In the midst of my imagination

The imagination is a powerful thing. I thought that being older than 5, ok maybe 10, indicated that I should have firm control of how my imagination worked by now. Not so. I have been proven wrong twice this week. At home, alone, one night I decided to throw caution to the wind, put homework aside and pick up a book to read. It turned out to be a murder mystery, with vanishing women and ghastly deaths, the usual murder mystery fair... And, yet the author did a good job of collecting my imagination and refusing to relinquish his grasp. I found myself jumping at slight noises from outside, holding my breath when I heard neighbors on the stairs, and even locking my bedroom door. (Not super effective if a killer wanted to get me... It's one of those locks you could open with a penny.) Even after I told myself I was being silly, I still had a some nervous minutes (ok I'll be honest, hours) that night. What added to this personal embarrassment (side note: is it really embarrassment if no one else is there to witness it? :end side note) was that this was not the first time I had read the book.
Incident number two is not for the squeamish, or those who are currently eating so stop reading now! No? You want to keep on reading? I warned you... As I was attempting to pick up my mail one afternoon from the communal mail boxes; you know the type, where everyone's box is next to each other, stacked like the cubby holes from first grade; and I noticed a bunch of ants climbing and darting all over the area. My imagination kicked into superdrive, took control of my brain, and my immediate thought was: what if someone put a dead rat in my mailbox? In my head I had a clear picture of myself approaching the mailbox, opening it slowly, reaching in and pulling out a dead, moldy, decomposing rat by its squishy tail...eeewwwww... Why I wasn't screaming in my head while this was happening I don't know, but the non-in-my-head me shuddered violently and felt extremely nauseous and ended up not getting the mail that day.

Adventure #1

Even though this is titled "Adventure #1," it is not my first adventure (boy is it not my first...sigh...), only the first since the beginning of this here blog. I am in the process of moving about 4 hours away from my current location. Over the weekend was the big trip to move all my stuff. You know its amazing, I moved across the country with all my stuff jammed in a little car, but to move 4 hours away I had to rent a U-haul truck--when did I accumulate so much stuff, I'm not sure. So anyways everything was fine and dandy going up.... until we pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex. As I was trying to find the right building in what was a labyrinth of apartment buildings my car stalled five times...in a row, my car is an automatic-its not supposed to stall. That was only the beginning. After unloading everything and returning the overly expensive truck, we had some dinner and were on our way. After driving for a while we realized that we had gotten on the wrong freeway to come home, it was still going south but ended up taking us on a 30 minute detour before connecting us back to the freeway that we needed to be on. Which would have been ok, only it connected us 15 miles from where we began... We kept on driving, kept on driving when all of a sudden the car started to vibrate... alot... then we heard a kind of popping noise and quickly pulled over. Yup, you guessed it: tire troubles; the thread was barely hanging on to one of the back tires. Luckily we had a spare and even more luckily we were stopped literally feet in front the "last exit for 40 miles" sign. So we go into town to try to find somewhere to buy a new tire, cause the spare is good for what, 50 miles? And we were only half way home. NO place was open, not even Walmart! So, we decide that since we don't want to stay in this town overnight, we would risk it and continue on our way home. So now we're driving along, slowly but surely, driving along when all of a sudden the engine light comes on and the car stalls out again! We quickly pull over to the side of the road and do the requisite check, make sure there is oil, not over heated, etc. etc. Don't know whats wrong, but the car starts again and we continue to slowly drive on. We decide to buy more gas and take a break. While there at the gas station the restroom facilities were used,.... come to find out there were no locks on the door... need I say more? Embarrassment ensued, 'nough said. Chocolate was purchased and we continued on the way home. You know those cartoons were everything goes wrong and the cartoon character finally gives up and kicks the car and the car explodes or shatters into a pile of rubbish? Well I didn't kick the car, didn't want to chance it, but I did consider it... Finally, hours later we were able to make it home. And this concludes Adventure #1.

Musings of a snake's life...

I know how a snake must feel. Slithering around all snake-like, doing your snake thing, living your snake life, not bothering anyone-just minding your own snake business. Then you have one too many rabbits for your current size, or sit in the sun for 3 hours and 58 minutes too long, and your skin has had it. Realizing that you are stuck in skin that is too small and too tight, you have to shed a layer... you have to, you can't help it, the skin has got to go. Then its a HUGE irritation and you rub and scratch and slither and glide etc. etc. against branches and rocks and door frames and whatever else that happens to be handy to help that old, dried-up, gross skin come off to make way for the new, beautiful skin underneath. I bet its during this time that most snake attacks happen. I mean you're at your worst-all flakey and nasty, and super irritated cause you itch and itch and you just want to get rid of the itch....stop the itch...stop the itch... oh the insanity.......-and someone comes along and gets all up in your face, I'd bite 'em too. Ok, well I might not bite them, but I would give them the evil eye at the very least and probably say something sarcastic, that is if I could think of something sarcastic to say (I always seem to think of the best come backs and zingers hours after the immediate need, and then when I do come up with something I reduce them to tears and expose them for the lame brains they are..... in my head). So, a word to the wise, if you don't want to get attacked by a snake: "Don't tease them while they're peeling!"

Burn Baby, Burn!

So, ok I went to the beach today. Its crazy that its November and we can still go to the beach and not freeze to death. Oh no, we had great weather, the sun was out, there was a slight breeze, there were even some waves to jump through. Did I mention the sun was out? We had music and soda, played catch and soccer and swam and talked and had a blast. Unbeknownst to us innocent beach goers those evil sun rays were attacking our fragile skin, ok, ok, my fragile skin since I was the whitest person there. I swear I put on suntan lotion, I know I did. Although looking back I don't think it was waterproof like my friend Pao said it was supposed to be. Which was bad since the first thing we did at our 4 hour beach trip was jump in the ocean. So the sun raged on in an unprovoked battle for 3 hours 58 minutes against my white white (not even off white, or mother of pearl white) white white skin, which was unprotected from our primary's harsh rays. And let me tell you...the sun won... big time...there were no surviving white skin cells. My face is like unto an overripe cherry tomato, and if lobster were on the menu my back would be the main course. We won't even discuss my legs which haven't even seen the sun since the mid 90's--I'm sure you can imagine the pain. To remedy my "suntan lotion" situation, I had to go to the store, which was painful in and of itself, to buy aloe vera with lidocain and some special lip balm. Don't you just love people at the store? As I was standing in line trying to pay, the lady behind me said, "Looks like someone got some sun, heh, heh." My first reaction was really how could you tell, was it the fact that I looked like I had colored every inch of my skin with a red crayola marker, or was is the heat you could feel emanating from body at least 3 feet away... Of course I didn't say that, only thought it, and mumbled my lame excuse "I put suntan lotion on" and tried to joke it off, but you know how those grocery store line conversations go...As I was leaving I heard the line lady tell the cashier "ouch, that looks painful." Yup,.... yup it is. Don't recommend it, not one bit. So now I'm waiting for the lidocain to kick in, hoping the Advil works, reapplying the lip balm and planning my next outing. I'm thinking....someplace dark....with lots and lots of airconditioning.

Getting Started

As I was rereading (for like the 50b'jillioneth time) our family forum, I had a realization: I'm becoming a forum junkie. Not the "oh, I need to check the forum today" junkie, not the "I wonder who's on now" junkie, oh no I'm talking hard core, "multiple checks (and by multiple I mean lots and lots-too embarrassed to give real numbers, only adjectives) an hour" junkie. I HAVE to have my daily fix, can't stop refreshing the page, even when I know no one has posted in the last 3 minutes 'cause no one but me is on-they all have lives, apparently-I still refresh, and refresh, and refresh and when nothing happens I refresh again. So my wise older sister suggested another creative outlet for my incessant need for internet forum-ing. A blog, she says, would be a good idea, so I'm giving it a try. I don't know yet if this is going to help my addiction... or make it worse....could be interesting...