Apologies for my lack of babble last week, I was pretty busy. This probably stems from my tendency to wait until the night before the test to read all the readings, but that's life for you.
So dentists. My dentists's name is Dr. Slutskin. I kid you not, that is his real honest-to-goodness name. It wasn't until I was about 13 that I realized his name was actually kind of funny. And I'm sure he got a fair amount of shit for it back in the day.
I have been visiting the office of Dr. Slutskin since I first got teeth or whatever. Whenever you first go to the dentist. Age 5? I don't even know. But it's weird because my entire family goes to see this guy (like Grammy and Grandad too) so he knows the general gist of the fam. This is why I continue to be baffled when he forgets my age.
Dr. Slutskin: So. How old are you now?
Me: 21
Dr. Slutskin: Oh.
I mean, every time he asks me this he's literally holding my file. I've been seeing this guy since I wore OshKosh B'Gosh clothes and he still thought I was 19 last time I went in. Guess I can't blame him too much, he does see a lot of people, but really. He remembers intricate details about my teeth because he brings it up during my brother's visits to compare them, but he can't remember that I'm 21 now?
Also, Dr. Slutskin has incredibly hairy hands. I know because they've been up close and personal near my oral orifice plenty of times. I'm talking knuckles and everything. I'm really glad he wears gloves. Another thing he does is tell me what a 'beautiful smile' I have and then tells me that the 'guys'll be all over you!' (if only I had that problem). I'm still unsure if he's actually complimenting my smile, or complimenting himself for the decade of dental work that he performed on my teeth. Too close to call.
And literally I've had over a decade of intense dental work. I've gone through:
8 retainers
1 bracket
2 years of braces (with those stupid rubber bands)
13 teeth pulled
The first teeth I got pulled included both front ones. Result: I hate the "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" song with a fiery burning passion. It's not funny, it's a family friendly method of assholery! I hope the person who came up with that shit dies in a terrible Amish horse and buggy incident. Jerks. I actually still have the nose thing they use to give you laughing gas. It's bright pink and still smells faintly of bubble gum. Laughing gas is the shit because it makes your entire body feel all weird. They just let me put on my N*SYNC cassette and PTFO in the dental chair while they pull teeth out of my head.
The retainers started when I was in first grade. When you first get retainers, your mouth is really confused and all WTF? so you end up talking like you have serious retardation issues. For days. All the other kids teased me about it because first graders are all little assholes. It sucked. I had retainers for another couple years (the kind you crank to expand your mouth because my mouth wasn't large enough for all my teeth), then a bracket as a mouth place holder, then more retainers, then braces, then finally my last set of retainers.
What sucks more than the retainers themselves are the teeth molds for the retainers.The molds are the consistency of silly putty and they're in these metal teeth shaped things that go in your mouth. You have to hold them there for several minutes so that the molds can dry and get an accurate representation of your chompers. This would be fine, except those metal things are HUGE and take up your entire mouth. So much in fact that it activates my gag reflex and I spend the entire time extremely nauseated, deep breathing, freaking out, and attempting to think of unicorns. When I was 12 it was so bad that I actually threw up on myself. You wanna talk about embarrassing? Not only did I puke on myself in front of the dental assistant and my mom and the dentist, I had to walk out of the office with my shirt covered in my own barf. Gross.
Bad but not nearly as sucky as retainer molds are dental x-rays. Now they're actually OK because they developed some new materials for the film, but back in the day they were awful. I remember getting into fights with the dental assistant because I refused to get dental x-rays. Those suckers hurt! They would cut into my gums and I would bleed. It was like trying to keep goddamn diamond cards in your mouth for 30 seconds a piece. And then of course they had to take a flipping photo at every possible angle. What is this? A goddamn mouth photoshoot?! Get those things away from me! Now the film is much more flexible (think craft foam) and I'm much more amicable about getting dental x-rays.
One thing about the dentist that confuses me is the Sucky Straw. It's that thing that sucks up all your spit when they're cleaning your teeth. They used to suck up my spit for me, but recently they've been letting me be the master of my own fluids. I don't handle the responsibility very well. I'm never sure how much spit is Too Much Spit. Often the dental hygienist just grabs my hand and puppeteers me into doing it. Then I feel lame and awkward. Story of my life.
Another thing that confuses me is the tendency of the dental hygienist to talk to you when they have their hands in your mouth. Am I supposed to respond? Are we even having a conversation? The most I can do without looking completely stupid is grunt and possibly nod.
Braces were annoying too. That waxy crap they give you doesn't do jack. My inner cheeks and gums were all shredded and gross. Ew. The only good part of braces were the rubber bands. In 7th grade Intro to Spanish I sat next to this really annoying guy. Whenever he got too much to handle I used my tongue to flick the rubber bands and send gobs of spit his way. Reallllll mature, I know. Young and stupid, remember?
The epitome of my dental adventures didn't even happen at the dentist. It happened at my friend's house for her sleepover birthday party. The next morning we had chocolate chip chocolate muffins and milk. I love muffins, but I love them even more warm. I got a second muffin, put it on my plate, and then popped it into the microwave for a minute. Then I went about pouring myself a glass a milk. Some seconds later, my friend goes, "Sam! You're muffin is ON FIRE!" I whip my head around and sure enough, there are purple flames inside the microwave. I slam the milk down, jerk open the microwave door, and blow out the flames. As I gingerly pull the plate out, my muffin looks surprisingly unharmed. My retainers, however, are not nearly as lucky.
Upon eating the first muffin I had put my retainers on my plate. Somehow I forgot about them the second time around and they ended up literally getting nuked. The front metal bar of the top retainer completely melted off. Part of the top retainer had melted into the bottom and there was a burnt gash from that. Thankfully, the my friend's microwave was completely untouched. My parents were both like, 'How the hell do you even do something like that?' and they forced me to be the one to call the dentist office and tell them what happened.
This is basically how that phone conversation went down:
Sam: so....I need to schedule an emergency dental appointment
Dentist office: Ok. What exactly did you do?
Sam: I...uh...I accidentally lit my retainers on fire.
DO: .......you WHAT?
Sam: I accidentally lit my retainers on fire. They accidentally got put in the microwave.
DO: You're telling me that you put your retainers in the microwave?
Sam: it was an accident....
DO: Well we have had people flush their retainers down the toilet, throw them away, and somebody's bulldog ate theirs once, but we have never had anybody light theirs on fire before.
Sam: so does that mean I can get an appointment?
DO: I'll see what I can do.
Result: the top retainer was completely ruined but the bottom was salvageable. Dad made me pay him back the $135 retainer replacement costs. No bueno.
Now I have lovely teeth. Or so Dr. Slutskin tells me every time I visit him.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Great Raisin
Before Penelope came in to my life I had another love: The Great Raisin.
The Great Raisin was my first car. He was an '88 Pontiac Bonneville. He was beautiful.
TGR originally belonged to Grammy. I remember riding in him as a kid in my little carseat...back when the tape player still worked. She retired him in 2004 when she bought a minivan because her increasing number of grandkids didn't really fit in TGR anymore.
I acquired TGR when I was 16. I practiced my sick driving skillz in him and generally wrecked havoc on the road and other drivers since I insisted upon driving exactly the speed limit. It drives Kelly and Mike crazy, but I assert that they both have lead foots and drive like maniacs. I've never gotten a speeding ticket, thankyouverymuch.
Anyway, TGR is named The Great Raisin because he was literally wrinkly. See, in the early millennium TGR had a peeling paint problem. So Grandad went to get him repainted. But before he took TGR in for a repainting he got him waxed. I'm not sure what prompted this. Probably a brain fart by Steve. What ended up happening is that all of the paint from the top of the car squished down the sides a little bit, creating a duct tape like texture to make my car actually wrinkly. It also didn't help that TGR was elephant gray.
Before I go blasting TGR was all his faults, I have to say that for an '88 he was pretty technologically advanced. He had power steering, electric locks and windows, ABS brakes, a sunroof, a light-up car diagram that let you know when something was left open, preprogrammed radio station buttons, steering wheel radio controls, and a compass the size of a velveeta cheese slice. Pretty good for being built before Gameboys were invented.
On the other hand, by the time I got ahold of TGR in 2006, he had been around the block a time or two.
1. The AC was broken.
2. The tape player broke in late 90s
3. One of the back doors had a broken lock that had to be manually locked. The rest of the locks worked but you had to press the lock button multiple times.
4. Only 3 out 4 windows actually lowered, another one used to get stuck in the down position.
5. The fabric covering the interior roof was no longer connected to the interior roof. I had to use a push pin to keep it in place or I couldn't see out the back window.
6. The heater worked but it took so long to actually blow warm air that most of the time I just gave up on it and wore winter gear while driving.
7. It ran best on Supreme gas. At the height of the gas price explosion, it cost me $70 to fill up my tank and it probably only got between 10 and 15 miles to the gallon.
8. All of the padding between the doors and the car was pretty much eroded so it used to make a whistling noise when driving down the highway.
9. Sometimes the starter would just be a bitch and TGR wouldn't start.
10. The sunroof leaked like a mofo.
11. The windshield wipers squealed really bad.
The first time I ever got to drive it my Dad was in the passenger seat. As soon as I started backing out of the driveway a huge torrent of rust-stained rainwater gushed from the sunroof opening all over my Dad. The seal of the sunroof was basically shot and there really wasn't much I could do about it. My solution was to stock my car with a box of industrial automotive paper towel things and shove them all around the inside perimeter of the sunroof to soak up as much water as I could. This worked most of the time, but occasionally after huge storms there would be so much water inside the roof of the car that water would dribble out of my front seat light buttons.
Toward the end of my relationship with TGR, he developed some sort of connection shortage in the steering column. Such that he would make the dinging problem noise all the time. Driving in the rain sucked because between the loud DING DING DING DING of the steering column and the SQWUURCH SQWUURCH of the wipers it was like driving in a one woman calliope.
What finally prompted my parents to allow me to get a new car was that TGR liked to just randomly die on me. Occasionally when I was stopped somewhere, the RPM gauge would rev a couple of times and the indicator would bounce up and down, and then the engine would die and every single problem light in the car would blink on. It did this to me multiple times, most often when I was stopped at stoplights. Most the time I could jam it into Park and restart it, but sometimes TGR just wanted to be a little bitch and make people hate me. Other drivers go nuts on you when you don't move at a green light immediately, and it's not like it's MY goddamn fault that my car is is acting like a jackass. It used to be incredibly frustrating.
Probably the best thing about TGR was that it was seriously like driving a tank. This car was made in the mentality of Bigger is Better and I can attest to it being seriously hard to damage. The same guy that I pranked senior year also accidentally hit me in the parking lot one time. He drove a green Toyota Corolla and one time he failed to check behind him before reversing (I actually think he was texting) and scraped the left flank of his car against the front of TGR. His car looks like it had decided to caress a cheese grater. TGR only had a cracked license plate cover. Like I said, I used to drive a tank.
The Great Raisin was my first car. He was an '88 Pontiac Bonneville. He was beautiful.
TGR originally belonged to Grammy. I remember riding in him as a kid in my little carseat...back when the tape player still worked. She retired him in 2004 when she bought a minivan because her increasing number of grandkids didn't really fit in TGR anymore.
I acquired TGR when I was 16. I practiced my sick driving skillz in him and generally wrecked havoc on the road and other drivers since I insisted upon driving exactly the speed limit. It drives Kelly and Mike crazy, but I assert that they both have lead foots and drive like maniacs. I've never gotten a speeding ticket, thankyouverymuch.
Anyway, TGR is named The Great Raisin because he was literally wrinkly. See, in the early millennium TGR had a peeling paint problem. So Grandad went to get him repainted. But before he took TGR in for a repainting he got him waxed. I'm not sure what prompted this. Probably a brain fart by Steve. What ended up happening is that all of the paint from the top of the car squished down the sides a little bit, creating a duct tape like texture to make my car actually wrinkly. It also didn't help that TGR was elephant gray.
 |
| This is me in front of The Great Raisin back in the day. |
On the other hand, by the time I got ahold of TGR in 2006, he had been around the block a time or two.
1. The AC was broken.
2. The tape player broke in late 90s
3. One of the back doors had a broken lock that had to be manually locked. The rest of the locks worked but you had to press the lock button multiple times.
4. Only 3 out 4 windows actually lowered, another one used to get stuck in the down position.
5. The fabric covering the interior roof was no longer connected to the interior roof. I had to use a push pin to keep it in place or I couldn't see out the back window.
6. The heater worked but it took so long to actually blow warm air that most of the time I just gave up on it and wore winter gear while driving.
7. It ran best on Supreme gas. At the height of the gas price explosion, it cost me $70 to fill up my tank and it probably only got between 10 and 15 miles to the gallon.
8. All of the padding between the doors and the car was pretty much eroded so it used to make a whistling noise when driving down the highway.
9. Sometimes the starter would just be a bitch and TGR wouldn't start.
10. The sunroof leaked like a mofo.
11. The windshield wipers squealed really bad.
The first time I ever got to drive it my Dad was in the passenger seat. As soon as I started backing out of the driveway a huge torrent of rust-stained rainwater gushed from the sunroof opening all over my Dad. The seal of the sunroof was basically shot and there really wasn't much I could do about it. My solution was to stock my car with a box of industrial automotive paper towel things and shove them all around the inside perimeter of the sunroof to soak up as much water as I could. This worked most of the time, but occasionally after huge storms there would be so much water inside the roof of the car that water would dribble out of my front seat light buttons.
Toward the end of my relationship with TGR, he developed some sort of connection shortage in the steering column. Such that he would make the dinging problem noise all the time. Driving in the rain sucked because between the loud DING DING DING DING of the steering column and the SQWUURCH SQWUURCH of the wipers it was like driving in a one woman calliope.
What finally prompted my parents to allow me to get a new car was that TGR liked to just randomly die on me. Occasionally when I was stopped somewhere, the RPM gauge would rev a couple of times and the indicator would bounce up and down, and then the engine would die and every single problem light in the car would blink on. It did this to me multiple times, most often when I was stopped at stoplights. Most the time I could jam it into Park and restart it, but sometimes TGR just wanted to be a little bitch and make people hate me. Other drivers go nuts on you when you don't move at a green light immediately, and it's not like it's MY goddamn fault that my car is is acting like a jackass. It used to be incredibly frustrating.
Probably the best thing about TGR was that it was seriously like driving a tank. This car was made in the mentality of Bigger is Better and I can attest to it being seriously hard to damage. The same guy that I pranked senior year also accidentally hit me in the parking lot one time. He drove a green Toyota Corolla and one time he failed to check behind him before reversing (I actually think he was texting) and scraped the left flank of his car against the front of TGR. His car looks like it had decided to caress a cheese grater. TGR only had a cracked license plate cover. Like I said, I used to drive a tank.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Family vacations
Maybe it's just a curse or something, but my family tends to have some weird vacations. I think we're just a magnet for trouble. I've recounted some for you below.
Myrtle Beach
Every year that we don't have some other fancy vacation planned my family goes to Myrtle Beach with my Dad's parents (aka Grandma & Grandad D, not to be confused with the aforementioned Grammy and Grandad C) because they have a timeshare that sleeps six and there's only two of them. So we basically stay in this really nice resort for free. Since we've been going here for so long we like to find new things to do.
One year (I was about 13 or so) my Mom, who has this fetish with lighthouses, decides that she wants to go on a seashell collecting lighthouse boat adventure thing. Kelly can never do anything alone so I get dragged along. This tour-a-ma-jig is in Georgia so we have to wake up at the asscrack of dawn and drive several hours to get there. I was not a happy camper.
So we arrive in Georgia and get on this rinky-dink boat with about 15 other tourists. We motor out to this teeny island with an ugly lighthouse on it. This particular island is located where a river meets an ocean and the only visitors are the people that go on these twice a day tours so it apparently has some gorgeous seashells. Mom also has an obsession with seashells.
The tour guide people tell us we have an hour and a half to go exploring but we have to be back on time. Mom and I split up and go searching for shells. This island is shaped like a 'U' with the boat moored at the bottom. I make it all the way up one side and then turn back. As I make my way back to the boat I pass Mom, who is busy collecting shells. I make a point to tell her that she'd better turn back now or she might not make it to the boat on time. Kelly is one of the most chronically late people on the planet so I already know that shit is going down.
I make it back to the boat with 10 minutes to spare. It is 1:50pm. We are supposed to be back at 2pm. As the minutes tick by more and more people arrive back at the boat. At 2:03pm just guess who the one person not back is? Yeah, my mom.
2:10pm: I start to worry
2:20pm: I'm getting nervous.
2:25pm: We can finally see Mom as a speck in the distance.
2:35pm: Mom is significantly closer to the boat but still pretty far. The boat driver/tour guide guys are getting pissed.
2:40pm: Boat driver guy decides to leave--without my mom. I plead with him to just wait a little longer, but he's adamant. At this point, the other tourists on the boat have sort of realized what is going on. I'm nearly in tears because I'm 13 and about to be stuck in a Georgia marina for several hours until the second tour comes back with Mom in tow and I have no money and no cell phone and this is a flippin' life crisis. The boat driver starts to prepare the boat to leave until this one guy jumps up and says in a Texas drawl, "I am a lawyer, and if you leave this little girl's mother I will sue!" I am absolutely mortified, but slightly relieved that the boat driver has opted to argue with Lawyer Man instead of driving off without my mom.
2:50pm: Kelly FINALLY makes it back to the boat. Only fifty minutes late. I spend the return boat trip sitting as far away from her as possible to make our relationship less evident.
Turns out that Mom was so ridiculously late because she kept seeing conch shells washing up in the waves. Some of Kelly's favorite things ever are complete conch shells. I mean, yeah the shells she brought back were beautiful, but she left me hanging on a boat with a hostile boat driver and a litigation-happy tourist for some goddamn seashells. Thanks Mom, glad to see where your priorities lie.
It might have been the same week of the Seashell Incident or the next year (can't remember) when Kelly dragged me to the antiques store. Another one of Kelly's fav things are antiques (other things she enjoys are jewelry, Christmas ornaments, shoes, reality tv, vacations, and smutty romance novels). She is especially enamored with 1950s era dresses that Leave It To Beaver type mothers wore back in the day. This giant antiques superstore place just happens to have a whole rack of them. She decides she wants to try them on.
Since I guess people don't normally have to try on antiques this place has no dressing room. There is however, a single unisex bathroom that we are welcome to use to try these dresses on. We get in this bathroom and she tries on the first dress. She manages to get it on over her head and with some wiggling down to where one might normally wear a dress. The zipper, sewn on the side armpit, is in no way getting zipped. She is just too big. She then attempts to remove the dress by pulling it over her head. Instead she gets the dress stuck on her ample bosom.
Now, I wear a 38C and I have the smallest boobs in my family. Kelly is the proud owner of a large rack of 36DDs. Picture this: we are in this teeny bathroom. My Mom is stuck in this dress with her arms pinned above her head and the dress shrouding her face. I thought it was pretty damn funny. She does not think it is nearly as amusing and demands I come help her. It only takes about a minute to get the first dress off.
Instead of learning her lesson, Kelly is holding out that the other dress she brought in will fit. I don't understand why she thinks she could fit into dresses handmade for other, much smaller women, but who am I to judge. She forces herself into the second dress--which does fit slightly better since we can zip this one up most of the way--but it is still pretty tight. In her attempt to get this dress off she gets stuck again, except this time she gets really stuck. I don't even understand how she got it on in the first place. I start laughing again, but try to help her out. The dress won't budge. It is really hard to get someone out of a vintage dress without ripping the stupid thing. But anyway, five minutes later we are still trying to get her unstuck (she was in the same arms-over-head face-covered-in-dress-fabric scenario) when there is an insistent knock on the door. Somebody apparently has to use the bathroom pretty badly. The added complication of a person waiting to use the bathroom we are currently in makes me laugh harder.
Mom and I continue to struggle with the dress, meanwhile the lady outside the door sounds like she's about to pee her pants in bladder agony. I'm about to pee my own pants inside the bathroom because I'm laughing so hard. We finally get the dress off, after much wiggling and huffing and puffing and tugging. As we exit the bathroom the waiting lady shoots us a dirty look and make a beeline for the toilet. I continue to laugh about this for several hours and I am sure to recount the whole story for the rest of my family.
Disney World
When I was in 5th grade my family took our first trip to Most Magical Place on Earth. I was uuber excited because this was like the first time ever that I'd gotten to skip school for anything remotely cool. Plus I'm 11 and 11 year olds always flip their shit for Disney World.
Long story short, we went to Disney World for 10 days and kept a god-awful packed schedule that Kelly drummed up. On our second to last night there, Grandad (Steve) woke up in the middle of the night having an asthma attack. He was also having chest pain so at 3am we had to call the ambulance. After getting to the hospital, they discover that Steve has three blocked arteries and they schedule him for an angioplasty. Grammy and Grandad had to stay in Florida for an extra two weeks.
The second time we went to Disney World we stayed in this really nice resort place. There was a day that we left unscheduled and were all taking naps when the fire alarms start screeching. We all freak out and evacuate the building. Turns out a couple of kids in the room below us were playing Pirates with some Peter Pan swords and accidentally hit the sprinkler head, causing the entire room--and the two rooms below it--to flood. Thankfully we dodged a bullet on this one.
Rehobeth DE
Labor Day Weekend a couple years ago.
Mom, who lives--and I seriously mean lives--for vacations of any sort, convinces me to go to the beach with her for the weekend. Dad and Danny were off galavanting with the Boy Scouts or something and she was not having any of that left-behind shit. Carly came with us because her aunt was letting us stay in their gated community beach house. We ended up leaving really late (like 9pm) because Kelly can't be on time for anything. Not that we were on any schedule, but it takes several hours to drive there and I really didn't want to get there obscenely late.
We finally arrive at the house (after getting a bit lost) and park in the driveway. We get the house key from the secret code key hiding place thing, and go to open the door. The key fits in the front door lock but it won't turn. We grab some flashlights from the car to get a better view of the lock. Now, it's almost one in the morning. We are grouped up at the front door with flashlights. We probably look like a group of really bad burglers. I'm actually surprised there weren't cops patrolling the neighborhood because I'm sure we looked like Probable Cause on a platter.
After an hour of attempted to break ourselves in to the house, we realize there is no hope and that we're going to have to sleep in the minivan. We literally laugh ourselves silly at the absurdity of the situation. But there's nothing we can do about it until the service center opens at 10am the next morning.
The next morning we hit up McDonald's for breakfast, and then hit the hardware store for some WD-40. We lubricate the fuck out of that lock, but it's still a no-go. Finally 10am rolls around and we go to the maintenance office. We explain our plight to the secretary, who laughs at us. When the guy with the spare keys finally gets there, he takes one look at us lounging on the waiting room couches and goes, "Are you the car sleepers?"
(Turns out that somebody had previously tried to break into the house and had broken some of the tumblers in the front door lock. I maintain that if we had only gotten there earlier we would have figured this out much sooner and could have managed to get in the house that night.)
Hawaii
In the summer of 2008 my family + Grandma/Grandad D + my aunt/uncle/2 cousins went on a two week Hawaiian vacation. We were taking a weeklong island hopping cruise and then staying a week in Kauai. Every day we stopped at a different island to do excursions. On our second day on the cruise we went snorkeling. Dumbass Kelly, who is diabetic and has an insulin pump, forgot to remove it before jumping into the Pacific, and thus snorkeled with it on for several hours before she realized she completely obliterated the circuitry on it.
Insulin pumps take the place of daily insulin shots. With her pump out of commission, Mom had to give herself insulin shots for the first time in nearly 15 years. Problem is, she didn't bring any needles. This resulted in an emergency trip to the only WalMart in Hawaii to buy syringes en masse. Only my family would have to go to WalMart to buy needles. People probably thought we were heroin addicts or something. Also happening during this time was Mom trying to get in touch with MiniMed (the pump manufacturer) so that they could send her a new pump. Now, we are on an island hopping cruise in a completely different time zone from the one in California (where Minimed HQ is). The company ended up having to send the package to three different Hawaiian islands before we finally intercepted it. The package would make it to the island we were on, but it wouldn't get to the pick up point before we had to return to this ship and I'll be damned if I'm getting left on a relatively remote tropical paradise because UPS fails at life. Kelly didn't end up getting her new pump until Tuesday of the second week.
Cooperstown, NY
The Family Vacation of 2007 was a trip to Cooperstown, NY to see Cal Ripken Jr. get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. My Dad is a baseball fanatic, and only a baseball fanatic would make his wife plan a vacation like this six years in advance.
The first problem with this vacation was our hotel. Because Kelly was so worried about getting a place close enough to Cooperstown, and because she booked this hotel more than a year in advance, we ended up staying over an hour away from the damn town. In a Holiday Inn Express. Holiday Inn Expresses are not meant to house a family of four for an entire week. They are meant for people who are on the express. They were also never meant to house the luggage of the likes of someone like Kelly.
My family of four drives a seven passenger minivan. For family vacations we put a cartop carrier on the roof of it. It doesn't matter if we're staying for the weekend or a week, this vehicle is always packed to the brim. It's not my fault, because I generally pack my suitcase, a backpack or laptop bag, and a purse. And it's not Danny's fault, because he packs less than I do. It's Kelly's fault (what else is new?). She generally packs: the largest suitcase (she shares it with Dad), a bathroom bag, backpack, purse, laptop bag, shoe bag, pillows, jackets, and any other odds and ends she thinks we have the potential to need (she's a 'you never know' kind of packer).
Between the luggage of all four of us, there is barely room to move. The room consists of two queen sized beds, a tv, a single dresser, a couch chair, and the bathroom. There's an outdoor pool, but it only goes to 5ft and it's really lame. This place sucks.
The first day we're there we drive up to Cooperstown to go the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum. I didn't really mind, first of all because I kind of dig history, and second of all because I wanted to get a look around. I was in the museum for about an hour and forty-five minutes. Kelly, Mike, and Danny were in the museum for over four hours. I wanted to kill myself. Like most other things, Kelly is fascinated with history so when you take her to a museum be prepared to stay awhile because she will read every goddamn plaque and infocard in there. But only three hours was in the actual museum; they spent the rest of the time in the giftshop.
In the drive to get there I got a good look at the place and I realized I was doomed: every single thing in the town of Cooperstown is baseball related. Everything. Even the post office uses baseball themed stamps. I generally don't mind sports (I actually played t-ball as a kid), but I do have a level of saturation and Cooperstown definitely exceeded that level. Kelly and I had sort of planned on going off to do some shopping or something but where the hell were we going to go? Denied.
Even worse, the HIE where we stayed was in Jamestown, NY. There was a Peebles, a really rickity movie theater (there were actual springs still in the cushions), a Subway, and that was pretty much it. Jamestown was pretty much Hell on Earth as far as 17-year-old me was concerned. One night we decided to go and find the closest WalMart, just for something to do (my life hit a new low). It was 45 minutes away.
So basically the options are to A) drive to Cooperstown or B) sit in the hotel room. And once Kelly and I had explored CTown on the first day, we both knew that there really wasn't much for us to do. And by 'not much' I mean nothing. Mike ended up renting an extra car so that he and Danny could go to CTown and Mom and I could go do other way better things. This didn't amount to much, since the most exciting thing we did was drive around until we found Saratoga Springs (it's beautiful up there, by the way).
Mind you, this is our family vacation. On family vacations you're supposed to spend time together as a family. Lies. This turned into Dad's vacation with the rest of us along for the ride. Ask him, and he'll tell you it's the best vacation he's ever had. Literally, he spent the entire week with a childlike grin on his face. But for the rest of us it was utterly miserable. To make things worse, we didn't even get to go to Myrtle Beach that year because the Hall of Fame Induction and Grandma/Grandad's vacation overlapped. Suckiest Vacation Ever.
Prank skank
Senior Prank
There was no way I was leaving high school without making my mark in some significant way. My original idea was to acquire a shitload of condoms and tape them all over the school. That way I couldn't get in trouble for anything because I was "promoting safe behaviors". This was until I figured out how expensive condoms actually are. There went that idea.
What I actually did was write a fake letter. My friend's mom gave me the idea. It was genius.
I pranked a guy who I had a giant crush on for years. He's delicious to look at and pretty smart, but our social ideals totally clash and he's really Catholic, and well, I'm not. I'd seen him get agitated a few times so I knew that he was the type of person to react first and think later. He was also really popular (NHS president and captain of the football team) and everybody knew him.
The letter (I spent an hour trying to get a good copy the school letterhead so it looked legit) said something along these lines: We know you're a good student, but unfortunately you are 1/2 a technology credit short of your graduation requirements. To fix this you can either A) take night classes or B) enroll in summer school. It was signed by me in the name of a guidance counselor that I completely made up. The second page of the letter was the information enrollment form that he was supposed to 'fill out and sign'. The body of the second form had a place to fill in his name with something like: "I _______, the undersigned, have been totally and completely duped by this awesome prank."
I was pretty sure that he'd read the letter, flip out, and then give the second page a once over and not really read it. I was right.
My friend Antlers was a guidance aide and offered to do the letter delivering for me. I was safely tucked away in AP Biology. Antlers told me that she stayed behind to watch through the door window and that JM threw a fit in the classroom. What he did next I wasn't really expecting.
When the bell rang to end 1st period he stomped his way down to the guidance office and proceeded to make a complete ass of himself in front of all the guidance counselors. He flipped a total shit and was dropping bleep bombs all over the place. Eventually, Antlers (she took pity on his poor soul) told him to read the second page. He did, and then got pissed all over again. Now he was not only steamed at having been pranked, but he was probably pretty embarrassed for making such a scene. Total win.
I popped into the guidance office right after this had gone down to get some eye witness accounts of the action. One of the GCs read the fake letter and told me that it was so legit even she had thought it was real. Double win. Everyone was amused (except JM). The coolest part was that the old high school rumor mill turned in my favor for once, and everyone found out about it. Even JM, who eventually discovered that I was the cause of his 'failure to graduate' letter, admitted that it was a good prank. Let's reiterate: I am a genius.
The other prank that I'm really proud of was in retaliation to a prank played on me. My friend's brother Scottald had one night lubed up my car door handles and Antlers' windshield wipers. We vowed to get him back. I got the chance to housesit for Scottald's family while they were on vacation and of course I'm going to take advantage of it. Antlers had to work but she was supportive anyway.
It took me nearly 8 hours and $30 in post-it notes and pom poms, but my revenge was complete.
There was no way I was leaving high school without making my mark in some significant way. My original idea was to acquire a shitload of condoms and tape them all over the school. That way I couldn't get in trouble for anything because I was "promoting safe behaviors". This was until I figured out how expensive condoms actually are. There went that idea.
What I actually did was write a fake letter. My friend's mom gave me the idea. It was genius.
I pranked a guy who I had a giant crush on for years. He's delicious to look at and pretty smart, but our social ideals totally clash and he's really Catholic, and well, I'm not. I'd seen him get agitated a few times so I knew that he was the type of person to react first and think later. He was also really popular (NHS president and captain of the football team) and everybody knew him.
The letter (I spent an hour trying to get a good copy the school letterhead so it looked legit) said something along these lines: We know you're a good student, but unfortunately you are 1/2 a technology credit short of your graduation requirements. To fix this you can either A) take night classes or B) enroll in summer school. It was signed by me in the name of a guidance counselor that I completely made up. The second page of the letter was the information enrollment form that he was supposed to 'fill out and sign'. The body of the second form had a place to fill in his name with something like: "I _______, the undersigned, have been totally and completely duped by this awesome prank."
I was pretty sure that he'd read the letter, flip out, and then give the second page a once over and not really read it. I was right.
My friend Antlers was a guidance aide and offered to do the letter delivering for me. I was safely tucked away in AP Biology. Antlers told me that she stayed behind to watch through the door window and that JM threw a fit in the classroom. What he did next I wasn't really expecting.
When the bell rang to end 1st period he stomped his way down to the guidance office and proceeded to make a complete ass of himself in front of all the guidance counselors. He flipped a total shit and was dropping bleep bombs all over the place. Eventually, Antlers (she took pity on his poor soul) told him to read the second page. He did, and then got pissed all over again. Now he was not only steamed at having been pranked, but he was probably pretty embarrassed for making such a scene. Total win.
I popped into the guidance office right after this had gone down to get some eye witness accounts of the action. One of the GCs read the fake letter and told me that it was so legit even she had thought it was real. Double win. Everyone was amused (except JM). The coolest part was that the old high school rumor mill turned in my favor for once, and everyone found out about it. Even JM, who eventually discovered that I was the cause of his 'failure to graduate' letter, admitted that it was a good prank. Let's reiterate: I am a genius.
The other prank that I'm really proud of was in retaliation to a prank played on me. My friend's brother Scottald had one night lubed up my car door handles and Antlers' windshield wipers. We vowed to get him back. I got the chance to housesit for Scottald's family while they were on vacation and of course I'm going to take advantage of it. Antlers had to work but she was supportive anyway.
It took me nearly 8 hours and $30 in post-it notes and pom poms, but my revenge was complete.
 |
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
This is a first
I made it all the way to Sunday without something crazy happening to me. I had even already told Sarah that I didn't have any stories. Of course, this is definitely not the first time I've had to eat my words.
Every Sunday a bar up the street from me has Trivia from 10pm-1am. Though not up to Jeopardy snuff, I do have a cranium packed with various pop culture facts and splashes of knowledge about other weird things too. Also, Soxhat was visiting for the weekend, so the two of us plus Ghost decided to do trivia.
First of all, I told them to meet me there at 9:30. They were both late, causing me to sit in a cafe for 15 minutes sitting awkwardly by the window by myself. This is only worth mentioning because I overheard this tidbit from the table next to me: "Apparently he thinks flowers and chocolate are just for whores!" Just for the record, I don't think said boyfriend is ever getting any. Unless he strictly buys diamonds, and then he's getting a lot.
Anyway, they finally arrive, we go to the bar, we sit down and catch up on life.
Our trivia team name is Horse E-books. Ghost follows this ridiculous twitter by the same name and he and Soxhat are both obsessed. I am sad that I jokingly suggested it because I'm then outvoted. Of the other teams, my favorites were: Quiz in My Pants, Touched By An Uncle, and I Don't Do Cocaine I Just Like the Smell of It. (I was texting another friend of mine and she said last weeks best was "The Only Thing That Pulls Out is My Couch")
Then we start talking. Apparently, Ghost (who has known me for two years) has always thought I was bisexual. What?? NO. That is not what I'm going for here. I may be on the edgier side of normal but I am totally straight. There's nothing wrong with being bi (or any other type of homosexuality for that matter) but I'm really gearing for heterosexual straight men. Not girls. Soxhat and Ghost then begin to analyze the situation and come to the conclusion that my short hair is at fault along with my nose piercing and ballsy persona. Well thanks guys.
The conversation continues on with Ghost lamenting about his love life. The poor guy can't seem to find a girlfriend and spent most of the night wallowing in self pity. He only had two beers, so alcohol was definitely not the cause. This eventually leads up to him seriously asking me to sleep with him. WHAT. THE. FUCK? Soxhat can hardly breathe he's laughing so hard. I'm gaping like a fish because #1) I'm extremely shocked and #2) not entirely sure how to go about the situation without further crushing Ghost's self-esteem to the point of no return. Several more seconds of shock pass before I settle on the course of least resistance, "Uh, no. Ghost I am not sleeping with you. There is no way. Not happening. Ever." This comes after he asked me to marry him for the third time (the first two times were last year in an exceedingly drunk escapade) and I refused. Again.
Just to be clear, Ghost and I have never been in a relationship that resembles anything other than friendship. Occasionally I will go with him to radio parties (he's a radio DJ) but that's about it. We are not dating, nor will we ever date. He's an interestingly awkward fellow but in no way my kind of dating material. The chances of that happening are approximately -14. The chances of me sleeping with him spur of the moment or ever are nonexistent. Never Ever. EVER. Ew.
It kind of got a little weird after that. Ghost was sitting next to me and Soxhat was across from us watching all this go down. Ghost eventually ends up suctioned to my arm like a particularly pesky octopus, and when I attempt to shake him off he mumbles, "Just humor me, mmkay? I just need some human contact." So I then became his living love doll. Occasionally he would try to get frisky with the digits, and then I'd be like, "Ghost, NO." and chastise him like a bad puppy. Let's just say that it was excessively awkward, even for me. It was certainly the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.
We lost in trivia, but it did have some bright points like the THREE Disney questions! I love Disney questions! The first of which was "The theme song 'A Whole New World' came from which Disney movie?" Of course it's Aladdin, all three of us knew that. But immediately after writing the answer down, Soxhat and Ghost start serenading me in the middle of the bar with 'A Whole New World', complete with scarily accurate falsetto. I wish I had videotaped it.
Also, for anyone who ever wanted to know, Bon Jovi's first single was "You Give Love A Bad Name" and some old French mathematician invented the roulette, and the Japanese bombed the Philippines the day after they bombed Pearl Harbor. Also, Muhammed Ali dodged the draft back in the day, natural gas smells like nothing, and I still can't remember for shit what RADAR actually stands for.
Every Sunday a bar up the street from me has Trivia from 10pm-1am. Though not up to Jeopardy snuff, I do have a cranium packed with various pop culture facts and splashes of knowledge about other weird things too. Also, Soxhat was visiting for the weekend, so the two of us plus Ghost decided to do trivia.
First of all, I told them to meet me there at 9:30. They were both late, causing me to sit in a cafe for 15 minutes sitting awkwardly by the window by myself. This is only worth mentioning because I overheard this tidbit from the table next to me: "Apparently he thinks flowers and chocolate are just for whores!" Just for the record, I don't think said boyfriend is ever getting any. Unless he strictly buys diamonds, and then he's getting a lot.
Anyway, they finally arrive, we go to the bar, we sit down and catch up on life.
Our trivia team name is Horse E-books. Ghost follows this ridiculous twitter by the same name and he and Soxhat are both obsessed. I am sad that I jokingly suggested it because I'm then outvoted. Of the other teams, my favorites were: Quiz in My Pants, Touched By An Uncle, and I Don't Do Cocaine I Just Like the Smell of It. (I was texting another friend of mine and she said last weeks best was "The Only Thing That Pulls Out is My Couch")
Then we start talking. Apparently, Ghost (who has known me for two years) has always thought I was bisexual. What?? NO. That is not what I'm going for here. I may be on the edgier side of normal but I am totally straight. There's nothing wrong with being bi (or any other type of homosexuality for that matter) but I'm really gearing for heterosexual straight men. Not girls. Soxhat and Ghost then begin to analyze the situation and come to the conclusion that my short hair is at fault along with my nose piercing and ballsy persona. Well thanks guys.
The conversation continues on with Ghost lamenting about his love life. The poor guy can't seem to find a girlfriend and spent most of the night wallowing in self pity. He only had two beers, so alcohol was definitely not the cause. This eventually leads up to him seriously asking me to sleep with him. WHAT. THE. FUCK? Soxhat can hardly breathe he's laughing so hard. I'm gaping like a fish because #1) I'm extremely shocked and #2) not entirely sure how to go about the situation without further crushing Ghost's self-esteem to the point of no return. Several more seconds of shock pass before I settle on the course of least resistance, "Uh, no. Ghost I am not sleeping with you. There is no way. Not happening. Ever." This comes after he asked me to marry him for the third time (the first two times were last year in an exceedingly drunk escapade) and I refused. Again.
Just to be clear, Ghost and I have never been in a relationship that resembles anything other than friendship. Occasionally I will go with him to radio parties (he's a radio DJ) but that's about it. We are not dating, nor will we ever date. He's an interestingly awkward fellow but in no way my kind of dating material. The chances of that happening are approximately -14. The chances of me sleeping with him spur of the moment or ever are nonexistent. Never Ever. EVER. Ew.
It kind of got a little weird after that. Ghost was sitting next to me and Soxhat was across from us watching all this go down. Ghost eventually ends up suctioned to my arm like a particularly pesky octopus, and when I attempt to shake him off he mumbles, "Just humor me, mmkay? I just need some human contact." So I then became his living love doll. Occasionally he would try to get frisky with the digits, and then I'd be like, "Ghost, NO." and chastise him like a bad puppy. Let's just say that it was excessively awkward, even for me. It was certainly the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.
We lost in trivia, but it did have some bright points like the THREE Disney questions! I love Disney questions! The first of which was "The theme song 'A Whole New World' came from which Disney movie?" Of course it's Aladdin, all three of us knew that. But immediately after writing the answer down, Soxhat and Ghost start serenading me in the middle of the bar with 'A Whole New World', complete with scarily accurate falsetto. I wish I had videotaped it.
Also, for anyone who ever wanted to know, Bon Jovi's first single was "You Give Love A Bad Name" and some old French mathematician invented the roulette, and the Japanese bombed the Philippines the day after they bombed Pearl Harbor. Also, Muhammed Ali dodged the draft back in the day, natural gas smells like nothing, and I still can't remember for shit what RADAR actually stands for.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Blast from the past 2005 part II
13th July 2005
so today i got up around like, 10ish or so. i flittered around the house. then lanes mom came over and told me that i was invited to her bible study session. i really am a woose, i have a really hard time saying 'no' to people. so now im stuck with a bible study class and a book called: A Young Woman After God's Own Heart: A Teen's Guide to Friends, Faith, Family and the Future.
i do not need help with my friends my faith my future or my family. (although i think my family needs help sometimes)
me and my enormously gigantic mouth.
15th July 2005
had my first bible study group today with lizzy, lane and myself. (damn you carly for talking your way out of it) it was torture. the whole time i was trying to hide behind my book but mrs. d was like dont hide behind your book. and then she had us read the first chapter of that hideous book outloud. that lady (the author of the book) was seriously high when she wrote that book. that, or she was delusional. she wrote the book like she was talking to a child. i DO NOT appreciate being addressed like a child. that is one of the few things that set me off. then mrs d goes on to say stuff like god loves you, and he is the creator and all this other stuff. i listened of course, and i understood the message she was trying to send, but that doesnt mean i have to believe it. at one point she told me and lizzy that we were blessed for having families that care for us and love us. and then she goes on to talk about how you see elementary school kids dressed in shorts in the middle of winter because their parents dont care for them properly. then i thought, well if god loves everybody, then why did he screw that kid over???? i mean if he loves everybody, then he must love that kid too. but maybe not.
July 28th 2005
i was saved from starvation today by the miraculous finding of a can of spaghettio's in the way way back of the canned food cabinet. So, i had it for lunch. even better, there were TWO cans of spaghettio's, so i can even have one for lunch tomarrow. (for breakfast im having leftover turkey burgers, i already called dibs on them). Yay.
18th August 2005
i DO NOT look like elvis. period. not one bit. i Definetly do not resemble him at all.
somehow mary grace, katie, erin, terra, and kniffen got it into their heads that i look like elvis. i do not think i look like elvis, and neither does becca, , jesse, sara, erin r, or all the other people i asked. so now erin is calling me elvis. maybe it would be okay if i looked anything like him, but i dont.
3rd September 2005
i just got back from school supply shopping with grammy. but im still mad at mom for bng an anal fruit loop. wanna know what we got into an argument about? mechanical pencils. yeah. what a freak. i just bought a pack of colored pens with like 8 colors, so now i can color code in even more prettyness.
(now: I am totally whipping out the insult "Anal Fruit Loop" sometime this week)
1st October 2005
i have just finished de-peanutbuttering myself. i no longer smell like a third-graders luch, but like that shampoo i have in the orange bottle. (i dont even know what kind it is cause i buy whatever i have a coupon for.)
i half watched Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which from the parts that i was actually paying attention to, was a pretty good movie. fell asleep on the chair and woke up to marty (note: Marty is a dog) licking peanut butter off my hand. then i went upstairs and they all told me to go look at myself in the mirror, so i did. i had PB everywhere. all over my face, my hands, in my hair, all over my shirt, and i smelled like PB.
17th October 2005
i tried to fix my headphones with super-glue. it worked, but i ended up gluing some of my hair to it because i was watching a movie, so i put them on.
its very awkward to have big clunky headphones glued to your head.
so i had to rip out some of my hair. it hurt. now im minus a clump of hair.
1st November 2005
did i mention that i am now the proud owner of a tivo? best invention ever. i tested it out with taping a full 10 hours of "I Love the 80s 3D" then i watched them and fast forwarded through all the parts where i dont know what they are talking about. it was fun.
and the best part is, it makes that little beepy noise. ITS THE COOLEST NOISE EVER!!!!
4th November 2005
Today is friday, but i just feel like blah. im so tired, i fell asleep on the living room floor with dannys bean bag on my back cause i was cold. i think i looked like a passed out turtle on drugs or something. and i had one of those old navy tank tops on so my stomach had little imprint lines from my tank top. like i had just got out of jail or something. if you cant already tell, im still kinda out of it, im just tired for reasons unbeknownst to me.
i kinda want to go to chapters tomarrow just to cheer on meade and glen burnie and to see the other bands but i dont know if mom or dad would take me. hmmm.
even though he still deserves to die, hiney earned some cool points when he admitted to owning the first 3 seasons of Family Guy and that he hasn't had time to watch the simpsons in months.
our bus driver is weird. she lets you get away with anything. some guys stuck their asses out the window today and all she did was laugh. im starting to seriously think that if i called her a bitch or something (i would never actually do this cause shes really nice) she would just laugh at me. shes cool.
6th November 2005
mom and i went into walmart and i got Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith. omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg! hes soooooooooooo hot!!!!!!! i was literally drooling during the movie. and that one part, where he has no shirt on? omg. HOTTY!!!! (hes only hot till Obi Wan cuts his legs off and he is burned alive)
and Yoda, who is the coolest little green guy ever, hes not hot, but hes still cool.
10th November 2005
so my dad has committed tree homicide. i asked him to get me the drivers handbook, so what does he do? he prints it out. all 104 pages. plus the other booklest thats like 50 pages. literally. not front and back pages, but single pages. so now i have the equivilent of a tree sitting on my desk. poor tree. and when i ask him about it, i figure hes gonna say something along the lines of "well im killing the ozone layer when i drive there to get it." bullshit. the trees are what help repair the ozone layer. hello???? come on, really save the trees. i should be a tree hugger or something. i should just randomly go up and hug trees. trees are nice.
(now: This, ladies and gents, is what we call foreshadowing)
16th November 2005
today started out really bad and then it got better. i woke up late, missed my bus, couldnt find any lunch money, had to learn about imaginary numbers in alg 2(who the hell gets bored enough to just MAKE UP numbers. wth???)
19th November 2005
im cleaning out my brothers closet and i found a christmas list he wrote last year (he was 7) that says:
Dear Santa Claus
Thank you for giving us gifts. Will you bring lots of presins this time for all of us in the class. Wait is your Eves dooing rite now I bet it is hard raping the gifts your pal? Danny.
omg, i cracked up. "raping the gifts" is just too much. and the spelling errors are just hilarious.
20th November 2005
me, lauren g, lauren b, carly, liz and mrs brandy all went to baskin robins/dunkin donuts on the way to the GS thing. first we all had trouble ordering, cuase we couldnt decide, so we told the lady to hold on a sec. then while we were talking we heard the girl talking and stuff cause i guess she didnt know her mike was on.
girl: bob, are those done yet?
(about a minute later)
girl: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT????
(we sit there in stunned silence for a sec and start cracking up)
carly:i bet you its on fire or somthing.
(a few seconds later)
girl:(talking to us now) umm...can you hold on a sec, theres a fire in here, the donuts got stuck in the oven.
carly: what did i tell you guys?
(we all further crack up.)
omg, it was really funny, and we were in line for about 20 minutes.
and i now have a myspace
22nd November 2005
played mario DDR. funny stuff. you go on an adventure to rescue the stars with toad and all your problems are solved by dancing.
mountain? dance over it.
river? dance across it.
bully? kick his ass in a dance off.
giant squid? ditto.
and luigis dance moves? he beats yous all.
1st December 2005
this is my hawthorne imitation. i got the idea from a new movie coming out(hint hint): (we had to write about an entry way. i was going for a mysterios/old/wise mood.
the door
A snaking line of insipid ants, curved along well-worn floorboards, intermixed with dust; some largely stashed in ominous corners and the rest strewn about the place; the former of which were ambling about beneath the cobwebby underside of an aged wardrobe, draped in a white sheet.
The now old and shabby wardrobe had entered this life from an oak tree even more so ancient. It was nailed, and sanded, and buffed, and primed for a long life outside the workshop. But still decades after it was created and decades before now, a young mother fell in love with it at auction and brought it home to her growing family. In this home the wardrobe became the center of the hustle and bustle of a continuously growing household; children hid inside it, mothers and fathers entrusted their clothing to it, and even the long deceased cat had curled up upon it to escape the dog; but this once grand wardrobe had come to be neglected in the endless passing of time. Now it’s hinges creaked and badly needed oiling, it’s knobs were so tarnished that their original coloring was unknown, and it’s vertically rectangular doors were forever scarred, scratched, and fingerprinted by all who took refuge in it’s inky depths. But this ancient wardrobe was far from ugly, as the presence of the sheet might convey; carvings of ornate designs swirled, spiriled, and looped throughout the area of the doors. Yet for all the love and tenderness put into this treasured wardrobe, one might think it to be deserving of surroundings slightly more grandiose.
The room in which the wardrobe was stationed all by it’s lonesome, was slightly dismal; with floating dots of dust, suspended in the light that burst forth through the solitary square, identified as a window, and with no other fixtures in the proximity. Ants of course, speckle the floor beneath the wardrobe and occasionally the present cat saunters in to bask in the warm glow of the sun that streams through the window and maybe glance at the ceaseless scrambling of the ants, leaving behind paw-shaped evidence on the filth covered floor. But even with the mediocre space in which the wardrobe calls home, it is still an exceptional wardrobe; for it is the entryway to a magical world by the name of Narnia, where our narrative begins.....
24th December 2005
i hope to god that my grandma has gotten me decent presents this year. last year my cousins all got thongs and clothes from aeropostal and abercrombie and i got granny panties and walmart clothes. (not that i dont like walmart, but the clothes that she picks out are just tacky.)
just got back from seeing Cheaper By the Dozen 2. pretty good movie. but the best parts was the kid sitting next to me, and my mom. whenever something ever remotely funny happened, my mom started hysterically laughing. and you could hear her over everybody else, and me, carly, and lizzie were 3 or 4 rows down from them. (i think i laughed more at her than at the movie) and then, when bonnie hunt is telling that one girl shes "beautiful no matter what.." the little kid next to me whispers "man,...shes UGLY!" and then carly and i bust out laughing. even better, he said it again after she had her little makeover, except this time it was "shes even UGLIER now!" and of course we start laughing again. Classic
Now: And thus concludes my 15 year old blogging. Look forward to more senseless ranting about bullshit in 2006!
Blast from the past: 2005
When I was 15 I started a livejournal. In my current state of severe procrastination I decided to go back through and look at some of them. I guess I've been a bit ridiculous for a while, but jesus I used to type like I was on spastic drugs half the time. I blame the damn hormones. All of these excerpts are literally cut and pasted. Enjoy vicariously living my 15-year-old life. (Also, it's a bit sad that my 15 year old typing is about equivalent to modern day drunk typing).
17th February 2005
reason why sonnets suck:
1)nobody cares about the damn sonnets.
2)nobody wants to write the damn sonnets
3)peotry does not have to rhyme, no matter what they say.
4)they just suck
5)shakespeare was a loser so nobody cares what he thinks anyway
6)shakespeare wrote them
7)everybody hates them
8)the guy wore ruffles for god sakes. need i say more?
9)they arent written in proper american
10)when am i going to use a sonnet in later life? huh? yeah! answer that one buddy.
chicklets. sounds like "chicken chocolate" weird huh?
20th February 2005
yeah, and then when we finally got home my mom decided to change our answering machine. first she was like: hi! youve reached the deans, we cant come to the phone right now so leave a message or a number and we'll get back to you soon. bye! and then i was like, mom that it soo cliche and non original. and she was like well can you think of something else? and i was like well no, but your not incapable. so then she goes, oh oh i got it. and it sounded like this. : yo......this is the house.....were not here right now...so like, leave a message after the tony thing. she said this while sounding totally drunk/high/waynes worldish. i was like, omg mother. the people are gonna think were having like a keg party or something cause you just sounded soo drunkenly stupid its not even funny. see? my family is soo weird.
now for my annual list.
why my parents are weirdos.
1)my mom thinks my lanyard is a bus safety hazard.( and she thinks its 'butch')
2)my parents stole the chain off my wallet. (too bad they dont know about my spares...)
3)they think dishes should be done every day, regardless if the sink is only a quarter full
4)they once thought i was having sex over the internet when they found me on the computer, imming my guy friends
5)i happen to like privacy so they accuse me of doing drugs when i lock my door. (the real reason is that my brother thinks its funny to bang open the door while im getting dressed.)
6)it took them almost 15 years to get me a cell phone. (oh, and i had to endure being locked out of the school at night to get one)
7)when i was looking really guyish one day, my father told me that "if you want to be that guyish, there are operations to fix that!" (i was really insulted!!)
8)my mom and her answering machine antics as stated above
9)my dad keeps twinkies, ho-hos and other snacks hidden in his truck, though he denies it.
10)they blocked mtv and mtv2 off our tv because they think ill get brainwashed or something.
11) when i got straight a's my mom said, "im so proud of you honey." to which i replied, that is soo cliche mom. (why dont they just hand over the cash now??)
12)half the stuff i say to mom just goes in her head and locks itself from the inside of a closet of her head
13)they've threatened me with a shrink
14)the always seem to show off the worst school pictures to everybody
15)they wont let me go to the mall with a group of friends without an adult. (yeah, and me the one who walked around dublin with a group of friends for 3 hours cant handle a mall)
16)my mom is paranoid. (there seems to be a serial killer/rapist everywhere we go.)
17)my dad has an old ozzy osbourne tape in his dresser drawer
18)my mom was an old mill cheerleader. (need i say more?)
19)my mom sells mary kay ( a massive waste of time and effort in my opinion)
20)they still make me eat my veggies. (most likely they're still hoping that i will 'grow' into the taste. well now, ive only hated vegetables all my life!)
21)they wont let me get unedited cds. (like their spously arguments are any better)
22)my mom confiscated my 'The Darkness' t-shirt because she said that as far as she is concerned, darkness means the devil and the devil is bad. (basically they accused me of worshipping satan. sigh.)
23)my dad took away my ball necklace because he 'didn't like it'
24)my dad took away my dull pocket knife because he said i would hurt myself
25)they get mad at me when i laugh at them for being stupid. which is most of the time.
26)they still wont let me watch R rated movies.
27) my mom wants to put me in a catholic school to get "a better education" (we dont even go to church!)
28)my mom goes nuts when i go to a dance or something. i think she thinks that shes going and not me cause i happen to not like globs of makeup on my face.
29)everything i get interested in my parents just come rambling in and decide to do it to. (my mom is now coleader of my gs troop and dad just gets into the whole guard thing.
30)becuse i influence them
28th February 2005
my mom is a sick, sick individual.
I'm having a bit of trouble with the format, but I promise the rest of 2005 will be up soon.
17th February 2005
reason why sonnets suck:
1)nobody cares about the damn sonnets.
2)nobody wants to write the damn sonnets
3)peotry does not have to rhyme, no matter what they say.
4)they just suck
5)shakespeare was a loser so nobody cares what he thinks anyway
6)shakespeare wrote them
7)everybody hates them
8)the guy wore ruffles for god sakes. need i say more?
9)they arent written in proper american
10)when am i going to use a sonnet in later life? huh? yeah! answer that one buddy.
chicklets. sounds like "chicken chocolate" weird huh?
20th February 2005
yeah, and then when we finally got home my mom decided to change our answering machine. first she was like: hi! youve reached the deans, we cant come to the phone right now so leave a message or a number and we'll get back to you soon. bye! and then i was like, mom that it soo cliche and non original. and she was like well can you think of something else? and i was like well no, but your not incapable. so then she goes, oh oh i got it. and it sounded like this. : yo......this is the house.....were not here right now...so like, leave a message after the tony thing. she said this while sounding totally drunk/high/waynes worldish. i was like, omg mother. the people are gonna think were having like a keg party or something cause you just sounded soo drunkenly stupid its not even funny. see? my family is soo weird.
now for my annual list.
why my parents are weirdos.
1)my mom thinks my lanyard is a bus safety hazard.( and she thinks its 'butch')
2)my parents stole the chain off my wallet. (too bad they dont know about my spares...)
3)they think dishes should be done every day, regardless if the sink is only a quarter full
4)they once thought i was having sex over the internet when they found me on the computer, imming my guy friends
5)i happen to like privacy so they accuse me of doing drugs when i lock my door. (the real reason is that my brother thinks its funny to bang open the door while im getting dressed.)
6)it took them almost 15 years to get me a cell phone. (oh, and i had to endure being locked out of the school at night to get one)
7)when i was looking really guyish one day, my father told me that "if you want to be that guyish, there are operations to fix that!" (i was really insulted!!)
8)my mom and her answering machine antics as stated above
9)my dad keeps twinkies, ho-hos and other snacks hidden in his truck, though he denies it.
10)they blocked mtv and mtv2 off our tv because they think ill get brainwashed or something.
11) when i got straight a's my mom said, "im so proud of you honey." to which i replied, that is soo cliche mom. (why dont they just hand over the cash now??)
12)half the stuff i say to mom just goes in her head and locks itself from the inside of a closet of her head
13)they've threatened me with a shrink
14)the always seem to show off the worst school pictures to everybody
15)they wont let me go to the mall with a group of friends without an adult. (yeah, and me the one who walked around dublin with a group of friends for 3 hours cant handle a mall)
16)my mom is paranoid. (there seems to be a serial killer/rapist everywhere we go.)
17)my dad has an old ozzy osbourne tape in his dresser drawer
18)my mom was an old mill cheerleader. (need i say more?)
19)my mom sells mary kay ( a massive waste of time and effort in my opinion)
20)they still make me eat my veggies. (most likely they're still hoping that i will 'grow' into the taste. well now, ive only hated vegetables all my life!)
21)they wont let me get unedited cds. (like their spously arguments are any better)
22)my mom confiscated my 'The Darkness' t-shirt because she said that as far as she is concerned, darkness means the devil and the devil is bad. (basically they accused me of worshipping satan. sigh.)
23)my dad took away my ball necklace because he 'didn't like it'
24)my dad took away my dull pocket knife because he said i would hurt myself
25)they get mad at me when i laugh at them for being stupid. which is most of the time.
26)they still wont let me watch R rated movies.
27) my mom wants to put me in a catholic school to get "a better education" (we dont even go to church!)
28)my mom goes nuts when i go to a dance or something. i think she thinks that shes going and not me cause i happen to not like globs of makeup on my face.
29)everything i get interested in my parents just come rambling in and decide to do it to. (my mom is now coleader of my gs troop and dad just gets into the whole guard thing.
30)becuse i influence them
28th February 2005
Our answering machine sounds like this:
You've got it!....you've reached the house....but...we're not here!....leave a message and we'll get back to you...Later Dude!!!!!.
You've got it!....you've reached the house....but...we're not here!....leave a message and we'll get back to you...Later Dude!!!!!.
my mom is a sick, sick individual.
28th March 2005
yeah, just got back from west virginia. it sucked. i was sooo damn bored! when we got up there, it was just us and grandma and grandad. we went and got chinease. (that part was okay) when we got back, i was bored again. went to bed on the couch. couldnt sleep cause moms nose was stuffy and she snored really really loud. she sounded like she had a boulder up her nose. for easter, i got, and listen to this: a yo-yo, a book for teens about 'god and me', a note passing notebook, joe boxer pj(these were cool, there comfy) and a bunch of candy. i almost cried when i saw the yo-yo. i was thinking, does my mom even pay attention to anything i do or say? cause i do not like yo-yos. nor have i ever passed notes. nor do i like church and im not religious. so that sucked. the only good things i got was the incredibles, jolly ranchers, and the pjs. then, we drove 4 hours back home to go to grammys house to visit with my aunt and uncle who were staying for the weekend. then grammy goes into her closet and brings out a bag and hands it to me. it was a DS!!!! i was soo thrilled! i had told her i wanted to go shopping for easter and she got me this too! i gave her a hug and i was happy.
ps. burnt my science project. at least i dont have to eat it.
ps. burnt my science project. at least i dont have to eat it.
7th April 2005
yesterday sucked. while playing flickerball in weight-training, i got beat up.....by the god damn football. coach marc was like, girls get 2 points if they score, so of course i was sent to the inzone(endzone?) and then this guy throws the ball from really far away and it bounces, yes bounces like 5 feet in front of me, and then it hits me in the nose. i didnt know that much blood was in my nose. by the time i got to the pe office i had blood dripping down my arms, all over my face, all over my hands and blood stains on my gym shirt. i got all cleaned up and we went back outside, but i didnt have to play anymore.
15th June 2005
had govt and weight training finals today. govt i could have done in my sleep. weight training too due to the fact that we had the test packet, a 'help packet' and stupid questions like :what is your favorite class? A. weight training B. weight training C. weight training or D. all of the above. then the essay was what did you like about weight training. he told us we could put "coach mark is an asshole" as long as we spelled 'asshole' right and he would accept that and give us full credit. god i love love love school.
22nd June 2005
yup, ive had speghettios for breakfast for 3 days in a row now. got my phone back. (extatic) am walking 50 feet to carlys house for a cookout today with the dulmaines and my family. i have to cook enougn mac and cheese for 18 people. thats what? 5 boxes of blue box? oh well. ill figure it out later.
28th June 2005
yesterday i had turkey burgers for breakfast. i was getting the ketchup out of the fridge and i dropped it. (it was one of the huge plastic bottles) and it exploded all over the kitchen. on the walls, the floor, the rug, and the fridge. i was like SHIT! it came off everything (except the rug.) but mom doesnt know. but the bottle was destroyed so i had to pur the remaining ketchup into an empty deer park bottle to salvage it.
3rd July 2005
Lizzy: .....yeah and then they were like, lets go and erection up the dead.
sam: erection???? don't you mean reserection?
sam: erection???? don't you mean reserection?
oh, and we played raquet ball. that is the bestest game ever. even though we don't play the game we just hit the ball around. toward the end, me and carly were sitting down and it was just lizzy and lane playing, lizzy whacks the ball right into lanes boob! lane looked shocked for a second and then she stumbled over to us and fell over on the ground going: my Boob!
Lizzy: oh my god lane! im so sorry! are you okay?
Lane: my boob!
Lizzy: well you still have one left
Lane: but i like both of them
Lizzy: I can buy you a new one
Lane: no thanks
this is while me and carly are rolling on the floor laughing.
we also went shopping. we passed one maternity store and one of us was like: wouldnt it be cool if we went inside to shop for imaginary babies? so Lane had Little Mikey, Carly had Roxanne, Lizzy had Cousin Ray-Ray and i had Chime-Changa. (lizzy named it)
Lizzy: oh my god lane! im so sorry! are you okay?
Lane: my boob!
Lizzy: well you still have one left
Lane: but i like both of them
Lizzy: I can buy you a new one
Lane: no thanks
this is while me and carly are rolling on the floor laughing.
we also went shopping. we passed one maternity store and one of us was like: wouldnt it be cool if we went inside to shop for imaginary babies? so Lane had Little Mikey, Carly had Roxanne, Lizzy had Cousin Ray-Ray and i had Chime-Changa. (lizzy named it)
4th July 2005
Then i cleaned out my clothes in my closet because i was running low on hangers. i found this really really ugly 'dress' that my mom bought for me at burlington coat factory. it is the most grusome thing i had ever laid eyes on. it is navy blue, long sleeves, and had little sparkly things sewn into it. it also only comes down to mid-thigh and it is shapeless. plus, it has SHOULDER PADS!!!!! i am very afraid of shoulder pads. they scare me. and they make my shoulders look even squarier than they already are. why did i have to get the MAN SHOULDERS in the family???!!! needless to say, if mom puts it back in my closet, fireworks arent the only thing that will be lit up tonight.
did i mention in my last post that on the last night of our trip, we stuffed gummy bears up our noses and all in our mouths and i took pictures? well, yeah, it was fun.
5th July 2005
i hate my computer. it has to be the biggest hunk of junk in the entire universe. it just literally beat me 35 times in a row at medium spider solitaire. then, i finally won. ......but i still hate the computer.
visited mama doris (my great-grandma) in the hospital today. she broke her hip. she gets her own personal tv and everything. plus she had a major HOT PHYSICAL THERAPIST! he stopped by to say hi. it was way nice.
i wrote the following on a post it: 20G, 5,000 songs, free lazer engraving, free shipping, $299. and stuck it on the parents bathroom mirror. dad was like, if you really want an ipod, i can have you a shuffle by tomarrow. i was like umno. i want a REAL ipod. not a downgraded imitation of a REAL ipod. dad was like, i never really said that i would get you an ipod. (he did) and if i did say that, then i was reffering to the ipod shuffle. well you didnt specify dipstick, so i get the one i want. then mom says that we really dont have a spare $300 and if they bought me something that expensive then they would have to get danny something too. and she said that they cant go giving me expensive gifts every time i get straight a's. me: seriously, danny didnt even get all above average or whatever it is. that is totally not fair. then mom said something along the lines of: you have to pay for half of it. NEWSFLASH: i do not have a job. all i can really do is babysit all summer. and if i did happen to aquire a job, my parents would make me quit or something because i am now their live in babysitter 5 or 6 days a week. I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!! my brother is a little monster on ritalin! i think he purposely doesnt take his ADD meds to spite me or something. plus, i found my pocketknife under HIS BED! what a freak! i hate my brother. most of the time. enough ranting. im going to go read or something. *sigh*
visited mama doris (my great-grandma) in the hospital today. she broke her hip. she gets her own personal tv and everything. plus she had a major HOT PHYSICAL THERAPIST! he stopped by to say hi. it was way nice.
i wrote the following on a post it: 20G, 5,000 songs, free lazer engraving, free shipping, $299. and stuck it on the parents bathroom mirror. dad was like, if you really want an ipod, i can have you a shuffle by tomarrow. i was like umno. i want a REAL ipod. not a downgraded imitation of a REAL ipod. dad was like, i never really said that i would get you an ipod. (he did) and if i did say that, then i was reffering to the ipod shuffle. well you didnt specify dipstick, so i get the one i want. then mom says that we really dont have a spare $300 and if they bought me something that expensive then they would have to get danny something too. and she said that they cant go giving me expensive gifts every time i get straight a's. me: seriously, danny didnt even get all above average or whatever it is. that is totally not fair. then mom said something along the lines of: you have to pay for half of it. NEWSFLASH: i do not have a job. all i can really do is babysit all summer. and if i did happen to aquire a job, my parents would make me quit or something because i am now their live in babysitter 5 or 6 days a week. I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!! my brother is a little monster on ritalin! i think he purposely doesnt take his ADD meds to spite me or something. plus, i found my pocketknife under HIS BED! what a freak! i hate my brother. most of the time. enough ranting. im going to go read or something. *sigh*
I'm having a bit of trouble with the format, but I promise the rest of 2005 will be up soon.
The Chronicles of Steve
Steve is my maternal grandfather (otherwise known as Grandad). As Grammy (his wife) likes to say, "There are just some people you just can't train." Grandad is one of those people.
For years now he has been doing all kinds of absurd shit and it's an inside joke my family likes to call 'The Steve Chronicles'. Mom swears that she will one day compile a book of all these things and become a bestselling author. Some examples are below.
Minor accidents
Several years ago Grandad was diagnosed with colon cancer. He got treated and is now cancer-free but sometimes has some minor accidents. His retired job was as a mail delivery guy for NSA (his life job had been working for NSA). One day he accidentally sharted in his pants. Very visibly. After enduring a lot of ragging from his coworkers he drove home on his lunch break. Once home he changed his underwear and pants and then the idiot went back to work. My dumbass grandfather didn't have enough sense to just stay home and instead returned to the lion's den to get made fun of some more.
The second time this happened to him at work he went in to the bathroom and attempted to flush his underwear down the toilet. He came home and told Grammy that it took him 10 flushes to finally get them to go down and that the toilet had overflowed a little bit.
The Shed
Besides Grammy, Grandad's other two loves in life are The Weather Channel (every time he calls he asks me how much snow is on the ground) and his grass. I have never seen another person in my life so obsessed with making his lawn look good, but this generally keeps him out of Grammy's hair and out of trouble so we just leave him be most of the time. Because he's so nuts about the grass he cuts it frequently and thus obsesses over his riding lawnmower. A couple years ago he bought a small shed to store the tractor in. One day he was cutting the grass as per usual. Grammy was down at the bottom of their driveway weeding a flowerbed. She looks up right at the moment when Grandad--still on the tractor--comes bursting through the back end of his new shed, blowing out the back panels and driving straight through her other flower bed. He apparently had been attempting to park the tractor and forgot to step on the clutch. Grammy later told me that the look of shock on his face as he busted through the shed was one of the funniest things she has ever seen.
Diet, Caffeine Free Soda
Steve is diabetic. Steve also has a terrible case of undiagnosed ADD. Thus he is limited to only diet sodas and giving him caffeine just makes the rest of the family want to kill him. The problem with this is that very few (read: basically nowhere) [I'm 21 and I STILL can't spell restuaraunt, restaraunt, resturant, resteraunt, restorant, resturuant, resteruant, RESTAURANT for shit.] food service providers actually serve this kind of soda. But he never learns and a semblance of the following conversation happens at every place we go out to eat at:
Waitress: And what can I get you to drink tonight, sir?
Steve: What kind of sodas do you have?
Waitress: We have [lists out generic sodas]
Steve: Do you have anything that's diet, caffeine free?
Waitress: We have Diet [insert cola]....
Steve (if the answer is Diet Coke): Blech. I'd might as well be drinking toilet water. Can I have water with lemon?
Steve (if the answer is Diet Pepsi): Give me water with lemon. You know, you really should carry caffeine free diet pepsi products because I am a diabetic and caffeine will keep me up all night...(continues on this line of thought for another five minutes. I always feel a bit bad for people that have to wait on us.)
It's gotten to the point where the rest of the family just rolls our eyes because we know what's coming. One time we tried to prank him. While Steve was in the bathroom we started joking with our waiter. We were warning him about what to expect when Grandad got back from the bathroom and ordered his drink. Our waiter was a really cool guy and offered to go next door to the 7-Eleven and buy him a diet, caffeine free Sprite. Because we all can't wait to see Steve's face when he orders and the waiter hands him this DCF bottle, we give the guy money and he goes over to the 7-Eleven. About ten minutes later, Steve is back and ready to order his drink. To the surprise of the entire family, he orders water with lemon right off the bat, no mention whatsoever of DCF sodas. We are all astounded and flabbergasted that our ploy was foiled. Damn. The waiter instead asks, "You don't want a diet, caffeine free Sprite?" and pulls the bottle out from behind his back. Steve eyeballs the bottle, goes "Sure" and takes it from him. No surprised expressions, no exclamations, nothing. Didn't we all feel foolish.
Baby
Grandad finally retired for the second time this past December. Now he's home every day to drive the rest of us nuts. Several days a week Grammy babysits my youngest cousin Grace, who is two. Grace's favorite toy is a plush baby doll that we generally refer to as "Baby". Several weeks ago Grandad accidentally spilled some water on Baby. Instead of taking it downstairs to put it in the dryer for a few minutes, he decides to dry Baby off in the microwave. He didn't realize that Baby had a voicebox inside it. He found this out the hard way when after 30 second in Baby erupts into flames. Now Baby has a giant charred abyss in the middle of its body and smells like when a vacuum sucks up stuff it's not supposed to.
Now don't get me wrong, I love Grandad and if you ask him to do something for you, he'll do it, no questions asked. But sometimes he just lacks common sense. Once you know more about Kelly, you'll find that it might just be genetic.
For years now he has been doing all kinds of absurd shit and it's an inside joke my family likes to call 'The Steve Chronicles'. Mom swears that she will one day compile a book of all these things and become a bestselling author. Some examples are below.
Minor accidents
Several years ago Grandad was diagnosed with colon cancer. He got treated and is now cancer-free but sometimes has some minor accidents. His retired job was as a mail delivery guy for NSA (his life job had been working for NSA). One day he accidentally sharted in his pants. Very visibly. After enduring a lot of ragging from his coworkers he drove home on his lunch break. Once home he changed his underwear and pants and then the idiot went back to work. My dumbass grandfather didn't have enough sense to just stay home and instead returned to the lion's den to get made fun of some more.
The second time this happened to him at work he went in to the bathroom and attempted to flush his underwear down the toilet. He came home and told Grammy that it took him 10 flushes to finally get them to go down and that the toilet had overflowed a little bit.
The Shed
Besides Grammy, Grandad's other two loves in life are The Weather Channel (every time he calls he asks me how much snow is on the ground) and his grass. I have never seen another person in my life so obsessed with making his lawn look good, but this generally keeps him out of Grammy's hair and out of trouble so we just leave him be most of the time. Because he's so nuts about the grass he cuts it frequently and thus obsesses over his riding lawnmower. A couple years ago he bought a small shed to store the tractor in. One day he was cutting the grass as per usual. Grammy was down at the bottom of their driveway weeding a flowerbed. She looks up right at the moment when Grandad--still on the tractor--comes bursting through the back end of his new shed, blowing out the back panels and driving straight through her other flower bed. He apparently had been attempting to park the tractor and forgot to step on the clutch. Grammy later told me that the look of shock on his face as he busted through the shed was one of the funniest things she has ever seen.
Diet, Caffeine Free Soda
Steve is diabetic. Steve also has a terrible case of undiagnosed ADD. Thus he is limited to only diet sodas and giving him caffeine just makes the rest of the family want to kill him. The problem with this is that very few (read: basically nowhere) [I'm 21 and I STILL can't spell restuaraunt, restaraunt, resturant, resteraunt, restorant, resturuant, resteruant, RESTAURANT for shit.] food service providers actually serve this kind of soda. But he never learns and a semblance of the following conversation happens at every place we go out to eat at:
Waitress: And what can I get you to drink tonight, sir?
Steve: What kind of sodas do you have?
Waitress: We have [lists out generic sodas]
Steve: Do you have anything that's diet, caffeine free?
Waitress: We have Diet [insert cola]....
Steve (if the answer is Diet Coke): Blech. I'd might as well be drinking toilet water. Can I have water with lemon?
Steve (if the answer is Diet Pepsi): Give me water with lemon. You know, you really should carry caffeine free diet pepsi products because I am a diabetic and caffeine will keep me up all night...(continues on this line of thought for another five minutes. I always feel a bit bad for people that have to wait on us.)
It's gotten to the point where the rest of the family just rolls our eyes because we know what's coming. One time we tried to prank him. While Steve was in the bathroom we started joking with our waiter. We were warning him about what to expect when Grandad got back from the bathroom and ordered his drink. Our waiter was a really cool guy and offered to go next door to the 7-Eleven and buy him a diet, caffeine free Sprite. Because we all can't wait to see Steve's face when he orders and the waiter hands him this DCF bottle, we give the guy money and he goes over to the 7-Eleven. About ten minutes later, Steve is back and ready to order his drink. To the surprise of the entire family, he orders water with lemon right off the bat, no mention whatsoever of DCF sodas. We are all astounded and flabbergasted that our ploy was foiled. Damn. The waiter instead asks, "You don't want a diet, caffeine free Sprite?" and pulls the bottle out from behind his back. Steve eyeballs the bottle, goes "Sure" and takes it from him. No surprised expressions, no exclamations, nothing. Didn't we all feel foolish.
Baby
Grandad finally retired for the second time this past December. Now he's home every day to drive the rest of us nuts. Several days a week Grammy babysits my youngest cousin Grace, who is two. Grace's favorite toy is a plush baby doll that we generally refer to as "Baby". Several weeks ago Grandad accidentally spilled some water on Baby. Instead of taking it downstairs to put it in the dryer for a few minutes, he decides to dry Baby off in the microwave. He didn't realize that Baby had a voicebox inside it. He found this out the hard way when after 30 second in Baby erupts into flames. Now Baby has a giant charred abyss in the middle of its body and smells like when a vacuum sucks up stuff it's not supposed to.
Now don't get me wrong, I love Grandad and if you ask him to do something for you, he'll do it, no questions asked. But sometimes he just lacks common sense. Once you know more about Kelly, you'll find that it might just be genetic.
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