It’s a recurring joke between Mr. Burt and me that the first time we vacationed at Walt Disney World, on our honeymoon, we were too broke to eat.

That was the truth. We could only afford the trip in the first place because Mr. Burt’s parents took all the other Burt kids and Burt grandkids to Cancun that summer and gave us the money that would have been our portion of the family vacation. Due to our marrying right out of college (literally, a few weeks after Mr. Burt graduated and before he started his job) tight would be a generous word to describe our budget: Mr. Burt worked at Olive Garden all four years at Baylor to pay for room and board, textbooks, and student fees, and even with the IT job he took his senior year in addition to waiting tables, only managed to scrape by on his living expenses with a very little left over for dates (his entire savings up to that point had gone to buy my engagement ring–which was perfect for my tiny ring finger, but by no means a rock by anyone’s standards); I worked on and off at department stores but, to my chagrin, brought all of $70 into our marriage because I have no self-control when working around clothes.

When Mr. Burt and I arrived at Walt Disney World, we had X dollars in our budget with absolutely no wiggle room, because that was all there was in the bank. We didn’t even have a credit card, though if we had, Mr. Burt was smart enough to know that starting your marriage broke was less than desirable but not the end of the world when you had a good job lined up, but starting it in debt because of your honeymoon was not a good financial precedent to set.

So, we made like Oregon Trail and limited our rations to bare bones. We splurged on a character breakfast buffet our first morning at the Magic Kingdom, but the rest of the week our first stop was an Epcot cafe where we could get cheap (by Disney standards) pastries and breakfast burritos. And split an orange juice. We’d skip lunch, maybe share an ice cream early afternoon if we were desperate, and ate a late lunch/early dinner, frequently splitting that meal. Not exactly taking advantage of the many unique and delicious dining opportunities Walt Disney World affords honeymooners, but it was what we could afford that won the day, and anyway,we didn’t really care that much about eating because…it was our honeymoon.

Thus it was that when our hunger pangs subsided and faded, as did all but our very best memories from that wonderful first week of marriage, being too poor to eat on our honeymoon became a joke.

There’s nothing like old photos to give you a shocking dose reality.

Take, for example, one of the few pictures of one of our honeymoon meals (indeed, one of our few honeymoon pictures, period, as we were also too poor for a proper camera and made due with four 27-exposure disposable cameras, the developing of which also pinched):

Two drinks. One blob of mashed potatoes. One prime rib. Oh, and not pictured, a minuscule Caesar salad. For two adults who hadn’t eaten anything all day except a cheese Danish and a breakfast burrito and possibly an Lemon Chill because we were about to die of heatstroke standing in line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. And that was a splurge.

“Remember how excited we were?” Mr. Burt said as we boggled at the picture last night. “We sat there at that table and said, ‘All right, we’re gonna have prime rib tonight!’ A little bit of prime rib. Geez, I feel so bad for us!”

I didn’t feel bad for us. I was too busy laughing at our naïve, dazed-by-our-own-happiness newlywed selves till my stomach hurt and tears tracked mascara down my cheeks.

It’s little wonder when we returned to Walt Disney World five years later for our second honeymoon, our package including a Disney Dining Plan, that we reacted to our first meal like this:

While we may feel a little sorry that First Honeymoon Mr. and LR Burt didn’t get to fully enjoy all Disney has to offer, we thank them for having the good sense not to have made that honeymoon a financial burden, or else we might not have been able to go back five years later for seconds.

We definitely wouldn’t have appreciated what it means to have full bellies. (Too full; eighteen months later, we’re still trying to work off the pounds we put on during that trip! Luckily for me, I also had a baby during that time. Children: the eternal scapegoats–but that’s another post…)

Mr. Burt doesn’t know it, but today two old men saved him about $100.

We were in Macy’s with Mr. Burt’s grandparents, parents, sister, and nieces, and on our way out of the store, my mother-in-law and I got waylaid by a lot of really adorable coats. We share a bit of a fetish, my mother-in-law’s more justifiable than mine being that she lives in Minnesota and actually wears a coat more than two days a year–though I am convinced that only one coat-wearing day a year would have justified the purchase of this particularly adorable coat that caught my eye. It was hot pink wool, after all. With ruffles.

As was the lingerie sported by the mannequin kitty-corner from the coat I was admiring.

The lingerie, naturally, was being admired by a couple of old men.

Only it wasn’t, quite.

If these had been people of Walmart, I wouldn’t have taken any interest in skeezy old men cracking crude jokes as the ogled the white plastic buttcheeks of a thong-wearing dummy. As it was, these were people of Macy’s, of the sort who wore newsboy caps and carried themselves in a way that demanded I refer to them, even mentally, as “gentlemen of a certain age.”

Not that the sex industry hasn’t hijacked the term “gentlemen” in a fit of lewd irony.

But I observed these two gentleman and discovered them not to be leering so much as looking at the scantily clad, headless female forms, and I heard nothing lewd.

Instead, when one gentleman nudged the other with his elbow and pointed at the bare-bottomed beauty, he said, “She’s a bit of a minimalist, that one.”

They walked away, chuckling without a hint of coarseness, and I forgot about the pink ruffled coat.

Because all I could think about was that I’d never heard the word “minimalist” at Walmart.

I was reminded of this Mitch Hedberg bit this morning when, as I put on my makeup, the back of a box of Target brand cotton swabs caught my eye:

That’s right–suggestions for how to use Q-Tips. In pictures, not words, so that people of all languages won’t be stuck scratching their heads as to whether cotton swabs come in handy other than for cleaning ears.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Q-Tips as mini brooms for my computer keyboard, but while they might just be the most effective bathroom cleaner ever, I’m not sure they’d be the most efficient–and as a mom of a nine month-old son, it’s all about efficiency.

Speaking of being a mom, it was–naturally–the last illustration that particularly tickled my funny bone. (The next-to-last tickled my gag reflex; is that a picture of a cotton swab toothbrush?)

But use a Q-tip to comb a baby’s hair? Well! If only I’d paid closer attention to my box of cotton swabs before now, the Burt Squirt might not have had to go around looking like this:

Another one for the Mommy Files, I suppose…

Nah, I buy Q-Tips because I want something to clean my ears with. Not because I want a tiny, fluffy comb!

When I tell people the Burt Squirt is crawling, they give me one of two responses: “Uh-oh, he’s going to be into everything now!” or “Dorrie better watch out!” In this post, we deal with the reality of the latter.

Weary of relocating every time the Mobile One comes near, Dorrie takes refuge in the box that recently delivered Mr. Burt’s new graphics card.

Alas, Dorrie is chagrined to discover that the Mobile One’s wits have developed along with his motor skills, and she has not outwitted him with her little “out of sight, out of mind” game.

Because when it comes to games, the Burt Squirt has mastered the one that goes:  “Where’s so-and-so? There she is!” In this case, Dorrie, unfortunately, is so-and-so.

Dorrie attempts to unnerve the Mobile One with her feline stare…

…but the Burt Squirt is not intimidated.

And so Dorrie wears the look of haughty annoyance that is her most frequent expression these days.

Once upon a time, the news that Prince William is getting married would have broken my heart.

Because he was supposed to marry me.

When I caught a glimpse of him in the newspaper, it was love at first sight between me and the handsome future King of England who was just my age. Or it would be, once he saw me–by which time he’d already be well on his way to falling deeply in love with me, thanks to the beautiful letter of sympathy I’d written to him upon the occasion of his mother’s tragic death.

It would have to be a real humdinger, as no doubt William had servants who read his post first to weed out the girls who were only after his power, riches, and masculine beauty from the one who truly loved him. If there is ever anything I can do… I wrote, convinced that the letter-reader’s response would be, Oh yes, Miss Bond, there is something you can do—heal His Royal Highness’ heart. Because nothing bespeaks true love like the phrase, Until that time, know that you are in my prayers whenever I think of you. Even the Apostle whose words I’d hijacked couldn’t have prayed as much for his fledgling churches as I was praying for William, because the first century had a distinct lack of 24-hour news coverage about celebrities dying to keep people frequently in his thoughts.

Also, Paul wasn’t a fifteen year-old girl.

He especially wasn’t a fifteen year-old girl who got caught by her father smuggling Diana-related newspapers back to her room and, flushing furiously, told him she was saving them because they were “history in the making”–as was getting up at three in the morning on a Saturday to watch Princess Diana’s funeral–like he didn’t know the truth, like every other father of a teenage daughter in 1997.

My letter never made it to Prince William—or his servant who read letters—it never even got finished–so I thankfully am spared the humiliation of having attempted to woo royalty with godliness. I only have to live with the humiliation of having played that card in my love games with regular boys at school and in youth group—about as successfully, I might add, as I would have been with His Royal Highness. The first boy who did take an interest, two years later, informed me that what actually drew me to him was not my prayers, but my pants—the blue plaid ones. And we all know what that’s teenage boy code for.

Not surprisingly, that relationship was no more destined to be than the one I had dreamed of with Prince William. For a big dose of irony, my first boyfriend played a prince in our high school production of Into the Woods—and used his charm both on-stage and off, with more girls than just me.

Princes were seriously over-rated, I decided, much as Sondheim’s Cinderella did. You have to work too hard to get–and keep–them.

Mr. Burt came into my life without the stench of prince anywhere near him. Well–he had played one of the Three Kings in a church play, but Binky the Wise Man bearing gifts of ties, toasters, and soaps-on-a-rope is a far cry from crowns and glass slippers and senior proms and angsty teenage romances. I never played any games with Mr. Burt; the first night we met I hadn’t washed my hair or put on makeup, and I spit popcorn on him. He wasn’t looking for me to impress him–though I did when I worked out the meaning of the word defenestration by using my (extremely limited) German vocabulary–and when I scored a date simply by being myself, I knew my search for Prince Charming was over.

Though that doesn’t mean I won’t get up at three in the morning to watch the royal wedding. After all, it’s history in the making.