mouse time

[this is one of my favorite stories of my life]

i believe this story took place in 2005. which is when this picture was.
don't we look like babies?

ONE night when i was in california for the summer i was getting home late (from a date fyi. like one of the first ones of my life. haha and the funny part is it was with the guy who my cousin is currently DATING. anyways) and so the girls (as in elle and joslin) were waiting up for me. i got home around 1:30 in the morning and i remember the girls had tried hard to stay awake, but they were a little delirious. we talked briefly and just basically said goodnight and then we were laying there.

the sleeping arrangements for summer at the nielsons has always been that i sleep on a luv sac that is on the ground right next to the bed, and elle and joslin share elle's bed. so we had just barely said goodnight and were lying there falling asleep when i heard a little scractching noise like coming from the bathroom area. now i should preface this by saying that previously that week they had thought that there might be mice in the house. okay so i was a little freaked out but i also was thinking i had just heard something else, and neither of the girls moved so i figured it was just me. then i heard it again and i heard elle sit up and so i knew something was going on. i freaked out and jumped up on there bed, because i was a little worried about being on the floor with some creature running around! so i jump up there, and by this time joslin is sitting up to and we are all screaming, well not like screaming loudly because everyone else is sleeping, but like quietly screaming (you know what i mean)! we were freaking out, we didn't know what to do because we certainly didn't want to get off the bed, our safe space, but we needed some assistance!

haha this is where the story gets exciting. elle had the great idea of calling her dad on the house phone, from her cell phone that was right by her bed. she grabs the phone and calls her home phone and i hear her whisper "dad, there is something in my room." next thing we know, people are running down the hall, we hear pounding footsteps getting louder and louder. well of course it was my uncle lonnie running down the hall to save us, and i was a little worried because we all knew it wasn't a real emergency, which he apparently thought it was. so what did i do? i layed back down and pretended to be asleep. well, he ripped open the door and was like "WHAT?!" we all felt a little bit silly at this point and began to regret our decision of calling him at 1:30 in the morning. maybe not the best choice. so elle is like "um...we think we heard a mouse?"

(oh my gosh i am laughing right now typing this. haha like i mean what were we thinking? we woke him up and he thought there was like a human in our room and came to save us. gosh we are so silly)

kristen, my aunt, had been shortly behind lonnie, so she arrived at the room also and was wondering what was wrong. anyways after we explained what happened, they were a little upset that we had woken them up to tell them that, mostly because lonnie thought that we said "there is someONE in our room" instead of someTHING which is what we claim to have said. we still debate that one today. anyways he was like "don't ever do that again" and then helped us all move into the living room to sleep there for the night like a good uncle would.

we never did find the mouse.

the national anthem.

okay so this story was actually fairly recent, it happened this past summer when i was working for the sacramento capitals. now normally for the matches i go to work around 9 or 10 to work in the office and then i would head over to the stadium around 3 or 4 to get things ready over there. the matches usually end around 10:30 ish, and then we would probably leave around 11:00 or 11:30. then it takes an hour to get home. point of the story is that it was pretty much an all day event and the hours were a bit crazy. so last season i don't think we had any matches back to back, we usually had a day inbetween which was nice so we got some sleep. this season, however, there was a stretch of 6 matches all in a row! this meant that we would get home around midnight and then head off to work again around 8 the next morning! plus we had to figure out a way to wash our staff shirts somewhere in between those hours when were home! okay so that doesn't necessarily pertain to the story, but it just adds to the story and now you know how crazy it was that week.

so near the end of the season we held the finals in sacramento, the last few games in that 6 match stretch were the finals. for the finals the people who work for the league come down and oversee things and make sure it is going as it should. there are alot of silly rules that we aren't as strict on during the season, so when the league people get there we have to get a bit more strict! its always a bit nerve racking, they are like standing over your shoulder making sure rules are being followed. they are really strict on what time the matches start, so this was one thing that we were really particular on when the league was there.

joslin and i don't really have a certain job that we do every game, we are just running around doing errands that need to be done. example: one of the players (remember these are professional players? so i mean i am like a little scared of them) comes up to me, "are there any more tennis balls to practice with?" he asks. me looking at the empty box the dang BOYS are supposed to be in charge of filling up "um...i'll run and get some" so i runnn to the far off corner of the stadium and haul back a whole huge box of tennis balls. and remember its 105 degrees. and i have regular clothes and im supposed to look cute. this is a normal occurance. i really love the randomness of it all.

so one day when the league was there and everyone was a little more uptight than normal we were approaching the time when the match has to start. (if it doesn't start on the dot at the right time we like get fined or something ridiculous.) so we are getting ready and in the back corner before the matches just an fyi there is always a band or some kind of entertainment playing for like an hour before while people are coming into the stadium to keep things fun. i am on the court and the person starts to sing the national anthem. we are all standing with our hands over our hearts and in the background for some reason the band over in the corner didn't get the memo and was still ROCKING OUT and we could totally hear it and it was definitely disrupting the national anthem. i am debating what to do, and this lady liz who is sort of over us, motions to me to run and tell the band to stop playing so that the poor lady singing the national anthem would be heard better and we wouldn't have this ROCK MUSIC in the background.

so i take off from the court (like center court, so i feel bad because the people in the stands were probably like why in the heck isn't that girl standing there with her hand on her heart listening to the national anthem! rude. and i am thinking people get off my back i have a job to do). so i am RUNNING over to the band thinking "what exactly am i am going to do when i get over there? i mean this is a loud band, we could hear them from the other side of the stadium...i can't just shout at them. they won't be able to hear me!" haha so i finally get over there and i am like standing there shouting waving my arms looking like a CRAZY person. i mean i am RIGHT in front of the stage. and there is a crowd watching them. haha so i am right in front of this whole crown enjoying the band shouting and waving my arms. oh gosh i wish i could have seen myself. for some reason they felt like they had to finish their song or something so after i stood there for like 30 seconds waving at them they FINALLY stopped just in time to hear the last few words "...and the home of the brave"

i love my job.
lets go caps.