I Am Vindicated

Someone in Minnesota searched for "Breathe Rights" and they were led to MY BLOG.

This is total vindication for all of those times I've been forced to post about the Breathe Rights found in my apartment.

Breathe-Rightgate

And, thus, Pops has been indicted in yet another Breathe-Right scandal. (Unfortunately I have already blogged here and and here and here about Pops' propensity to forget/leave/save his Breathe-Rights all over the place, I will try to keep this one as short as possible.)

A month ago I was sitting on the futon in our living staring at our bookshelves in a sleepy sort of way. I noticed something strange hanging off one of the shelves, so I got up and went over to see what it was.

It was a Breathe-Right, of course.

"JOEY!" I hollered.

"What?" He asked, lifting his head up off the couch.

"I found a Breathe-Right. On the bookshelf."

He ran over to come inspect. Sure enough, there it was, stuck to our bookshelf for who knows how long.

"That thing has to have been there for a month," he said. "Since your parents were here."

"I know. How did we miss it all this time?!" I said, gingerly unsticking it from the cheap "wood" shelf.

I folded it up and threw it away, hoping to be rid of it.

And then this afternoon Joey called me.

"Hi, babe, I thought I should let you know what's going on here." Famous last words. My mind raced as I tried to figure out what could possibly have gone wrong.

"What?" I hesitantly asked.

"Well, I was letting Henry out of the kitchen and I picked up one of the chairs and I noticed something sticky was on it. So I reached down and pulled it off. Guess what it was?"

The only thing that was running through my head was cockroach and I didn't think those were sticky enough when squished to adhere to the bottom of chair legs, so I just said, "Um...."

"A Breathe-Right!" He crowed. "Another one!"

I was beginning to wonder if the kids had formed some sort of evil conspiracy when they were here. My cell phone goes missing, the camera is stolen, and we find a Breathe-Right when no one who uses Breathe-Rights has been anywhere near our house in three months.

"That is disturbing. I need to call my Pops on the way home from work tonight." I said.

Maybe he's teleporting them to us...or maybe flying his remote-controlled plane on bombing missions and dropping them in through our chimney.

It's probably the remote-controlled airplane one.

The Return Of The Breathe Right

So I guess I don't have very good aim when throwing things in the trash when I'm half asleep. (Or when I'm fully awake, for that matter...)

I got up right away when my alarm went off, quite pleased that it was Friday. Henry (somehow on our bed again) was all stretched out and ready for his Morning Rubs. He looked really cute so I obliged him.

I was scratching his furry little back when I felt something odd in his fur. It felt like some kind of tape. Joey hadn't woken up yet (it was 6:30 a.m.!) so the lights were off and it was really dark. I unstuck whatever the sticky substance was and held it up to the light by the window.

"AAAAUGH!" I screamed, fairly quietly.

"Maaabuaaaaahhhhhh....." said Joey, tossing around in the covers. Henry just looked up at me like, Mom, what's your problem?

"It's....it's....it's a Breathe Right!" I poked at it. It was all distorted in shape and wadded up--very similar to the one I found in my pants the night before. In fact, it seemed to be the very same one. "I must not have thrown it in the trash like I thought I did."

Joey rolled around and mumbled some stuff. Poor guy.

Henry and I threw away the Breathe Right for sure this time and went out in the living room where he immediately wanted to play fetch, get scratched, go outside, and eat breakfast all at the same time. (He's way too high energy.)

And, thus, I hope this chapter in the Breathe Right saga is closed. Seriously.

The Breathe Right

Some of you may remember a previous post on my Pops' Breathe Rights. Some of you may not, so I'm including it here for a back story.

When Pops, Mommy and The Kid came down last month, Pops brought along his Breathe Rights. I assured him that he'd be in big trouble if I found any in unusual places. Fortunately for him, I didn't find any.

While he was here.

Last night I wasn't feeling very good. It was chilly outside (yay!) so I put on my lounge pants and a t-shirt and loafed around with Henry all evening while Joey went to church.

Around 9:30 I got into bed, Joey read me Pooh (Kanga and Roo came to the Hundred Acre Wood and Piglet got a bath, poor thing) and was just about finished with the story when I said, "There's something funny on the inside of my pants."

"Oh?" Joey said as I struggled with the comforter to try to get to the bottom of what was scratching my ankle.

I flipped the lining of my lounge pants out and, to my great astonishment and horror, there was a Breathe Right.

Regardless of the fact that my stomach was really hurting, I began to laugh uncontrollably. "How did a Breathe Right get inside my pants?!" I asked Joey.

He was stymied. "Maybe in the laundry?" He offered.

Maybe, indeed.

Obviously Pops' legacy of Breathe Rights has followed him down to Texas. And, thus, he's in Big Trouble.

I fell asleep shortly after I removed said Breathe Right from my pants (it was really stuck on there) and came from my sleepy haze suddenly at 10:30 when Joey finished his Greek and came to bed.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him.

"Going to bed," he replied. He thinks it's funny when I'm disoriented in my sleep.

"Am I wearing pants?" I asked.

"Yes, you are." He replied.

"I thought I took those off." (I must have gotten them confused with the Breathe Right.)

"No, you didn't. You're wearing pants."

And we settled in to sleep with Henry on the foot of the bed. (We've given up.)

I got up when my alarm went off this morning (yay!) and felt much better than I did last night (YAY!). I sat on the floor to give Henry his Morning Rubs and Joey came in to pat me on the head. "Good morning!"

"Good morning," I replied. Then, suddenly, "Hey! I'm wearing pants! I thought I took those off."

Joey laughed. "No, you never did."

See what Dad's Breathe Right did to my brain?!

This One's For The Kid

Poor, poor The Kid. He had a real rough morning.

I must preface this story by mentioning that Pops wears these plasticy things on his nose at night to "keep him from snoring". They're called Breathe-Rights and they're infamous in our house. (None of us children are convinced that the claims of said Breathe-Rights are accurate. Besides, those NFL guys wear them when they play football. Weird.)

We tend to find Breathe-Rights stuck in strange places, but most commonly on the mirror in the bathroom.

I guess they're better the second time around. Either that or Mom is making Pops be frugal. (Probably more of the latter than the former.) Mom's pretty good like that.

Back to The Kid.

This morning he got out of the shower and was drying off when he felt something odd and scratchy. He examined the towel and, to his great dismay, found a Breathe-Right stuck to the towel.

So of course he screamed.

As I was not there (thankfully), I can only assume that what happened next went something like this. The Kid attempts to get the Breathe-Right off the towel and after much struggle he succeeds. He then cannot get the Breathe-Right off his hand and is hopping around frantically in his struggle to be rid of the thing. After five or ten minutes he manages to disentangle himself from the vice-like grip of the Breathe-Right and makes it out the door to church only a few minutes late.

The Kid tells me that he finds these things all over the house lately. He's seen them on the steering wheel, seat, AND dashboard of Pops' Aurora, on the tractor (Pops has old-timey John Deere tractors), on Paul Cheshier's hat (I am not even sure I want to know how that happened) and in the shower.

Not to mention The Kid's towel.