Once upon a time when I was little, my mother took Alli and I grocery shopping (which she hated to do, but when you’re pregnant and you have two small children you can’t exactly leave them home unattended while their father is off building houses on the weekend or whatever).  Stop & Shop was always so fun for me.  There was so much stuff to get into, so much to see, so many snacks my mom would say “no” to but we would ask for anyway every single time.  They even had a whole aisle for coloring books and magazines.  A WHOLE AISLE.  Was there anything more desirable as a seven year old than row-upon-row of coloring books?  This one day in particular stands out in my memory over all the others.  You see, as a small child I loved paper dolls.  LOVED them.  (( Right now The Destroyer is shaking his head, wondering What is the point of paper dolls? again.  Obviously, you manly thing, they are dolls made out of paper with paper clothes and that speaks volumes for its awesomeness.  You’ll just never understand, because you were never a little girl. ))  I especially loved the Disney ones.  Well, on this particular visit my mother had left Alli and I in the coloring book aisle while she went about the business of deciding what we would eat for the rest of our lives.

People, it was 1991.  It was socially acceptable to leave your children unattended in a locked vehicle with a window cracked, or in the coloring book aisle of your regular grocery store.  (( Plus, we totally begged her and promised we’d be good [which she should have known was the harbinger of doom in the guise of our smiling, innocent faces] and in her defense she was totally pregnant. ))

Anyway, we were looking at coloring books that our mother had already informed us we couldn’t have, and we were to “stay put” for “a few” minutes (that = forever when you are seven).  Before us stood all of our wee little hopes and dreams in the majestic form of row after row of glorious coloring books.  (( They just don’t make them like they used to. ))  After a few minutes of perusing the wares, my gaze drifted upwards.  Lo! and Behold! I could see the object of my desire that I never knew I always needed until that moment!  A Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid paper doll book!  It was on the very top shelf, only five or six shelves out of my reach!  It occurred to my young mind then and there that I would get it.  It would be mine.  If I could just get up there and get my hands on it my mother would let me have it, as if the fact that it was on the top shelf meant something impressive to her wallet.  She didn’t say “no paper dolls” before leaving us.  I distinctly remembered her saying, “You are just looking, you aren’t getting any coloring books today.”  That would be my defense.  “Mommy, you said I couldn’t get a coloring book.  This isn’t a coloring book!”

(( She always told me I’d make a great lawyer. ))

WANT.

I began to climb.  Alli was half way down the aisle to my left, looking at something on the bottom shelf.  Pfft.  How small she was with her bottom shelf.  She would never be as big as me, climbing these shelves of coloring books.  I was 17 months and one day older and so very much more brilliant!  It was me that was always coming up with the good ideas, like sneaking into the kitchen at night and eating peanut butter and drinking Hershey’s chocolate syrup right out of the cupboards.  With one foot on the second shelf and my hands on the shelf by my head, I raised my right leg to find the third shelf.  That’s when it happened.  I didn’t know the shelves weren’t screwed in and secure like a regular bookcase.  That third particle board shelf tilted under my weight and I fell backwards with the shelf and all of its coloring books and paper dolls falling with me.  I landed on my butt in a plethora of pages, the offending shelf resting on my miraculously uninjured foot.

And then I did what any ashamed little Catholic girl would do.  I took my sister by the hand and hurried to find my mom, pretending like nothing had happened at all and we had simply grown bored in the three minutes we’d been separated and would rather be walking around with her.  What she never found out was that those two cherubic faces that clung to the sides of her shopping cart like tamer versions of their normal hooligan-monkey-selves that day had fled a scene of paper and particle board destruction for which she, as our parent, would have been held responsible had there been any witnesses.  But there weren’t, and if I was caught on camera I’m guessing that the security monitoring people were laughing too hard to do anything about it since no one approached us to tell her what I’d done.

And she doesn’t read my blog anyway, so she’ll never find out.

You’ll be happy to know that I eventually did get my Little Mermaid paper doll book.  And like all of my coloring books and paper dolls from that time, along with all of Sarah’s Barbie dolls (I didn’t discriminate when it came to ruining things), it was eventually ruined and thrown out.

This happened this weekend, but I haven’t had time to draw something silly to illustrate it.  The Destroyer and I were talking about how much we love each other when he came home from his 3-day overnight drill this weekend (I know, we gross everyone out with our gooey-ness) when he brought up Valentine’s Day.

TD:  What do you want for Valentine’s Day?
me:  Nothing.
TD:  Is this one of those times when you say ‘nothing’ but you expect me to get you something anyway and you get mad at me if I don’t?
me:  No.  I seriously don’t want anything.
TD:  Okay.
me:  It isn’t even a real holiday!  I don’t need you to buy me something to show me you love me.  *pause*  There will probably be years when I’ll want something for Valentine’s Day, but right now I don’t.
TD:  You’re the best wife ever.

Okay, maybe I made up that last line – but it’s totally what he would have said if we hadn’t been snogging.

Happy Just-Another-Day, people.

This is how you know you’ve been watching way too much How I Met Your Mother.

And yes, this happened this morning.  What we were discussing is not important, just know that it was an Every Day Conversation for us (and not sexual or otherwise dirty in nature whatsoever).

Yeah… so The Destroyer and I started watching the current season of Bones tonight (thank you, Hulu Plus!), and I may have (read: totally did) pointed at the TV and shouted LIMECAT!!!  (( The Destroyer can confirm this. ))

You be the judge.

images via Fox.com & oddanimals.com, and edited by me

It speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Throughout the series, we haven’t been able to stop ourselves from making fun of Cam’s hair because it seriously gets worse each season!  This season is by far the best material yet (obviously).

Oh, and how cute is a pregnant Bones?  SO EFFING CUTE!!

pee ess  -  Huzzah for the downfall of SOPA & PIPA (for now)!

Hello there!  How are you?  Are you good?  I hope so, because I’d hate to think you were doing bad.  I’m dedicating this blog post to you.  Don’t bother looking around to see if I mean someone else, you’re exactly who I want to address tonight.

Do you like the internet?  Do you use it to look at silly cat pictures, watch random viral videos, or research things?  Do you use it for work, for play, or for pretty much everything in your life (like me)?  You probably do, because you’re reading my blog which is on the internet and I just know people use my blog to research important topics, and that’s why today’s blog post is especially for you.  I have some important news for you, good news and bad news.  I’ll give you the bad news first.

There’s this thing people are talking about right now called SOPA/PIPA.

NO!!!!  DON’T RUN AWAY!

If you’re anything like me, you don’t pay attention to politics like ever unless it’s time for the Presidential election (which this is totally not about, btw).  Maybe you avoid all things politics, and that’s okay.  I usually do, too.  But this is different.  This isn’t just politics.  I’m going to dumb it down so that you can understand it, without all the political mumbo-jumbo.

Congress wants to pass a bill that will censor the internet and allow the entertainment industry and other corporations to sue the owners of websites to take down material or even block a web or IP address FOR THE ENTIRE COUNTRY.  Imagine a country where YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are practically outlawed and your personal website is constantly under threat of being shut down.  *shudder*  The bill proposes that it will protect the entertainment industry, but what it will really end up doing is taking away a huge creative outlet and social medium for billions of people.  The internet as we know it will cease to exist and will morph into something entirely different.

Watch this video and see why I’m participating in a blackout on January 18, 2012 along with many other sites like Wikipedia, WordPress, reddit and Google.  (( Here’s a large list of sites participating in the blackout on Wednesday.  ))

I know the future of the internet looks bleak, but remember how I said I was going to give you some good news?  Here it is:

You can do something about SOPA/PIPA.

If you haven’t yet, you can send an email to your state representative.  (( I’ve already sent mine. ))  There needs to be at least 40 senators opposing the bill come Tuesday, January 24, 2012.  At the last count there were only six.  SIX SENATORS SAYING NO.  Remember that your senators speak for you, and you can tell them how you feel and what you want.

Find out who to contact and how to contact them here:  Directory of Representatives.  It’s all alphabetical by state and so super easy that a monkey could do it in his sleep with his toes.  (( Read: I did it. ))

Good luck to you, and to everyone you know.  This is important to you, because you use the internet.

It’s 5AM, I’ve gotten about an hour of broken sleep over the past 5 hours of tossing and turning, and I’m bored as hell.  Is it too much to ask to just frakking fall asleep already?  (( Sorry for the swearing, Daddy. ))  The only time I get any sleep anymore is when I medicate, and I can’t bring myself to do that every night.

I wish I could turn my brain off at night, or at least put the swirl of endless thoughts on pause for a few hours.  Mostly I think about things that stress me out because I’m laying there in bed in the dark unable to get comfortable and sort of angry, but it happens when I’m not thinking about negative things too.  I don’t deal with my anger the way I should, and pretty much everything makes me angry or stressed out.  But is that what’s causing me to never sleep anymore?  I can’t know.*

I feel kind of lost without Terra Nova.  Tuesdays come around and without really thinking about it I click on Hulu to see if there’s a new episode up, only to remember that season one is over and there may not even be a season two.  It makes me sad to know that the best thing to come out of 2011 might get FOX’d**.

Oh, and I bruised my finger tip last night.  Right now it’s throbbing, but at least the shooting pains are gone (unless I accidentally use my finger).  It’s wicked hard to type without my middle finger.  All of my ‘I’s’ are accidentally ‘O’s’ and my ‘N’s’ are ‘M’s’.  It’s driving me nuts to keep backspacing and I’m angry because I BRUISED MY FINGER.  Who does that???

¤

*  When my brother was little he used to say “I can’t know” instead of “I don’t know”.  It was so freaking adorable.  Also wicked cute was when he was five and I would listen to The Beatles album A Hard Day’s Night and he would sing and dance for me, wanting to impress me by how he knew all the words even though mostly he was just making sounds that sounded like the words.  I was still impressed.

**  FOX’d – verb; to get cancelled prematurely.  I just made that up.  IT’S GOING TO BE A THING.

I have literally been going insane this past week over why my blog feed was not working, but now it is and I am all giddy and stuff.

GIDDY, I TELL YOU!

I know I haven’t blogged much over the past few months – over the past year, really – but the truth is that I haven’t been doing much of anything at all.  I make no secret of the fact that I spend my days playing video games and watching every television show I can get my hands on.  When I get bored, I get depressed (( like the Why am I even alive? and What’s the point in living? kind of depressed )) so I try to keep my mind occupied.  There are more reasons why I try to keep my attention on non-important things, but I really don’t want to get into those here.  I’m not very adept at dealing with stress.  Any form of stress usually results in me breaking down in tears of frustration, helplessness, and anger; and with those feelings comes the overwhelming sense of anxiety screaming from inside me that everything is bad and nothing can ever be good again.  I don’t know why I feel these things, but I do know that they’ve basically stopped me from living my life.  I’m at a stand-still while everyone else is moving forward.

The other day I read this and it really made me take a hard look at the way I’ve been living.  I do not enjoy hearing about other people’s pain, ever – even if it is someone I dislike immensely – and I do not take any comfort in knowing that someone else is going through anything like I have been going through.  It does not make me feel any less alone.  There is often nothing we can do for ourselves, let alone one another.

But I don’t want this blog today to be about how miserable I’ve been.  I’m working very hard to have a brighter outlook on life these days, and what I want to write today is a promise to myself.  I’m promising myself that I will write more, because writing makes the whole world seem a little sunnier.  I’m promising myself that I will try very hard to get out of the mindset that my life will begin once *this* happens.  I’m a perfectionist.  The downside of being a perfectionist is that I don’t want to do anything unless I can do it 100% right and 100% right away, so the end result is that I usually wind up doing nothing at all.  And that’s exactly what I have to stop doing with my life: nothing.  I’ve tried so many times over the past decade to learn how to Let Go, people tell me all the time that I need to Let Go.

What does that even mean?

Maybe I have control issues, and maybe I like my control issues.  Maybe I’m a little to comfortable in my discomfort and misery, but things are going to start changing for me because I’m going to make them change.  I’m not going to sit around (metaphorically, I’ll probably still sit around a lot) waiting for something good to happen so that I can move on.  I’m just going to move on so things can start to get better.

That’s my promise to myself.

You see how I like to keep you guessing?  lolz.*

I have been waking up every morning and not drinking coffee and hating it, so today (like yesterday) I am having coffee.  It’s like I’m a zombie and words are just meaningless sounds coming out of my mouth when I haven’t had my coffee.  Quitting is going to be a slow process.

Speaking of zombies, I hate AMC so hard.  They posted the first episode of The Walking Dead’s season two on their webpage and then never posted any of the other ones.  I love that show.  I don’t want to watch season one all the time.  I want to find out what happens to the little girl that got lost and whether or not they move into the empty church or find more survivors or just a world covered with walkers.  You know, it just occurred to me that they could totally live on a boat out in the middle of the ocean for long periods of time.  That’s a good idea.  THEY SHOULD USE IT.  Unless they already have, in which case I can’t take credit for the idea.  But I wouldn’t know now, would I?  Stupid AMC.

Oh, and more zombie not-so-news: this video is awesome.  It has zombies, Alex Day, and Charlie McDonnell.  I love those guys and Alex makes some catchy music.

- ¤ -

Oh!  Maybe when the world “ends” this December (yeah right, idiots) it will finally be the Zombie Apocalypse!  That would make my husband very happy.

Speaking of my husband, I’ve noticed that I blogged a lot more when my husband wasn’t home every day.  I’m blaming him, but in a friendly way (or am I?).  Do you know how hard it is to write in the company of others?  Each day we wake up and sit at our respective computers (reason A why we need our own computer rooms in the future), at which point I bring up my beloved iGoogle in Firefox and The Destroyer begins playing Lord of the Rings Online.  It has become a desperately bad routine that he will jump into Ventrillo and start talking to our kin mates about awesome current happenings in game and I immediately feel like I’m missing something, so I close out iGoogle with its beyond full Google Reader and mostly unread emails (I know, I am a failure but nobody ever emails me anyway and all I’m ignoring are promotional emails from GoDaddy *gag* and a slew of other websites I don’t really care about) and jump into LotRO.  Then our day looks like this:

LotRO
maybe some food
more LotRO
the Marshall and Lily Show
LotRO
maybe some dinner
LotRO
the Marhsll and Lily Show
bedtime

Do you see how that leaves no room for blogging or reading blogs or doing anything but playing LotRO because I feel left out when I’m hearing only one side of the conversation?  I’m sorry blog.  I’ve been terrible.  Eventually things will change, but for now they will stay the same.  Much like me and my coffee this morning, I’m having it but it has no cream in it.  Only non-dairy creamer (which is not real cream, btw), so things are changing slowly.

Come to think of it, I really don’t like fast change most of the time.  Fast change is too much to adapt to all at once, where as gradual change (the good kind) makes you feel like nothing is really changing and there is much less anxiety in that.  You know, unless it’s change that you want to happen all at once in which case it never happens fast enough.

Oh, and I watched the first episode of The Bachelor last night.  There’s literally a crazy woman in every season, and this time around it’s Jenna.  I was so excited when she popped up and introduced herself as a blogger, and then she started talking.  Everything she said made no sense.  It would have been better if she hadn’t started talking.  Seriously.  She’s way more crazy than whatserface from Brad’s season.  And have you checked out her Bio on ABC.com?  I looked at it this morning, and the whole thing is stupid.

Do you like being the center of the attention or do you prefer being more mysterious and why?
This is tough – I love keeping people guessing, yet I madly love to make people laugh.

Okay, you didn’t make anyone laugh last night.  You were a mess, sobbing by yourself and talking to yourself off in some room somewhere and freaking out and saying stupid things like “maybe we could share a tampon sometime”.  Obviously you like to be the center of attention any way you can get it.  Oh, and you didn’t keep anyone guessing Jenna, unless you want us guessing at your sanity and wondering why Ben kept you around.

If you wanted to impress a man what would you do and why?
Approach a man – I think it shows a woman is confident & secure with herself. We are a different generation. I don’t necessarily need to be courted…I like spontaneity…anything goes.

Really?  Anything?  Because you were trembling and crying so much that you scared Ben away.  I’m pretty sure he only kept you around because he felt bad for you.  He seems like a nice guy, and nice guys try to let you down easy.  Or maybe he’s giving you the benefit of the doubt.  I know I’ve got more than my fair share of crazy, but I don’t go on television flaunting it and I certainly let my husband know about it before we got married.  Maybe that’s mean of me, but when you put yourself on television you open yourself up for us to criticize on all of your flaws.  Maybe I’m wrong to be so judgmental, but first impressions are hard to erase.

- ¤ -

* That’s how you keep a person guessing.

Well hello there, 2012.  I know you’re only a few hours old but I’ve had my sights set on you for a while now, you gorgeous thing.  That girl you woke up with this morning?  That was me.  I know, I look so different when I’m awake and showered and I have make-up on, but you need to know all of my faces – even the not-so-pretty ones.  Don’t be embarrassed.  I have such big plans for you.  They may not be the biggest plans I’ve ever had in my life, but they’re things I really want and so that makes them seem big to me.  I can promise you two things about the time we’ll have together, 2012.

First I want you to know that we’re going to experience a lot together, and it won’t always be pretty.  We’re going to celebrate and we’re going to freak out; we’ll sing some days and cry on others (hell, maybe even both!).  I don’t expect that everything will always be hunky-dory, and you shouldn’t either.  Disappointment is part of life, and while I’m really hoping for a lot less disappointment with you than I got with 2011, I’m hoping I’ll learn how to deal with it better than I have in the past.

And second, my expectations are high.  They aren’t over the moon, but they’re higher than I usually shoot for and the reason is this:  When I don’t set expectations or goals for myself, I don’t do anything.  That was the theme of 2011 (I know I mention 2011 a lot, but I’m sure I’ll mention it less and less as time goes on) and my laziness overwhelmed just about everything.  I didn’t accomplish much that didn’t require sitting still, and very few things that require sitting still took too much effort so I mostly did nothing.  This year will be different.  This year I want things, and things are going to happen.  That’s how I know we’re going someplace, 2012.  Me and you.  We’re moving into the future together, and we’re taking The Destroyer with us.  I’ve told him all about you, and he’s just as excited as I am that you’re finally here.

In short, 2012, the next twelve months are going to be legen- wait for it…

-dary.  That’s right.  Gimme five up top.

—–

We’ve been watching a LOT of How I Met Your Mother.  In fact, that’s how we brought in the new year.  We love the Marshall and Lily show.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I LOVE…  that 2011 is finally coming to a close.  To celebrate the occasion, I’ve written a farewell letter.

Dear 2011,
It’s time for me to say goodbye, and you know what?  I’m not sad at all.  I’m actually glad you’re ending, and it isn’t just the usual end-of-the-year-anticipation I’m feeling (although I feel that as well).  The truth is, 2011, you’ve been hardly anything but depressing and boring, and there really isn’t much in the way of happy memories for us.  I will most likely look back upon our time together as  dreariest, most stressful year of my life.  Even if you hadn’t come directly after the best year of my life you would still be the worst year with practically no redeeming qualities.  You were full of angry and bitter feelings on my part, and I’m going to get revenge upon you by making 2012 the best year of my life.  I plan on making sweet, passionate love to the next 12 months by moving back to Rhode Island, getting a job, and eventually getting a place with my wonderful husband – our very first place together.  It’s going to be glorious!  Gone will be the days of sitting around with a lazy attitude 24 hours a day in a 9 x 15 room having nothing to do, being bored and playing my beloved video games so much that they’ve lost their sparkly appeal.  Of course I will still be lazy, that will likely never change, but I’ll have obligations that require me to not be so lazy every minute of every day.  I won’t feel like a waste of space, like I’m wasting away each day – at least that’s what I intend.  2012 is going to be the year when I make things happen while you, 2011, will rot in the back of my brain where I keep the trash I can’t physically erase but still avoid.
Good riddance,
me

PS  -  I’m taking all my awesome Christmas presents with me into my new relationship, and I’m leaving you with nothing.

I LOVE…  this portrait I drew in paint of my brother Robert (red), sister Alli (blue), and her dog Kokomo on Christmas day when we were talking via webcam.

Yes, I am fully aware that Kokomo looks like a sheep, but the portrait is otherwise entirely accurate.  I should have taken a screen shot of them as well so that the proper comparison could be made, but I didn’t think of it.  It was Christmas and I had other things on my mind.

I LOVE…  coffee.  Alas, once again I’m going to try and quit the coffee drinking.  I simply cannot have coffee without cream, but milk and cream make me sick.  This time we’ll see if I can actually stop drinking coffee.  At first there will be a surge in Coca-Cola consumption, I have no doubt, but hopefully I’ll be able to ween myself off of that as well at some point in the future.

I LOVE…  How I Met Your Mother.  The Destroyer and I have just discovered it (I know, we’re so behind the times) and we lovingly call it the Marshall and Lily show.  It’s our new before bedtime TV show.  I had to stop watching The Universe.  I call it Doomsday, because all it does is make me anxious before I fall asleep that the world is going to suddenly end in fiery painfulness.  Seriously, every other episode after season 1 is about how everything in space is against the planet Earth and blah-blah-blah-Armageddon-is-inevitable and YOURDAYSARENUMBERED.  It’s too much for me to contemplate before I go to sleep at night.

What do YOU love today?