OENCH, Complete

A few days late, I'm finally getting around to informing you all as to what exactly OENCH was. My delay is due to the fact that once OENCH was really rolling, I wasn't terribly interested in blogging.

But I'm back.

My sister turned ten this weekend, and after Christmas I was rather glum about missing her birthday for the first time in ten years. A few weeks ago, on a whim, I looked up plane tickets for the weekend, then realized it was a three-day weekend. That, more or less, was it. I told Sr. Rosann about my plan and promised I wouldn't miss any school, and she practically pushed me out the door. So, my parents and I ironed out the details and started devising ways to maximize the head-explosion of my surprise arrival.

OENCH (pronounced "wench") is Operation Explode Noona and Charlie's Heads. We left Alex out of the acronym because the extra vowel would have complicated matters, and I guessed his response would be a smile and a "Hey, you're here" rather than an exploding head. I'm all about precision of language.

The plan set into motion on Friday, when I hopped a plane after school and landed in Baltimore late that night when the kids were asleep (except Alex, who, as anticipated, was gad to see me but in no way exploded). In the morning, I dragged myself out of bed and snuck into the garage with a box of donuts right as Melissa came downstairs, and called the house from my cell phone.

Me: Happy birthday!
Melissa: Thanks!
Me: How does it feel to be ten?
Melissa: Meh, about the same.
Mom: Tell her she should come and bring some donuts.
Melissa: (annoyed, because this rubs in my absence) :sigh: Mom says you should come and bring donuts.
Me: Ha, that'd be great, wouldn't it?

This is the part where I walked around to the front door, knocked, and waved donuts in the air when Melissa looked to see who it was.



She was not terribly interested in the donuts. Go figure.