I'll Meet You There

There's certain movies I know not to watch before I do, because it's gauranteed I'll be curled up in a ball on my couch, blanket over me, a box of tissues in hand, sobbing into them. I'm one of those old people kids made fun of, including myself, that cry hysterically over movies. And even though I know I shouldn't watch them, I do it anyway.

Tonight's example: The Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie - The Lost Valentine.

In my defense, I didn't realize going into this how hard this movie was going to be for me to watch. As soon as Betty White's character was shown as a grandmother and not just a cute little old lady, I started balling. I still really miss my grandma. I imagine I always will. Until now, I've avoided movies specifically about grandmas and close relationships with grandmas because of this. I was done about three minutes into this movie. I trooped on, however, because the movie featured two of my favorite actresses, Betty White and Jennifer Love Hewitt. It could have only been better if Jane Lynch was there, too, but I digress.

It would have been very generic of me to say a movie made me cry because the main character was a grandma, I realize. So let me back up to the first two minutes of the movie where it's revealed that her husband, her lost valentine, was in the Air Force. Yep, I lost it there first, officially. My grandfather, my best friend in the entire world, was in the Air Force. His Air Force picture still hangs in our hallway so we pass it every single day. I miss him, too, more than words can say. I felt like it was all the things that hit too close to home all in one movie.

I won't get into the whole thing and ruin the plot for those of you who haven't seen it. There were several scenes that made me ball like a baby, especially the one toward the end with Betty White and the casket. But it was the end scene that did me in. If you haven't seen the movie and still want to, I'm warning you not to read past here.

At the end of the movie, Jennifer Love Hewitt's character and Betty White's movie grandson are in the yard when the sprinklers come on, flashing back to and earlier scene in the movie when Betty and her movie husband had just moved into that very same house and the same thing happened to them. As that happened, Betty was in the back yard watering her flowers. This was post her deceased husband's arrival in the casket after sixty-six years, in the very same train station she saw him off on on Valentine's day those sixty-six years ago. After she said to the man who worked at the station and greeted her every year when she went back to wait for him on that same day, "My husband is coming home today." And he did, in a casket, but he was home.

As she was standing outside of her house with the hose, she noticed that the rose bush her husband had planted when they first moved in and that had been dead for years was blooming. Just as she went to water it, the song she and her husband used to dance to came on the radio just inside of the window. Then they showed him in his Air Force uniform. He had come to take her. And while her movie grandson and J.Love's character repeated their love story in the front yard, she went with her husband, who was finally home.

I had no shiz left to lose at this point. I was full out leaving it all over the couch and the tissues I had run out of. When my grandma passed away, she came to say goodbye. With her was my grandfather...dressed in his Air Force uniform. That uniform hangs in my closet, a reminder of my grandfather's greatest feat. And as it is in life, a person's greatest, most important job, is the one they will do in death.

The Best Dang Hootinany Funeral In the History of Basic Blogging

Many moons ago, and by that I mean last February, I wrote a blog mentioning that my grandma had passed away in January. I was inherently absent during that time, and then for awhile after I posted that blog. I always intended to write a follow up about her funeral, mostly because it was one of the oddest experiences of my life. I haven’t been able to do so until now for emotional reasons, but I think now would be a good time to share. It’s the one year anniversary of her death, and what a better way to honor her than with a blog for all the world to see. (Sorry, Grandma!)

One thing you have to understand is that my grandma was really funny. Like, really funny. I don’t know if it was on purpose or not, but she would just say these things and we’d all bust out laughing. She could come out with things that were cool with the teens, and also things that made everyone laugh. You never knew what was going to come out of her mouth, which was a really great thing about her. Whether I knew who she really was or not, like her death has left me to wonder, I can’t take away just how funny she was. I’m sure she’s still making people laugh in heaven.

There’s also another thing I know, and that’s that I got a lot of my humor for her. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that, because if I can come out with the things she did at her age, I will be forever grateful and have nothing to complain about.

That being said, there was no way her funeral was going to be the somber meeting of family members and friends you haven’t seen in awhile like most are. I knew going into it that there would be a lot of crying, because she had a lot of friends who loved her dearly, but it would also be a quirky event. People would start talking and telling stories about her, and it would end up being a hootinany. It didn’t disappoint.

Some may think it to be in bad taste to speak of my grandmother’s funeral this way, but if you knew my grandmother you would know she’s in heaven watching me type this and laughing her butt off. And she always thought her butt needed to shrink, so I'm just trying to help her out. She’d be excited this would get posted. She’d be happy to know that we were remembering her as a funny woman, and not standing all over the place crying.

A testament to this would be the fact that she planned her funeral on her own. We thought this odd and were extremely taken aback when we found this out. We were especially taken back when she didn’t want anyone following behind the hearse to the cemetery to be laid to rest. Nor was there to be a gathering after. We simply had one viewing and one service to get it right. Her reasoning was basically that she was dead and it was ridiculous for everyone to go chasing after her, wasting their day, etc. She was a practical woman, and although we found this harsh and a little hard to swallow because we loved her so much, that was just her. So trust me, I have it on good authority that writing about this is a-okay with her.

Let’s start out with me telling you all that I got dressed in a pretty little outfit fit for a funeral. We were getting ready to leave the house and I realized something; I was so worried about getting dressed and looking proper for the funeral, that there was no me in the outfit. I was in drab clothing and about as neat as a pin. My grandma wouldn’t like this at all, because it just wasn’t me. I could just imagine my grandma, had she been alive, asking me why I was dressed like that. Because it was a funeral and I couldn’t dress like a colorblind monkey or anything, I put in pink Tinkerbell earrings, and you know what, I instantly felt better. They were me and I knew she would have adored that I didn’t take the me out of me for her funeral.

The funeral home became awfully crowded awfully quickly, and before I knew it, I was being accosted by people who kept asking me if I remembered them, because the last time they saw me I was two, or three, but never over five. They seemed genuinely disappointed when I didn’t, but they accepted it. Not until they gave me at least three hugs, but they did. I got hugged by so many older woman that I legitimately smelled like a perfume store had thrown up on me. As long as they accepted that I didn’t remember them and walked away, it was all good.

That was until one lady came along and kept repeatedly asking me if I remembered her. I told her no, but she insisted I had to and continued to tell me stories about her and myself when I was all of four. I finally said I remembered her. I lied so bad, but she was happy with this. Sometimes the best part of believe really is the lie. Oddly enough, I kind of liked this lady and wished that I had remembered her.

About an hour into the viewing, gram’s pastor showed up. To explain this properly you have to understand that I knew gram’s old pastor who was at the church for many years. However, he had just left the church and they had gotten a brand new pastor just a few months earlier, and we had never met. My mom had met her, but this really isn’t relevant to the situation.

I was making my rounds when I ran into a rather short lady who was wearing a full clergy uniform. I walked up to her and introduced myself, saying that she must be Pastor Jan. Her response:

“How did you know?” She faked being shocked that I could have possible have guessed this with her wearing her uniform and all.

She was easily the funniest pastor ever. She got funnier as the day went on. I love her and if I do get married, it will be by no one but her. I don’t care if she’s 104, she’s marrying me. I like a little comedy with my wedding.

Soon after this, Original Becky showed up. She brought donuts. To understand how this is funny, I must tell you a story.

Ten years ago, during my grandfather’s funeral, we were getting ready to leave when we noticed a huge box of donuts on one of the tables just outside of his viewing room. My mom, gram, aunt and myself started talking about how off putting it was that the funeral home went out and got donuts and left them lying there. It was in horrible taste, so my grandma, very upset and not thinking clearly, decided to mention it to them. That’s when they told us that they had not brought them, but one of the guests at the funeral had brought them; a really old, shorter lady with a lot of spunk.

We later found out that my Great-Great Aunt Pearl had brought them for the kids that were attending the funeral to keep the busy. After that, she always brought donuts to funerals, which was really awesome and also a little funny. We always enjoyed them. The last funeral in our family was hers, and Original Becky knew this, so she brought donuts. I think we probably laughed for a good five minutes, and I’m sure grandma was watching and laughing, too.

With Original Becky there, debauchery was bound to ensue. I am forever grateful that she came, genuinely stayed for a good hour or so, talked to me, got my mind off of things, got me away from people who kept hugging me, crying, and insisting I knew them, and brought donuts and a meat tray. Thank you, Original Becky. Seriously. You are the best.

During out conversation, several subjects came up. One of them was Criminal Minds. Yes, Squirrel Monkeys, we even talk about Criminal Minds at funerals. We keep it classy in Pennsylvania. It was fair considering that show was literally the only thing getting me through this time. I know that sounds dumb, but at night when you go home, everyone goes to bed, and you’re alone with your thoughts is the hardest time. I, however, was just getting into the show and between two different television channels, there was eight hours of the show on at night. I was able to sit down, space out, and watch the show into the wee hours of the morning until I feel asleep, not crying, not feeling dead inside. So maybe now you all can understand why I like this show a little more than makes sense.

So, to appropriately sum this up, we got to talking about a show where people kill other people, and FBI agents try to analyze the killer...at a funeral. Classy, I know. We were even having this huge conversation about the psych of the killer, when Don walked by. Don, his wife, and his daughter lived in the house behind and one over from my grandmother’s until she moved into a senior community. I grew up with his daughter and knew her literally all of my life. I am familiar with Don and his inappropriate comments, and now that I’m an adult, I just love him.

He happened to walk by at an apparently inappropriate time. I know Original Becky and myself had just made a comment about Dr. Reid and the sexual psych of a serial killer. I’m not sure how those two went together, but they did. This prompted Don to hear just that part, turn, and make the most obscure comment about penis size ever. Neither of us can remember the exact comment, but we can remember it was amazingly awesome, we were the only ones who heard it, and we couldn’t stop thinking about Dr. Reid that way at a funeral. Thanks, Don. No really, we thought it was awesome. Nearly a year later, we still do.

During this convo, Original Becky also could see me getting teary eyed and chose to bring up my whole serial killer bit. And by serial killer, we mean cereal killer. I had mentioned to her just days earlier that every time I hear someone on Criminal Minds taking about a serial killer, the image that immediately comes to mind is one of a spoon chasing cereal down the street and then killing it. Not someone eating it; not someone stepping on it, a spoon getting out of the drawer, out of the house, and chasing the cereal that has also gotten out of the cupboards and out of the house, down the street and then beating it to death. I don’t get it either, folks, but that’s what I picture.

On a side note, one day our neighbor's kids were screaming and harassing our dogs, and the neighbors were doing nothing to stop it. I was tempted to go and tell the kids, in an attempt to scare them, that every time they screamed a piece of cereal died. My mom and three of my friends thought this was brilliant. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, though. I’ll save it for a rainy day.

When we were done talking about Criminal Minds, cereal killers, and penis sizes, Original Becky and I thought we’d go hit my uncle up for some awesome stories. Since my grandma’s passing, my real aunt is no longer someone we associate with for several reasons that I won’t get into, but no matter how we feel about her, the man she is married to is pretty much the most hysterical person in the world. I hate to say this, but he tops Don. He says more inappropriate things and has more good stories. I’m sorry, Don. I like you both equally, but his stories are better.

Thankfully, funeral or no funeral, Uncle Ray did not disappoint. His line of work consist of him owning his own company which does various work, anything from electrical work, to construction, to painting, to remodeling. You name it, he does it himself with a help from a few employees. Over the years he’s gotten some pretty odd and stupid jobs.

The one that sticks out the most is when he was flown to either Mexico or India. I can’t remember which, and I know they’re not close to each other or anything alike, but it’s been awhile since I heard this story. Anyway, he was flown there because their computer systems weren’t working at a tech support place. He flew the whole way down there only to find that everyone in the office was so smart, they were stupid. They never plugged in the main plug for the computer system. He promptly plugged it in, got on the next flight and came back home all in the same day.

He’s also a bit of a hero here because he fixed the bomb robot for the city police squad about ten years ago. In doing this, he made several friends in the police force. One of them proceeded to get him involved in the following story, which he chose to share with us during the funeral.

The local police station had just gotten all new computers. They offered to have someone come in and set them up so that the police officer on the desk that day didn’t have to mess with it. She said no, that was okay, she was very familiar with computers and would have no problem setting them up during her shift, and it wouldn’t take her long. Obviously this was high priority, because they couldn’t go very long without their computers, being a police station and all, so they told her to go ahead and do it.

Three hours later the computers were set up, everything plugged in, but nothing turned on. Uncle Ray was called. When he got there he went all over everything. Everything looked good, including the way that the plugs were put into the surge protector. What didn’t look good, however, was that she had gone and plugged the surge protector into itself instead of into the wall, because she didn’t know what was going to protect the surge protector from a storm. Apparently, she also didn’t know that the surge protector needs power from the outlet in the wall for this to even be an issue. Folks, she carries a gun. It’s loaded.

Eventually the time came for the service, and Original Becky left, as she didn’t know my gram well enough to feel comfortable staying. This was fine, because she was nice enough to come there for me, to keep me company and show me support and I appreciated it. Right before she left, I was asked to do a eulogy during the service. I had no plans to do a eulogy, because in the crazy suddenness that was my grandma’s death, I simply hadn’t had time to think about it. It all happened so quickly. I didn’t want to agree, but I didn’t really do so, either. Pastor Jan just kind of decided I was going to do it and that was final. The look on my face must of been pretty horrific, because, as Becky was putting her coat on, she said, “It’s okay, just rant like you always do.” Obviously, you see where this is going.

I got up to the podium and the first thing out of my mouth was, “I didn’t have a speech planned for today and I kind of got forced into doing this, so my friend told me to rant like I always do, so that’s what I’m going to do.” Yep, that’s how I started my speech. Luckily, I pulled a bunch of stuff out of my invisible hat and it all went well. People laughed, shook their heads, and agreed with things I said. I could have won an award for the most disorganized, ranty speech to ever exist, but it was a funeral, I was the granddaughter of the deceased and I had no time to prep. I got let off the hook.

Thankfully, I soon became the least interesting thing about the service. I had just sat back down when the best thing that could have ever happened at a funeral for someone with my grandmother’s personality, happened. You see, we have a slightly mentally challenged family member. The booklet to the service was three pages long. The pastor was going into yet another Bible verse when the relative yelled out, “THIS IS A LONG SERVICE!”

My mom and I did the mature thing and cracked up, mostly because it reminded us of the time when we were all one big happy family, and my mom, my aunt, my grandma and myself were seated in a row at another relative’s funeral. The service was going on forever, and all of a sudden one of us cracked up for no good reason. This caused a chain reaction, and there the four of us were laughing hysterical in the middle of the world’s longest funeral service for no good reason, and failing at hiding it. It’s suffice to say that this lady made our day by bringing back a morbidly amusing memory.

As the service ended and people started to disband, my aunt and I were looking for Aunt Sarah. You have to understand that Aunt Sarah is lucky if she’s over four feet tall. This is not an exaggeration, she really is that short. She literally comes to about two inches below my boobies and I’m 5’5.

Earlier in the day, Original Becky, who is 5’8 and then had heels on, had the living daylights scared out of her when she happened to move to the side and out of the bottom of her eye caught Aunt Sarah standing beside her. Aunt Sarah had been there for some time, but being that she was almost two feet shorter than Original Becky, she never noticed until she went to move. I laughed. I’m sorry, Original Becky, but not really.

Anyway, we were trying to figure out if her son had come and retrieved her from the funeral, or if she wanted one of us to take her home since she was in her mid eighties and no longer drove. We looked for that woman and looked for that woman. We even checked behind a few chairs and a really tall podium. I kid you not, we really did, because she is just that short. Do you all want to know where we found her?

Behind Pastor Jan, who is 4’11 at best. So yes, the shortest person in the whole room was having a conversation with, and therefore unintentionally hiding behind the second shortest person in the whole room, and not at all on purpose. Only in my life, people. Only in my life.

Before we parted, I said my goodbyes to grandma. I didn’t know what to say but one thing. “Don’t go running around naked in heaven.” I realize how this sounds, and it’s pretty much like that. We had a running joke that, every time I would talk to her, the last thing I said to her before I hung up the phone, and right after I love you was, I would tell her to be good and not go running naked down the hallways. I thought this was a fitting way to send her into the afterlife, and I don’t think she’d have it any other way.

With all the pain that came with that funeral, and I still feel over her death, I truly found one incredible thing that will keep me tied to her forever. When she was my age, she married. She kept her wedding suit all of her life. I decided to try it on for shits and giggles. It fits me like a glove, like it was made for me. I fit into the one thing she wore on the best day of her life, and that’s the most beautiful way I could wish to be connected to her.

And also in honor of my grandma, I’d like to share a few gems that were excluded from last night’s post regarding online conversations. These came after. I know this would have made her laugh, but I’m still going to apologize for them anyway. Sorry, Grandma.

- Oh, this won’t end well.

I know guys, so that’s so open ended. That could go with just about anything I’ve ever said or done.

- She was writing something and trying to figure out if she should put pants on her character.
- I just washed my pajamas and they smell funny.
- They smell like they were eating pizza and pop tarts.

- And I am in one of those moods where I’m avoiding posting on Facebook because I could piss a lot of people off.

- I fell you?
- I want to know how that works.

- And I want to like it to be nice, but I can’t.

- And now he’s not sure if he likes me or not.
- I’m okay with that.

- The one who is like 10 billion feet tall and afraid of me.

- It’s so funny.
- For me, not him.

- That sounds so dirty.

Again, this could go with any conversation and just about anything I’ve ever said.

- I feel like a loser, OKAY?

- Unless he croaks fairly early, then I’m screwed.

- But you start asking me to do a tutorial that takes longer than ten minutes, and a child could do it in their sleep, you can suck it.

Sorry, Grandma.

- OMG, they’re so country!

I have no room to talk here, folks.

- THAT’S WRONG!
- THAT’S SACRILEGIOUS!
- THAT’S ILLEGAL!

What was that all about, you may wonder? My friend Googling Ian Somerhalder and coming up with pictures of Justin Bieber. I have three questions. Why? How? Why!?

- Then they think I’m nuts.
- Either way, no one messes with a crazy person.
- It’s a win / win.
- I will teach you my crazy ways.

- It was all kinds of special.

This could also show up in all my conversations without fail.

- When I heard they dated I was like, “well, that didn’t go well.”

I would be an awesome matchmaker, no? Oh, no. Right. No.

- Do you want me to sing to it as torture?

- Usually it’s when you say something, and they only do it so you can make an ass out of yourself.

- Can you see him trying to debate country music with Lo?

- I’ll pull something random out of my ass.

Not literally! You guys are sick!

- Some bitch could sneeze twenty miles from me and I’d catch what she has.
- Some really nice lady could sneeze twenty miles from me and I’d catch it, too.

- Ugh, no, hotness is an excuse.
- I mean, being hot is an excuse.
- Eh, same difference.

- I have my killer figured out, too. We’ve got our killers in a row, yo! Sorry about the yo. It rhymed with row.

I'm not sure the yo was the problem with these sentences.

- So, I can’t wait to find out who your killer is.
- Wait!
- Wait!
- Wait!
- That sounded wrong.

- THE BOOTS!

- I figured we already trolled on his mom. Looking up someone’s myspace couldn’t be that creepy, right?

If you have to ask... I always forget that rule.

- And by what can be described only as the Grace of God, I managed to spell David’s last name right on the first try. Just don’t ask me to do it again.

- Let’s recap what we’ve done with our night. We cyberstalked a picture of someone's mom, and successfully cyberstalked the dating status of every single Simple Plan member.

Guys, I had a fever. She’s awesome. Those are our stories and we’re sticking to them.

- We could so outdo Perez Hilton.

- I think we should sing campfire songs to it.
- That’s my answer to everything.

- She’s like, NO IT’S NOT! THE NOSE PICKER?

- Does he smell good? Because if he smells good, jump him.
- I’m such a good influence.
- Find him, smell him, proceed from there.

What have I told you about taking my advice? Right. Don’t do it. Ever.

- Okay, I know I can’t rationalize things that way.

That’s all for today, folks. I’m going to hug my Macbook and thank it a million times over to dislodging whatever was stuck in the mouse that was causing it to malfunction. I would have had a breakdown that would have landed me in a sanitarium had Mrs. Macbook passed.

Also, Zoe, I know there’s nothing in here from our conversation, but the son of a monkey’s uncle didn’t save. Boo.

The Things Men Do to Not Look Like A Jonas Brother

This post is long overdue by about a year, but I decided this would be the right time to tell these stories. In the last post, I talked about how my grandparents influenced my life more than mostly anyone I knew. When they passed, I felt like an orphan in my own way.

Today, I would like to tell you a little about my grandma. She was the most badass grandma I ever knew. If she was watching me type this right now, she’d be laughing. She would swear at old people who drove down the road and were in her way, albeit being old herself. She would speed. She would do what she wanted, when she wanted, and no one could take that away from her. If I turn out to be like her, I can’t complain. She was loved. She still is loved.

Last year, my grandma ended up in the hospital. This was when she was really starting to get sick and we knew that our time was becoming limited with her. If I were the one in the hospital, I would have been a bowl full of cranky. I don’t do well in hospitals. I can go for tests and appointments, but if you leave me there, I will have my own little panic attack. I don’t like feeling trapped and alone, and hospitals will definitely do that to you, but I digress.

Grandma hated hospitals as well, but she would never complain. If she did, it was in this sarcastic, Alex from Wizards of Waverly Place, kind of way. All you could do was laugh, which is exactly what she wanted you to do.

While in the hospital this particular time, she had an interesting roommate. Grandma, having nothing else to do, always made friends with her roomies. But this time she was roomed with a woman who must have been going into dementia. She wasn’t totally sure what was going on and kind of did her own thing. On top of that, she also needed oxygen to, well, breathe. I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.

One day while we were there, she was told to do her arm exercises to keep her body strong while she was cooped up in a hospital bed. I’m not sure if this woman was a Maverick, really out of it, or just a bit cheeky, but she did the best thing ever. She proceeded to take the oxygen out of her nose, and use the chord that went in her nose to do her arm exercises. Yes, folks, she was using her oxygen tube as a weight.

Grandma’s response? “Oh, she does that all the time. A nurse will be in, in a few minutes to tell her to put it back in her nose so she doesn’t stop breathing and die.” A few minutes later, here came the nurse.

While there, we somehow got to talking about how Aunt Bev said she was leaving everything to me when she passed. Don’t ask me how this happened, because that conversation had nothing to do with Grandma and her being in the hospital, but it happened. Grandma just looked at me, hunkered down in her bed, and said “It wouldn’t be hard to kill her. All you’d have to do was push her down a flight of stairs.” Then she cackled and changed the subject. She was kidding, of course, but that was my Grandma.

When we were getting ready to leave, Grandma decided it was time for her to go home. She had it with staying in the hospital, since she was now just there for observation. She was done being observed, so she followed us to the elevator. The nurse, fearing she was going to try to run away, came over and told her she was not to leave. She wasn’t going to, but in fact, was just trying to freak out the nurses. It worked.

But the best part was when she told the nurse, “There’s no way you could ever find me if I did get in the elevator. It’s like Where’s Waldo in a hospital. All of us patients are dressed the same.” The nurse couldn’t disagree.

After we got on the elevator and began out descent down, it stopped like it often did for someone else to get in. It opened up to a little younger than middle aged guy who was an employee of the hospital. He looked at us confused and asked us what way the elevator was going. We told him down. He got in and started laughing.

He then proceeded to tell us that, no matter what floor he was on or where he was waiting for the elevator at, the buttons never lit up to tell him if the elevator that stopped was going up or down, so he never knew if he should get on it, because he didn’t know if it was stopping for him, or for someone else to get off. He then jokingly said it was a conspiracy, and that the elevators refused to tell him where they were going because they simply didn’t like him since he rode them several times a day. They felt overworked by him and were rebelling. I adore that guy.

Possibly the funniest story I have to tell happened on the way to the hospital the following day. We were stopped at a stoplight, and there was a group of people pushing a car onto a cart for towing in an empty parking lot. As we were watching them, we saw a midget make his way over and start talking to the people. There’s nothing funny about midgets unless they start singing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” except this midget was wearing mens' shorts as pants. You read that right.

And for the record, they were huge on him. He looked like he was going gangster with the big pants that were ready to fall down, but yet he didn’t get them long enough to reach his shoes, so his socks just stuck out randomly.

He was just round enough that childrens' clothing probably didn’t fit him, and mens' pants were too long. However, it was completely obvious he was wearing mens' shorts...as pants. We decided this was acceptable since his only other option was to buy pants for teenage boys, and he probably didn’t want to look like a Jonas Brother. We could understand, but I still don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard in my entire life. Thinking back on it, I still laugh. Just picture it for me. You’ll laugh, too.

The Angels Are On Her Now

This was supposed to be posted yesterday. I went to bed before I could proofread it. Sorry, guys!

Today I cleaned like nobody's business. This doesn't sound epic, but if you know me at all by now, you'll know this is for two reasons. One is that I managed to injure myself. That's right; I injured myself cleaning. Nothing major. I just ticked off my ankle that had a one hundred and twenty pound box come down on it three years ago. It wasn't supposed to heal. It did. I expected one day I would tick it off, and quite frankly, I don't blame it. Injuring yourself cleaning is funny enough to warrant the pain, so it's all good. I say that now...

Second, I clean when I need to think. I don't know why I do this, but for some reason I can get lost in all my thoughts while I clean, and then take out the feelings of those thoughts on the dusting, sweeping, etc. It's a healthy way to let my emotions out and clean my house, so it works for me. Unfortunately, or fortunately, for all of you, this post is going to be about the thinking that happened during cleaning and not about how I hurt myself. I actually don't know how I did it, I just did. Sorry there's not a better story to that. I know. I'm disappointed, too.

Yesterday and today were emotional days for me. I have no other reasoning for this other than it's that time of the month. If you're a girl you understand why that's relevant to this story. If you're a guy then I'll just tell you. That time of the month is the emotional equivalent of a woman being pregnant. I realize the irony in this considering you don't get your period when you're pregnant. I think this is our body's way of either preparing us for pregnancy, or making sure we have to act like a crazy pregnant lady in case we don't get pregnant. I'm not sure what my body is trying to tell me, but I'd like to think that I am on to its evil ways.

Anyway, I found myself with one particular thing that I needed to think about. That was, why I do the things I do when it comes to love. I'm the kind of girl who truly wants to be with someone, and then wants to be alone just as much. I can't have it both ways, and all I've ever wanted to know is why I feel this way; why I'm torn. How could one person want both things? What is causing that person to want to open their heart up and love, and then push everyone away who loves her back at the same time? I knew if I ever found the answer to this, I would find myself explaining the whys and hows to at least one person, if not several. I at least owe Friend that, if he would ask. Knowing him, eventually he probably will.

I didn't have an answer for anyone, not even myself, until today. I was just letting my mind wander, letting it run through all the reasons I felt like I had been socked in the heart over the weekend, when, in fact, I had not. The feeling was so overwhelming that I just let my mind go, and eventually, before I even knew it, by the end of day two, I had my answer without ever trying to find it.

I've had a lot of death happen in my life. Namely, the death of my grandparents. As you all know, my grandma died in January of this year. We knew the time was nearing, yet it was very sudden. We got a call and she was gone. I guess we expected it to go differently. I don't really even know anymore. In 2000, my grandpap died. He had cancer, but they didn't lead us to believe that he was as bad off as he was. One day we got a call that he was in his last of days. We were genuinely shocked. A year after he was diagnosed, he was just gone. I wasn't ready for that. Even if I had years to ponder it, I still wouldn't have been.

I was closer to my grandpap than my grandma. This is no disrespect to my grandma. When I was little and my mom was in school, or worked, I stayed with my grandparents. They largely helped to form me into the person I am today, and I am grateful for that. I was there a lot, and in a way, they were just as much my parents as my parents were. Of course, by this time my father was gone, so my grandpap stepped into duel roles and he loved every single moment of it. So did I. I was also with him more because my grandma worked. He dedicated his days to spending them with me. Period. That's what he did and I was the world to him. He always made me know that. It wasn't just in the things he said, but in the things he did and the way he treated me. Even if he never verbally expressed to me how much he loved me, I would have known. I still know over ten years later.

After my grandpap died, people I didn't even know were coming up to me at his funeral and knowing who I was because he had showed them pictures of me, and told them all about me. Every one of them expressed how I was his world and how much he loved me. There were many who did so.

There were also many people who attended his funeral. Old war buddies from across the nation came out, war veterans from across the nation who didn't even know him, but came to respect a fellow veteran after hearing of his death, and people who knew him from when he owned the feed store were all there. There was a line the whole way out the door. There were more flower arrangements than we fairly knew what to do with. There was a lot of love. This is a testament to the man he was. He left behind a legacy, and to this day, I miss him more than anything.

When I was little, around eight or ten, he would talk to me about my wedding. He did this nearly daily and I wasn't even at the age where I was thinking about weddings, or dating, and still thought boys had cooties. He would tell me about how he was going to walk me down the aisle, and how we would share the first dance, and it would be our day as much as my day with my new husband. That was the kind of person my grandpap was. All he wanted was to hand me over to someone who brought me more happiness than I ever thought possible. He wasn't selfish with me. He was kind and respected my little girl decisions, no matter how dumb. As long as it made me happy, he was there to share in it.

Without realizing it, I grew up with the idea of having him to share my wedding with. He would be the one who walked me down the aisle. He would be the one to hand me off to start my new life. He'd be the one in the front row bawling his eyes out. He'd be the one I'd dance with during the father / daughter dance. He'd be the one who helped me fix up our first house. He'd be the one to babysit the grand kids. There was never any flexibility in that. I never saw my wedding without him.

Then my grandpap got cancer. That was okay, because he was always going to beat it. Wasn't he? He was always going to be there for my wedding. Him dying before my wedding, before I started my life, was never a thought in my mind. But then he did, and when he did I was also very sick. I was told that I would have only been able to get through two more years with the way my body was had I not found help. I had to focus on myself, but the death hit me hard.

I found out just how sick I was one day, and the following day my grandpap passed. From that day on I began to get better. I'm sure part of it was from the help I was getting. I'm a logical thinker. But I can't help but notice the coincidence in this, and somewhere in my heart I've always known that he was part of the reason that I survived what I did. He's part of the reason I'm still surviving after all I've been through. He's always here with me. I can feel him and there's some things I just know. Those are two of them.

Having been sick, I was pulled out of high school. My body couldn't handle what was required to physically be in school. Sometimes I got dizzy and nearly fell down the stairs. Others, I got so sick I couldn't stand it. Sometimes I was so tired that I needed, not wanted, to lie down. When I didn't, again, I got sick. My body was extremely weak. I started homeschooling prior to my grandfather's death. I got behind being so sick, and eventually got my GED. I know, I'm not exactly a genius here, but I think I turned out all right.

Not being in high school, and being sick, therefore, not having the strength to go out with friends, and having lost touch with many after leaving high school, my social skills lacked sourly. I just didn't realize it until I got out into the work world. I could socialize fine with girls, sure, but guys were a whole other story. They were these scary beasts that I didn't want to deal with. I had never flirted with a guy, or talked to one I was interested in, for that matter. I didn't know what it was like to go on a date. To kiss a guy. I had done neither.

I had become, "that girl." As much as I was okay with it, it was also uncomfortable. For the second job I ever had, I worked closely with a guy. I liked this guy. I was optimistic that I could get whomever I wanted. Not because I was gorgeous or perfect, but because I thought I had a decent personality and they would at least give me a shot before saying no. My grandpap always led me to believe that. I didn't get either out of this guy, but later came to find out that it wasn't me, it was his father that was intentionally keeping us apart. It's a long story; one for another day.

From then on, I found jobs where I worked with all women. I avoided guys. I didn't know why I was so afraid of them. Part of the reason was that I wasn't in high school to get the interaction as part of daily life; there was no male living in the house to learn from. I had no males in my life at all, in fact. Another part was because of what my father had done. But what about my grandpap? He taught me that guys were wonderful, caring, sweet; and he made me believe that I would find my fairytale in real life just by talking about my wedding. He let me know there was someone out there for me who would be far from perfect, but perfect for me.

This lead me into years of trying to figure out why I was so messed up when it came to guys. I went through a tough time. I got depressed. I became immature. I acted like a moron. See here and here if you don't believe me. I will never tell who the second one is about. Ever. But it's not someone I've ever talked about on this blog. Oh, and probably here, too. Yep, that really was me. What in the hell was happening to this mature, level headed, have it all almost figured out girl? I hated being that way.

When I got sick a second time and had to quit my job that I loved because of it, I never could have seen what was coming next. I truly loved the job I had. I worked at Hallmark with all women and we were all good friends. Despite the pay not being great, it was the perfect job for me. But I kept getting ill and had to take several months off for my body to cooperate with me again, because I couldn't keep going the way I was. I started to feel better three months later and started to look for another place to work. I knew I would end up in retail until I figured out something otherwise, and my mom worked with someone whose son worked at Best Buy. We talked to him and he said he could get me in. I loved music, I loved movies. I was game.

To this day I don't know if this was the smartest move that I've ever made, or the dumbest. Before I knew it, I was hired to work in the media department selling CDs, DVDs and gaming systems. What I didn't know until I started was that I was the only girl in a department. Let me repeat that, I was the only girl in a department. I was the one girl on the sales floor. In a company with nearly sixty people, there were maybe ten girls who worked there period. I can not even begin to tell you how mortified I was. I knew for most people this wouldn't be a big deal, so I sucked it up and moved on. I realize now that although I look back at that job and feel fear and have not so fond memories, I had to work there to learn how to deal with guys. Now, I prefer talking to and hanging out with guys over girls. There's far less drama and cat fights, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had learned in my other jobs that I seemed to be able to persuade guys to like me, or to do what I wanted. The thing was, I never did anything to bring this on. I never fancied myself pretty, not even cute. I was the geek in school and still saw myself that way. Years change a lot of things, and I started to no longer see myself as the ugly duckling, but I still was far from the kind of girl who got their own way with guys. Yet I was one of these girls, and I didn't even do anything. I didn't even know how to do anything, and I was backwards with guys. In fact, I would have preferred if the only form of noticing me they did was to notice me long enough to realize they just wanted to ignore me, and then went on their merry way.

I am still not the prettiest girl in the world, and yet this happen to me all the time. It is never with guys that I like back, at least not usually. Is it because I'm a Scorpio? I'm not into astrology, but it's the only reason I have. I guess that makes it null and void.

I had worked at Lowe's for a very short period of time. I didn't work in a department with any men, but at the registers with all women. I got hit on by contractors all the time. I didn't speak to them outside of the allotted "register" talk. I was actually more quiet than most of the girls there, yet they still hit on me. Some of the men that worked there would go out of their way to help me out even if I didn't need help, but wouldn't do it with other girls. I wasn't even that cute, and especially not in those snazzy red vests. I went in minus the makeup so that this wouldn't happen. I was mortified. I'm not a girl that likes to be noticed. I know this probably sounds like I'm complaining about nothing to most girls, but for me this was the last thing I wanted. Then it got worse.

I worked at Hallmark for almost two years thinking this wouldn't be a problem. Most of the clientele were women. Then came awesome, older business man. Now AOBM, as I shall call him for short, was well read, kind, probably in his late thirties to early forties, and came in all the time just to talk to me. He offered to buy me stuff, take me out, etc. I turned him down nicely every time, because he was genuinely a nice, not pervy guy, and I appreciated it, I did, but I was still mortified. Eventually we got another lady to work with named Mary Ann, who is, to this day, my favorite person I've ever worked with. After AOBM came in several times, she shoved her ring on my finger and asked me about my husband right in front of him. AOBM came in no more.

I really thought things couldn't get any worse, and then Best Buy came along. The guys who worked there would bend over backwards for me, and I didn't even ask them to. I dated two guys I worked with from there. These were the first and only two guys I've dated. I don't consider them real boyfriends, and in reality, I should have never dated them. They were the type of guys who didn't know who they were, only cared about themselves and were never going anywhere in life. I know the one is an unemployed druggie now, and I know nothing about the other one, but you all get the hint. In my attempt to not be mortified by guys and give them a chance, I didn't think it out properly except to think that I was being a scared little unsociable chicken, and dated guys who weren't worth my time.

Sadly, that wasn't the worst of my guy issues at Best Buy. I got hit on by a lot of stoner gamers, and guys in their pajamas. I wish I was kidding. One time I came back from vacation exhausted. I had offered to take someone else's shift, stupidly, not thinking that I would be getting back from vacation within a half an hour of having to be at work. I sat down on the floor to file DVDs and woke up a few minutes later to one of the guys from another department doing my job and waking me up. He basically did my job while I was there, which wasn't fair to him, but I never asked him to. He just did. Thank God this was an instance of someone just being really nice, but still. I never asked him. He just did it. I didn't know why guys wanted to be around me, far more do nice things for me, even if they didn't like me.

And then came the kicker. I could probably make a whole post about this story, but I'll try to keep it short and sweet. There's nothing sweet about it, though. One day these two guys, obviously slightly intoxicated, but not enough to excuse their behavior, came in. They walked around for awhile and then came up to me and asked if we had a certain movie. It was not on the shelf so I did what we normally would do, and got into the computer system to look it up and see if we had any in stock, or if any stores nearby did. This was a mistake, and I realized they weren't so much as looking for a movie. It was a super old movie that hadn't been in print for several years.

What were they looking for, you ask? Well, once they had me cornered right up against the computer desk and started asking me if I did threesomes and if I liked porn, I realized quickly they were looking for a "good time." They even offered to pay me. How nice. I should have told them where to stick their money, only I was a little afraid. This happened on a night when we normally weren't busy, so we were understaffed. There was a NFL game going on that night, and normally the store is so dead you can hear crickets.

However, the store had just started some upgrading and got a brand new, the biggest screen I've ever seen, big screen television. Being that we live in a small area that is big on football, of course everyone who loved football and electronics found out about this. There was no longer a reason for them to go to the bar and buy drinks, because now they could just come and stand around the big television at Best Buy for free!

Because of this, the store was crowded, although not busy with shoppers, but where I was standing, no one could see me being cornered. The person who was supposed to be watching the monitors was also more busy watching the football game than doing that, or they would have noticed the obviously inappropriate and uncomfortable position I was in. To make it worse, my co-worker had somewhere to be, so he was in the back collecting his stuff while the other co-worker who was supposed to be there to work with me in the same department was running late. I was the only one in the department. Had anyone else been in it, they would have noticed something was wrong by now. This was also before we had the walkie talkies that connected to our pants and went in our ears. I couldn't even call anyone for help.

I got lucky because the co-worker who was leaving forget to clock out before grabbing his stuff. He was going to clock out on another computer, but while trying to avoid people noticed something wasn't right. This co-worker was well over six feet tall so he could see above pretty much everything and decided to clock out at the computer I was being trapped at. As soon as he came over, the guys split and left the store. Awesome co-worker told me he had seen something going on and knew something wasn't right, and then proceeded to go and alert the person who was supposed to be watching the monitors of what had just happened. Awesome co-worker also told me that, if the guys didn't leave, he was going to call me hunny and ask me if I would pick up supper on the way home. After that I wore a ring that looked like an engagement ring. I was only bothered once after that and those guys never came back, thankfully.

Then we have the infamous Good Girls Go Bad story about Mike, who is probably still waiting for me to call him about buying a house. I didn't do anything there either, he just clung himself to me, but I digress. You get the picture of the issues I have with guys. Little boys like me, never men.

While I was working at Best Buy, in the mess of all things that I didn't know and that scared me, I met Friend. Now you all can probably get a better idea of why he was, and in his own way, still is such a substantial part of my life. He wasn't like the other guys; the ones I dated or the ones that hit on me. He wasn't interested in himself only, or in just getting laid. In fact, he had a girlfriend. He just liked me for who I was. He never wanted nor expected anything from me. And with that, our friendship grew.

To this day, I can honestly say that if I had not met Friend, I'm not sure where I would be emotionally. He listened to me for hours on end. I complained a lot. If I were him, I probably would have either ran from me, or moved away and changed my name just to get away from me. You think I'm kidding. I'm not. I was that bad, but he never cared. And through all of that, he liked me. Me. The person who over shared everything with him and used him as a shoulder to cry on. Of course I never did it because I was trying to use him, but yet, because I trusted and respected him. I had never, ever trusted or respected a guy before other than my grandfather. And, like my grandpap, after our friendship developed, I knew that Friend loved me. Unlike my grandpap, it was as more than a friend. Just so you don't get confused and think my grandpap was a creeper or anything. It was in the way Friend acted and the things he did, more than what he said. But he said it, too, in his own way. And he was happy to say it finally. This he told me. Even if he hadn't, I still would have known.

The thing that happened with Friend is truly my fault. It is. I take full responsibility for it. I think back now and I wonder if he ever knew I loved him. I wonder if he knows I still love him and always will in some way. I tried to tell him in the best way I could, but it wasn't very good. I know now what I didn't then, and that's that I didn't know how to tell him. No matter how I knew what he felt for me, I was afraid if I told him, that he, too, would leave, just like my grandpap. My grandpap didn't leave by any fault of his own, but Friend had the choice, so who's to say that he wouldn't? My dad did.

When I had the chance to just be with Friend, another thing I knew for sure was that, if I were to be with him, that would be it for me. That's who I would be with. I just knew. Now, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me that "they just knew" and I laughed to myself and thought they were nuts, I could live in the lap of luxury and do nothing for the rest of my life. So really, I can't explain on which grounds I had to just know this, but I did. At the time I was only 21 or 22, and he was a few years younger, so I just wasn't ready for that kind of commitment. I think back now and wonder if I should have been, but then I realize a few things.

I was in a bad place when we were so close. I didn't know who I was, and had I gotten together with him, who knows who I would be. Would I have ever figured out exactly who I was? Or would I only know who I was with him? He was the opposite. He only knew who he was with certain people, and not who he could be without him. Then those people left. He's just learning who he is now, and I can see it in him when we talk the little that we do anymore. He's becoming his own person at the same age when I became my own person. Yet I still have the same feelings for him.

I struggle with this. I realized today that, even though I always felt we were supposed to end up together, that it was us against the world, we had to take the paths we took to figure ourselves out. It was supposed to happen. We're still friends through all of this, and that being said, there was a reason. The reason I worked at Best Buy was to meet him and get more comfortable with guys, while finding out exactly what I didn't want in a guy. Through him I found out what I did, at least emotionally.

I've said it once and I'll say it again. I don't agree with Friend's lifestyle. I think he can be wreckless, but as his age, it's his choice. I know the kind of life he's lived and I understand why he is the way he is. I don't hate him for it, I'm not angry, I hold no resentment, but I accept it. It's just not the kind of lifestyle that I can live. But I see him growing and getting out of the drinking, and the constantly being drunk, and maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know. What I do know is all that I learned today, and the answers I have received.

I, without knowing it, have lived with a fear of commitment since my grandpap died. He was the ideal father and grandpap figure to me. No one compared to him. I found every reason to not go out with someone, instead of finding reasons to do so.

I've lived with the fear of abandonment really since my father left. It intensified once my grandpap died, and continued on. If I got involved with someone and I fell hard, and they left, I didn't know if I would be able to pick up the pieces. This went for friends I got close to as well. I was such a fragile being before, but I'm not now. I know that if I give love a try now that I could pick up the pieces if it didn't work out. It wouldn't break me. It would simply be a learning experience.

My love of weddings and wanting to be a wedding planner comes from the days when my grandpap and I would talk weddings together. It's idealistic for me. It brings me back to my childhood and the days where I had my best friend by my side. It's a reminder that life is beautiful, and I was loved so deeply and unbelievably by someone I trusted and respected fully. The people I would be helping plan their wedding also feel that way, but it's a different kind of love and a beautiful thing to be a part of.

I never saw myself getting married anymore. Not after I really got into the real world and started to kiss frogs. Not after I realized my grandpap would never be at the wedding and that the day was as much about having him walk me down the aisle as it was about getting married. I rejected the idea, because he was never not part of it. Now I know that if I stand at the end of that aisle with no one by my side, he will be there to walk me down it. Even in spirit, he will be there. He will still be in the first row, he will still dance at my wedding, but now grandma will be there by his side. His one and only true love.

My grandma was so intent on not dying until I was married. She was worried I'd end up old and alone, and trying to take care of my mom and everything around me before I did eventually end up alone. We have a small family. It's now just my mom, Aunt Bev and myself. She had a point, and she promised she wouldn't die until I was married. I think I let her down because I didn't have the chance to get out and meet someone, and when I did, I pushed him away because I was ill prepared and non understanding of the feelings I was facing until we had our year apart last year and I realized what I really felt. But that's okay. It was meant to happen this way.

When my grandma passed, as weird as this will sound, I felt like an orphan in a way. Yes, I still had my mom, but my grandparents had so much to do with raising me. Most of my youngest and favorite childhood memories were with them. It's not my mom's fault. She was a single mother who was going to school and working hard to provide for us. I loved the days with my grandparents. When I had problems, I still, up until the day my grandma passed, would call her and we would talk them out. Sometimes we would even complain about being sick together since we had many of the same symptoms. I didn't have that anymore. My little light was gone. Knowing she was going to pass, I had prepared myself several months before, only to learn that I wasn't really prepared and I missed her more than words could express. It felt like my childhood left right along with her.

Because of that I learned what it was like to shut down, and then realized that was what I had been doing all of these years. I needed to do the opposite. I knew what it was like to shut down, but not to open up. I have geniunely been trying to do so and somedays it's harder than others. Sometimes I just want to cry and be alone, away from the rest of the world. Other days I know that I'm ready to try love and try things again. I'm taking it one day at a time, but I'm getting there.

Without two of the most influential people left in my life, I found myself unexpectedly becoming the free, hopeful and optimistic person I was when I was child. I'm opening up again and I'm having to rely on myself. It's a different world out there for me, but today, I learned so many things about myself. I learned why I do and have done the things I have. I learned why I treated Friend the way I did, and then went back to him after a year apologizing and making sure he was okay. And I still feel like I have so much more to apologize to him for and I may never get the chance.

I miss him, I do, but I know it's time to let go. He has a girlfriend and I would never do anything to disrupt that. He knows that. I'm not here to make his life complicated; I've done enough of that. I just want to see him happy, because he's gone through more than I have. I respect him. I always heard that if you truly love someone that you would just want to see them happy. I never believed it, but I do now. There is no jealously, or anger. There's just the hurt that I feel knowing that I could have been with him, but the relief in knowing that we both had to grow separately.

As much as I don't want to let go, today taught me to let go of my father's memory, keep my grandpap's and my grandma's and let go of what I can not have. This doesn't, by any means, mean we still can't be friends. If it becomes too difficult like it did last year, then it will, but right now, I want to stay friends with him. The truth in last year is one he doesn't know. I loved him, I never wanted him to leave me, and I was scared so I pushed him away first. I regret this every day. I will just not compare anyone to him or "wait and see what happens." You girls know what I mean by that. We all do it. We are friends. Period. It hurts, but I'll live.

Today, as I was crying and pondering what I was learning, I talked to my grandpap. I couldn't see him, but I could feel him. I told him that if I was on the right track, if what I was learning was what I was supposed to be, to give me a sign. I told him that I missed him and I wanted to know that he was still around me and that I was making him proud.

I don't know how many of you know about "pennies from heaven." Essentially, it's said that when you're missing someone and you find a penny appear from nowhere, or in the oddest place with a year significance to the person you're missing who has passed on, that it is them saying hi. I see dead people. I never had to rely on a penny, however, later in the night, once I had picked myself up again and stopped thinking about waiting for a sign from him, this happened.

I went into my mom's room to get the bandage for my ankle. I barely ever go in there unless it's for something like that. Because my ankle was bothering me so badly, I couldn't bear to bend down long enough to find out which shelf it was on, because I knew it was on a lower shelf, just not the exact one. Therefore, I sat. I went about my business, pulled out the bandage wrap and wrapped my ankle. And that's when I saw it, but almost didn't.

My mom has one of those carpets made from eighteen by eighteen carpet tiles that interlocks together. When it's together, you can no longer see where it interlocks, and it interlocks so tightly that nothing can get in between it, but there it was. A penny in between the carpeting. I don't even know how it managed to wiggle it's way down in there, but I picked it up and thought nothing of it. I went to put it on my mom's shelf when I noticed the date. There it was as plain as day, 2000. The year my grandfather died. Somehow, I just knew it was from him. Some may call it a coincidence, but having lived in this house with that carpeting for around eight years and knowing nothing has ever gotten stuck down in it, I knew this was different. This was special.

So I will keep this penny as a reminder that I am on the right track. I'm living, I'm learning, and I'm on my way to being who I really am, and finding peace when I'm confused. My grandpap is here watching, guiding me, now with my grandma by his side. I am a lucky girl, a blessed girl and I will be okay. I will just keep growing knowing that I have two angels watching out for me.

It's Awfully Pretty Inside My Fairy Tale Castle of Snow

Yes, I ran away without really going anywhere. I admit this. I suck. I admit this, too. I also admit that I found this website fun, although it is intended to keep idiots busy. I understand this makes me an idiot and I am okay with that, because I enjoyed chasing the button, although I knew each time I pressed it, it would become harder to catch, therefore it would eventually become impossible to press the button at all. This is probably because I’ve long accepted that inanimate objects are smarter than me.

Although I realize my running away may have seemed unnecessary, others had reasoned their theories on why I disappeared, and decided to share them with me. They are, but not limited to, as follows.

1. I was still mediating that conversation between my friend and my mom about Matthew Gray Gubler’s hair. Let me explain.

On January 16th I posted this on my Twitter, and I quote exactly.

“Currently mediating a convo about Matthew Gray Gubler’s hair between my mom and my friend.”

Then I didn’t update after that. I actually had someone @reply me asking if the reason I hadn’t updated my Twitter lately was because I was still mediating that conversation. My response as of twenty hours ago was as follows, and again I exact quote.

“I know you’re all still wondering. Is she still moderating a convo about MGG’s hair? The answer is yes and no.”

But really guys, my mom and my friend had this odd little conversation about whether he was sexier with short hair, or long hair. Okay, so it technically started when I mentioned my friend thought he was hot, and my mom asked me to ask her if she liked him with long hair or short hair. I asked her through text, she answered, my mom disagreed, I told my friend and she rebuked. Viola, mediation occurred. I have an opinion, but am remaining Sweden, so you guys decide if you like it better long or short, and if you leave it in the comments, I’ll let my mom and friend know.

And no, that friend is not Aunt Bev, which leads me to possible reason 2 of why I haven’t been around.

2. Did your mom and Aunt Bev manage to do something so average that it somehow turned into a debacle and now there are problems in which may or may not involve jail time for those involved?

No, seriously, this was brought up to me. The answer is no. They are still them, but no one has ended up in jail.

Yet.

3. Have to somehow managed to kill yourself off with your talents of klutziness and unparalleled bad balance?

No, no I have not, but my question back to them is as follows. If I had killed myself, did you really think I would get back to you? Their answers? Yep. I love my friends.

4. I just figured you fell down a rabbit hole.

No really, my friend said this to me. It wasn’t even an Alice in Wonderland reference. I am just talented enough that I could somehow fall down and either die, or disappear into a rabbit hole and no one would find it weird, apparently.

5. I just figured you got lost in the snow.

We did have a solid two and a half feet of snow for weeks on end, but I chose not to go out in it. It’s understandable that I could have gotten lost in snow that, if walked in, only Jared Padalecki would look normal human size in, but I refrained. I’m glad my friends have faith in me.

In reality though, you guys, I am not as big of a loser as I’m letting on, but only in this case. My grandma died. For real. She passed away last month and it turned into this huge debacle in which we learned things about her we never wanted to know and left us all more confused than ever. In all of this, not only have I not updated, but I’ve learned only one thing.

I sincerely let my neighbor with the big knockers down when I promised her at the ripe old age of fourteen that I would trick or treat until I was thirty, and come and sing Christmas carols to her every year until she died. I am so sorry for failing you, Big Knockers Lady. Also, if you could please let someone in the neighborhood know your real name, we’d all love it. We really do refer to you as Big Boobs Lady, simply because no one seems to know your name. Unless that is your name. In which case, you’re good.

I also learned that I am talented enough to do one thing that no one mentioned. I can hurt myself without doing anything at all. I currently feel totally useless and hauled up on the couch with awesome ice packs all day. I won’t tell anyone I’m trying to put my room back together after a water leakage incident due to snow, if you won’t. Shh! If you don’t, I promise to leave you with words of advice for free. Oh, who am I kidding? I was going to do that anyway.

1. Up is a deceivingly sad movie about death and the loss of a life partner. You will need tissues for this movie, and preferably should buy a brightly colored box to hug while you watch the movie, in hopes that it will cheer you up somehow. It won’t. Even if there is a dog in the movie named Dug that will haphazardly stop mid sentence and yell SQUIRREL, it still won’t.

2. It’s not just the sellers that suck at Craigslist, as the website suggests. Buyers suck pretty hard too. Let me tell you a story.

My mom decided to sell her bedroom furniture on Craigslist. We did not have pictures yet, so naturally we received emails for pictures. We promptly took pictures of the furniture and posted them on Craigslist, and then joyously let everyone know pictures had been added. They were all on their way down the Yellow Brick Road to finding their perfect furniture, except for one particular woman who insisted there were no pictures. I checked the ad again, but they were clearly there. Other people had emailed me in the meantime expressing their liking for the furniture and their want to come see it based on the pictures. I went back and re-updated the page, just to be on the safe side, only to realize she never went back and looked at the ad after I emailed her and told her I had put pictures up. I emailed her back nicely and told her that the pictures were now there and any errors had been fixed. I didn’t want to make her feel stupid, which in turn, just proved that I was really the stupid one here.

She later emailed me back not once, but twice, apparently because I didn’t answer her first email within ten minutes of her sending it. I felt really bad about this considering I wasn’t near my computer at all when she sent either email, and my magical computer gnomes were on strike for lapse of a paycheck. The first email contained a copy of the Craigslist ad, minus the pictures. This was apparently proof there were no pictures on the ad. The only thing that this proved was that she may have been too lazy to add the pictures to the email. In that same email, coincidentally enough, she also happened to ad the link to my ad telling me to look at that link, because that was the exact page she was on when she copied and pasted my own ad into that email. I clicked the link. The pictures were there. Then came the second email which went exactly like this:

"I looked on Craigslist to find your listing and emailed it to you. It says that the listing has a pic, (photo) but there are no photos when you click on the listing. Could you just email them directly? Your email to me lists attachments, but there are none. Maybe you have to check your email and confirm changes to your listing."

This is an exact copy and paste. Names have been left out to protect the not so innocent; those guilty of needing a little chlorine in their gene pool, if you will. Let me notate the particular gems of this email, in case you haven’t noticed them yourself.

*It’s obvious that I must not know what a pic is, because she had to tell me that a pic was a photo. I would like to share with her that she used incorrect punctuation and sentence form when doing so.

*When I click on the link she sent me, I get pictures, so obviously we are not looking at the same ad, even though we are.

*I never sent her any attachments, and also kept copies of all the emails I sent her. They did not list attachments either, at least not my end. This tells me she’s a little more than slightly confused about how to use a computer.

*She passive aggressively decides to tell me that it’s obvious the problem lies in me, even though she’s the only one who can’t see the pictures. Hmm.

*No matter what I did, she obviously couldn’t correctly identify if there was an attachment attached to her email, so it wasn’t worth my time to email her pictures.

I nicely emailed her back and told her our furniture was not for her, being as she was the only one not seeing the pictures. I was kind, but returned her passive aggressive manner, and then promptly decided not to communicate with her any longer. Oddly enough, we got an email an hour later from a woman who fell in love with the furniture because of the pictures. She came out to see the furniture the next day and took it on the spot at full asking price. Take that, “There Are No Pictures,” lady. Take that.

3. Never, ever under any circumstances tune out when your mom and your friend are discussing your friend’s potential purchase of a home. You might just tune back in in time to hear your friend go, “I MAY NEVER GO OUTSIDE!,” and have no idea what they’re talking about.

4. If you’re ever unsure about a book you’re reading, pulling up reviews online for further insight may only confuse you more. I shall elaborate.

I am currently reading a fictional book that pertains to the subject of spiritual warfare, and intertwines with talking about Him. The book was so different and unusual that I decided I wanted to see what others thought about it, because I honestly had no idea what to think of it. For once in my life, I was speechless. I ended up coming across a review on a blog from a woman who was quite angry at the author of the book for portraying spiritual warfare as violent, and then went on to rant how this went completely against the Bible’s rendering of spiritual warfare. I don’t know what Bible she’s reading, but I think it left out Revelations. Either that, or she thought it was called spiritual warfare just because someone got a kick out of calling it that, and all those violent and unpleasant terms used in the Bible referring to it were really just code words to scare people, when really they meant sunshine and lollipops, as well as unicorns farting rainbows. When I finish the book and make a decision on how I feel about it, I will then share what I’m reading with you all. It’s just one of those books.

5. If you are a millionaire who decides to put himself on The Millionaire Matchmaker, and you wear shirts two sizes too big, pants that are also two sizes too big and aren’t meant to be capris, but come nowhere near your ankles, and Ed Hardy shoes that resemble a woman’s Mary Jane’s, don’t brag about what a hot bod you have, and then expect to not be made over. Seriously. Just don’t. And don’t give the lady you're paying to help you attitude.

6. Even though the NuvaRing commercial says “hormonal vaginal ring,” this does not mean that the vaginal ring is hormonal and will suddenly start a fight with your no no place about the lack of light it sees when in use.

7. Aunt Bev buys the best presents ever. As proof I will provide the below ill centered picture so that you can see what the present she bought me allowed me to be able to make. The pictures inside the frame, I totally made those thanks to her.


8. The guys on Supernatural really are that hot. In case you’ve forgotten, we have this example and this one.

9. I do not have the maturity level necessary to watch the Olympics. Every time someone correctly pronounces the name of an athlete from another country, I find a way to realize just how dirty it sounds.

10. Criminal Minds is a really good show. When you finally catch up on all five seasons, you suddenly have complete Criminal Minds withdrawal. It sucks.

That’s all I have for today, folks. I will leave you with something I wrote for my Grandma the day she passed and had intended on posting. Since then I have found out many things about her that have made me question everything I knew about her, but I have decided to post this anyway in hopes that someone can relate to the truth you feel just hours after learning someone has passed.

Oh, and btw, I know this layout is ugly. I'm working on it.

Someone else’s tragedy is always far more romantic than your own. That’s a lesson the movies won’t teach you and that you have to learn on your own. Too bad I already knew that.

My gram passed away this morning. I made the phone calls. No matter how many times I explained whose granddaughter I was, and then followed those words with “she passed away,” it still doesn’t seem real. I’m in total shock, but the funny thing about shock is that your body begins to respond to the stupidest things. Instead of crying, I find myself frustrated every time someone goes “but I just talked to her the other day.” And there wasn’t one person who didn’t announce this to me. In a moment, anything can change.

She was a wonderful grandmother, and I spent my childhood looking up to her, playing with her, and she always chased me around the kitchen island. I will always remember that. She gave me the gift of amazing memories, and warm love. Even though she’s gone, those things will never fade.

She was a mother to others, and even those who didn’t have a mother of their own. She took in everyone and was a great friend. Or, like my great aunt told me, “she was like my sister.” I like to think a lot of people will remember her that way.

So here’s to you, Laura: Grandma, Mother, Sister and Friend. You are now at peace, free from any pain and suffering. You will walk amongst the clouds with those that have been lost before you, but at the end of everything, you will be reunited with your one true love. In life and straight through to death, love is all that matters.

I Have A Kansas Song Stuck In My Head

Yep, it's true. I am a slacker. Even my blog is yelling at me, following me without a shadow through my day so when I turn around, I can not see it following me, but I just know. I called the police. They don't care.

Okay...so in all seriousness here, folks, I know that I'm hardly updating and I'm sorry. My grandma is still in the hospital, I had a party to plan / attend (even if it was for my dog, but I won't say either way...), I had an appointment and also made cookies for a charity event for the cute little animals, amongst other things. But I don't want to talk about most of that. I want to talk about my appointment. So yes, I'm actually going to tell a story today. I don't know how fun it is, but I desperately feel the need to tell it.

Today, I had a dentist appointment. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but the dentist office I'm going to is kind of a pain in the ass. Okay, not kind of. The only reason I was going there was because my dentist retired and my insurance covered these people. They were closest to my house and family owned, so they won by default. Since June, which is when I started going to them, there's been issues. I was just going to list them, but hell, let me just tell you a story about them, because I'm not sure if I'm angry or amused by the amount of unprofessional fail going on at this office.

Every single time I've gone to them, they've been running at least a half an hour late, even when I'm the first appointment. Not kidding. Each time I get in a conversation with the people in the waiting room, who also have the same story. After awhile I was beginning to think the only reason I was going there was to catch up on my morning talk shows that played in the waiting room. And, in the interest of time, they are very popular for giving me a card with an appointment time on it, or giving me a time over the phone, and then calling the day before the appointment to remind me of my appointment, only to give me a totally different time. At first I thought I was going nuts, even though I have a ton of doctor's appointments and never once had this happen. That was until today when I was talking to another lady in the waiting room who also revealed this has consistently happened to her, and then I knew I wasn't crazy. She said, too, she's also come in at the time they gave her in the reminder call, and then was told upon coming in that her appointment was at a different time, the original time she was given, and that the mistake was her own. It wasn't. The pre-molded plastic that molds plastic spoons is sharper than they are.

Then we have the issue that my brand new filling just cracked in half and fell out, and I wasn't eating anything that should have hurt it. Beyond that, new fillings should not be falling out. And we're not talking that I ate immediately after it was put in and it wasn't set. It was about a month later. I've never, ever in the history of my life had a filling fall out. My old dentist, god rest his soul, always got those babies in, got them drilled down so my bite was even, and I was totally set. My bite since they fixed that filling; not so even.

Also, along the same lines is the fact that while I was going to them, they decided to swap out my old fillings with the mercury in them, for ones that match my teeth and do not have mercury. I realize the mercury in them is very, very minimal, but with having heart problems, it was worth a try. Besides that, a lot of doctors have been saying that if you can get them changed out, you should. My insurance was paying, so why not do it? Because my teeth never hurt until they switched them out. That's why. In fact, when they were doing my one tooth they told me that it was so far down to the gums that she didn't know how it wasn't hurting me. It wasn't, trust me. Now, though, after she tore apart my dentist and how he didn't put any filling, or padding, or whatever it was against my gum and how he did it incorrectly, and then went in and put said filling, it hurts like hell. I can't even eat on it. But it's not like I can eat on that side of my mouth anyway, and I haven't been able to since June.

Why, you ask? Well, back in good ole June, they started a root canal. Then, they had to send in papers to get the rest of the root canal approved. Only they forgot. And then several weeks later called me and said they were sending the papers that I thought were already sent. It took three weeks for approval, and almost another month after that for them to give me an appointment, since they wouldn't just give me one when they sent the papers in after telling me it takes exactly three weeks for my insurance to respond always. So making an appointment for three weeks after the date they sent the papers to the insurance, even a month, should have been a no brainer. But no, they wouldn't make it until after the approval. So I went and got the second part of the root canal done where they filled my tooth. That's when they remembered they forgot to send in the approval for the crown. And then they forgot to send it again, and a got a call a few weeks later, the whole deal. So it's now been over four months and still my root canal isn't done. And I know what you're thinking. Why would I keep going to them?

I feel like it's because I'm a stupid idiot, but honestly it's because they were the ones with the approval to my root canal. They started it, and I preferred they finish it. I also didn't know if my insurance would let me go somewhere else since they already had the approval. I had since stopped letting them do anything else to my teeth and opted that, when they were finished with my root canal, I would go on ahead and have another dentist do everything. I just wanted them to finish my damn root canal since they were the ones with the approval. And today happened...the day when they were to finish it.

Now, please understand that by now there are stress fractures in my filling for my root canal due to them waiting so damn long to put a crown on. I'm in pain, can't eat on that side because I have two teeth bothering me over there; my root canal one and the one they swapped the filling in. I could not have been happier to get this crown put on today. I would finally have a tooth that would stop hurting, and I wouldn't have to go back to that place, therefore getting to move on and get the other stuff that is hurting fixed, since I obviously couldn't trust them to do it and my insurance wouldn't let me go to two dentists at one, especially when one was carrying the approval for my root canal. I didn't even know if I could trust them to finish my root canal, but again, they had retained the approval for it and my insurance is a bit hinky, so I figured I'd shut up and get it done there.

So here I went merrily to the dentist office today. Upon entering, I waited at the reception desk while one of the dental assistants and the receptionist continued to have a personal conversation in front of me, and ignore me like I was invisible. When they finally finished their conversation, they turned to me and then checked me in. And ask for my insurance card that they had about four copies of. Awesome. But this was typical. This happens every time. I am always second to their conversations, and they've asked me on several, but not all occasions, to recopy my insurance card.

From there, I went in and sat in the waiting room for a half an hour, which was to be expected. The funny thing was, the appointment they gave me was for 10:30, they called me the day before to "remind" me of the appointment and told me it was at 10:00. I questioned it and they insisted on 10:00, and then didn't take me until 10:30 anyway, so I'm unsure why I even bothered to go in at 10:00. I should have known better. But while I was there waiting, I was enlightened by others.

First, there was a guy who was visiting from California. He took his mom to get her teeth cleaned. He got there at 8:30. At 10:30 when I went back, she still hadn't come out. Around ten till 11:00, I went out to pee and they were just finishing her up. And all she was doing was GETTING HER TEETH CLEANED! That's it. When he left...that's all they had done. That's just beyond ridiculous, first of all.

Then, there was a lady who was there with her daughter. Her daughter had missed three days of school in the last week and a half due to their negligence to correctly do her teeth. They were refusing to pull her baby teeth, and trying to drill them and fill cavities in them. They're baby teeth. They fall out. They were hurting her, and all they wanted to do was have them pulled. Her daughter was upset and scared, and when we ended up running into them at Wal-Mart a good while later, the mother said she was taking her daughter elsewhere, as she's had it with them. She was also the one who told me they often tell her one time, and then another. Awesome.

When I finally got back to the chair, the dentist came in immediately, didn't say too much, gave me two shots in my mouth, and then left. I didn't realize that I had to have any numbing agents to get my crown put on, and I know that I should have said something when she went to put it into my mouth, but she did it so fast I barely had time to think, far more talk. A few minutes later, I started to feel kind of sick. This normally doesn't happen, but sometimes it will. Only, then I felt dizzy and I was realizing she hadn't just given me a numbing agent. She had to have given me something else...without telling me.

Then we sat...and sat...and wondered if she had died, because trust me, by now, I was numb. The thing with this dentist office is that it's very open and you can see what others are doing, so it wasn't hard to see that she was working on two other patients back and forth while I sat there feeling sick, and with a very numb mouth. I tried to pass the time by going to the bathroom, only to find she was working on ANOTHER person, and one of the other people she had started out working on, was still sitting there. This is when I became concerned that I was going to die there, but I went back to the room and waited some more, feeling increasingly worse as time went on.

After a half an hour, the numbing agent was wearing off and no one had come back to look inside my mouth. Hell, no one had even come back to check on me, say "I'll be right with you," or "go to hell." I feel the second one was the sentiment closer to what they were thinking. No one. Not one person. They just let me sit back there for a HALF AN HOUR with a NUMB MOUTH. This is when I realized they weren't coming back any time soon, nor did they care. I also realized my mouth was also not so numb anymore, meaning they were going to have to give me more of what they already had just to do what they were going to do, and for no reason. Had they worked on me instead of leaving me alone for a half an hour, we wouldn't have had this problem. Sure, maybe they would have had to give me a little more to keep me numb, but they basically just shot junk into my gums and made me sick for no reason, only to have to repeat it. This was logically problematic for two reasons...okay, more than two, but I'm trying to be nice.

One, I have issues with my heart, so we have to be careful with giving me Novocaine and anything of the like. They know this. They've known this since my first appointment. Then they do this, and would be forced to give me more because they ignored me. Then there's the issue that whatever they gave me was already making me feel sick. I didn't think I could handle more without spending the day sick. It wasn't the normal stuff they gave me, and this is when I decided to get up and take a look at the marked tubes that she had pulled the medication out of it that she put in my mouth, and had not thrown them away. The garbage can was right there and they were empty. Just saying. Upon an examination of them, I saw the one was an anesthetic, which was fine. I know that anesthetics are sometimes used in dental treatments. The problem, however, was that it had hydrochloride in it. I'm allergic to hydrochloride, and had she bothered to ask me if it was okay to give me any kind of anesthetic first, or asked me what I was allergic to first, she would have known that. No wonder I was sick.

By now it was slightly after a half an hour and I hadn't heard a word or a peep from anyone who worked there. I was done. Combine that with the fact that they had given me something I was allergic to without checking with me first, and then would have to give me either more, or more of something different because I was no longer numb due to their negligence, I knew there was not much of a reason to stick around. She wasn't getting to me any time soon. It was over an hour after my appointment, and I was back at point one and just sitting there. I've never, ever done this before, but I got up and walked out of my appointment, and as I passed several nurses with my purse and water bottle, and my mom with hers, and passed the dentist, they all looked at us, but no one bothered to ask if anything was going on, or if everything was okay. They just ignored us.

Needless to say, this was my final straw with the dentist office. When I had left, I also took my approval paper with me that they left lying out, knowing they had to remit it to the insurance company with the bill for the crown, so that they couldn't do it. Hey, it was my paper. I then proceeded to call the insurance company, who told me if there were any issues such as these, they wanted them through an e-mail, or in writing. When I got home, I wrote them out an e-mail explaining the situation, letting them know that the dentist's office did NOT put a crown on my tooth like I had been waiting over four months for them to do, as well as my other woes with them, and there were several. I then asked if there were some way for them to let me go to another dentist, and allow that dentist to send in a new pre-approval paper since the crown still needs done. I don't know what's going to happen, but I hope they don't say no and make me go back to that office, because I think if they do, I would rather go somewhere and just have the root canal tooth pulled than finish this root canal with them. I just can not do it. It's not worth my time, sanity, or the health of my mouth, the mouth they have very poorly taken care of.

The really finish off the story beautifully, they called me and left a message on my answering machine asking me to call them back. This is great, except they did this six and a half hours after I walked out. SIX AND A HALF HOURS. Look, people, either do it as soon as you notice someone left the office, or don't do it at all. I think this really says a lot about them.

I won't post the name of the dental office on here, but if you live in Western Pennsylvania, Westmoreland or Allegheny County, and are trying to find a new dentist, please comment on this blog and I will privately let you know who NOT to go to and save you the hell I've gone through with these people.

Now, because I haven't been fun, I will give you all a bonus and tell you a few cute little stories from days past, via texts that are still in my phone. I hate leaving you all with an angst driven blog entry.

- The other day my mom and I were watching Murder, She Wrote, and John Astin, who was in The Addams Family, was on there. This started us in singing the theme song, only we couldn't remember what order spooky and ooky were in, so I had to Google the lyrics. Then, after I did that, I couldn't get the song out of my head. Awesome. And for the record, it's spooky and then ooky, but these both come after kooky, which I had totally forgotten about. Ah, rhyming words. They're so fickle.

- I was sitting on the couch with one cat lying on my lap, and another up on the back of the couch behind my head. I was petting the cat on my lap, while the one behind me was sleeping. Or at least I thought he was sleeping. That was until he whacked me over the head. Apparently he was jealous I wasn't petting him, too.

- I am disappointed in myself because I actually watched several episodes of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and I kind of liked them. But just a few things. First, I like Kim and all, but how is it that she hears herself sing, and then still believes she actually can? Is she that tone deaf? I don't know why exactly someone would choose to work with her, but with the auto-tone she sounded okay, and the song is selling, so I guess that's all that matters. But, bottom line, Bitch whose hair was tardy to the party, can not sing. Second, she does realized she just got engaged to a married man, right? Because I don't think she does. Dear Lord...

- Another show I'm a little disappointed I watch is The Rachel Zoe Project. I always wonder why I watch it, and then the other day she says "I literally felt like a cow about to moo," in reference to how she felt like it was a cattle herd backstage at a fashion show. Then I remembered why I watch it.

- I have recently fallen in love with the song Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas, and I wondered to Becky through text how weird it would be for me to have a seventies song as a ring tone. Around here, you can't have a country ring tone, as everyone does and you'll never hear your phone and know it's yours, and I usually don't hear most of the sub-par music of today ring tones, so I wanted something different. She told me it would only be a two on the scale of one to ten in weirdness, so I'm going for it. Oh, and you're welcome for the video on this. Mom, I'm sorry that it doesn't have lyrics, but it has something way better. Hot guys.

- I was coming home from getting my glasses tightened the other day, and a hardware store sign said "It's wine season! Get your wine here!" Only in Western Pennsylvania, folks. In all fairness, I think there was a wine shop back there, too, but I'm unsure and the wording was on the hardware store sign. I'm sorry, but getting wine at a hardware store would be like using Spongebob as an alter cover. Does.not.compute.

- While exiting Target, my mom was reading the reciept and making sure everything was kosher on it, when she says out loud, what's up dry sht? I almost died when she said that, and then immediately had to see what she was talking about. I come over, look at the receipt, and sure enough it said UP DRY SHT. I realized they meant Up Drier Sheets, but you guys, that could be ominously dirty. I told Becky I would scan this receipt for her to put it on 11 points. Still working on that one.

- I probably haven't told this story before, but Aunt Bev grew up in a rather interesting house. Ever since she was a teenager, she's seen things in the house, heard them, and have had strange occurrences. She no longer lives there, but when her mom passed away, my mom was helping her clean out the house and they also had some very interesting things happen, as have I. I won't get into anyone else's stories but my own, and I'll only tell one. One day I was at her house and upstairs seeing the new renovations being done. I was standing in her parent's old room when my mom announced she was going to go and move her vehicle. I stood in the room for awhile when all of a sudden I heard someone crying. Thinking it was my mom trying to be cute, I just blew it off and stepped back, fully expecting to see her standing there, because I had heard it too loudly, too clearly, and for too long for it to be anything but her, and it was a female crying. She wasn't standing there, however, and when I looked out the window, she was in her vehicle moving it. There was no way she could have made the sound that came from directly behind me only thirty seconds earlier.

That being said, we were joking about going to the house to hand out Halloween candy, as it would be like our own haunted house experience. I should explain that Bev's brother now owns the house, but has not yet moved in, and she still has stuff there she needs to get, so we'd have a reason to go over. This is when Aunt Bev goes "The problem with that is, there will be three of us there (her, my mom, and myself), and ten people handing out candy." She was referring to whatever is in the house. This then turned into us going "Some kids will be like, hey, thanks for the candy, and I'll be like, I didn't give them candy, and you two will agree, and we'll just turn around and there will be this ominous piece of candy just looming there." Needless to say, although that is unlikely to happen, we still decided to just avoid the house.

- One of the cutest movies that Disney ever did for their exclusive channel is called The Scream Team. It's a Halloween movie with Kat Dennings, Eric Idle, and Kathy Nijimy, and they hardly show it anymore. However, the best line ever comes from it. "And we're walking...and we're walking, and we're smiling...because we're dead, not depressed." The guy who said it was obviously gay, and I am obviously in love with him, and also determined when I die I'm going to run around saying that to all the newbies to the afterlife.

- I'm obsessed with wedding shows, and one of my favorites is My Fair Wedding with David Tetura. Last week on the show, there was a man named Tedroy. At first I thought his first name was Ted and his last Roy. Then, they said his last name was Johnson. Later they showed his name illuminated on the dance floor, and it was indeed Tedroy. I have zero disrespect towards the name, but I have to wonder, is Tedroy the ghetto version of Billy Bob or Jim Bob? Is that mean to wonder it truthfully?

- Becky recently bought a new jacket and asked me if it was weird she was concerned someone was going to steal it from the back room while she was working. She works at Wal-Mart, so I found this to be an illusive question considering some of the people she works with, but I couldn't evade it. I told her I'd be worried, joking, of course, and then took it back and ominously told her that No, no...nothing to be worried about. It's probably fine. I didn't think she was working with any kleptos. I also told her to watch out for box gnomes, because sometimes they get bored, and then proceeded to go back to the original sentiment and ask her all about her jacket. When she left that day, she found she had nothing to be worried about. She doesn't work with an kleptos, which is really good to know. No, seriously...it is.

- The Dancing With the Stars cast this year is adorable, especially Melissa Joan Hart. She's concerned, however, that she's a bad dancer, and although she's not great, she doesn't suck. In her package last week, though, she said the cutest thing. While practicing for her Latin dance, she goes "I know what I look like...and it's ridiculous." How can you not adore her?

On the same note, Donny Osmond keeps insisting that after all the ways he moves is body on the show, Utah isn't going to allow his Mormon self back in, which is just great and hilarious, and I love Donny in a very platonic way. This week he said it regarding that he had to dance a very sexy dance. Only, after saying that, he got up and danced with the one judge, Bruno, and then kissed him. He was all up on Bruno in a very hilarious way, to which host Tom Bergeron responded by saying, "I'd say take it outside, but that could get scary." Everyone lost their shit and couldn't concentrate, resulting in poor Carrie Ann Inaba giving a very half assed review of his dancing while laughing hysterically.

Then, if that wasn't enough for one night, Donny later proceeded to dance backstage with Aaron Carter. Okay, seriously you guys, I never thought I'd see Donny and Aaron in the same room together, or use their names in the same sentence, far more see them dancing together. However, Donny seems awesome, and many moons ago I knew Aaron and he was a really nice, easy going kid, and I'm sure he probably still is, so somehow I think they're a good match. Not romantically, just to dance together.

- The other day I had to go to the hospital for another ultrasound of my side. The doctor was concerned it could be cancerous, and would continue to do ultrasounds on it and keep an eye on it. If it grew, it was a good possibility it was cancerous, but if it didn't, I was fine. The thing with polyps are, they do two things. They grow, or they stay the same. However, they've never met me. I went in and had a ultrasound done by two different people, only to find out it had actually shrunk. No one was sure what to think of it, but it actually shrunk. They don't know why, and neither do I, but I don't care. It's harmless and it seems to be going away on its own. Therefore, I love it and want to hug it, but can't.

While waiting to go back for my ultrasound, since I was early (and they did take me on time, unlike the dentist), two interesting things happened. First, a huge, we're talking close to 7 foot and built like a brick wall, prisoner was brought through. He had shackles on and four guards. I had to pee prior and was too afraid to get up and go past him until he left.

Second, when I did finally go pee, I was in the hallway and this little girl, probably around 1 and a half, was walking by poking all these poles like Monk, and I was in front of the one pole, so she poked me and kept going like it was totally normal. She made my life. I wanted to adopt her, but I think her mom wanted her. Plus, if I was running around with a black baby, seeing as I'm the whitest girl in America, I think someone would sense something was wrong and I'd be put in jail quickly. I couldn't even go incognito. As it should be.

From there we visited my grandma, and then went to her house to check up on things, and pay some of her bills sine she's been in there for almost three weeks. When we were leaving, we noticed pictures on her neighbor's door of her grandson. He looks like a fruity politician, so I said he was going to be one. My mom said "that, or a gay party planner." Then we settled on a gay politician. Can I be besties with this kid?

- This was my excuse for not responding to an e-mail in a decent amount of time, when really I just hadn't had a chance to be online. Copied and pasted.

I just finished making neon orange Rice Krispie treats, while simultaneously ranting about how suburban lawns hate rakes. It's safer for you if you don't ask. But that's not the point of this email.

The point is...I didn't get back to your email last night. Look, I'm going to level with you here with no BS or exaggeration. Last night, I was testing out my new job as the Wicked Witch Of the East. My first mission was not to answer any emails. As you can see, I resigned before my first twenty four hours were up. Some call me a quitter, others a lose, and none an entrepreneur. But I just think I didn't have it in me.

- After the last blog, I'm sure you know about the game of Life, and the antics that have ensued while my mom and I played it. Now, add Aunt Bev, because that's exactly what happened on Saturday. Here are the highlights.

Everyone married someone of the opposite sex, instead of the same sex, like my mom did last time. So obviously my mom and Aunt Bev didn't get married even though we decided it was totally acceptable to marry someone of the same sex if we so choose. I decided to ask them who they did marry, then. My mom said James Gardner, who is thirty years older than her. Aunt Bev decided she married the guy from a vibrator ad in one of her magazines. This is the ad she makes fun of it because it's for a woman's vibrator and tries to claim that it's so discreet, that your significant other won't know you're using it. We don't believe them.

I, on the other hand, was a major whore in the game. Or, as Lauren likes to say, whoire. I'm not sure why she uses whoire when she types, but she does and I love it. Anyway, I had a ton of kids. I was totally octo-mom with a fake husband, who I decided was Jensen Ackles. Who says board games are fun and imaginative?

- And last but not least, the Supernatural quote of the day. "Being a fugitive; freaking dance party." Their idea of a dance party is not the same as mine...of course he was being sarcastic. I think.