Confession Twelve: When I say MY Interns I am Right Because They Lived in MY Office

Its funny how things work out.

A little over a year ago I was working as a post-grad intern at a BCS school, then got a call to return to my alma mater for a full-time job where oddly enough I took over control of the undergrads. For those keeping track Brett Favre’s retirement lasted longer than my gig at that BCS school; in my defense, I did come back here to work with the winningest coach of his respective sport in school history so its not like the decision was 100% stupid on my part.

Within the same year of my return, my department was moved from one large office to four individual offices – the Director has the office the size of my freshman dorm room, while each of us Assistant Directors have our own four walls and the graduate assistants share a space (see left- I took that earlier today. True story!). Located in my office are the two most important items our department could have 1. The printer - which lures the occasional person in to visit. 2. The candy dish - which lures more people in than the printer and usually makes Rm. 247 the place to be in the morning. Oh yeah, I usually have baked goods of some sort too. Come to think of it, I am not sure why those I work with are not 600 lbs. ... maybe its all that running we do between each others offices five feet away from one another. I do enjoy the "intercom system" though, i.e. screaming while still seated at my desk.

Yet, the prized article in my office are not the post-bowl plaques of former football coaches with the misspelling in the schedules, nor the autographed photo of one of my former little babies from PA, but is actually the “student desk”. – If you ask the GA’s, at some point I wanted to be a teacher and their smaller desk is living proof of this notion when in all actuality I knew we needed a place to put the undergrads during their office hours so why not with me?

Have I mentioned that I am the mom of my office?

This summer we had plans of hosting three undergrads who, depending upon the day, would have a morning or afternoon shift. Ok, sounds easy enough. There might have been one or two days where they would overlap by a minute or so, but we never planned on creating an additional act for the circus that we perform in on a daily basis.

Then two were given a ”group” project …

K-squared, as we liked to call the girls, turned out to get along so well that they not only began coming in on the same day at the same times, but they also worked their butts off in unison. We never once had a girl fight. Great! What more could a boss ask for?

Then, one day, one … snorted. No joke. Hilarious. By the end of Week Three one would get the other going and before you knew it, the estrogen ocean that became my little work sanctuary was loudly spilling into the hallway.

Today was their last day and I am honestly saddened by this – these two rocked! The third intern does too, BUT he is around straight through August until the end of the year. We can’t miss him because he isn’t going anywhere!

In loving memory of my ass-kickers I would like to share the lessons they taught me this summer:

1. Toledo spelled backwards is Odelot and pronounced O-DE-LOT.
2. In the event someone does not respond to an email, you can threaten to kick them off your team. (Ok maybe I got to teach them how wrong this is.)
3. Justin Timberlake is actually a very nice guy, but like a dog can sense fear – or maybe he has 20/20 vision and picks-up on girls shaking. I bet he has a lot of practice with that sort of thing!
4. The “younger generation” does not know who the American Gladiators are.
5. You can be 14 and snuck in places in our college town – Yes, this one forced me to leave the office because I was afraid to hear the rest of the story.
6. Bees do not survive in a basement.
7. Someone in the room will always be wearing heels and will be willing to give them up in the event a co-worker needs kicked in the butt, regardless if all parties involved know each other or not. In the event they have yet to be introduced, this is a great time to do it.
8. It’s not worth it to learn Spanish to graduate.

Now, if this was a real blog that more than two people read this would be the spot where I would ask for those out there cruising the information super highway to leave me comments on what their best/worst internship lessons were ... I bet someone would have some golden nugget - right?

Confession Eleven: I Heart My Brothers

The moment I stepped onto my mid-western campus as a college freshman I gained a characteristic that has come to define me to those who have attempted to date me, places I will and will not enter, my vocabulary, and my budding professional career. Furthermore, I have multiple brothers of all shapes, sizes, colors backgrounds and temperaments.

Seeing as I have never alluded to being the lost character on “Big Love” the question that I would expect to arise would be where did these “brothers” come from?

The easy explanation - they were on our football roster.

Throughout my undergraduate years I worked as a manager (read: COACH’S BITCH) for our football team and loved every second of it. I am one of the only people I know who have traveled with three bus loads of guys to a game and have had the pleasure of having each of them make fun of me for having toothpaste on my shirt at pre-game meal the next morning. Even more exciting, I have been told on more than one occasion when my messy ponytail was not as cute as it could be – usually the bow was crooked; faux paux! I truly believe my manly men were reading their girlfriends copies of Glamour, Cosmo and Vogue instead of Sports Illustrated and Maxium and I was living proof. Coincidently, these same groups of guys have been the ones to be shocked when I arrive anywhere dressed in something other than mesh shorts, a t-shirt, while lacking my signature ponytail and running shoes. Add make-up to the mix and the older ones heads looked eerily similar to the little girl from the Exorcist (in the spinning sense, not the puking one!)

Slowly, this trend, which also included 6’6, 300 lb. men scaring the living bajesus out of potential suitors in social settings, moved more from a little sister relationship to the big sister relationship more or less because my fatties (I worked with the offensive line and let me tell you, nothing makes a 5’8 size 8 girl feel better about herself than a bunch of teddy bears of that size.) were no longer older than me, but were in fact becoming younger than myself. The cute/funny thing about all of this is neither my protective, nor their protective vibes ever diminished. Awwww, my little cuties. I just want to hug each of the freakishly tall goobers … except when they miss a block, then I want to ring their fat necks but the problem is I can’t get my hands around them.

This weekend, I realized that my little brothers were all growing-up and there are just a handful of them still out there.

Weird.

My dynasty is dwindling. Its like the little football family tree is turning into a bush.

But one foot in the graduation grave means I still have five pretty manicured toes out of it. Enter: Sunday afternoon, the boys reported to camp which meant I was getting attacked when I wasn’t not looking … making fun of the camp buzzes … laughing at jerseys that have become too small (Oink. Oink. Piggy. Too Many Twinkies!) … and shuffling the guys through headshots as quickly as possible so that they can nap for a half hour before the team meeting. (Read: Standing on a chair and getting my point across – in my own special way. Ask some of the seniors what happens when you try to waste my time.)

Oh and bye the way, yes guys, you are welcome for that gift of sleep, consider it, an early grad gift … just don’t go too soon, I have too many games, tailgates and fall afternoons to waste on you losers – my Band of Little Brothers. :o)

Confession Ten: Some Days Not Even a GPS System Can Predict the Final Destination of Any Adventure

Friends … you pick them and most days, you aren’t sure why – but you love those select goobers anyways because they bring out the best in you and more than likely give you the best memories.

We all have THOSE days that turn into THOSE nights. They usually happen in college and are aided by some sort of liquid courage … then you pretend to grow-up and the liquid courage is not needed (nor really wanted in most cases), just stupidity and a sense of adventure.

As bad as it sounds, three of us comprise the “Oreo Cookie” … Harriet, me, and Peaches. We may not be the most politically correct group ever, but we work well together and though trouble manages to GPS itself to our group, we have never traded our "Polo’s and Manolo’s" for jumpsuits! Thank you God! Really, we would look like a hot triple tranny mess in one piece orange suits and I am not trying to trade my bangles in for shackles, okay? Plus, Peaches would whine on a daily basis that her hair needed to be did.

Like most of our adventures, our latest was unstructured, only slightly planned and started out on the wrong foot. Despite having a nice woman read mapquest directions from Harriet’s windshield, we were lost about 20 minutes into our two-hour drive Saturday afternoon. Maybe lost isn’t the right word … temporarily misguided may say it better. Long story short, CP and I went to America's Roller Coast once this summer (I think I might have mentioned that once or twice. “This one time, on our way to band camp …") and I more or less was convinced that route would take us to our destination. I think we were about an inch off of where we needed to be on the map. (Note: Consider a map, consider the scale, do the math. Any further north and we might have been turning the Jimmy into a mini-yacht.) Crisis #1. was later diverted because CP navigated us back to the main road and our route no longer smelled like cow, or alpaca.

Crisis #2 arose when we got to my sister’s house. Once again heavenly beings were on our side because despite TBS (the big sister) and fam not being home we were able to break in through the back yard. So maybe this was not that much of a crisis, but this was my chance to redeem myself. (Yeah, didn’t happen. I was totally still being made fun of – WHICH I DID NOT DESERVE! I totally got us to where we needed to be in the end and introduced an alternate route to the mix.)

Once we left the family, the night becomes a blur of randomness except for the once memory I can not stop flashing back to ... The Cookie was happily chilling (both hanging out and I was cold) at a minor league baseball game when the man in front of us stood up and showed us his home plate – and it was tight and quite possibly used to be white. For some season his belt did not get the memo that it was sunny outside and we got to the dim, saggy moon. I hope you all have a mental picture too - although it can't be as bad as the real thing.

More or less the rest of the night was an even screwier version of that instance. No one else dropped their pants, but a detour not only led us to, away from, and back to a wrong destination (thanks GPS! Wrong hotel!) it also allowed us to crash a wedding after party filled with what could have only been about 20 former Lax players/ex-frat boys – TEE.FREAKIN.HEE. Peaches and I were also given our shot at "ESPN's Dream Job" as we ran play-by-play as our third said goodbye to her long lost friend.

Shenanigans. There is no other way to describe the adventure; although one long car ride would work too! (Love ya girls!)

To recap, let’s set this night straight with a few lessons learned:
1. Listen to the nice voice on the GPS. If it asks if you want to take the toll road always answer Yes!
2. Much like Michigan has its strange “Michigan Left”, Cleveland has its own right turn. To accomplish such a turn you must be the first person in the LEFT LANE at a red light. After rolling to a stop, you must then play chicken in making said right turn with the traffic that is flowing from left to right. Do not signal that you are looking to make such a turn.
3. Say one wrong thing and you will never live it down. It is best to just sing with what is on the radio, especially when the song asks “Ladies” to shake their “bottoms” and let them see what you have. Also, dance while your friend’s mouths drop.
4. Annie said it best, “The sun will come out tomorrow …” and with my friends, you might just see that sunset and after one hundred random acts of stupidity, you are going to see that sun rise too!