friends visiting from France

I didn’t want to start this post with “Welcome to Embarrassing Confessions Tuesday” because I believe I’ve already started at least one post with those words, which gives you an idea of how often I land myself in embarrassing situations. Anyway. If you’ve been here a while (and even if you haven’t), you might be wondering what happened this time, so let’s dive right in, shall we?

I spent the weekend indoors with a head cold, instead of going out to listen to music (as planned) and hanging out with our friends who are visiting from France (also as planned). Good thing our visitors stayed in a hotel! I opted out of their activities because I needed to rest, and, moreover, I didn’t want to get anyone sick.

On Saturday, Callaghan took them for a trek over to the local ghost town, the Superstition Mountains and the cursed house over there that I used to own and inhabit (that might be a story for another time). Sunday’s plan was to leave early in the morning to go up north and explore Sedona and the Grand Canyon. Our friends were to come to our place in their rental car to pick up Callaghan.

When the alarm went off at 6:30am Sunday, I woke up momentarily, closed my eyes, and opened them again just minutes later, it seemed. Hearing Callaghan muttering to himself in French off in the distance, I called out to him, wanting to know what was wrong. No response. I listened and heard more muttering, though I couldn’t make out any words. I thought he sounded agitated, but maybe my brain superimposed that state of mind over his verbal stream, since the only time he talks to himself is when he’s pissed off. There were other noises, too… a slamming door, things getting thrown around. All the noise woke me up, and I don’t wake up easily! Something must be really wrong, I thought. I called out again, and then a third time. When he still didn’t answer, I got out of bed and went to see what was happening.

Folks, it was not my fault. It was very early, I wasn’t fully awake, I was sick, and I didn’t hear any other voices but Callaghan’s. I stumbled into the living room, which was atypically bright with the overhead light that we rarely use.

And everyone was there.

You know that classic bad dream where you’re standing in your underwear with a bunch of people staring at you? YEAH, THAT HAPPENED. Christophe, Sandrine and their nine-year-old daughter were right there in the middle of our small apartment living room. Christophe was less than three feet away from me. I was wearing panties and nothing else.

There was that painfully suspended moment of eye-popping shock on everyone’s face when we all realized that I was pretty much naked, you know, that longest moment ever where it’s registering that someone in the room is in their underwear… and then I shrieked and apologized at the same time that they gasped and apologized and everyone was awkwardly apologizing as I turned and ran back into the bedroom, Callaghan close behind me. I jumped into the bed and pulled the sheet over my face. I was abjectly mortified. I’d walked into a room full of people wearing only panties! I couldn’t believe it.

Callaghan held me through the covers and said, “Baby! I’m so sorry! I thought you knew they were here!”

He thought I knew? HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? I’d been asleep! When they came to pick him up the previous morning, they didn’t come up to the apartment… he went down to meet them! How was I supposed to know that this time, they were all coming up? How was I supposed to know ANYTHING when I was half-asleep, groggy and disoriented with my head blown up with a cold virus? My brain wasn’t even on yet, much less alert with any clairvoyant knowledge of this sort!

After he apologized (so many apologies all around!) and reassured me, he left me in the bed, saying he’d come back to kiss me good-bye before they left. But in my mind, the only course of action I could take – the only way to remedy the situation and get on top of my mortification – was to go back out there, because facing fire, humiliation, whatever head-on is how I do (to borrow an expression from zfrank1). I was NOT going to lie under the covers and hide. I had to recover my dignity.

So I got out of bed, put on my short gray robe, and marched back out to the living-room, throwing my arms out wide for dramatic effect and saying loudly, “LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN! BONJOUR!” and we all laughed. It was comic relief, and it was effective.

And that’s how you make an entrance after your first entrance is an epic, humiliating FAIL.

But this was how I felt inside, beneath the false cheer:

Stabby.

When the gang got back that night and we all went out to dinner, we engaged in normal conversation as if nothing had happened. But I knew and still know that they know what I look like naked, and that makes me feel, well, naked.

So, what can we learn from this?

–If there’s even a remote possibility that people are coming over at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning, don’t go to bed naked (or just in your undies).

–If you call out for your partner and get no response, don’t go out there… just call louder, repeatedly.

–If you must sleep in only your undies, at least wear cute ones, because you never know who is going to see them. Fortunately, mine were reasonably cute. I was wearing a Barely There CustomFlex Fit Bikini in the pale blue zebra stripe, and I must say, that was a fortunate circumstance. I wasn’t wearing a thong (thank goodness). I wasn’t wearing granny panties (I don’t own any, anyway). The bikini was the ideal model of underwear to have on if I had to get caught wearing nothing else.

I hope that reading posts like this makes you feel less alone in your own embarrassing moments!

As for me, I’m still sick, but the cold’s progressing toward the end – it’s dropped a little lower and now I’m coughing a lot, as in, constantly. It should be out of my system soon!

This little Sesame Street Bert doll moved into the apartment with us and sat in our linen closet up until yesterday.

The Bert for Kitof.

I do remember when Callaghan found it at the store, soon after we got back to the States, but a lot has happened since then. Over time, it just became a part of the interior landscape of the closet… I’d see it without really seeing it. It was like ET amongst the stuffed animals. So when it reappeared in the room yesterday, I needed a reminder: it was for one of Callaghan’s French friends, Kitof, who’s in Texas this week with his wife and daughter. We met them downtown late yesterday afternoon for Congress Avenue Bridge bat-viewing and dinner at Hut’s Hamburgers. (Their vegan veggie burgers are fantastic, by the way!)

“So what’s the story behind Bert, again?” I asked Callaghan as I was sitting at my desk. He’d told me once, like three years ago, which is evidently past the expiration date on the part of my memory that stores that sort of information.

“The story behind Bert? Oh, well!” He heightened his voice with a grand flourish. “It’s because Kitof and I were fans of Ernie and Bert when we were kids, so we really like them… and it does happen from time to time that we do impersonations. So when I found this little Bert, I got it for Kitof’s birthday, since they’re coming here.”

“Cute! Wasn’t there also, like, an incident involving Ernie and Bert?” I had this hazy inkling that there were specifics I wasn’t remembering.

“Oh, that. Yeah.” His voice returned to normal. The most exciting part of his story had been told, so there was no need for dramatic emphasis on what he was going to say next. “One evening in Rome, we sat in the hotel watching videos of Ernie and Bert.”

It took me a second to process this.

“You guys were in Rome and that was how you spent the evening… watching Ernie and Bert?”

“Yeah!” he laughed. “It was just Rome.”

It was just Rome. Europeans!

“Uh… did it occur to you that it was weird?” I mean, ROME! I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me being American, but when someone begins a sentence with “One evening in Rome,” I kind of expect something other than Ernie and Bert to follow.

“No, it wasn’t weird. It was Ernie and Bert. We’re pretty good at impersonating them in French, too!”

Callaghan stood in the doorway and started to affect the muppets’ voices.

“Bart! J’ai soif!” he lisped in Ernie’s high-pitched voice. Then he dropped his voice to a nasally low and growled: “Hé Ernest! J’aimerais bien dormir!”

He turned to look at me. I wasn’t in my chair anymore. I was on the floor, laughing.

He ignored my hysterics and went to his computer, found the clip online and sent it to me. Thus, I can share it with you:

De rien! You’re welcome!

It’s in French, obviously, so I’ll summarize: it’s the episode in which Ernie and Bert (“Ernest and Bart” in French) are in bed, and Bert’s trying to sleep. You know the one. Ernie is thirsty, and he unwittingly keeps Bert awake as he talks to himself, coming up with silly ways to combat his thirst (including drinking imaginary mineral water). This concludes with Ernie finally getting up to get real water. But when he gets back into bed, he still can’t sleep… because by then, he’s hungry! And Bert’s like, WTF… I can’t win.

Bert sitting next to Callaghan on the 1M, going downtown. Keeping Austin Weird.

And here’s the sky full of bats! We actually missed their emergence from under the bridge… I took this picture while we were walking along the river. We’ll have to try catching them another time.