Category Archives: Random Shit

Lodge and in charge

Posted by Elizabeth in Beach, Daily, Listing, Random Shit, Totally normal, WTF?

I made a sudden decision tonight to replace all our ceilings with bead board, or at least some tobacco barn slats that I feel sure we have leftover from the farm project. I figure it’s super easy: sand that popcorny shit, slap a few boards up, have fun with the nail gun and BAM! Ceiling city. Maybe I can do that when I’m off on Friday.

I also made a sudden discovery tonight: I LIKE CAMPING. I’m not sure that roughing it can be defined in only one way, so I’m going to define it MY way: camping is, not sleeping in your own bed, it’s being able to see stars/moon/sun/streetlights from your bed, and it’s taking enough food into that sleeping area, wherever it may be, that you don’t rely on trail mix and melted snow if you get lost. BURGERS, lost people, PORK CHOPS. As some of us may recall from childhood, camping was a fort in the backyard. As adults, I say we bring back the Living Room Fort. We bring it back with pillows, blankets, those old refrigerator boxes, laundry baskets, step stools, THE WHOLE SHEBANG.

As if these weren’t already good enough ideas, I bombarded my mind with extra ideas it needs. (It always needs extra ideas.) My ideas are as follows:

  1. Make a new friend everyday. Now admittedly, some of us don’t run into a lot of people throughout the day and that can make this task seem daunting. A new friend can be the Canada goose who poos on your sidewalk. Your new friend can be the multi-pierced fellow at the grocery store who wants to touch your produce. It doesn’t matter, y’all. You’re just looking to make ONE new friend. Pick an interesting one.
  2. Be glad for one thing everyday. Today, I am glad that the people who live behind us in the weird house with the sketchy brown fence didn’t get hurt during what appeared to be, at the time, an electrical fire. Although, she’s a former art teacher, so BB and I concocted some fun, what-if stories that we’ll just share at a later date. (What if she was burning some kind of giant plastic bleach jug for an “art” project and then her family got home and was all “MOM! That’s bleach and FIRE!” And she’s all “No, kids. This is art.”)
  3. Oh, my other idea. This one rocks so steady, I can’t even stand it. Here it is, are you ready?

That’s right, y’all. THROWBACK VINTAGE ’60s style MOTOR-FUCKING-LODGE! My SIL stayed for a night this weekend and absolutely fell in love with it. The little guy at the front desk flips open the book to see if there are rooms available. And if there are rooms, he will hand you a real key with a giant plastic number as he pencils in your reservation. WITH A PENCIL. And dogs are allowed and even encouraged. And I just can’t say with any certainty that it will be the finest place I ever stay in, BUT! I think we might try it Brady style. Load up the wagon, stock the kitchenette, bring our beach towels and get the sheets sandy. I mean, hello…it’s the ATLANTIS LODGE.

Bitches.

The more you know…

Posted by Elizabeth in Listing, Lucille & Charles, Muse, Random Shit, Totally normal

NBC

Like an afterschool special, I am here FOR YOU. A community service, if you will. A fount of good information to help you be your best you.  So today, I ask the question:

Did you know?

1.       That the reason aluminum is the main ingredient in deodorant is because that’s what keeps you from stinking? And that “all-natural, aluminum-free” deodorant is code for makes-you-stink?

2.       That giant glue traps designed to catch roaches can stick to a cat’s hind end?

3.       That a combination of scissors, Palmolive and Wesson oil can’t get that kind of glue off?

4.       That my vet will bathe a cat for only $20?

5.       That Facebook might be just the thing to get a man out of his dark, jobless depression?

6.       That while the rest of the country is buried in ice and snow, North Carolina has 70 degree weather with howling winds and eerie pink skies?

7.       That Doritos, Gatorade, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Quaker and everything in your pantry is a PepsiCo product?

8.       That trying to ban PepsiCo products is next to impossible?

9.       That Coke Zero is the best-tasting thing since Coke?

10.   That my world is upside down?

Mother Tongue

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Daily, Good Stuff, Muse, Random Shit, The Almighty TV, The Weather, Totally normal, WTF?

I forgot to put up my post about the Golden Globes. Well, that implies that I wrote a post about the Golden Globes and that’s a blatant lie, so there you go. I’ve had far more important things to do. First of all, I worked like, almost a full week last week, y’all. I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I was so done with my work people by Friday that I looked at my boss at one point and said, “Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Just shut up.” Oh yeah. True story.

Anyway, this weekend I was all I’m gonna organize! I’m gonna get shit done! I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna! and now it’s Sunday night and I haven’t even finished that one load of laundry. HOWEVER. I’ve yet to find a person out there who hasn’t read Stieg Larsson’s Millienium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and I’ve been anxious to watch the movie. A quick search of the on-demand movie channel revealed that the first two books are now movies in Swedish with English subtitles. Let this not deter you, Internet! These movies are OUTSTANDING.

If you’ve read them, you know how graphic they are and the movies do the nasty parts some serious justice. They are entertaining and stick with the story pretty closely, but by far the most fun for me was learning Swedish words. For instance, did you know that “okay” in English and “okay” in Swedish are the same? ME EITHER. And “holy shit” and “what the fuck” sound exactly the same, except with extra syllables. I always thought Spanish was fun, but Swedish? Well. I haven’t asked anyone about this officially, but I’m pretty sure Swedish is a combo of German, French and English, and maybe some other languages, and they use all those fun letters with the dots and slashes through them, like the No Smoking signs. SO FUN, RIGHT?!

Now this is interesting: I just looked on Wikipedia and it turns out that Swedish is the official language of Finland, too. Which totally confuses me, because I would think that Finnish would be Finland’s language, but does that mean that Finnish isn’t a language? Or do people in Finland not like their own language? Or is it like Canada, where people speak English but probably don’t want to, and feel like Americans just shoved English down their throats and so they rebel by saying “oot the door” and other weird stuff?

These are the questions that keep me up…in the afternoon. I didn’t even nap today thinking about this stuff. I blame Stieg Larsson.

In other news, everyone in these movies drives a Volvo. Or, if they’re executives at their jobs, they drive Audis or Mercedes. Can you imagine living somewhere where there isn’t a tacky 12 year-old domestic death trap parked on every street corner? Me either. And all the houses in Stockholm looked really quaint but modern and Ikea-y and the rural towns have names like Uppsala and Hedestad. I said on Facebook today that I wanted to plan a trip to Sweden soon and one of my friends sent me the current weather in Stockholm, which was 22 degrees, and I said that I didn’t mind because hello? It’s colder than that in Pittsburgh today. (I only know that because I’m watching the Steelers play the Jets, and that’s only because my friend Kristen showed me Heinz Field when I was there a few months ago and now I feel beholden to Pennsylvania.)

Tomorrow I’m going to see the lu-lu doctor, which is not the vagina doctor. Apparently this is confusing to some people. I’m going to ask her what I’m supposed to do about taking my crazy meds when I’m sick with a stomach virus, and also about Ambien amnesia, which is happening more and more. Maybe I’ll come out of there with some new prescriptions, and if that’s the case, I’ll be sure to let you know what’s good and new on the crazytrain market.

Until then…

Var är toaletten? (I’m asking you where the toilet is, please, when I’m in Sweden. Or Finland.)

The one where January bites back

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Daily, Lamenting, Muse, Random Shit, The Almighty TV, Totally normal, WTF?

If writing is an exercise, I’m about as lazy and out of shape as one can be. I’ve been practicing a little with logging my dreams (see recent posts) but writing about my life is, well, a bit overwhelming. Many of you reading have blogs yourselves, and most of you have regular schedules of posting. There are Monday these and Wednesday those, and sections and lists that your readers count on. I used to do that here, and then life got in the way.

I vow to try really hard to remember to use my muscles a little more often.

Since Christmas, the house has been quiet but tumultuous, if that’s possible. I had a three week break from school over the holidays, which I really enjoyed but which threw my circadian rhythm off so much so that I worried for days about oversleeping on my first day back. The first week back was a blur of training, registration, lesson planning, putting out fires and getting back into a regular sleep schedule. The second week back was about as awful as I would expect in January. We discovered mistakes we’d made with advising this past semester and had to rectify those quickly, until it snowed and I got the stomach flu and we had extended drop/add and my co-workers were short staffed and OH GOD THE STOMACH FLU.

From what I know, it’s spread like wildfire around this town. From what I’ve heard, it’s all over everywhere. I think I’d rather be shot in the toes than have that again. Not even kidding.

So I guess the point of my story is that my mind has been elsewhere and I’ve suffered because of it. There are so many things that I think Oh! I need to remember to blog about that! and then a day goes by and I forget, or it’s not relevant anymore. I watched some serious TV over both the holiday and The Illness of January, and I’m happy to report that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is my new discovery. It’s just…genius. I can’t believe I hadn’t found it before, but I owe that show a debt of gratitude for helping me climb out of a panic attack the other day. The thing about a stomach bug is that if I can’t keep anything inside me (I know this is gross, but most of y’all are moms and your gross-o-meter should be tolerating higher stuff than this) I can’t keep my medication regulated. So it stands to reason that without the good drugs, I am a pure-T nutcase. I’m telling you, this week was not pretty.

Catching up on Google Reader was a treat this week, as I’m woefully behind on my reading and have so much more to go. A lot of your posts have given me good ideas and some have even helped me come up with things to talk about in my class this semester. Y’all are so smart. I feel so…inferior.

In other news, things that have been rocky are slowly rocking themselves back right again. I wish so much that I could talk about this here, but the important thing is that you know I am and will always be a shiny, sparkling, extra wonderful, fantastical rock star. I just don’t see how you could argue otherwise. I didn’t make new year’s resolutions because frankly, who keeps them? (not me), and most of them cost money (gym, diet crap, buy a fancy planner, buy organization shit that will sit in a bag for a year) so I just scrapped that plan. Instead I am resolving NOTHING. I promise you absolutely nothing, I don’t guarantee a single thought, idea or gesture, and I surely am not planning to live up to anyone’s expectations.

See what I did here? I lowered your opinion of me so when I do good shit, you’ll be all surprised and impressed. I said it already: I’m a genius.

Finally, this exercise of the writing here has sparked some ideas so I’ll be back in the next few days to write specifically and, perhaps, intelligently. I ask that you stick with me, and I ask that you do this one huge thing for me that would make me happier than all the Doritos on the planet: send your love, your happy thoughts, your prayers for good and your healing powers to my friend. She is an even brighter and shinier star than I, and she needs a few peanuts in her gallery.

Thanks bunches.

Three card Marley

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Muse, Random Shit, Totally normal, True That?, WTF?

Out of my head tonight and I am drawing pictures of clouds and the threshold of heaven.

Keith Richards is on my mind, seriously on my mind all the time these days, as is his guitar.

I’m thinking about you, wanting to get on this kind of manic high with you because I know you’d love it. I really just wanna get fucked up with you, see what that’s like. Mostly I wish we’d drink beer and talk about things that need talking about.

Tapping keys along to the keyboard and bass, but I lose the guitar, the most important set of strings…well, ever.

The problem with this mania is that the high doesn’t last long. You either get really lost in it until you fall asleep or you stay awake, get confused and finally find yourself doing something productive. Which beats the point in being a little hyper.

I call her and say I need to get out. She says sure, come over and let’s hang, all three of us. Didn’t want it to be all three of us. So I say I’m going, but I cancel on her. I head instead to the bar where I know I’ll find him. He’s there, but he’s there with the girl he told me he’d broken up with. She’s had a crisis. She says it’s nice to meet me, that she’s heard so much about me. I tell her I hope it was good, and say that yes, he’s mentioned her name a time or two as well.

Three beers and several badly-sung pop tunes later, they are flirting in a corner, it’s very obvious my friends are coming much later (if at all) and for now I am the third wheel. I pay my tab and walk down the steps. I spin wheels on the gravel because I am jealous and hurt. Two emotions I was almost certain I didn’t have towards him or anything related to him. I drive carefully home, steady between the lines.

I am wrong, because I have every one of those emotions. I feel stupid, a little hurt, mostly stupid and perhaps also a little embarrassed. I’m introduced flatly, impersonally. He grasps her shoulders and spins her toward me, telling her to just turn around and meet me. I heard the whole thing. She knows I did. She looks me up and down and realizes she doesn’t need to feel self-conscious. She is triumphant, but not in a condescending way.

We make it a game to make fun of him, like two insta-pals giving the boyfriend a hard time. He looks uncomfortable and doesn’t know where to give his attention. Here? There? He can’t be in two places at once! What will he do!

We make it easy. We dance and sing along to the songs and hear the call for last call. Gratefully, I sign my bill and fly down the steps out to my car.

Live and learn, right?

Right.