Blog Tour: Forgiving Trinity & Giveaway

Top 3 Embarrassing Moments

Jen, thank you so much for letting me share… I KNOW this is all horrifying, and I HOPE it’s a little comical, too. Otherwise, you just wind up knowing way too much about my bodily functions and exposure. This post is both extremely difficult and way too easy to write! Easy because I’m a six foot tall klutz with a big mouth and a penchant for putting my huge foot in it who is always getting into weird situations. Hard because, growing up with said social impairments, I’m fairly difficult to embarrass. Seriously. It takes a lot to make me blush. But it can happen! Most of these are fairly gross, but, then again, so am I! Here are my top 3, delivered for your amusement and pleasure!

1. The Great Panting Fiasco of ‘99

This must have been monstrously embarrassing, but I can’t even feel bad for him. At least he has his underwear on! My goodies were out and about for the entire world to see!

My little sister was a very pretty, popular girl in high school and she seemed to always have a boyfriend. Most of her boyfriends were huge tools. One in particular was a tool I didn’t care for in the least. One day he and my sister were planning to go on a date and I was standing in the doorway, giving him a glare-filled, threat-laced talk about how he better respect and be cool to my little sister. Just then my adorable little brother Jack came behind me. He’d been on a surprise attack pantsing spree lately and he decided it would be HI-LAR-I-OUS to pull my pants down mid-speech.

Which would have been bad enough.

Except the little punk managed to grab my underwear too.

On the bright side, the guy broke up with my sister. He said, “Your family is too weird.” I think he meant, “There’s not enough brain bleach in the world to erase the image of seeing your sister’s specials on the eve of our first date.”

2. What was supposed to be a romantic moment…

Back when I was first dating the guy who is now my husband, I was still in that ‘I Want To Impress You And Prove I’m Pretty Normal!’ stage…wow, that seems so long ago! We went out to a really nice, classy Chinese food restaurant. We ate, we laughed, we really, really connected. On the ride home, Frank started telling me how he really felt about me. How he’d never been so excited to see someone. How he found himself thinking about me all the time. How it felt like we’d known each other for years, even though we’d just met.

I should have been able to treasure those sweet, kind words, but I couldn’t…because my intestines were having a violent, scary riot.

I was sweating. I was trying to focus on not throwing up or farting or something so much worse. What had I eaten? Would I survive? How long until we got to my house?! HOW LONG?!

There were so many appropriate but inappropriate images to help explain ‘food poisoning,’ but I settled on this one. Cause those delicious dumplings were KILLING me!! KILLING ME!!

When Frank pulled in the driveway, he reached over to cup my face and tell me how much he cared, but there was empty space and an open car door, because I was sprinting to get into the house and bathroom. Frank went home thinking I was less than impressed with our date, and I just never addressed it and was super, super nice when I called later that night.

Years later, I confessed what had happened to Frank. By this time, we’d shared so many stomach disasters and bathroom calamities, it was hard to imagine being shy about digestion. He looked at me with pity. “Oh no. You were that sick, and I kept being all romantic? How did you hold it together?” (And that’s why I love this man!)

3. Do you smell cheese?

Do you know more about my bodily functions than you ever wanted to?! Well guess what! I have one more! When my daughter was born, I breastfed her. When you breastfeed, your body gets into a schedule, and it produces milk at the times when the baby eats, which makes perfect sense. And then you go back to work, and you don’t have the baby there…but your body doesn’t know that.

I was teaching poetry terms to eighth grade students, trying hard to focus on alliteration and rhyme  scheme, that I almost didn’t hear the first few giggles.

If you’ve never taught middle school, then you don’t know that your day is filled, largely, with trying to figure out what is hanging out of your nose, stuck in your teeth, or smeared on your clothing in a totally inappropriate area. Because, for some reason, teaching middle school makes all those things happen with more humiliating regularity.

A very, very charming little trouble-maker raised his hand. This particular young man never, ever raised his hand, and I knew on instinct that whatever he was about to share would NOT be helpful. At all. “Mrs. Reinhardt? I think…something is leaking. On you. Up…uh…here.” He made swirling motions chest-level.

I looked down and saw that entire front of my shirt was soaking wet. Wet with milk. That was going to get warm and smell like…sour milk.

Why, what’s the alluring aroma? It could be me. Or that block of Gouda over there.

It was hot that day. Very hot. I had a sweater in my room from the winter. I put it on with as much dignity as I could muster, and turned back to the blackboard, face on fire, sweat now pouring down from my armpits to mingle with the souring milk. FAN-TAS-TIC!

The one tiny saving grace came from the charming bad boy, who did, actually, have a heart and, that day, earned my undying love. “Shut up, guys! There’s nothing Mrs. R can do about it!” he said. It didn’t stop the giggles, but it warmed my heart. Which was awful, because it just made me sweatier and smellier. It was a long day, at the end of which I smelled like a cheese factory.

Now you all know officially too much about me! You’re welcome ;)! Please feel free to explode the comments section with your own gross hilarity. I. Will. Never. Judge. You!

Liz, thank you so much for sharing these moments with us, and making us laugh! 

Giveaway details: Liz has generously offered to give one of my readers an ebook copy of FORGIVING TRINITY (international!), in addition to the tour wide giveaway! Just enter the Rafflecopter widget below!

Tour wide contest info: US only, ends April 20th. There are 6 prizes for this one! 3 physical copies, a choice of Double Clutch or Junk Miles, and 3 e-book copies of Forgiving Trinity.

[Click here to enter the Tour Wide Giveaway!]

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