Nothing much here. I've been watching a lot of Netflix. Like, A LOT. That's why I haven't been blogging. It must be showing because someone in my tap class recently asked me if I was pregnant. And it wasn't a man. And it wasn't a joke. And when I told her no, it was just a food baby, she didn't believe me and asked me AGAIN. So I guess I need to either do jumping jacks while I watch Netflix or eat more fiber so I can deliver my food babies before tap class . Once, a few years back, I ate a lot of Fiber One bars staying with some family not knowing the effect that more than one would have on my body and I can assure you that you do not want to eat more than one Fiber One bar per twenty-four hours unless you are well-stocked on toilet paper and want to read the same two issues of Consumer Reports in your aunt's bathroom.
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She went back in the fall, and all systems were still GO. Of course, there were a few victory tacos after that.
You can see that my cousin Emily is the one who is naturally not scowling because she enjoys having meaningful conversations with children. I'm just like, who at this table needs ketchup? You have three seconds to tell me before I go back to sit in front of my plate of chicken.
I guess maybe we look a little alike. I mean, she is white, has curly hair, and is pregnant. So we're basically twins. Her son woke up from a nap and came outside where we were all sitting and jumped in my lap and snuggled for the better part of thirty minutes before he realized I wasn't his mother. Eve came out and thought his mother was her mother and then they were all like they laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike. That goes out to old people and kids my age who watched Nick at Nite in 1988.
We were there the day after Eve's birthday, so of course I made a cake since she only had a bowl of frozen yogurt on her actual birthday that was the size of her head. That was actually the smaller sized bowl.
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She had cancer. She gets lots of desserts.
[Cue the anonymous emails about how artificial food dyes probably definitely caused her cancer. "Did you know that air fresheners have formaldehyde and that's giving us cancer? I know this because I clicked on a link at the bottom of a BuzzFeed quiz called Which Mean Girls Character Are You?"]
Eve had a Halloween birthday party when we got home because we needed more cake. She loves her costume parties, and this year she was a vampire. Nat was a corpse bride who I assume got too close to the vampire at one point.
Dan dressed in black and said he was a dementor. I like that 90% of their costumes just come from the floor of their closets. One day they'll be gangly teenagers wearing football jerseys and carrying around pillowcases to collect 8-10 handfuls of candy. I'm sure your teenager doesn't do this, though.
I was getting snotcicles so our firefighter friends let me use one of their flame-retardant balaclavas. It is always a good idea to sport a terrorist mask and then bang on the window of someone in a vehicle who is trying to nap. They will pee themselves. You will high five yourself.
The hike went great, especially since I didn't have to hike it. I felt wonderful afterward! We were waiting at the finish line for what seemed like a while for the last hikers to come through. There were a lot of people on the trail that day and I do remember a group of teenagers who came off the trail, saw the Ultimate Hike finish line sign, sideways glanced at one another for some odd reason, and hauled ass away. We waited some more. And some more. And then it was so very dark.
I was ancy and volunteered to put on my headlamp and go in there to see if I could pick up some walkie-talkie action. Did I tell you how so very dark it was? Well, it's one thing to hike in the dark when there are dozens of other people around you with headlamps on. It's a whole 'nother thing to hike in the dark with just one headlamp. It. is. dark. Scary dark. Dark enough that you keep telling knock-knock jokes on the walkie-talkie so you don't run into the Blair Witch.
Eventually I got to an intersection and saw something very interesting- the sign we had put down a few hours before to let hikers know they needed to make a turn had been moved, indicating that they should just keep hiking straight forever. Now I know why those teenagers were so shifty-looking. They were obviously planning what Redskins jersey they were going to wear when they steal all the candy from the grade-school set.
Don't worry, we found the hikers. Their hike was just a little bit more ultimater. But you know what is the ultimatest?
PICKLES!
I was given a camcorder and I knew I was given it to get some inspirational footage of an Ultimate Hike. But I failed miserably in a very beauteous way.
When we were leaving to go back to Raleigh, I went to fill up the van at the gas station across the street. Which is also where we purchased the gourmet pickle ingredients. It's a nice gas station and convenience store, not one of those that you fear you're going to walk into a robbery-in-progress. Obviously. Those gas stations do not carry gourmet pickle ingredients.
Because it is such a nice gas station, I assumed the pumps would work accordingly. As in: insert card, start pump, pump stops, put pump back, do not get covered in gasoline. Something went wrong in this process between the pump stopping and me not getting covered in gasoline, more specifically that when I pulled the stopped pump out of the van, the gasoline started spewing all over me, leaving me smelling like I had just been caught in a freak gasoline fight accident, after I had checked out of my room with access to a shower. I stunk up the entire first floor of that Holiday Inn Express as I went back into the lobby bathroom to try and scrub off the gas smell with those sad, little hotel soaps that should really be tested to see if they will remove gasoline smell from skin. When I had scrubbed away three layers of skin, I applied the entire miniature bottle of scented lotion that comes with your room, which of course I had stowed in my purse because that is what I do with free lotion in preparation of the zombie apocalypse as those guys have really dry skin. So, for the entire five-hour ride back to Raleigh, I smelled of gasoline and cucumber-melon. It was okay though because I had to drive back in my pajamas since the last of my clean clothes had been sullied by the incident and I feel like you can get away with smelling like petrol and Bath and Body Works trial-sized lotions when it looks like you have completely given up on yourself by wearing pajamas into a Taco Bell.
Eve is still going to the hospital every three months and is always looking good. (She takes after me.) In the summer, she had her very last CT scan. Tacos, tacos, everywhere/and all the bills did shrink/tacos, tacos, everywhere/not a beer to drink.
She went back in the fall, and all systems were still GO. Of course, there were a few victory tacos after that.
And the winter was all good, too. Mo' tacos. Mo' taco sauce. I always end up with fistfuls of packets in my coat pockets on account of all the victory tacos. I'm totally going to be that woman who is going to get supremely lost on a hike one day because I was daydreaming about what I was going to order at Taco Bell post-hike, but is found three days later in the woods having survived on leaves doused in taco sauce.
We took a trip to the mountains of Georgia to visit my dad's family around Eve's birthday. Everyone was so excited for me to come and meet my second-cousin in real life because they were all convinced we look so much alike. Like Patty Duke shenanigans would definitely occur. WE BOTH HAVE CURLY HAIR! I know this because we have been Facebook friends and sometimes I would see a picture of her in my newsfeed and for a nanosecond think someone tagged a really good picture of me but then realized, oh wait, this isn't me. I'm still not photogenic, mostly due to my resting bitch face which makes it seem like I am always smelling something bad when a camera is taking pictures and I'm not paying attention. I'm just trying to figure out who farted.You can see that my cousin Emily is the one who is naturally not scowling because she enjoys having meaningful conversations with children. I'm just like, who at this table needs ketchup? You have three seconds to tell me before I go back to sit in front of my plate of chicken.
I guess maybe we look a little alike. I mean, she is white, has curly hair, and is pregnant. So we're basically twins. Her son woke up from a nap and came outside where we were all sitting and jumped in my lap and snuggled for the better part of thirty minutes before he realized I wasn't his mother. Eve came out and thought his mother was her mother and then they were all like they laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike. That goes out to old people and kids my age who watched Nick at Nite in 1988.
We were there the day after Eve's birthday, so of course I made a cake since she only had a bowl of frozen yogurt on her actual birthday that was the size of her head. That was actually the smaller sized bowl.
She had cancer. She gets lots of desserts.
[Cue the anonymous emails about how artificial food dyes probably definitely caused her cancer. "Did you know that air fresheners have formaldehyde and that's giving us cancer? I know this because I clicked on a link at the bottom of a BuzzFeed quiz called Which Mean Girls Character Are You?"]
Eve had a Halloween birthday party when we got home because we needed more cake. She loves her costume parties, and this year she was a vampire. Nat was a corpse bride who I assume got too close to the vampire at one point.
Although she invited her whole class, we still had enough cake leftover for the other kindergarten classes she didn't invite. What can I say? I like 'em big, like my nachos food babies. Also, I'm a sucker for kids who hand me drawings of birthday cakes that they want to see come to life. It's only cute if you're under ten.
Dan dressed in black and said he was a dementor. I like that 90% of their costumes just come from the floor of their closets. One day they'll be gangly teenagers wearing football jerseys and carrying around pillowcases to collect 8-10 handfuls of candy. I'm sure your teenager doesn't do this, though.
(I wish Daniel would stop making such goofy faces in pictures.)
I would post a pic of Matt and I at Halloween but I know what's good for a marriage and a picture of him dressed as what he was dressed as would not be something he would go out and buy me a pair of diamond earrings for. Matt has never, ever planned what he is going to be for any costume party in his life until approximately 90 minutes before said party, which would be okay if he got invited 91 minutes in advance. There was the year he burned a perfectly good shirt and said he was struck by lightning. There was the year he put on a suit and wore a name tag that said "I am Robert Palmer." There was the year he tried to cut up our white bed sheets to become a ghost like you'd see on Scooby Doo, except I was like YOU CANNOT CUT UP OUR EXTREMELY HARD-TO-FIND CALIFORNIA QUEEN BED SHEETS. So he instead found a random peach bed sheet and cut eyes in it and went as one of those Pac-Man ghosts.
Since he had not come up with anything to wear on the day of the Halloween party, the girls and I went to Walmart and started picking up random stuff that may have been rolled back a few times. They got him a Chevrolet t-shirt, a camouflage fleece jacket, an American flag doo-rag, bunny ears with a bowtie and tail, and some face crayons. I do realize that a lot of these items are not costumes for a lot of people. I don't even know what we were going for with this array, but once they put it all in the shopping cart, it was obvious the sum was greater than the parts. I expected the crayons would be used to make bunny whiskers but what ended up coming out of the bedroom that night was a man who had put on his finest sweatpants, all the Americana gear, the tail in the front, the coordinating bowtie (because he's a classy guy), the bunny ears, and, instead of whiskers, a John Waters mustache. Oh, and I almost forgot about these glasses he had in middle school that look like something you'd see on To Catch a Predator which he swears were in style at that point in time but apparently we grew up in two extremely different towns.
I probably could post a picture because he is in China right now on business and I don't think they allow this part of the internet over there. MATT, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, PLEASE BRING ME BACK SOME PEARLS. He got my mother-in-law a beautiful multi-string pearl necklace a few trips back and I got a hair pin.
I would post a pic of Matt and I at Halloween but I know what's good for a marriage and a picture of him dressed as what he was dressed as would not be something he would go out and buy me a pair of diamond earrings for. Matt has never, ever planned what he is going to be for any costume party in his life until approximately 90 minutes before said party, which would be okay if he got invited 91 minutes in advance. There was the year he burned a perfectly good shirt and said he was struck by lightning. There was the year he put on a suit and wore a name tag that said "I am Robert Palmer." There was the year he tried to cut up our white bed sheets to become a ghost like you'd see on Scooby Doo, except I was like YOU CANNOT CUT UP OUR EXTREMELY HARD-TO-FIND CALIFORNIA QUEEN BED SHEETS. So he instead found a random peach bed sheet and cut eyes in it and went as one of those Pac-Man ghosts.
Since he had not come up with anything to wear on the day of the Halloween party, the girls and I went to Walmart and started picking up random stuff that may have been rolled back a few times. They got him a Chevrolet t-shirt, a camouflage fleece jacket, an American flag doo-rag, bunny ears with a bowtie and tail, and some face crayons. I do realize that a lot of these items are not costumes for a lot of people. I don't even know what we were going for with this array, but once they put it all in the shopping cart, it was obvious the sum was greater than the parts. I expected the crayons would be used to make bunny whiskers but what ended up coming out of the bedroom that night was a man who had put on his finest sweatpants, all the Americana gear, the tail in the front, the coordinating bowtie (because he's a classy guy), the bunny ears, and, instead of whiskers, a John Waters mustache. Oh, and I almost forgot about these glasses he had in middle school that look like something you'd see on To Catch a Predator which he swears were in style at that point in time but apparently we grew up in two extremely different towns.
I probably could post a picture because he is in China right now on business and I don't think they allow this part of the internet over there. MATT, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, PLEASE BRING ME BACK SOME PEARLS. He got my mother-in-law a beautiful multi-string pearl necklace a few trips back and I got a hair pin.
I volunteered at another hike after Halloween on the Foothills trail. It was dark and cold but after dropping the hikers off at the trailhead, we drove along the ridge line and pulled over to look at the stars. Then, the most amazing thing happened: I saw my first shooting star, ever. I had seen them on film but never in real life. And then the really amazing part came when I turned on Africa in my van really loud and a SECOND shooting star shot across the sky. CAN YOU IMAGINE? Africa is my second favorite song of all time, and to hear it standing on the ridge with stars shooting across the sky was like a scene from what I hope is a beautiful biopic that will play at my funeral.
It was really cold, and it sounds ridiculous to complain about being cold at a hike when you are doing the easy part of not hiking, but when you're not moving much, it's Vanilla Ice cold. So cold that the arthritis in your big toe will flare up. I was wearing long underwear, an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, a sweatshirt, and a coat. I was underdressed.
It was really cold, and it sounds ridiculous to complain about being cold at a hike when you are doing the easy part of not hiking, but when you're not moving much, it's Vanilla Ice cold. So cold that the arthritis in your big toe will flare up. I was wearing long underwear, an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, a sweatshirt, and a coat. I was underdressed.
I was getting snotcicles so our firefighter friends let me use one of their flame-retardant balaclavas. It is always a good idea to sport a terrorist mask and then bang on the window of someone in a vehicle who is trying to nap. They will pee themselves. You will high five yourself.
The hike went great, especially since I didn't have to hike it. I felt wonderful afterward! We were waiting at the finish line for what seemed like a while for the last hikers to come through. There were a lot of people on the trail that day and I do remember a group of teenagers who came off the trail, saw the Ultimate Hike finish line sign, sideways glanced at one another for some odd reason, and hauled ass away. We waited some more. And some more. And then it was so very dark.
I was ancy and volunteered to put on my headlamp and go in there to see if I could pick up some walkie-talkie action. Did I tell you how so very dark it was? Well, it's one thing to hike in the dark when there are dozens of other people around you with headlamps on. It's a whole 'nother thing to hike in the dark with just one headlamp. It. is. dark. Scary dark. Dark enough that you keep telling knock-knock jokes on the walkie-talkie so you don't run into the Blair Witch.
Eventually I got to an intersection and saw something very interesting- the sign we had put down a few hours before to let hikers know they needed to make a turn had been moved, indicating that they should just keep hiking straight forever. Now I know why those teenagers were so shifty-looking. They were obviously planning what Redskins jersey they were going to wear when they steal all the candy from the grade-school set.
Don't worry, we found the hikers. Their hike was just a little bit more ultimater. But you know what is the ultimatest?
PICKLES!
I was given a camcorder and I knew I was given it to get some inspirational footage of an Ultimate Hike. But I failed miserably in a very beauteous way.
When we were leaving to go back to Raleigh, I went to fill up the van at the gas station across the street. Which is also where we purchased the gourmet pickle ingredients. It's a nice gas station and convenience store, not one of those that you fear you're going to walk into a robbery-in-progress. Obviously. Those gas stations do not carry gourmet pickle ingredients.
Because it is such a nice gas station, I assumed the pumps would work accordingly. As in: insert card, start pump, pump stops, put pump back, do not get covered in gasoline. Something went wrong in this process between the pump stopping and me not getting covered in gasoline, more specifically that when I pulled the stopped pump out of the van, the gasoline started spewing all over me, leaving me smelling like I had just been caught in a freak gasoline fight accident, after I had checked out of my room with access to a shower. I stunk up the entire first floor of that Holiday Inn Express as I went back into the lobby bathroom to try and scrub off the gas smell with those sad, little hotel soaps that should really be tested to see if they will remove gasoline smell from skin. When I had scrubbed away three layers of skin, I applied the entire miniature bottle of scented lotion that comes with your room, which of course I had stowed in my purse because that is what I do with free lotion in preparation of the zombie apocalypse as those guys have really dry skin. So, for the entire five-hour ride back to Raleigh, I smelled of gasoline and cucumber-melon. It was okay though because I had to drive back in my pajamas since the last of my clean clothes had been sullied by the incident and I feel like you can get away with smelling like petrol and Bath and Body Works trial-sized lotions when it looks like you have completely given up on yourself by wearing pajamas into a Taco Bell.
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