Meet the Fockers, the lost chapter

The trip went great!!!!! I successfully managed to portray a wonderful, and well rounded individual. I was both funny (they couldn't stop laughing) and charming. They were very impressed with my intelligence, and considered me just a delightful individual to have around because I was so graceful and eloquent........ oh wait... zzzzzz... I must have fallen asleep for a second there.. I think I was dreaming. How the trip actually went:

"Hi, my name is Sara. I'm Joey's girlfriend. I'd like to take a moment and give you a disclaimer. In the next 24 hours I will be attempting to do everything humanly possible to make myself look stupid and/or cause physical damage to your home, your possessions and my personal being. Oh, you are still going to let me in the front door. What brave souls you are." That is what I should have said. It is only fair to give warning when Destructo girl enters your house. ha ha... Okay so here is the play by play of what I do when I'm really hoping to make a good impression. We get in Friday night around 7 and everything goes well. Perfectly smooth. I think to myself, yep.. I got this. I'm gonna do great. I fit in well here. We won't go into the slight hyperventilation in the car when we first pulled into the drive way... or the palms sweating, or the me saying "be cool sara, be cool" over and over to myself in my head. Anyways, great first night! They have a beautiful house, an amazing back yard that I would like to dig up and ship to myself so that I can have something that pretty to look at, and 4 really cute dogs to play with. Plus they are nice to me. They gave me hugs and laughed at my very corny, Sara is nervous so she is going to try and make you laugh, jokes. What more could you ask for? I fall asleep smiling in a comfy bed with a sigh of contentment.

Next morning: 8 am. Yawn, stretch... we slept in a little ooops. Oh well, no biggie. Time to shower. Angry BEEP BEEP BEEP...what's beeping?!? What did I do?!?! Oh fire alarm! Not good! Joey comes running downstairs to shut it off. Then reminds me that very sweetly that it is a sensitive alarm so I should probably open the bathroom window because of the steam. Oh yeah.. you warned me about that last night. Gotcha! That will be the worst thing I do on the whole trip! Promise!!! We decided to go to Lake Tahoe that afternoon because it is a pretty day and we are soooo close that I just couldn't miss out. I've seen pictures and wow! Talk about beautiful!
I'm all excited, we drive to the lake and it is gorgeous. I'm in 7th heaven as we wade around the shore and smile while we are silly, romantic and in love. Then just before we leave we are over by these large boulders and we are very carefully climbing out of the water. Joey has tender feet so I decided that I should go ahead and show him an easy way to some place where he can sit and put his shoes back on. I am trying to step from one boulder to another, when something shifts and down I go! Practically face planting on a huge boulder. I am wearing a rather short skirt and land with an umph on my chest and arm with my legs in the water. Graceful I know. Joey helps me up, and looking concerned asks if I am okay??? Yes. I am fine. I just feel dumb. I have bloody knuckles, a few bruises and a nice scrap on my now swollen forearm. Psshhhh.. no big deal. I'm tough! I'm a mountain girl. I fall down a lot. This will just be funny tomorrow. After a nice little lunch in Truckie we head back to the house. Doris is wonderful and helps me clean up my boo-boos. We hang out for the rest the afternoon and just have fun. Then before dinner, Momsy asks Joey if he'll go pick up some coleslaw from the store. "Go ahead and take the scooters! It will be fun!" Okay, sure. Sounds great! ( I'll give a cookie to whoever can guess what I do next ). So we go out to the garage. Momsy has a really spiffy little red scooter and Doris has a nice blue scooter. I like the red one, no big surprise there. So I put on the helmet, I start her up and get ready to back out of the garage. I think I should insert an important note here. I have never driven a scooter. BUT since I can dirt bike no problem, this shouldn't be a big deal right? Same thing without the shifting or jumps. Easy peasy lemon squeezie. I back out. Mary's car makes for some tight turning but I've got it. I back down to the end of the car. Joey's mom has come out onto the porch to watch us scoot off. Little did she know the show she was in for. Oh boy! So I randomly ask joey what I am doing, he says just hit the gas and turn. His mistake was in thinking I am an intelligent human being. So I hit the gas. I am headed straight towards Mary's car! CRAP! MUST... TURN!!!! I turn! YES! I have missed the car..... but now I am headed straight for the garage door!!! BAD WORD!!!! ANOTHER BAD WORD!!!! MUST TURN!!!!!! I turn with centimeters to spare, if even that, I might have actually hit the door... WHEW...but now I am headed straight for the 4 foot tall metal lawn scutpture/ bird thing! CRAP!!! BAD WORD!! BAD WORD!!! THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!!!!!! CRASH! Sara hits the lawn sculpture bird thing! Sara is down! The scooter is on Sara's left leg! She cannot move, she cannot turn it off... there are people running towards her! Joey turns off the scooter and man handles it off of my leg. I have lost a shoe and pretty much all of my pride. Doris, Momsy and Mary are all asking if I am okay. All of that happened in about a 30 second period of time and in less than 10 ft of space. I feel unbelievably stupid... did I REALLY just do that. Seriously? Can I have a do over? Please? Can I just shake your hand and pretend like I just walked up your drive way? "Hi my name is Sara. Nice to meet you.. what just happened here? Who is the dumb girl and do you want me to call the circus or John Ritter from Three's Company? She looks dangerous in a pathetically funny way. " But no... it is me.. this is my life. I really just did that in front of Joey's family which I was hoping to impress. Fantastic. They take the scooter away from me... they put it back in the garage. Where it, other life forms and all lawn sculptures will all be safe. By now we are over the shock and fear of me nearly careening into the highway or into apparently anything else I could possibly find to run into. We are all laughing, kind of. Ten minutes after we initially went to the garage to get the scooters I climb on the back of Joey's scooter and we go off to get the coleslaw. To be honest.. that is all pretty much a blur. I think I was still in shock. We get to the store, and I have to ask joey.. very quietly... did I REALLY just do that???? He busts up laughing and says "yes sweetie, you really just did that." I was afraid of that. We get back to the house and now there is LOTS of laughter. Almost the tears running down your face kind of laughter. They, bless them, think that I handled it all very gracefully. Aren't they wonderful people?!?!? While joey helped with some plants in the back yard I sat in the kitchen with Momsy and an ice pack and we laughed and chatted. So here is my new recommendation to anyone meeting someone that they hope to have a good impression with. Crash a scooter into whatever is readily available. It is a FANTASTIC icebreaker. You will be the life of the party. Everyone will laugh, you included, and you will feel like part of the family in no time flat. (this is because they now have embarrassing blackmail on you, just like all good families do). After we had dinner, Joey and his sister took me down to a nice big church parking lot and let me have at it with the scooter. It was easy, and a LOT of fun. I didn't hit a single thing, imagine that! I even rode it home just fine. :)

Sooo... I went to Reno and all I got were these stupid bruises and this amazingly embarrassing story which I will never live down. :) ha ha... Aka. I had an awesome time! I didn't manage to kill or maim anyone so I pretty much am writing this one off as a success. Lol, I am not sure if I'll ever be invited back, but they did say they were sad I couldn't stay longer. So I think they liked me. I'm mean really, how could you not like this horribly clumsy, slightly awkward, and often bright red girl? Now here is the kicker... read my blog the day I left for this trip.. how I was hoping that nothing like this would happen, ha.. funny! Oh my life. I'm really lucky that joey puts up with me. He is a brave and loving soul. AND I am beyond thankful that his family has a good sense of humor. Instead of this all going horribly wrong they just kind of took me in as their own and accepted me for all of my klutzy, graceless glory. I have to admit that I am a little sad that they only got to see awkward sara and didn't really get any exposure to the normal side that I have hidden deep within. Sometime... if they will have me, I'd like to return and maybe stay longer than a weekend. Then we can get all of this fun stuff out of the way and the rest of the time I can work on my impersonation of a charming person. I promise not to light anything on fire, and I'll do my best to avoid more "colorful" memories in the future. Ha ha... geez... that was classic. I wish you could have been there, you would have chuckled.