America the Beautiful

And the beautifully cruel.

The current presidential election season has roused strong emotions. It seems that none of those emotions are going to do America any good though. The political climate has been rocky for years. I can't remember the last time I heard anything good said about politicians.

I understand that the house I was raised in leans towards being conservative and extremely distrustful of authority figures. It was only recently that I found out none of my friends parents would quiz them on appropriate behavior for being arrested. Every time we watched a cop show as a family my dad would mute the commercials and ask us what to say if we had been arrested for those crimes. The answer was the same every time.

"I want a lawyer."

Say nothing else, not even your name until you get a lawyer.

In retrospect it seems a little strange that my dad would be so adamant about this particular problem. Was he expecting us to be a family of bad criminals. Bad as in they are always getting caught, because good criminal don't get caught, that's what makes them good. Or was he just preparing us to live in world were people are persecuted for not following the norm. Because if that was the case it would make a lot of sense.

I don't even have any answers, it's just something that has been bothering me for a while now.

I have reached a new level of stupid

I am not a fan of bad customer service. And by bad customer service I mean these new automated answering systems that make you talk back to them. Because when you say snarky, very sarcastic things under your breath the automated lady voice thinks you're talking to her. To be fair, I was talking to her. I just didn't realize she'd respond with -

"I didn't understand what you said. To repeat this message say 'repeat' or press one."

It took about five minutes into the call for me to be offered a press a number option. Why? None of the options on the "speak to me now" menu were what I needed. I needed the "I am unbelievably stupid, please help" option. This is a great option. It should be an option on the website of every business. It means I have screwed up in a new and slightly surprising way. I need to talk to a real person to get this figured out.

The worst part was when I called back. After hanging up in a rage induced fit of pique. The evil lady, instead of saying her usual spiel, asked if I was calling about a package with this tracking number. I should have just said no, instead I said yes and got the whole "this package was not deliverable and is being returned to the original sender."

I wanted to bang my head against a wall. Repeatedly.

I feel an explanation of events is now in order. I have recently(ish) moved in with a friend. I have also recently(ish) gotten a new pair glasses. The glasses arrived about a week after I had moved. Instead of driving the ten hours it takes to get home I asked my mother to mail them to me. In a moment of unbelievable stupidity I gave her the wrong mailing address. The address I gave her doesn't exist outside of Google Maps. Yeah. I fail hard.

My mother, being the reason behind half my DNA, put the wrong address on the shipping label. My parents had also recently(ish) moved. To make a long, dramatic story kind of short. It got lost in the mailing system for a few days but eventually got taken back to the post office in Wyoming, where my mom picked it up. A few days and addresses later I got my new glasses. They are pretty nice.

The only reason we got it worked out is because I called a random post office and they gave me the number for the people I needed to call. Talking to an actual person is so much easier.

I'm the baby, you gotta love me

My lovely siblings have been taking great care of me since I haven't really been able to walk the last few days. Well, I can walk but it's super painful and if I walk a lot I start to leave a blood trail. It's just not a good idea.

For the most part the food has been edible. There was an incident with easy mac and cheese that didn't go over so well. It had sat in the microwave for too long and lost all the water. I was mostly passed out on the couch when my brother mixed it up. He asked if it needed water and I said no. I'd forgotten that water evaporates. Everything ended okay because my mother made me Gold Fish mac and cheese. It was cute and delicious.

Fishies (Photo)

Thankfully my older sister made me a salad so I have eaten something healthy in the last few days. Pretty sure it's the only healthy thing I've eaten.

I did get some interesting, but yummy french toast for  breakfast. My brother made it. I was not entirely sure it was going to end well. I kept hearing questionable noises coming from the kitchen. The most disturbing was when he asked if it was supposed to look like that. Since I was lounging (in a rather foul temper) on the couch and couldn't actually see the kitchen I had no way of answering. It's been really odd to have him cook for me since if it's just the two of us at home I do the cooking.

It looked a lot like this, but flatter (Photo)

The best thing was when I asked my brother to get me a cup of coffee. I have a French press. He took the lid off and freaked out when he saw the coffee grounds. He didn't realize the plunger thing needed to be pressed down. In his defense he avoids all coffee and necessary equipment for making coffee. I got to talk him through the actions for a French press. Mostly that you have to push the plunger down slowly. He also took the lid of the creamer instead of popping the top up. Just unscrewed the whole thing.

This is real hard to use.

But mostly I've just eaten a lot a macaroni and cheese. It's my go to comfort food when I feel bad or am stressed.

I tried to decapitate my toe

Yesterday afternoon we were getting ready for a picnic when I cut open the bottom of my toe/foot area. It was highly unpleasant. And kind of embarrassing. My mom asked me to grab something from the pantry (our pantry is like 10 feet tall). It was barely out of my reach. Instead of taking the minute or so of time to move stuff around and set up the step ladder I decided to be time efficient and just jump up and grab it.

In retrospect it does seem like a dumb decision. However, I have lived in this house for over a year and jumped up to grab items on numerous occasions. At the time it seemed a reasonable action to take.

I landed on something and it hurt. It felt like a paper cut, a sharp stabbing pain. I looked down, this was possibly another mistake. Blood had gushed out of my foot all over the floor. There was a small puddle of blood on the pantry floor that was getting bigger while I put pressure on my foot. I turned my foot over and could see into my toe. A flap of skin had popped open, it looked like someone had tried to peel all the skin off. I freaked out.

My family members all rushed to the kitchen to see what they could do to help. After looking at the wound they decided it needed stitches. They bandaged up the toe in an attempt to stop the bleeding and took my to InstaCare.

Unfortunately the place was located in an intersection that is under construction. Traffic was at a standstill and we took the side roads, which ended up being blocked off and we did a circle around the building before getting to the lot. My father was driving and was not happy with the traffic. I was sitting in the middle of the back seat with my foot propped up on the passenger side seat. I did what most people do. I texted my best friends a picture of my bandaged foot. Responding to their messages kept me from freaking out about getting stitches. I have never had stitches before. 

The clinic was basically empty. I am assuming it's because of the horrible traffic. I got in to see a doctor in what is probably record time. I am almost positive you can't really read my handwriting on the information form. I probably should have had my father fill it out, but it's a little late for that.

The nurse was very nice. I remember she had on these light blue cowboy boots and black scrubs. She also had a really nice voice when she said my heart rate was elevated. Had I not been in so much pain it would have been funny in a I wan to punch you sort of way.

Had that nurse been the doctor things would have gone better. He came in and it all went down hill from there. He was an older, heavy man with a slow, wanna be Texas drawl. (I say want to be because it's Wyoming and most people from Wyoming who try and effect a Texas drawl don't do it right.) After looking at my foot he declared it a superficial lesion slapped two bandages on it and sent me home.

It was slightly more involved than that but the whole visit couldn't have taken more than fifteen minutes. I have a gouge out of the bottom of my toe and slice out of the side. The side cut almost looks like my skin just burst open. It's disturbing to look at. What's slightly more disturbing is that the bottom gouge connects to the side slice so that half of my toe skin can flap up.

I spent most of the examination gritting my teeth and trying not to bitch every time his pudgy fingers poked the open wound. For some reason the doctor did not realize, or possibly care, that it was really only one cut. He kept saying it didn't need stitches. Now it is possible there was nothing to keep the stitches in and they would only cause more problems but that isn't what he said. The doctor also told me I would be able to walk on it with out any problems. He only told me that after I asked. He also said I could take ibuprofen or Tylenol but didn't say how often or how much. Which I found highly irritating because I try to never take pain medicine if I could to something else to alleviate the pain, like drinking more water or eating something different.

By the time I got home I had already bled through the bandages the doctor had put on. I was so tempted to call them back and bitch at him. He had specified, the only thing he'd actually told me to do, that I needed to change the bandages once a day for the next ten days or so. When I'd asked if I would need to do more than that he'd said in a very snooty voice, "Once a day will be fine."

Subtext "I am the doctor, this is not a real problem."

You know when you can just hear what someone is saying?

That's what happened then. The doctor had decided I was a young woman who came in because of a little cut. Problem solved.

Even the nurse asked if he should look at it from another angle. If you are a doctor what would it hurt to have another look at something? It would have taken less then a minute and might have possibly made my life a little easier. It's not like he had another patient to look at.

Instead of him doing his job my mother has bandaged up my toe and I've been on bed rest. Which is very boring. Very boring. And quite possibly the only reason I wrote this post. Because every time I get up and walk around blood starts leaking all over the place. It's messy and disgusting.

A new family member joins the clan

Earlier this week my sister had her baby boy. It's very exciting. This is the first time one of my siblings had a kiddo. It's a little weird, but mostly just awesome.

Here is a picture of my cat, Beast, because I haven't gotten pictures of the baby yet. He had to go the hospital today to check for jaundice. It's a little nerve wracking, having someone so little that I love so much. Knowing that I can't do anything to keep him safe is uncomfortable. I kind of understand why some parents are control freaks.

Well. That sucked.

That awkward moment when you just got out of the shower and can't remember if you actually washed your hair or just got it wet. It seems like the older I've gotten the more things slip through the cracks. I just don't remember. Sometimes because it didn't happen and others cuz it wasn't important when I was doing whatever. I'm not sure this is a recent problem, but I can be in the same room and just not hear what's being said. Family plans will be made and I will have no idea because I wasn't paying attention. I was definitely wrapped in my own problems. Sadly that just causes more problems.

"We told you."
"You didn't."
"You were in the room when we talked about it."
"...."

After several years of this happening you'd think people (mostly family members) would realize they need to ask me if I heard. Not just assume I was listening to the conversation. I can hold mostly complete conversations and not remember them. If my attention if focused on something else it's gone.

What people should see when I'm not listening.

I can actually listen to what is being said, just some days it takes more energy than I want to use. Being lazy can cause all sorts of unanticipated problems. On the bright side, if you don't care about being left out of group meetings and pissing off all your extended family members, it really is a much easier way of life.

Buddha is my copilot

It's a literal statement. I have a Buddha statue bookend that a friend gave me (read: I absconded with it) and  have as yet to take into my temporary abode. Temporary because if I don't use that word I get all depressed and feel like a failure for living in my parents basement after getting a college degree. A degree I haven't really used in the last year. Because I am the ultimate in lazy. And exhausted.

There are so many things I took for granted when growing up. Ideas, mostly, but other things. Like the fact that I have parents who let me make my own mistakes. People who let me grow into an adult without the horrors of clinging parents. I will admit that some days I almost wish I'd had parents who took a large interest in me as a teenager. And then I realize how obnoxious and over bearing and irritating that would have been and I am unbelievably thankful my parents have brains. Not that clingy parents don't have brains; they just don't use them.

Complete candor. I thought I was done with the whole social awkwardness thing after high school. And to an extent that's true. It's just awkward in new and unpleasant ways. Like explaining how I really don't want to be in a serious relationship. I really will never be going back to church (exceptions being family events: baptisms and stuff) and while I am thankful I grew up in a minority, conservative religion it is not something I subscribe to anymore. Growing up in a minority group, and it is a minority group even though it has nothing to do with ethnicity or race, can give people a better understanding of love and compassion. Those two ideas have been the prominent cornerstones of my life so far and will continue to be the ideal I measure life by.

All of which is a last ditch effort to keep my family members and friends from being too judgmental when I say that I am not a Christian. Nor will I be leaning that direction for decades, if not the rest of my life. A few people will read this and not be at surprised; the rest will be mildly disappointed but not overly shocked. I really hope there is no one who reads this and is completely shock. If you are completely gobsmacked take comfort in the fact that we must not be friends, or even remote acquaintances anymore.

A large part of me wants to just bury this post, delete it and pretend that everything is fine. And that would be wrong. Both to myself and my family. I have been told I'm brutally honest. Something I've been working to change, honesty is good but brutal honesty can be deadly. Certain situations require tact or just straight up silence. For the last two years I assumed this would be the best case scenario. Just keep quite, don't speak up and don't disappoint anyone.

And now we get to the real problem. I have a fantastic family (a little crazy, but totally awesome) and friends who would drop everything if I needed them. I do not want to be a disappointment. I don't want to become just another statistic that gets shown to teenagers in church school about adults that leave the church. The fear is just about crippling. I grew up with these people, went to little one room grade schools, a boarding academy and a college that were all part of one institution, one religion. I know that I could go to any major city in the world and find an Adventist church. Even if I didn't speak the language, wasn't dressed right and was completely inept in their culture they would take me in. No questions asked. Because we shared a religion. It's kind of awe-inspiring.

When looking back on it I am surprised I could walk away like I did. Granted it wasn't very far and very, very few people knew. And now I guess more do.

Basically what I'm saying is that I can't lie to people anymore. Even by omission. And then asking very nicely that you not hate me.

But mostly it's a huge thank you to Justin. You are possibly the most brave person I know.
And a thank you to Bex, for not letting me crawl into a hole and pretend the world doesn't exist.

The Emergency Room is not to be used for hair cutting

Today is probably the worst day I've had in recent memory. With my new job I have Friday's and Saturday's off. This morning I woke up to my father whistling and yelling that he needed help. Anyone who has roomed with me knows it takes a few seconds for my brain to have any intelligent thoughts. I took too long to answer and my dad burst in my room shouting that he needed help, that he couldn't see and that he needed to go to the hospital. Not exactly a great combination.

I grabbed the first semi clothes like objects I could find, picked up my purse and ran upstairs. My father was in the garage manually pulling the door down. He'd been in the middle of installing the garage door opener when his eyes went wonky, one looking up the other down. He said it lasted for about five minutes. Since he looked okay I asked if he felt good enough for me to put on real clothes before we left for the ER. It only took me about minute to put on real clothes but it felt like an eternity.

When I got back upstairs (it was a good thing I'd gone down to my room to get dressed because my car keys were not in my purse) my father was back up on a ladder finishing the instillation... He took too long to answer questions and insisted on locking the back door before we left. It was rather annoying. If your in pain we need to just go, screw the back door.

Never before have I hated bad drivers so much. Never. I've also never hated school zones like I did today. I will admit that I went over the speed limit. But not a lot. Something was seriously wrong with my father and I couldn't risk the time it would take by being pulled over. Each minute I was stopped at a red light was excruciating; my thoughts spun out of control as I imagined the worst scenarios. I kept thinking he was going to have a seizure and die in the car and it would have been all my fault because I took the time to get dressed. The emotional roller coaster continued until I pulled into the ER drop off; it then went from up and down to pure panic as I watched daddy stagger in the door. Almost blind panic ensued as I went around to the parking garage to park the car. Later I couldn't even remember what floor I'd parked on.

Parking garages confuse me on good days, hospitals are also notoriously confusing. I'd never been in this hospital before, with the exception of when I was born, and almost burst into tears when trying to ask for directions. Thankfully they had rather large signs with easy to follow arrows. It was easy to get around once I'd calmed down enough so I could actually read the signs.

We waited less than a minute after I found the ER waiting room before being pulled back by a way to chipper nurse. Chick needed to detox the caffeine. The feeling of dread that had started when I woke up got strung tighter and tighter as she continued to ask asinine questions. I wanted to shake her and scream "Can't you tell something is wrong with my daddy?"

The only thing that stopped me was knowing nurses are required to ask those questions, that shaking a nurse is a great way to get kicked out and that one of my best friends is a nurse who talks about the crazy people she deals with at work. I don't want to be one of those crazy people. But it was so hard. It couldn't have been more than five or six minutes before she lead us back to the actual ER. At least that's what I assume it was since the entire area was done in overly soothing, sterile, horrifying hospital style. I don't care what experts in psychology say, there is nothing that can sooth people when someone they love is having medical problems Calm is not even registered as a valid emotion.

Another nurse came into the new patient room, number 13 cuz apparently the hospital staff is not superstitious at all (not that I noticed that until afterwords, like right now), and asked all the same questions again. When the doctor finally got there, and honestly in retrospect it took time but not nearly as long as it could have been, he ask all the questions a third time. I was trying to keep my freaking out to a minimum and not succeeding very well. It didn't help that every few seconds the heart monitor would let out a high pitched beeping noise. Every time I sort of got under control it would let out a loud shriek. Not exactly soothing.

The nurse came back and hooked my father up to an IV and the heart monitor. I sat their and watched it all happening, a useless bystander. It hurts to sit and watch someone you love be in pain, to have to sit there and do nothing. After a while I realized my mother did not know what was happening, I thought about calling her but ended up texting her because I didn't want to explain what was happening on voice mail. She showed up a half hour before noon so I could go get some food. One of the first things she commented on was my dad's hair, apparently it was too long and she wanted to give him a hair cut... Some days I cannot believe the things that she does. It's just unreal.

I remember being absurdly grateful when I saw that people didn't have to pay for the parking garage. I've never taken anyone to the hospital before, much less the emergency room and have never thought about the parking space and stuff that hospitals need. While I was out the doctors had him get a CT scan. Apparently he did not have a stroke, he had a pinched vein (or artery, or something like that) which causes all of the same symptoms as a stroke but isn't as bad...? I am still unclear on all of that.

What I do know is that instead of coming home and relaxing like the nurses told him too he is in the garage fixing the door opener... It's enough to make me develop eye twitches. The good news is that he's fine, there was no permanent damage. Unfortunately the doctors don't know why it happens sometimes and not others. Real helpful.

Mommy's out of school for the summer

One of the great things about having a parent who is a teacher is summer vacation, because they get it too. This means my mom is around all summer. Not that I've really had anytime in the last six years to spend with her. But it is nice to be able to hang out with mom and not have to work around her work schedule.

Poor mommy was sick this weekend, it was kind of nasty. She had really bad food poisoning, at least that's what she thinks. It was... bad. I ended up having to drive her to her last day of school, which wasn't to bad since I got free ice cream out of it. It was delicious.

Exciting things happened last week. When I went down to Lincoln I finally picked up my diploma, it's so pretty.  It only took me ten months to pick the stupid thing up. Four years to "earn" a diploma and I can't even be bothered to send in the letter with my home address on it. Fail.

I bought a black frame with matting, it is also pretty. It took me a good five minutes to get the stupid frame on the wall. In my college cheapness I bought a craptastic frame that has a hinged wall hook hangy thing. Everytime I would try to "catch" the hook on the nail it just collapsed. I almost dropped the frame (diploma and all) into the dark depths behind my dresser. The only wall space, and I do mean only, was right above my dresser... I was standing preciously on a folding chair and my dresser trying to hang a frame on a nail several feet above my head. I felt like an idiot. Apparently college does not give real world experience for mounting pictures on walls.

By the time I got the stupid thing up I pretty much fell over laughing. My sister didn't think it was quite as funny, but she found it amusing as well.

I am molting. And it's not pretty

Baby oil is Nirvana.

The worst thing about sunburns is a few days later when skin starts sloughing off like a reptile replacing their scales. It's ugly. It's uncomfortable. It makes me grumpy. Who wants to run around flaking off little pieces of skin?

Plus trying to put anything on a peeling sunburn can be excruciatingly painful. Enough to make me want to run screaming and bash my head through the wall. Even if that wouldn't make me feel better it might be enough so that I pass out for a few hours. I've been running around with an ice pack practically attached to different parts of my body. The skin right under my collar bones is the worst, I move at all and causes this rippling burning sensation. Super painful. Makes it hard to think about anything else.

Which brings me to my next point. Baby oil is Nirvana. It is the only stuff I've been able to put on that doesn't feel like I am dumping molten lava into an open wound. The stuff is fantastic. The only detriment is that I now smell like a baby. And not in a good way. It's that weird kind of stuffy baby smell. At least I don't smell like a dirty baby, so it could be much worse.

I think that sunburns give me a major case ditsy (okay so it's probably not the sunburn, but I like being able to blame it on something other than myself). This week has been full of "Oh... um. My bad?" I dislike being so oblivious. Every single time I've done something stupid it's been in the kitchen.

Mom was getting ready for a picnic lunch and I decided to help her prep the food. She handed me a bunch of celery, told me to slice it up for the potato salad. I grabbed the huge bunch and chopped the bottom off. My mother flipped, apparently we only needed about three stalks instead of all of them. Well, to redeem my failure I decided to help mom peel the eggs, since she wasn't doing a good job. In high school I'd worked on salad bar prep and I remembered how much easier it is to peel eggs if you roll it across the counter, crushing the entire shell (it's pretty cool, it pops right off). I had forgotten that those eggs had been cooled, not straight out of the pot. It seems that just cooked hard boiled eggs will smoosh, all over the place, if you wake them on the counter. Yeah... I then ended up putting a dirty bowl in the pot of cooked potatoes. It was in the sink and I'd thought it was filled with soaking water, not potatoes. My mother was not happy.

Sadly, that was not the end of my reign of terror.

The next day I was cleaning the kitchen and the sink was not draining. Since the clog was on the disposal side I turned it on to take care of the problem. The sink started shaking and it sounded horrible. I thought it might blow up so I turned it off and left the sink alone. The sink seemed to be doing fine and I forgot all about the weird noises. Suppertime rolled around and I tried to open a jar of pesto and ended up dumping oil all over the counter. All over it. Since I had messed up the counter I opted to clean the kitchen after everyone was done eating. The cleaning went just fine, until I knocked over mom's pill box. It fell on the floor, spilled the contents and broke a piece off (mom duck taped it back on). It was about that time I realized the dishrag was missing. I hadn't seen it all day. Yeah, it was in the garbage disposal.

Unfortunately mom still hasn't banned me from the kitchen.

I wish I had a walk in freezer

To hide all the dead bodies. Of course.

Not really. I want it so the next time I get sunburned I can just crawl into it for a few hours. Or so when I find my own method for cryogenic freezing I will already have an place to stash my body. Not that I particularly want to go into cryo, seems like a waste of time. Knowing my luck I would end up like Mr. Freeze from Batman, never able to leave the cold suit thingy.

This would not look good on me. (photo).

Saturday was my Mommy's birthday (she's real old) and we did a picnic lunch birthday party thing. I totally spaced grabbing sunscreen. So did everyone else in my family, we all got burned a little but I got burned a whole lot. It hurts, it hurts like crazy bad. Getting sunburned seems to short circuit my ability to critically analyze ideas. Not like that particular ability is stable normally (hah, never). Because of that I now have a list of things you should never put on your sunburned skin.

Things that don't work on sunburns:
1.Body scrub
(bad, bad idea. I thought that if I used something that exfoliates skin it would help scrap off the burnt skin and I would get better faster. I have no idea if that actually worked, all I know is that if felt like rubbing my skin with sand paper. Not fun).

2. Vitamin E cream
(It just doesn't do anything, it hurts to rub on and does nothing useful).

3. Pain-a-trate
(It's basically the equivalent of icy/hot, I did not know that when I put it on. I would not have tried to use if if I had known that. I just thought it was a topical cream that numbed the skin, which sounded fabulous).

4. Clothes
(Sunburns make me want to join an indoor nudist colony).

Things that work on sunburns:
1. Aloe
(It's the most wonderful stuff ever. Unless it's straight from the plant, in which case it smells awful).

2. Ice
(I am not sure if this actually helps but it makes me feel better).

She loves me a lot

Grade school children and be sweetly naive. I remember doing lots of stupid stuff when I was that age, making dandelion chains, believing boys had cooties and killing daddy long leg spiders (they're super creepy, almost as creepy as the spiders I found in my dorm room two years ago). My friends and I used flowers to determine if our crushes liked us back, I am sure most of you know what I am talking about.

Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!

My older brother was an adorable child, he also had an interesting way of pulling off petals. Instead of doing the normal "she loves me" or "she doesn't love me." He used to pluck the petals and say "she loves me" and then the next petal would be "she loves me a lot." He obviously didn't understand the principle of negative prospects. 

Of course now he has been happily married for ... six years. It might be seven years this summer. Wow, that is a long time. So he had a good reason for believing she loved him a lot.

Museum of childhood horrors

I had a flash back to one of the stupidest things I did as a child. It was not a memory I particularly wanted to think about. I might have been four, maybe five, when I it happened. I pressed my hands into the rough wooden fence and slid my hands about a foot, that was when I pulled my hands away because they hurt.

Yeah. I was not the most intelligent child. I remember running home crying. My father plopped me down into a chair and attacked my hands with tweezers and a pocket knife. It took over two hours to get most of the splinters out. Two hours of sitting in a chair while my father dug into my hands with sharp objects. He spent the entire time lecturing me. It went something like this:

Daddy: "What were you thinking?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Well, why did you do it?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Didn't you realize it would hurt?"
Me: "Yes."
Daddy: "Then why did you do it?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Did you want to get hurt?"
Me: "No."
Daddy: "Then why did you do it?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Did you think it wouldn't give you splinters?"
Me: "No."
Daddy: "Then why did you do that?"
Me: "I don't know."

Brain damage! (shout out to Bill Cosby. I love him.)

Thinking back on it I am still not sure why I did it. I vaguely remember thinking it wouldn't hurt that badly and that I was tough so it wouldn't matter. Like I said, I was not the most intelligent child. It took me years to be able to walk past a wooden fence without wanting to cry. I still don't like to handle wooden objects, especially wooden cooking spoons (they really freak me out).

Surprise, I am the new cookie monster

Yesterday something incredibly exciting and disappointing happened. I found some Tazo Focus tea, it was hiding in my Celestial Seasonings English Breakfast tea box. Very exciting stuff. I have been craving a cup of Tazo Focus for months. Literally months. Since last November, or maybe October, can't remember. There is not a store in Casper that carries the stuff. The closest store that has it stocked was Fort Collins, Colorado. I am not willing to drive down to Fort Collins for a four dollar box of tea.

Especially not this tea. It's not the best tasting stuff in the world, it is kind of nasty tasting. But like circus peanuts I occasionally get a craving for it. It's made out of yerba matte, black tea, orange essence and coca peel. Yeah, it's odd. The first sip is extremely chocolaty but after that it's pretty good. Packed full of caffeine, there is an insane amount of caffeine in Focus tea. Well, to be honest, there is a lot of caffeine in most black teas.

(photo)

Anyway. I got super excited when I found the tea bags. I immediately went and made myself a cup. It was weird, and not weird how I remembered it. That could have been because I put some milk in it. It might have been fine but the only milk I could find was canned... not the best choice.

It was kind of a let down.

But last night was a ton of fun. My sister took me out for Thankful Thursday at the Beacon, it's a country bar. Thankful Thursday is a weekly event and auction to raise money for various groups. This week was for the Reach 4A Star riding academy, they basically do what my best friend wants to do when she "grows-up" if that ever happens (no she is pretty much already there). The auction is hosted by Radio Rick, a local DJ and radio talk show host. It was a super fun night, I especially like the "bidding" wars. Not that anything got outrageously expensive, but they had a shiny box of Godiva chocolates that could not be sold. Someone ended up buying them and re-donating them, my sister eventually ended up getting them because she wanted the shiny box. It was great.

Showering in the space time continuum

I got up freakishly early today, for a variety of reasons. First off I had lost one of my pillows sometime in the night, this is highly disturbing because then I am not cocooned in by pockets of cottony goodness and can't sleep. Then my mother came in, don't even know how early that is, and wanted to talk about me getting a job. And finally I got out of bed, before 9 a.m. (which is just wrong) because the newest resident got hired and needed to take a drug test. Which I then didn't have to take him too, so really I should be back in bed sleeping right now. But I drank to much coffee.

Mommy always turns the dishwasher on right before she leaves for school (she's a teacher, not a student). Normally this doesn't cause any problems, but since I was up so early I wanted to take a shower. Unfortunately someone got in before me, that combined with the dishwasher means I had a cold shower. Cold showers make me extremely grumpy. I tend to take that out on other people in any way I can. Including barraging them with stupid stories from college. It was great.

A COLD shower? I kill you! (photo)

What's even better is that now I am in the house alone, well except for the dog, the cat and the lurking spider (aka my brother). 

While attempting to decide what I should blog about today I ended up letting my coffee get cold. I decided to nuke it and pray the microwave didn't just burn it (it always does anyway, and I drink it anyway). I opened the microwave and there was a plate, an empty dinner plate, just sitting in the middle of the glass tray. It was the most bizarre thing ever. Which can all be explained by the fact that my mother constantly breaks the space time continuum (it's possible!), it must have gotten tired of it and started pushing all of her crap back into the real dimension. Let's just hope that doesn't happen inside somebody's head. Unless it's the lurking spider, he can get a plate in the head, it would be funny.

If they space time continuum was a person it would totally be  him. (Photo)

The difference between gift cards and cash

It seems that for Christmas and my birthday (about a month and a half apart) I have family who will give me money and family who will give me gift cards. It's always the same people too. Which I am all down with. This was first Christmas in several years that I got an actual gift from my grandparents and not a gift card to Borders (I got an easel and it's awesome). Not surprising, since Borders is kaput. *sigh* It makes me super sad.

It sort of like this but the bottom bar doesn't extend the full length 

When I would get the gift card it would always take me longer to decide what I was going to buy than if I just had cash. I do this with all gift cards, it's like since that person took time to decide on a specific store I should pick out something special. The expectations are killer. Not that the people giving me the gift cards care, they only give gift cards because they think cash is impersonal. Which it is, but it's also way easier to spend.

Although when people give me cash I have a tendency to pay off school bills instead of buying myself a present. But education is the best gift there is. My parents got mad at me when the found out I spent all my birthday money on school a few years ago. So now I make sure I never tell them. Or I use the money to pay bills.

Basically if you want me to buy myself something give me a gift card, if you want me to be able to survive financially give me cash.

I love cash.

Not as much as Parker.

I can't find the video clip with her smelling the cash, but this one is funny too.

You scream, I scream, we all scream for Ice Cream!

Some time last summer... two summers ago? I bought an ice cream machine. And just this last week I actually used it. It didn't end up so great. The entire experience reminded me of the very first time I used my waffle maker... only with way less steam/smoke stuff.

Mummy dearest has several packages of ice cream mix stuff, it's all very fancy and there are like two instructions for use. Mix with 2 1/2 cups of whole milk and pour into machine. Somehow I managed to completely screw that up. Apparently it is freakishly difficult to follow orders in this house.

I asked mummy dearest if I could swap out the whole milk with 2% ... she told me to just use canned milk. And then she walked over and handed me a can of sweetened condensed milk. Not even close to the same thing. In all honesty I cannot deride her for her mistake because I have done the same thing twice before (I generally do that about once a year when making gravy, I will open the wrong can). If you have ever opened a can of sweetened condensed milk thinking it was canned milk it would probably have given you a scare. Sweetened condensed milk is viscous and an off white color ... it kind of looks like curdled canned milk.

Well I dump the entire can into the bottom of the ice cream machine, because my mother told me too, and she turns around and freaks out. So I pour about half of the stuff out and then dump in the rest of the package and some 2% milk. I popped on the top and turned the machine on.

About five minutes later it still looks the same. The mixture isn't mixing so I attempted to mix it with a spoon while it's still churning. This would be bad idea number three (#2 being the sweetened condensed milk, we will get to 1 in a moment). The spoon catches on the spinner thing and makes a really bad noise. At this point I decide it is better to just turn it off and mix it by hand (just enough for the stuff to actually be mixed in completely).

Ten minutes later and it still looks completely liquid. Nothing is starting to ice, it doesn't even feel that cold.

The instructions for the ice cream machine state that the bottom part (it's like a giant ice block that doubles as a churning bowl) should be completely frozen before attempting to make ice cream. This process usually takes over four hours. I'd had it in the freezer for maybe three hours (this would be mistake number 1).

Then my parents got all antsy because our home phone wasn't working... Turns out I had unplugged the phone in the kitchen when I plugged in my ice cream machine. The kitchen phone is the main phone system and if it is off no phones will work ... it was not my most brilliant moment.

All in all the mix is sitting in the fridge and the machine is in the freezer waiting to be completely frozen. I started this Thursday and I still don't have my ice cream.

How does five minutes always become hours?

Whenever I call my mother and ask her when she is coming home from the school (she is a teacher) she always says she'll be back in five minutes... and it always, always, always longer. Like waaaaay longer. Around several hours later.

This horrible understanding of time seems to be inherited. My father does it to, but only when referring to work and only when he's talking to my brother. It's rather amusing to hear them talk.

"It's only going to take five minutes."

Six hours later.

"How much longer?"

"Oh, only about five minutes."

"WHAT?"

"..."

It's a rather terrifying problem. And I seem to have inherited it too. Except mine only comes out when I am reading, or watching a movie, or I really, really, really do not want to do something. I can pretty much be an epic pain when I don't want to do something. It's not a pretty sight.

Last night my mother had her school Christmas program... It was pretty good. The singing wasn't so great, but that was only when the kids tried to do a three part harmony. I am going to suggest to her that she stick with single harmony songs. Mostly because it is really difficult to get a group of kids to sing in harmony, much less a rather complex three part song. And she doesn't have that many kids, maybe 20. Probably less. And not all of the kids can sing... not to be mean, but some of them can just not carry a tune. Which is totally understandable, not everyone can sing, and not everyone who can sing is understandable.

When my mom was a kid she would sing duets with her younger brother (my uncle). He would carry the tune wonderfully (he is freakishly musically talented. I am slightly angry I didn't inherit that.) and my mother would "sing" along so everyone could understand what he was saying. She tells the story a lot. Her younger sister joined them after she was born, my aunt was the cute one (this is my addition to the story, my aunt was adorable as a girl and is really beautiful now).

Wow... just wow. Epic fail

My sisters friend is over and he has just introduced me to the most epic fail band ever.

You can watch and decide for yourself if it's worth an epic fail.

And here is another one.

And this one too.

Although, between you and me I think the banana song is freaking hilarious.

Weddings

I spent all last weekend in Lincoln getting ready for my bff's wedding. It was super fun, except for the part during the ceremony where I realized I had absolutely picked the wrong shoes (but there sooo hot). She looked amazing. As soon as I shrink the file sizes down to a manageable size I will post them, mostly so I can have ammunition for embarrassment.

My date to the wedding took all the pictures this last weekend, so it is almost a guarantee they will turn out better than if I had taken them. Just not as fun.

The food was delicious. I think I spent most of the weekend curled up on the floor with a crazy grin. It was super good. Okay, so I didn't ever actual curl up on the floor (except for the party after the wedding), but I really wanted to.

I jacked the pictures from a groomsman's facebook... I hope he doesn't mind. But I will have my pictures up shortly. You know, sometime in March.