Memorial Memories

This was probably the first time in my life that I actually did something for Memorial Day weekend. I usually just sit around and sleep. It’s never been very important to my family to celebrate patriotic holidays. Which is really odd considering that my parents support the armed forces like no other. So you’d think that every Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day, they’d be out in full force with their flags ablazing. Instead, we usually spent the day at the mall. Which, I suppose, is actually quite American if you think about it. I remember one year my mom let me get sparklers and so I stood outside my house and giggled like a maniac waving around a fiery stick and spelling my name in the air. And that, my friends, is the extent of my fireworks experience. Awesome! And we’ve never owned a grill, so I didn’t even know what grilled food tasted like until Guy Green and his little friends starting grilling steaks for a dollar my junior year of college. But this year, this year, I got to celebrate like a normal person with grilled foods and outdoorsy activities like boating and professional sun burning.

Yes, I spent the weekend at a lake, riding around on a boat and rubbing SPF 55 sunscreen onto my embattled white skin. (I mean, you don’t get this white from spending time outdoors. It took years of indoor reading for me to achieve this ghost-like look.) I baked like I was in an oven, but managed to escape pretty much unscathed. Thank you Neutrogena! (link) I am not so much lobster-looking as freckled looking. I should have known that one day I would have fantastically freckly arms just like my mother and her mother before her. I just didn’t think it’d happen so soon. Too bad they can’t all merge into one. Then I’d be awesomely tan. And everybody loves a tanned girl.

I did not get pictures of this weekend, which I know you all are hankering for. The fact that I do not have documented proof of my body in a boat does make this sound like a piece of fiction. And when you toss in the little fact that I slept in a tent? That’s the making of a novel as outlandish as The Da Vinci Code.

But it was good, you know? I enjoyed myself out there in the sun in my teeny shorts and modest bathing suit top. I watched a lot of people wipe out on water skis and wakeboards and smiled happily as I sat on the swim deck and dangled my pale, pale legs into the brown, brown water. I met some great people and decided that beer really is as gross as I thought it would be. I fell in love with oatmeal cream pies all over again and learned that a boy who can talk about Justin and Britney and why the world was so much better off with those two crazy kids together for at LEAST thirty minutes, is fantastically attractive.

Back from the Dead

I just spent hours trying to get caught up on my internet life (blogs, recaps, entertainment news...you know, the important stuff in life.) (Like, can you believe Brad and Angelina's baby is getting $5 million for its first pictures!) and I am still not completely caught up. My silly REAL life has gone and gotten in the way of me being an uber internet geek. Which is absolutely ridiculous, might I add. Who needs a real life when you've got an awesomely fake one on the internet?

Well, ME, apparently, I guess. Possibly. (Shocking!) I wish I had the ability to be cool and mysterious. That'd be so...cool...and...mysterious. Anyway, let the record show that I like happiness. I will vote for it every time. Because it is COOL. So please don't worry that I slipped away from the internet in order to listen to emo music and cry myself to sleep and think about death while dressed in black and getting a tattoo.

In other old news that I should have posted about a week ago: Parsnip got me a lily and a special lunch for mother's day. I love being a mom! Even if it is to a destrutive hellbeast of a dog. She's getting a little gray in her fur now and I call her an old lady even though she's only 2 years old. It's a mom thing.

I cleaned my apartment and it's spic and span. Good thing I'm moving in a month. Again.

I procured the second season of Gilmore Girls after watching the first season in a record amount of time. I'm only through the first disc of season 2, but Dean is so cute! I can't believe they made him an adulterous man whore in season 4/5.

My (apparently much tinier) butt has been grabbed twice at work in the last week. (By girls...not that it stops the guys at work from doing inappropriate stuff like that, but I must give off a "girls only" vibe when it comes to touching my butt.) And me getting a tattoo on said grabbed butt seems to be a hot topic of discussion when my co-workers are loopy? Insane? Tired? I don't know. But my ass is not that exciting, y'all. Thank god they haven't started slapping it like I'm a boy in a locker room.

I was proclaimed anorexic at one point last week. My flabby arms and stomach and legs and any other avaiable body part beg to differ.

I *heart* Kasey Chamber's "Pony." (Phillison shout out!)

The end.

Adventures in Baby-Sitting

BGF took a day off of work a few weeks ago to baby-sit his 8 month old nephew. And this baby is adorable, y'all. He's a charmer to the nth degree and could probably save the world with his dimples.

BGF hasn't had a ton of baby-sitting experience in his life, so the day promised to be an adventure. The baby delivered.

This baby, like most babies, enjoys grabbing manically at anything possible. Including the dog. Fortunately for us all, Parsnip is surprisingly okay with the baby, so dog-sitting for me wasn't a problem for BGF. In fact, it was like built-in entertainment for the kid. And in between pulling the dog's snout and ears (and, of course, poking at her eyes), the baby enjoyed running into things, like the coffee table and the entertainment center and the lamp. At one point, he thought it'd be a good idea to play with the electrical outlet strip.

Now you see why BGF needed a Diet Coke. He had to have something to enjoy in between chasing the kid down and yelling, "Don't touch that!" Your throat gets parched after a while of doing this, apparently. Besides, how else would he have the energy to keep the moppet out of trouble if he didn't have the life-giving power of Diet Coke?


Apparently BGF turned his back for one second though. One second in which that precious, precious Diet Coke, yes that one tin can holding the life saving liquid inside, was sacrificed. To the baby. BGF had parked that coke on the coffee table, which was, unfortunately, right in the baby's reach. He decided to take a swing at the can, much like how he goes for the dog's snout and grabbed that can right in his chubby little hand. And then proceeded to turn the can UPSIDE DOWN. Diet Coke went EVERYWHERE. On the floor, on the table, on the baby. (The dog was smart enough to get out of the way.) So now there was a sticky, carbonated child screaming on the floor. He managed to get his entire body wet and his clothes were disgusting. Unfortunately, the baby didn't have a change of clothes, so BGF had no choice but to strip him down and wash said clothes. He took care of business pretty efficiently and things seemed to calm down until time to get the clothes out of the dryer. Here's how it went down.

Onesy? Check.

Shorts? Check.

Sock? One. Check.

Other sock?

...

Other sock?

...

Where's the other sock!?

BGF had managed to lose the other sock because, in his words, "they're so dang tiny!" The baby sock was nowhere to be found and he was fearful that he'd have to return a sockless baby. This would not do because everyone knows a sockless baby is a hobo baby and a hobo baby is a sad baby and a sad baby is a poor reflection of its care-giver.

At one point during this search, I called him to ask about something on his desk at work and he proclaimed, "I can't find his sock!" I had no idea what he was talking about, but at that point, I figured it was best not to know. I wished him luck and went about my work. (A.K.A. popping a bag of popcorn and e-mailing.) A few minutes later I received an e-mail from BGF with this text:

"I found the sock."

All was right with the world again and then about thirty minutes later, this e-mail came:

"I don't think I'll be baby-sitting for [baby's name] anymore for a while."


Behold the destruction from the baby. He pulled down everything (he could reach) off of the entertainment center. I think BGF's got a point.

So Long Ten Bucks

Freaking Paris got freaking eliminated. Dammit! We were making a run for the gold, honey!

This and That

This just in: Mikayla was teething over the weekend, so this explains her hatred of me. In fact, it explains her hatred of the world. She was busy having a sharp object push through her gums. Ouch!

Alice and Joel have a blog and I didn't know because I never look at other people's links. :sigh: This is why I need people to announce when they update links. Anyways, I think I am going to add them to my list just because I can. Same goes for Matt and Melody. I held their baby and put a picture of it on this blog, so I feel I owe it to them.

And since I just said I like it when people announce new links, I feel as though I should practice what I preach. So, without further ado, here is the big announcement: BGF has begun blogging! Y’all! For real! Woo-hoo! So go check it out!

Finally, the Flickr photos have been uploaded. There's more of the awesome trip pictures from the previous post. Enjoy!

Tripping

As promised, the weekend update.

First of all, let me say that I have the coolest friends in the world and really, all of you should be incredibly jealous of me. My friends are awesome. And they’ve actually gotten COOLER. I didn’t even think that was possible. It might have something to do with the tequila. (Oh, I’m kidding!)

I’m not sure how to describe everything without writing a very, very long post that would make Proust proud, so I’m going to go with random points and pictures.

The wedding was lovely and great and I got no pictures of the bride. So sue me. I did get a picture of the dapper groom, however.

Handsome devil! And isn’t Lana’s top absolutely beautiful?

I really liked the bridesmaids’ bouquets. Many thanks to Lana for this shot.

The wedding really took up very little of the weekend and so that’s all I’ve got to say about that. It’s awesome when your friends with the groom and you’re a girl because you basically get off scot free. You can go and enjoy the wedding and then be done with it. Good times!

There were two babies present this weekend. Jenny’s (not Jenny Crow, for those of you keeping score at home) beautiful baby, Mikayla (I have no idea if that is spelled correctly) visited with us for most of the weekend. She is 10 months old and hates me. Here she is not crying. This is not what she looks like when I hold her, despite that look of misery on her face. She was actually MUCH MORE upset while I held her. The pacifier is her friend, obviously.

Okay, we’re back to the wedding one more time. Matt and Melody Lumpkin have a beautiful daughter named Eleanor who loves me. She was totally okay with me holding her and here I am trying to get a smile out of her.

The chubbiness of that baby cannot be rivaled. It was really funny to see how tiny Mikayla is compared to Eleanor. And then the personality difference as well. Two completely different babies available for comparison this weekend. Good thing I am immune to their charms. And thank GOD there is no way I will be having one of those any time soon.

My personal highlight of the weekend was hanging out with Dr. Johnny Wink. He was my favorite professor in college and my inspiration. I cannot say enough kind words about him. In fact, I am planning on devoting an entire post to him soon. So for now, check out our matching shirts!

Yes, he is giving me bunny ears. And yes, he is very proud of himself for doing so.

We played Jeopardy with Dr. Wink and his mother Friday morning at the nursing home. Every morning, he drives across to see her and they try to beat the combined scores of the players on TV. He occasionally invites students to come play as honored guests. Lana and I were lucky enough to be invited and of course, we accepted. And I'm also proud to report that we won, which was very exciting because they had lost 2 in a row. See, Dr. Wink is very serious about this and keeps score in a notebook, which also houses their record. They are way over .500, in case you are wondering. This is not shocking because the man knew practically all the answers to the questions. Lana was excellent as well. I’m pretty sure I contributed nothing to the game, but hey, at least I showed up!

Lots of other things happened this weekend. I hung out with some old friends who I haven't seen in ages. We ate ourselves silly and drove all around Little Rock. We giggled for hours and stayed up way past our bedtimes. We went to the mall. We went to the movies. We went to Barnes and Noble. TWICE. All that coffee and estrogen and watching Stick It led to pictures like this:

So that is all for now. I am back in Ohio, or as Lana likes to call it, "Crapland." I enjoyed my time in Arkansas (A.K.A. "Paradise," per Lana.) It was good. I miss it already. But mostly, I miss the people. My friends are awesome and I am sad I don't get to see them more than once a year. But this is the life I lead and so it goes...on and on. I'm just waiting for the next wedding, when I get to pull out my party shoes and head down to the south.


P.S. Jenny Crow, this one's for you: