Christmas Goodies/Baddies

Every year someone brings a plate/tray/decorative bowl of Christmas cookies/pralines/fudge to my parents house. Being as my room is closest to the front door, I am always first to intercept such gifts. Whether or not I am fully dressed is of no consequence. I don't care about the giver, only the goods.

 Getting a tray of these morsels is always a momentous occasion. I love treats, especially ones that are only made around the holidays.

I love them.

I bask in their glow. 

I devour their goodness.

However, there seem to be two baking errors that continually have my neighbors in their vice-like grips.

It never fails that every Christmas We receive a plate of cookies that appear scrumptious in presentation, but have a tendency to turn to sand in your mouth.

Problem 1. Very frustrating.

It always leaves me confused and hurt; unsure whether or not to venture onward to other treats, afraid they too may lead to my death by asphyxiation.

Memories of the sand cookie may taunt me, but I try a different treat. Perhaps this fudge is what I've been searching for?

...

It is not. Which leads me to Problem 2. The more serious of neighborly offenses.

Rock hard treats.

 Its not that difficult! Cookies are supposed to be soft. Rocks crack your teeth. Not the other way around!

No matter how I try I can never just say, "oh, this treat is much too hard" and toss it out. I consider it to be a personal challenge to my love of Christmas sweets. I must eat this rock-like cookie/fudge/praline! The Smiths/Bells/Whitehouses worked hard on it! So I set out to destroy and devour the treat.

I'm always left with a pile of crumbs all over myself/the table/the floor, and none of the goodie actually in my mouth.

EVERY TIME.

Then I wallow. Because not only did I not get to enjoy a tasty holiday treat, but I'm also a failure.

typical.

Vegetarians

I don't understand vegetarians.

I mean, I love animals, probably more than most people! But I also love meat. mmm... steaaaak. Thats not saying I don't have a ton of respect for people whose moral guidelines or animal love prevents them from indulging in carnivorous behaviors. I do, however, have a problem with those vegetarians who just do it to be different. Over a meat-centric meal last week my girlfriend and I were discussing our shared hatred for the attention-seeking type of vegemaniacs.

ME: "Um, I hate the way they don't even bother looking at the menu before announcing to the world that they are better than us"
GF: "I know. 'Excuse me, do you have any vegetarian options?' might as well be 'yes excuse me, do you have food for special people?'"

Granted, they are not the only people I try to avoid restaurant dining with. There are generally 3 other types:

1) The "Usual" guy: Who eats there all the time and is always ready to order before the menus even arrive.
2) The Indecisive girl: the opposite of the "usual guy," Who changes her mind again and again, forcing the other patrons into waiting to order; Then laments throughout the entire meal how she should have gotten one of the other 32 options she was considering.
3) The Dumb one: the most tolerable of the 3 and DEFINITELY easier to handle than a vegetarian. This guy either can't pronounce anything on the menu or straight up can't read and tends to order things that have pictures he can simply point to.

However, like previously mentioned, ANY of these pale in comparison to a snooty vegetarian on a scale from one to annoying as hell.

        "THE USUAL" GUY  INDECISIVE GIRL   THE DUMB ONE    VEGETARIAN

Snooty Vegetarian is always soooo pleased with himself when he gets to announce to the entire table that he is better than them. 

"I'm so awesome."

He expects some sort of restaurant-wide celebration simply because he has chosen to abstain from eating animal products. Maybe a song and dance like some restaurants do for a birthday. 

"Attention everyone, sorry to interrupt your meals, but there is a vegetarian in the house!!"  

"WOOT!" 

"Hell yea!"

"Good for him!"

"Congratulations!!" 

Snooty Vegetarian thinks the world revolves around him and his eating habits. 

Guess what SnootyVegetarian Guy... NO ONE CARES! Except maybe Peta. 

And the cows. Maybe the cows will throw you the party you feel you deserve. 

A Joke.

One sunny australian day, Koala was smoking some dank weed. (I dunno what dank means, being a non-weed smoker myself, but i've heard this used before.) He was sunbathing, enjoying his doobie when along comes Lizard. Lizard partakes of the marriageyouwanna. Lizard gets high. like, hiiiiiiiiiigh.

WHOOOOA.

DUUUUUUDE.

Lizard is so high, there is nothing more important and demanding at that exact moment than his life-altering thirst. He excuses himself from Koala and his pot to go down to the rive for a drank.

do-duh-dooo. Lizard meanders down to the river for a drink, where he runs into Alligator. 

"Duuuude. You gotta go up the hill and take a hit of Koala's joint bra..." 

so alligator journeys up the hill to ask Koala to share some of the wealth. Koala, high as a kite, makes a humorous miscalculation. 

laughter ensues. 

shit my girlfriend says

My girlfriend says funny things when she is on medication. I mean she gets loopy like whoa. So for your enjoyment, I have decided to keep track of some of the ridiculous shit she says, and turn it into short posts. Last week while she was hopped up on the quick, (i.e. cough syrup with codeine), she said this as we were falling asleep:

"I think if I would have lived during prehistoric times, I would have been eaten by a water buffalo."
Out of nowhere. Completely, randomly, unprovoked. Hilarity. The following is my illustrated unfolding of the aforementioned event. Enjoy.

Oh and yea, that is a hungry hungry hippo version of a water buffalo. How kind of you to notice. 

Why I blog.

I always knew I would go to college. I didn't know where I would go, or what I would study, but  i knew getting a job would be way easier if I had a college degree. So I ended up at the University of Oklahoma.

 I have summed up my college experience with the picture below. 

It took me 5 years to graduate. Took a victory lap. Almost dropped out a few times, but in the end I got my degree. I was all set and ready for the real world!

I was all high and mighty until I started looking for jobs. I got turned down everywhere. I mean everywhere! I applied for over 70 jobs and never landed one of them. Even McDonald's didn't want me! I would go in and the managers would say, "you're not qualified to do this job." or even worse, "you're overqualified for this position." So? They passed up someone who could have turned out to be the best damn burger-flipper in the midwest. Their loss. 

I gave up hope. Maybe I was destined to be a bum and lounge on my parents' couch all day, sipping on high-fructose corn syrup and rotting my brain with television. While a lot of people fantasize about being able to do nothing all day every day, it got old fast. 

My life had no purpose. I had seen literally every episode of Law and Order: SVU ever made. I had to do something, and quick! before I ended up turning into one of those 40-year-old women who live with their mother and her 5 dogs with Papa Johns on speed-dial who has to be lifted out of the house in a crane. 

So I had my girlfriend call in a favor for me and I landed an interview with one of her buddies. 

I got the job!! Go me!

It does tend to be a BIT on the dull side however, so in efforts to prevent myself from getting fired because of this...

I started this blog. Its colorful, perfect for ADD, and helps pass the time so I don't go completely insane. 

Just in case you were wondering. Which you probably weren't. 

Tough toenails. 

Sweet Redemption

When I was younger I played with barbies. I was embarrassed that I liked something so girly, so I used to take my pink toy trunk and all my dolls and play with my Barbies in the safety of my closet. It was safe from passersby and I could accessorize to my hearts desire. But mainly I was away from my brother, Nelson, who had 5 years and about 150 lbs on me.

 We fought all the time when I was a kid and he loved to tackle, wrestle, basically anything that involved him pushing me down and sitting on me so I couldn't breathe. I tried to stay away from him. Especially when I was doing something he would deem stupid and girly... like playing with dolls. He scared me. He quickly discovered my hiding spot and came calling to destroy my Barbie village.

Turns out Nelson didn't just want to make fun of me. He enjoyed playing with my Barbies too.

Although his idea of having fun with them was not something my dolls were used to. He enjoyed torturing them. He got creative too. I could almost hear their little screams.  

I was sick of my brother ruining my toys. His methods of destruction would pop up in the most unexpected places. 

...

...

That was the last straw! The day I found Barbie Bride's head floating alongside Ken's in a shallow porcelain grave was the day I decided something had to be done. I tried pleading with the parental unit,

                                                                          to no avail.

I finally decided to take matters into my own hands. I would hit him where it hurt. I would retaliate with such force that he would never recover. I would make him feel my pain, and that which he truly treasured would soon be destroyed. 

My brother's 1968 Nolan Ryan Rookie Card. I wouldn't ruin it, I would just hide it away for safe keeping. So I had something to bargain with the next time Nelson decapitated Bride and Groom Barbie. 

"You wanna see Nolan again?! Put the happy couple down!!!"

I hid the card away in a book in my closet and forgot about the whole thing; the memory lying dormant in my little brain, waiting for the perfect moment to reappear. 

When my brother did realize his most prized possession was missing, I went to go find it after making him promise to never mess with Barbie again. 

The book I had put it in was gone. I searched and searched but when I couldn't find it I went to my mom, who could always find things I couldn't. (She always said it was because my uterus wasn't fully developed yet. WTF mom?!)

"Oh, those old books up in the back closet? I gave those to Goodwill honey! The man came by yesterday while you were at school and picked up a bunch of old things."

                        

My brother spent the remainder of his youth torturing me AND my Barbies even more viciously than before. My plan to retaliate backfired, and to this day he still hasn't forgiven me. The other day I googled the card to see what it would have been worth. Besides a more peaceful childhood, if we would have kept the card, today it would be worth 28 thousand dollars. Thats a shit ton of Barbie dolls. 

Squirrel Rescue!

Ok. I need to preface this post by informing everyone (and by everyone I obviously mean the one person that follows me) that I am an extreme animal lover. I have a miniature zoo at my house. Seriously. 2 horses, 4 dogs, 2 birds, a cat and I feel it necessary to mention our recently deceased fat-tailed gecko louie. 


This being said- obviously you wouldn't be shocked to know I have managed to never hit an animal with my car. I will literally stop in the middle of the highway to save a turtle. I was often late to class in college because there was a duck pond in between me and advanced molecular biology. (ok so it was art therapy, we drew all day. don't judge me.) Anyway, i've been known to wait upwards of half an hour for a row of fuzzy baby ducks to safely maneuver their way across lindsey street.


Having spent hours of my driving career trying to avoid ending a tiny life, I tend to get a little emotional when I see an animal, all bloody and rigor mortis-like chillin' in the middle of the road. RIP raccoon, possum, north american grizzly. 


Now that I feel confident I have gotten my love for animals across, i'm hoping you might not think i'm crazy for the story i'm about to retell. The story of my heroic squirrel rescue. 




Prologue
One sunny fall day in Norman, I was driving home from class completely absorbed in my N'Sync CD and not really paying attention to anything but the sultry voice of a young, jheri curled Justin Timberlake. I was just about to bust out in the chorus of "bye bye bye" when I was forced to slam on the brakes when I saw the car in front of me, brakes squealing, run over a rogue squirrel. 

It wasn't one of those hits that just abolish the poor little squirrel body, smushing guts all over the road like a gusher. (loved those things when i was a kid.) It seemed like the little guy just bounced off the tire. Maybe he would be ok!
He wasn't. I watched as he collapsed on the concrete. But before I could finish sending up a silent prayer for his little squirrel soul, he was back on his feet and stumbling around like a drunk hobo on a sunday morning. 

Something had to be done. I couldn't just let the little fella lay there suffering in the road. His life couldn't end without knowing that someone cared. I decided to take him to the animal hospital. This called for professionals. I grabbed a towel from the trunk of my car and walked out in the road to scoop him up. I was slightly worried that this adorable creature with his fuzzy tail and pleading eyes would turn out to be a rabies-infested hell creature, but i had to help him. I placed him in the passenger seat and headed towards the vet. 

It seemed like it would be an easy enough transport. Squirrel was twitching a bit, but it wasn't parkinsons' style so I thought maybe I could get him to the vet without incident. But I was a fool. A damn fool. 


Somewhere along the way Squirrel came out of his shock and went insane. 

Damn you hell creature!


Still, I had a mission, and I wasn't going home without getting this guy to a Dr. 


I was ecstatic when i got him there safely. Well, safely for him anyway. I was so proud of myself and my good deed as I handed him over to the vets. They quickly shattered my hope with words like, "brain damage," and "internal bleeding." 

I was so crushed. I had become attached to Squirrel. I just wanted him to live! I was defeated. I think the vet tech saw it all over my face. She told me to wait while she went to talk to the vet again. She came out and told me they were giving the squirrel steroid injections to stop the swelling, and hopefully they would be able to save him then re-release him to the wild. 

Success!! 
Maybe she was lying. I choose to believe it was a miracle. Now everytime i see a squirrel I imagine its my little friend. Hi Squirrel. You're welcome. 

Dramady

This morning as i was busy counting all of the holes in my office ceiling, i was abruptly and obnoxiously interrupted by the most annoying coworker in the company. Brian. He never stops talking. I mean never. (He once argued with me about how Texas is going to secede from the remainder of the United States, for over an hour. And by argued i mean he talked about how awesome it would be and I sat there quietly pretending to answer emails. I was pretty spaced out, but he somehow managed to pull me me back into reality with a rousing rendition of "A Country Boy Can Survive.") Brutal. 

Anyway, this morning he began a review of some movie he and a friend rented from redbox last night. I'm guessing that "friend," was a bucket of chicken and a Mr. Pibb big gulp. He didn't like it. Insert 45 minutes worth of reasons why not. But he thought he was going to like it because it was a "new" genre he read about called a "dramady." While I tried to stop my facial expressions from revealing my surprise that he was in fact literate, he kindly informed me that "dramady" meant it was both a drama and a comedy. Combined. Thanks for enlightening me Bri-Bri.  

I pondered about what movies or shows I watched would be considered to fall into this "newly" developed dramady genre. Maybe its just me, but most shows slash movies have both dramatic and comedic elements, no?

Check out Shakespeare- that man was a beast! He invented dramady! Who decided they could simply combine the two words into one and pawn it off as their own original thought?! How dare they. 

Although... 

the words DO fit nicely together. So much so that I invented my own combinations. Word up.