This past Saturday, the 14 of march, the majority of my siblings, Ellie, Daniel, Matt, Micah, Josiah, and I, along with my uncle, went to go clean at the camp grounds where we spend two precious weeks out of the very precious summer every year.
Now we were working on leaves.
I hate cleaning up leaves. I don't know why exactly, but I don't like it;
However, on this particular day I really didn't mind it, which seemed pretty cool to me, seeing as I had just figured out that I didn't like leaves the moment we arrived.
I was up until two the previous night, and probable an average of three the previous week, And we had to get up at a lustrous nine o'clock in order to be awake and ready by ten, for the forty-five minute journey to the camp grounds.
Now in any case when working with little kids you can't completely expect any constant form of work. And as it happened to be there was a ride on lawn mower which is about as close to driving and as cool as driving as you're going to get for a kid.
So now we have an opposition. Or several.
For me, it's the fact that we are raking leaves. But I didn't mind it so much.
For them, it was the person who was riding the mower, and thinking of all the excuses not to work so as to ride the mower instead of whoever was riding at the moment.
Obviously the three younger children could not focus on the task, and being distracted can kill people. Everyone knows this.
Anyway this is how the raking went down.
we would scrape up these huge piles and then shove the piles into waste buckets.
then load the buckets on a trailer, and Ellie would drive the tractor hitched to the trailer down to a leaf dump site.
I would take the mower and follow the leaves to assist in the dumping of the leaves
and then we would travel the vast distances back to the remaining leaves to continue the vicious cycle.
Now after about seven hours of this, we were finished, and my uncle took us out to eat after the hard days work.
This is where it gets good.

Ponderosa's.

For some reason, and I'm not sure if it's just me and Ellie, but whenever we seem to end up in public places we start talking about everyone in the particular restaurant.
We got our plates and after a few moments of quiet indulgence we started talking.
Now throughout the random comments of peoples behaviors or peculiar oddities, I noticed a waitress, a hot waitress.
Now I'm not the kind of guy to blatantly hit on girls or try to get dates, but I wanted to leave a note for our waitress before we left.
And leading up to the notes I was joking around saying things like,
"When she asks if there's any thing I need, I'll say,
'uh..can I get a date? I mean Rootbeer!?' "
You know, joking around, in a good nature sort of way.
So I write a note that said something like,
Joshua Barnes (and underneath of which I had my phone number)
a reference to the fact that I had a facebook,
and then a poem that goes like this.

"She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climbs and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."

So I was set.
I left the not on the napkin under the tip, and I was gone.
Fast forward two nights.
We are now at Monday night the 16th..
Specifically yesterday.

I was hanging out with a friend and I randomly got on facebook
and I had a friend request.
Chelsea.
There was a message that said something like "hey were you at ponderosa's the other day?"
now as I read it out loud I had no control over the overwhelming urge to laugh.
It was awesome.
And so later on she messaged me and we we're talking and at one point she used a sign off
- your future girl.
When I read that I remembered the line I had used.
Then all I could think of is that I looked like a total douche.
Hysterical, yet a total douche.

So anyway I explained that I wasn't actually trying to hit on her
but when I saw opportunity I wasn't about to let it go.

haha.