Oh, sweet memories

Hey, I thought we were supposed to be doing favorite memories from all the houses we lived in? Or was that just a suggestion? Well, I'm running with it.


Shepherd, MT  house 1985-1990: Riding my mom's horse Lightning, feeding our pet ducks, and trying to ride our one horned goat named DJ. Mara telling me that I had to share the spotlight with baby J when she was born.


Orange(ish) house that we lived in when we first moved to Sidney: 1990-?  After putting down our adorable 3 legged dog named Hutch (that could open Christmas presents, and McDonald's cheeseburgers) I wanted another dog, so I pretended to be one until I got one. Jenna has posted about this in a post entitled, "Why I hate cats!"


Blue house 1992 (?)-1995:  Watching Mrs. Skidden hit our street sign with a school bus. Trying to catch rabbits under a box with a carrot tied to a string, posting "Do NOT DISTURB UNDER CONSTRUCTION" signs on Jen and my door while we were rearranging furniture, when Jenna broke the bunk bed ladder, and holding a funeral for "Dracula" a garden spider that my dad killed. Being told to call a boy on our bus named Domanick "DomaDICK" by my dad when he kept bullying me. Mara making us pretend to be her children in grocery stores.

1201 house: My favorite house that my parents ever lived in, I'm not sure why but I loved it. Having wrestling matches with Jenna in our shared room. Roller skating to ace of base in the back storage room when it still had a cement floor, spying on Davey "CROTCH-ett" the weird neighbor kid. And raising a few litters of Sadie's puppies.

Brian Roger's condo - Even though Jenna and I were sent to G&G's that summer while Mara, and my parents lived in the condo while our 2060 house was being built, Jenna and I did stay there for a few weeks out of the summer. Sleeping three a breast on mattresses on the floor, watching the lightning storms out Mom and Dad's windows that summer, ORANGES (teehhehehhe) and going through Mr. Roger's highschool memorabilia (ridiculous). 


2060 Sunflower Lane - the last house that I lived with my parents in. I have a lot of really fun memories in that house, especially with my high school friends (one of my friends repeatedly fell down the stairs, or slipped on the floor in that house).  Backing into a high school boyfriends truck in the driveway. Going on bike rides with Jenna, watching Mara kick a hole in the wall while doing her leg exercises, saying good bye to all of my friends from high school before going to college. Making the toilet overflow in the basement and blaming it on Jenna, and making her work the plunger. ;) Trying to make chocolate cookies and spilling cocoa everywhere. J and I didn't know how to run the washing machine at that point so we washed all the rags by hand and then put them out to dry on the back porch, where they all froze solid. We thought we did a great job cleaning but I specifically remember Mom coming home and coming into the kitchen, looking around, and saying, "What'd you guys do?" we told her we made cookies and cleaned up after ourselves and she said,"Well you did a piss poor job." Changing Mom and Dad's answering machine greeting (see post below entitled "Jordan!!!! Where the eff are you?!") Watching Mara and J play Mancala, and J getting pissed and throwing marbles. Giving my parents dog Riley his first bath when he was a really small puppy, right after we found him.

Oh this is making me all nostalgic. We need to plan a sisters' getaway trip. Mara you pick the location and set a time line and Jen and I will make it work.  And.....break!

Hearts, Half-Off

My favorite part of Valentine’s Day? The day after Valentine's Day, when the picked-over hearts and chocolates go on clearance. (Because, as we all know, hearts and teddy plushes are no longer relevant after Feb. 14^th. Henceforth one shall only speak of eggs and bunnies.)

I bought a giant peanut butter chocolate heart for a quarter. It was like I was at the General Store, and it was 1950. And the shelves kind of look like they were raided and plundered for a '50s fallout shelter...However this is Walgreen’s, on North Lombard St, so the shelves generally look like it's the height of the apocalypse.

-J

They Don't Make Sheets Like They Used To

Alright, alright...sorry I'm slow with the posts but you guys know I've been working on my little "Lucy Says." project!

Today I was shopping @ Goodwill for linens. Recognize this fabric?



Sheet from Goodwill= $3; Nostalgic print= priceless

When I spotted this golden oldie I almost gasped. This print is probably circa 1984 (mom can confirm my guess). I still have the matching pillowcase from ma & pa's old bedding!! On the way home I was thinking, "Why do I remember the most random details in life but often omit detail-oriented experiences?" For example, if I had any drawing skills I could sketch out an exact replica of the orca fountain that used to reside in the North Park kiddy pool. But if you asked me to recall what the inside of Neuschwanstein looks like...uhhh...drawing a blank. All I remember is that creepy lady behind us on the tour who was breathing like Darth Vader & wearing Z-Coil shoes!!

So is it just me or do our brains file some really random elements of life's daily minutia?

And what's with today's crappy sheets? All of my "vintage" ones are soft & wrinkle-free straight out of the dryer but all of my new sheets are wadded & look like they came from the bottom of a hamper. I refuse to iron them!! And I think it's b.s. that you have to blow tons of $ on egyptian cotton sheets to give me the same experience that my beloved 80's threads do.  Besides, we all know that egyptian cotton leads to no good.
See Brittany Murphy's strife in "Uptown Girls" (R.I.P. Brittany):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8PdTNHjNiI&feature=fvw

peace.
♥m

Life in 3 Dimensions

Why

does this 

keep happening

to all of our childhood characters? 


What was wrong with Bambi before? Is it that he needs a high gloss sheen for relevancy in the 21st century? Not only that, but the figures are a bit awkward, and the color palettes are revolting -- they're all over the place.

And is Crackle raising the roof here? Because he really shouldn't be. Not after what they've done to him. 


As for Lucky Charms, the top image is what I grew up with, in the '90s. Then they began to play with dramatic lighting effects, confirming any suspicions of creepiness. Their first character was adorable.

As was the sugar bear of Golden Crisps:

Here's Toucan Sam's makeover, through the years

And that horrendous purple...

I'm half expecting cereals to start including 3d glasses as in their boxes. 

What's so wrong with 2 dimensions anyways? Why can't we just leave these characters flat, living life in and on their boxes?

-J

Recovering reality TV junkie

So here is my confession of the day, (well, the beginning of several confessions today) and it will not shock anyone that knows me. I USED to be addicted to horrible, reality television. To save money, we don't have cable, we have a HD antenna, so we get 5 channels which actually cover several of the shows I really like. However, we don't get MTV.  Fortunately, MTV posts everything on their website, so I honestly go to bed the night a show airs like....oh say, Jersey Shore and I'm giddy because I know that when I wake up, MTV will have posted the new episode and I can watch it quite comfortably in my pajamas at 8 a.m.  the following morning. Kraig also bought me a DVI chord for my computer so I can plug my computer into the TV and watch it on our 50" big screen. Now that's love. :) Unfortunately, this also enabled my addiction immensely.

However, my addiction got in the way of a lot of things. When I didn't have a job, I would put off dusting, or vacuuming because I had to watch Grey's Anatomy from the night before. Thursdays are a doozy because so many of my favorite shows are on that night, so Friday morning, I'm not free until at least noon. Luckily on Fridays I don't go to work until 2 p.m. :) It got ridiculous though. Kraig would come home from work and there'd by dishes in the sink, and dirty clothes all over the floor and I'd be sitting in front of my computer, eating or drinking like a zombie. He'd ask, "What'd you do all day?" Very cautiously because he knows, EXACTLY what I've been doing all day. And I'd answer, "Oh, I washed some dishes, and stuff. I don't know." again, cautiously, he'd ask, "What do you mean, you don't know what you've been doing for the last 12 hours?"  "Really, you've been gone for 12 hours?" the reason these questions were asked so cautiously was because I got very sensitive about being unemployed and even though all I was doing was watching TV for an insane amount of time at home, I didn't want to be scolded for it, or called lazy. Even though, that's exactly what I was being. So one day, and one of my friends texted me and asked if I could take care of her dog over Thanksgiving. I said sure, and went over to her house for all the details and to meet her furry child. When I got to her house, I immediately felt ashamed and embarrassed. Her house was spotless. I'm talking, eat off the floor spotless, everything in their "office" was organized, labeled, and put in adorable decorative boxes. Even her fridge was organized.  She even had a "menu board" on her fridge, for that week dinner was planned out for every night. In an odd way, I found it comforting.  So if it's so comforting, why haven't I done it to my house? I started home that day, and as much I tried to justify all the reasons that our house didn't look like hers, I couldn't come up with any good reasons. I immediately went home and started organizing our office with a file cabinet I had bought, and finally cleaned off our dining room table so we could actually eat off of it. And when I was done, and Kraig came home I think his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. I was so proud of myself too, for actually getting organized and labeling things and putting things where they are supposed to go. I didn't watch TV at all that entire day, and for once I didn't miss it.  I was too busy getting our house together.  I started reading again too, and writing. I started blogging and I started getting my creative juices flowing. It felt like I had been lost for a while and finally found my way back to the era of "pre-reality tv." It's like a black hole that sucks you in, and you have no conscious sense of time or energy wasted watching the trash. I was POW to reality television. Over Christmas, M had her teevo full of episodes of Jerseylicious, and as much as I wanted to watch some of them, I knew that this was my test, like putting a shot of Grey Goose in front of an alcoholic and seeing what happens. I passed with flying colors and immediately closed her "recordings" window.

On a random note, and response to Jen's previous post. I also hate cats. At work we have a clinic cat named "Fannie" and she's without a doubt, pure evil. She hisses and bites the clinic workers if you get too close, and one day I went to pet her without really looking at her, (we have several other clinic cats that are very friendly) and she stiffened up and turned and hissed at me, and I immediately was transported back to a sunny day in Shepherd, MT when I was outside with Mara and got bit by a stray cat with rabies.  "Fannie" drew blood on a fellow clinic worker, while she was working on a computer a few weeks ago. We saved her life, and gave her a wonderful place to live and she's so ungrateful. Dogs aren't like that, I've seen stray dogs that have gotten hit by cars and brought in, and they seem to know that you are going to help them, and they cooperate and they're friendly and loving and so grateful.
Have you ever seen the movie "Constantine?" Cats all genetically have some type of soulless internal portal to hell, and if you sit in a chair with your feet in bucket of water and stare into their eyes, you're headed straight into Satan's workshop. And you want that in your house as a pet? So, I salute you Jen and your giant middle finger to Lucifer's furry minions.

An empty space where Bun was

The Case Against Cats

My roommate had a couple friends staying over last week, and they brought their kitten. Pearl. She was a white Siamese cat with huge eyes and extra toes. 

After spending a couple days with her I found myself walking out of the house with swollen lymph glands and fine mists of white fluff stuck to my cardigans. This was enough to ignite my cat hatred. And so I came up with a list of grievances.

The case against cats:

1. They carry a disease, which they transmit in their shit, that makes you go crazy...Toxoplasmosis     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis
2. BTW they shit and piss in the house, on purpose. And you get to clean it up. And then get toxoplasmosis. (I can make excuses for creatures like rabbits who piss in the house – their brain is the size of a pea.)
3. They stare at you when you don’t know it – general shystyness. 
4. My sister Kali was bitten by a cat with rabies at a young age, causing her to, as a possible defense mechanism, walk around on all fours like a dog for years, barking at me, and pinching me, peeing her pants.
5. They carry rabies.
6. They offer no skill set, unlike dogs, who coevolved with humans and offer protection, comradery, and even hunting skills, if you so wish. Have you ever seen a seeing-eye cat? No, because they’re too busy licking themselves or coughing up the bits of themselves they just licked, which you then clean up. Unless you’re blind.
7. They have names like “Pearl.”
8. Their toy of choice is a Ribbon Dancer
9. They stink, literally. And of course the finicky bastards hate water, making baths impossible.
10. You have to buy the surface that they piss on. Yes. But really? They can’t just piss outside? Is the concern that if you let them out to go to the bathroom, they may run away? Because if that's the case, maybe you should reconsider -- maybe your cat doesn't want to be with you anyways. Why don’t we leave them in their alleys?

-J