen to me.  We were the only people in the gym, so I decided I needed to go get reinforcements to talk my dad into leaving the gym.

As I ran down the hall, I had a feeling that the silver boxes were scattered throughout the school and I needed to find Matt to get him out of the building as well.  I went to work and started looking in each of the offices, but I couldn't find him.  Then my office phone rang and it was Matt.  He was trapped in a tower on the other side of the high school and the only way to get to him was to walk over a tightrope that connected the DMU campus to Ottumwa High School. He also told me that the people who had set up the small boxes knew that I was coming after them and they would be trying to deter me from crossing the rope.

I needed to figure out a way to get my dad out of the gym and rescue Matt, but I suddenly because suspicious that my dad was in cahoots with the people who set out the boxes, so I decided to go rescue Matt.  I started to walk over the tightrope with hundreds of people on the ground below me cheering, and then balls started flying through the air at me that I had to dodge and jump over.  I finally made it to Matt, we walked down the stairs, and outside.  I took him to Hilton Coliseum and told him to hide in the tunnel with me because we would be safe from the electric current as long as we stayed there.

Poor puppy

I was at my house with my dad and my childhood dog, Shamrock, on Christmas Day.  Shammie had to go outside, so my dad was going to take her for a walk.  He reached into the closet to get her leash and when he closed the door, we heard a big crack, and Shammie's leg was caught in the door.  Instead of opening it to let her out, my dad picked up the dog and started pulling on her, trying to get her leg out.  I ran over to let her out and we discovered that her leg was completely crushed and she couldn't walk on it.  I started crying, and Shammie went to lay down in the corner.  I was yelling at my dad about being irresponsible when I noticed Shammie running around the house - her leg had magically healed itself!

I decided that we should take her to Matt's house to see how the cats handled having a dog around.  (My logic was that if they were nice to a dog, they would be nice to a baby some day...naturally.)  We got to Matt's and Shammie was very excited to see the cats, but they just hissed at her and ran away.  We started talking to Matt about something, and I realized that I hadn't seen the cats or the dog in quite some time.  I ran all over the house looking for them, and I finally found them in a spare bedroom with the door closed.  When I walked in the room, I saw the cats laying on a blanket snickering at me.  I asked them what was so funny but they wouldn't tell me, they just kept laughing.  Finally I heard a small whimper and realized that they had pinned Shammie under a blanket and then laid down on the edges so that she couldn't get out!  The cats thought this was hilarious but I was angry so I took Shammie back to my house.

Marinara crisis

I woke up one morning and discovered that there were red stains all over my house.  I walked around to investigate and finally figured out that my mom had dumped a bottle of marinara sauce on my cats and then set them loose in my house.  I found her laying on my couch drinking a can of pop so I asked her if she realized she'd just trashed my house and she said "eh, it'll be fine."

Suddenly I realized it was my wedding day and I still hadn't picked up my dress from Schaffers.  As I was driving there to get it, I realized that I had actually never seen the dress, therefore it hadn't been altered.  I tried to figure out how we could scotch tape it so that it fit me, but when I got there it was a completely different dress in the wrong color because there had been an ordering mistake.  They tried to lace up the corset back but it was way too big and looked terrible.  I asked them to find me a different dress in stock and they found my correct dress, but in the wrong color and again several sizes too big.

I wasn't confident that I looked good, so I tried to get in touch with my bridesmaids so they could come look at it, but I couldn't find any of them.  I also couldn't get a hold of Matt, so I called our Best Man, John, and asked him to come take a look at the dress.  He drove all the way to the store only to tell me "I don't know, I guess you look alright."  That was no help whatsoever, so I decided I should probably go to the ceremony location and start setting up chairs.  As I once again tried to get in touch with my bridal party to have them help me, I realized I couldn't remember who all of my bridesmaids were.  I was confident that I had a bridesmaid coming in from out of town, but I couldn't think who that would be.  Suddenly I realized that Shauna had flown in from New York and that no one had gone to the airport to pick her up the day before.  Then I realized that we hadn't had a rehearsal or a dinner the night before either.  All of the sudden it occurred to me that it was only Thursday, so I took my ugly dress and returned to my marinara covered house.

Crazy co-workers

My co-worker Brent called me up and told me that he needed some help because he was going on a big date the next day.  He asked if I would come on the date with them to make sure that he didn't mess it up.  I said that I would, and then he said that he wanted me to coach him the day before so that he knew what to say, so I needed to play in a golf outing with him in Ottumwa.  I was getting ready to head to Ottumwa when I realized that my wedding was the next day so I had a few things to take care of.  By the time I got to Ottumwa, the golf outing was almost over, so Brent decided that he should just go to a bar in Des Moines while I gave him advice.  As soon as we got to the bar, he immediately got food poisoning and had to go home.  After I dropped him off at home, I went back to the bar where my family had arrived for the wedding and wanted to give me a fancy bridal shower.  I told them all that it would have to wait because I had to go to work.

When I got to work I could smell something funny and realized that there was a carbon monoxide leak in the building.  I went downstairs to investigate and found that all the buildings had been evacuated except for mine because the alarm didn't go off.  I went back upstairs to tell everyone to leave, but no supervisors were at work so no one would leave the building.  I went to my co-worker Anna's desk and started asking her lots of questions but she was being very vague and wouldn't answer them.  I couldn't figure out what was going on until another co-worker, Duane, walked by and told me that Anna had quit but she didn't want me to know.  I convinced Anna to leave the building and walk around with me.  During the walk, I started asking her lots of specific questions about the future.  Finally I cracked her and she said "Fine, I didn't want you to know, but I got a new job."  I asked when she was leaving and she said "I'm not telling, and I won't tell you where I'm going either."  She got in her car and drove away.

John goes to Target

Matt and I were on our way to Target to register for our wedding when he suddenly realized that he had to go out of town on business.  He called John, his best man, to go to Target with me in his place.  He gave John very strict instructions to pretend to be Matt though, because Target will arrest you if you register with a fake groom and he didn't want to bail us out of jail.  When I met John in the Target parking lot, I gave him some quick instructions about how to act like Matt and we went inside.  We were assigned a registry consultant to walk around the store with us and use the scanner gun because they wouldn't allow us to do it ourselves.  John panicked and started saying things like "you and Matt need this" and "Matt would really like this."  I kept kicking him to get him to stop but he was clueless.  Finally he took me over to the section of fringed purses and wanted me to pick on out for Matt.  The registry consultant started to question this, so I ran out of the store leaving John to defend himself.

I ran all the way to my brand new office which was in an architecture firm.  I had never seen it before so I was very excited, but when I got there I realized they had just put up a desk in the storage closet and I had no window.  I saw that there was another empty office in the corner that did have a window, so I decided to army crawl to the corner.  When I got in there, someone had taken a bunch of my personal items from my house and scattered them all over the floor.  I found a dried rose that Matt had given me last year and it was crushed and laying in the trash.  This made me very angry so I yelled out that I was quitting and walked out the door.

Allison's hideaway

A bunch of my friends were at dinner and my friend Allison started telling us about this new apartment she was renting in Ottumwa.  We all wanted to see it, so we decided to take a speedboat down the Des Moines River to see it.  When we got to Ottumwa, she pointed to the water purification plant and told us that they had converted the entire building into apartments/lofts.  The only way to get in was from the river, so we docked the boat and went inside.  When we got in there, she told us that each tenant got one floor of the building, but she had the top three that were all one unit.  As we walked around inside, I realized that there were no doors or walls, just futons and couches laying around everywhere.  There also weren't any kitchens or bathrooms, just living spaces.  The majority of the tenants were men in their 40's who were all passed out on their futons in the middle of the afternoon. 

We walked up a flight of stairs and Allison informed us that to get to her penthouse, you had to climb a series of ladders.  I suddenly realized that I was carrying my cat, Autumn, and that I was going to have to carry her up all these ladders.  I put her in the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt and started to climb.  We ended up climbing up one very long ladder, down the hall to a short ladder, around the corner where we had to climb DOWN a ladder to get to a secret floor of the building.  This room was Allison's living room.  She had an old couch and a huge TV.  I wanted to stay there but she told us that we had to see her room on the next floor.  We started climbing up the last ladder which was in a very narrow passageway.  Because of the cat in my pocket I almost didn't fit and I got a little stuck and had to force myself through.  I was very worried about Autumn, but when we got into the room she started running around and was fine. 

In Allison's room she had a library full of every book or magazine we could ever want, a variety of movies to watch, and a stockpile of snacks.  Katie decided that she was just going to live in the room, but I knew that eventually I had to get home to feed my other cat, Louie.  I started to panic because I wasn't sure I could get back down all those ladders while holding Autumn.  I mentioned this to Allison, hoping that she knew of an easier exit, but she informed me that people weren't intended to get back out once they entered.  I tried to pick Autumn up so we could sneak down the ladder but she wouldn't come back to me.  So I sat in the corner and cried.