For all intensive purposes

I've always believed myself to be an adept communicator. I've never had a problem expressing what I'm feeling or explaining myself or getting a point across. Granted, this may be because there is never a shortage of words when I am communicating (I fear I am becoming one of those people whose trap is never shut), but whatever the case, I feel confident in my ability to have others understand me. Unfortunately, the same is often not true when I am trying to understand what is being communicated to me. Although it may have something to do with my hearing, I fear it mostly has to do with my lack of common sense. These misunderstandings fall into two categories: situations when the person talking to me is being sarcastic or trying to imply something and I totally fail to recognize it, and situations when I do not understand or hear correctly the actual words spoken to me. Thankfully, I know there are others of you out there who are as slow to catch on to sarcasm and implications as I am, but do any of you still have a hard time understanding what words are being spoken? (Here I am touting what a good communicator I am and I have this feeling that none of you know what the heck I'm talking about.)
Let me illustrate. Have you guys all played Mad Gab? It's that game where there are silly phrases written on cards and one team at a time has to keep repeating the phrases until they are able to figure out the real phrases being represented. For example, a card might read Way tame hen hit, and the team has to figure out that the phrase being represented is Wait a minute. Understand?
Well for me, it is like I have been playing this game my entire life, except backwards. It's like someone is saying to me "Wait a minute," and I am like "What? What do you mean, 'Way tame hen hit?'" I'm not kidding! It happens ALL THE TIME, and it is so humiliating. Remember that Hands to Heaven song? (Tonight I need your sweet caress, hold me in the darkness...) Well, despite the fact that I had been listening to and singing that song for most of my life, it had never occurred to me that perhaps the lyrics tonight you call my rest lush nest, you believe my sadness didn't make a lick of sense. It wasn't until Brian and I were dating and we were driving back to his house while this song was on the radio and he sang, tonight you calm my restlessness; you relieve my sadness, that I thought, but of course! And then there was the time in college when I was sitting around the kitchen table with my roommates trying to coordinate something, and I said, "Well, we'll just play it by year." And my roommate asked, "Did you just say 'play it by year'?" And I said, "Yeah." And she said, "It's play it by ear!" Are you kidding me? I had spent like twenty years saying 'play it by year' and nobody had ever enlightened me? So anyway, this is the sort of thing that happens to me all the time.
Well the other day, I was reading Brooke's blog and she was saying, "For all intents and purposes..." and I started chuckling to myself thinking, how fabulous that my Florence best friend has the same disorder I have! She doesn't realize that it is supposed to be for all intensive purposes. Hehehe..he......he....he....Wait a minute! Oh, crap, not again! Later on, Brian confirmed what I had feared--it's not for all intensive purposes. Please forgive me for doubting you, Brooke. I should have known better.
Anyway...

I've never posted this fabulous picture taken at Laura's wedding. It's the picture that Sarah put in the center of the quilt she made me for Christmas. I love it!

And here's a few more just for entertainment and history's sake.