My lack of math skills has been a constant source of entertainment for my family, going way back to one of my first dates with Pat.

“I suck at math,” I told him, while driving out to dinner the first month we were dating. “In fact, I literally have to stop and think that eight plus five is twelve.”

“Uh, it’s thirteen, actually,” Pat replied.

“Really?!”…as I proceeded to count it off on my fingers. Back then, Pat did not do the eye roll, as he would have done now. He was in the phase of trying to impress me with his wonderful gentleman skills…AND trying to get me to sleep with him. Well, I take that back–we SLEPT together our first date–we didn’t “fornicate” for two months, and he was in the stage where he was trying to close the sale yet.

So, Pat is on some cross-country motorcycle trip, and not here to share today’s “Math with Joyce” episode with, so I will share it with all of you instead.

Yesterday I bought this HUGE water bottle and a cool sling thing to carry it in on my long walks with the dogs. I can clip their collapsible bowl to it, and make sure to have a lot of water for Max when he acts like he is dying on the walks, but is fine the second we get home and he chases squirrels and chipmunks.

I filled the 48 ounce bottle with ice and water, put it in the sling, slung it over my shoulder, and started hiking with the pups. About five minutes into our hike, my shoulder was aching and I switched sides with the water bottle slingy-thing.

At that point, I thought, “Jesus, this thing weighs a ton. I wonder how much it weighs? When I get home, I will re-fill it, and weigh it.”

About five minutes later, it crossed my mind again, and thought, “I wonder how much 48 ounces of water weighs?”

I got home and weighed it–um…anyone guess around FOUR POUNDS?

Okay, I am NOT a techie. I barely use any apps.

However, that all changed recently, and I have an app that I will be torturing my family with by posting screenshots of, and they will be dying of embarrassment and asking why I have to share such things. Um, hello…it’s been almost 13 years, and you are asking that NOW?

So, a couple weeks ago, I was very moody and crying for no reason. Well, there MIGHT be a reason– it’s called someone being a sore loser and harassing me and being litigious, but I can’t talk about THAT.

So, instead of thinking THAT could be the cause of my moods, I turned to Pat and said, “When am I supposed to get my period?!?!? Maybe it’s my period!”

Pat replied, “I have no idea when you are supposed to get your period.”

My first thought was, “IF HE EFFING LOVED ME, HE’D KNOW THAT!!!” (Irrational moody Joyce coming out to play).

Pat then followed up with “Is there some period app on your phone that you can track that shit with?”.

Hmmmm…let’s check! Why yes, there are a LOT of period apps! Score.

I downloaded this gem:

Check it out–I just tap a bar when my period starts, and the FUN begins!

So, check out the calendar–FUN TIMES! So, I just showed it to Pat and announced I am going to be ovulating tomorrow, and very fertile on the 12th. So, I quote, “No fucking on Tuesday unless you double bag that thing.” I am so romantic.

The next screen is kind of boring. I mean, my life is not so pathetic that I will track if I am spotting or the speed of my flow. Come on. Although, it could be fun to go to the gyno with such an abundance of info and open up the app and give WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more info than they need.

The Symptom screen made my day. Um, the constipation one is PRICELESS!

Let’s not fool myself here–the MOODS screen is going to be my most fun. I am black and white. I need two icons, that it is–“turning cartwheels” happy, or ” I am fucking going to kill someone” livid. That is me. (And again, in reference to any litigious assholes out there–the previous sentence is no way a specific threat against anyone. If it was, Pat would be the first in line filing TRO’s, so save yourself the legal fees.)

I so look forward to filling out all these little graphs, and being able to track when I should be happy, should be PMSing, and being able to pull out my phone to check and see if today is a good day to have sexy time or not. I highly anticipate anytime Pat wants to start something, I pull out my phone and point out the brown bottle sign for constipation is on today’s calendar, and really, do you want to tap that?!?!?!?

In fact, I might make that my profile picture on Facebook just to make it easier than whipping out my phone and showing him.

I was just going to wrap this up with a witty endutation, and noticed the sign for “tender breasts”…WTF?!?!?

And while I was waiting for the screenshot of the tender breasts to show up in my email, I was still fixating on the “constipation” graphic…and wondered if there was an app to track bowel movements (I am so ladylike…I know).

SWEET JESUS…SCORE!

As you all probably know,

1–If something embarrassing, funny, cool, strange, unbelievable, etc. is going to happen, it is going to probably happen to ME.

2–I am obsessed with kayaking, among other things. (Knitting as well, and I did, one time this summer, bring my knitting along on my kayak–true story.)

Since I kayak on smaller lakes, not rushing rivers, oceans, or anything with a waterfall, there usually is more of a relaxing element to my kayaking, and not much excitement.

For example, THIS would NEVER happen to me:

And I will come clean now…this is “photoshopped”…Anya and I did NOT go over Niagara Falls in my kayak. Just in case you believed we did. ; P

So, yesterday, my sister and I decided to go out on a leisurely kayaking trip, more to float and gossip than to actually kayak. Oh, and to also take a lot of lame selfies like this:

So, we kayaked around the lake, and I am keeping the name of the lake ANONYMOUS since I will die of embarrassment if my name is ever associated with this…and noticed four ducks and a heron or sandhill crane (I am not up on my birds) always ONE PIER ahead of us. My sister likes taking animal pictures (last week, we had to stalk some deer in the kayak), so she would attempt to get pictures of the ducks or large mystery bird at every pier. And they would ALWAYS fly away at the last second.

After attempting to photograph the ducks and mystery large bird numerous times, we ended up in an area of the lake with a lot of tall reeds, cattails, lilypads, and SIX GEESE! The geese were all swimming, so peacefully, all in the same direction…very quiet.

I was very excited and told my sister we should sneak up on the geese and get pictures.

I kept getting closer and closer and they were not flying away. What the heck? As I got even closer, I realized they were fake geese (notice the word DECOY never pops in my brain here?!?!?) Fake geese, just floating along….

I yelled to my sister that they were fake, and we should get some fun pictures with the FAKE GEESE! We should pet them, and kiss them and do fun things with them–taking the pictures far enough away that they’d look real.

I even asked at that point why someone would just leave FAKE GEESE out in the lake… (Most of you probably see where this is headed and think I am the biggest moron.)

So, our photo shoot started:

Then Jen went over in the reeds and took pictures of me being a dork:

AND THEN IT HAPPENED…

I heard a goose HONKING. LOUDLY. From right behind my sister. It freaked me out and I yelled, “OMG, are real geese coming in?!?!?!?”  Just had images of some Alfred Hitchcock movie in the making here…

Then I see movement behind my sister and take a closer look, totally freaking out:

And I paddle closer to see this:

OMFG. And my sister LITERALLY was right against their blind, snapping pictures.

By the way, there was a THIRD GUY, with another gun, RIGHT BEHIND JEN.

I apologized, (I think) and paddled away like I was in the GD Kayak Olympics, laughing my ass off, leaving my sister behind. It was the most mortifying moment EVER. I hope to hell these guys are not one of my friends husbands, or co-workers of Pat.

My sister and I got to shore and could not stop laughing. In fact, I will put it out there…when this picture was snapped, I did pee my pants. Not enough where I need to get Poise Pads. But I’ll put it out there before my sister spreads rumors…I never laughed so hard in my life.

We came home, told Pat and Mike about it, and I just got to the “we saw these geese, and they were just floating there” part…and Pat goes, “Decoys…they were decoys.” I yelled at him for the spoiler , and he was like, “Um hello dumbass–it’s FALL, there are geese NOT MOVING in the lake, you are so lucky you didn’t get shot.”

Didn’t think about that part. Yeah, guess we were lucky the guys were cool about two gals fucking around with their decoys for about 10 minutes. I do recall apologizing for probably scaring all the real birds away–they said they were not having much luck anyway. Thinking back on it–I sure as hell don’t want to be out in the kayak with guys shooting freaking geese out of the air–my next blog post will be about how one ended up hitting me in the face as it fell back out of the sky and breaking my nose or something. Because that shit ONLY HAPPENS TO ME.

The upside of the adventure, as Jen pointed out, “We probably saved some gooses life today.” : )