Game Day At Our House Has A Lot More Hard Core Cheating - Usually From My Mom Even Though She'll Deny It Til The Cows Come Home

So I went to my cousin's baby shower last week, and out of the fifty something people that attended either me or someone in my family won all of the game categories. At first I thought it was because we're just all really competitive when there's no alcohol around, but then I realized, nope - we all just like to cheat.

It's not like we planned it, and it's not like we were playing a scam on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or anything, it was just light cheating. Like, so light I announced I was doing it as I was doing it just so I wouldn't get in trouble. (Because I like living on the edge, but am still too afraid I'll get detention, or worse a C in one of my classes, like they'll go back and retro-grade me somehow, and my High School GPA will dip down and I'll never move out of my Mom's house and will have to go on welfare and eat only bologna for a week straight and start hooking just to get by.)

Anyway, after the party I was mentioning to my mom how I won the make-a-play-doh-baby-blind-folded game, and then she launched into how she won.

". . . blah, blah, blah and that's how you win by cheating!"

"Wow."

"I know, pretty cool right?"

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Longer than you've been around."

"Nice Mom. I don't think I've ever seen you do anything bad. You feed the meter next to you just in case."

"Well, that's the thing, the best part is, it's not technically cheating. It's just tilting the odds a little. And you can't put this on your blog."

"Of course not."

"This is just me as a mother passing down my knowledge to my eldest daughter, that she has to take to her grave."

"It's not that serious is i-"

"TO YOUR GRAVE!"

"Ok! Sorry!"

"Oops, I think I just ran a red light."

"This is a tender moment we're having."


And really, I didn't cheat. That much. We had to be blind folded and make a baby and some baby stuff out of play doh, but they didn't say human baby.

So, here I am explaining to everyone that I'm going to make a panda baby. And Becky and DD are thrilled with my explanation of how I'm going to fashion the tummy out of some white doh.



And this is how it turned out. It was much cuter than the picture makes it seem.



Here's an example of what the other teams came up with. Clearly, panda-baby is cuter than pink-blob baby.



Uh. . . also, I inverted panda baby's head colors. He's like an x-ray-head panda baby.

No photos please!!!

My birthday is coming up people. . . I'm just saying. I want one.

It's just like having a puppy! But it's sort of a bear.


So then we won!


And I kept the blindfold on my head like that way too long. I took it home with me, just in case I ever want to test my skills and challenge myself on my off time. Watch out future baby showers, and possibly my future children's kindergarten classes! I'm gonna play-doh the shit out that game.

Ok, the real winners are these guys - because in that polka dotted belly is a little girl that's gonna be cute and awesome, and incredibly science-class inclined. And when she's old enough I'm gonna teach her how to play games Auntie Lori's way. And then how to celebrate with a box of chilled wine and some Cold Stone, Auntie Amy style.

Good Morning To You Too, Hole Where My Pocket Used To Be

Do you ever have one of those mornings where you can't remember if you put on deodorant, let alone pants?

I got into the car this morning, hair curled, shoes tied, makeup on, all that, but something felt wrong.

"Maybe that's cause it's 6:15 in the morning," I grumbled to myself. "Six mother fucking fifteen." I like to talk with a Samuel L. Jackson accent when it's early in the morning. Crystal loves it. "Mornin puppy dawg. Let's get this potty time buuuuuuullshit over with, this mother fucker has got to get her ass to work."

So, I start the car and look away from the clock to my pants. My pajama pants. My flannel pajama pants, tucked neatly into my socks, where I put them while I was tying my Vans on.

Awesome.

Good thing I checked, otherwise I would have had a really awkward time trying to explain to the auditor why it is I had the clothes-version of a mullet on - Business on the top, party on the bottom. Now lets get this fact checking shit on the road Mr. Aud-i-tor, mama's got some mother fucking instant oatmeal to eat.

But It's Just Sort Of Expired

Sometimes I eat string cheese I find in my purse six hours after I put it there simply so that I can tell Gabi I just did that. Because it freaks. her. out. She would check the expiration date on tap water if it had one, and when we were in Fresno she complained the milk tasted too milky. (That doesn't have anything to do with expiration dates, I just thought it was awesome of her. This milk is too milky! The bed is too bedy! And my hair is too hairy!) I only tell her because it cracks me up how much she gets the heebie jeebies from it, and since she doesn't have any siblings of her own, I have decided it's my job as her friend to antagonize her in an older sisterly way. It takes some of the pressure off Becky, and give me the same sort of giggles I get when I come back from the bathroom, hands unwashed, and let my mom know I just peed and didn't wash my hands.

Don't get me wrong, I totally believe in sanitation - I shower every day, I brush and floss, I wash my hands after I take out the trash, I practically boil them if I touch chicken, and sometimes even after I touch cooked chicken (thanks to Home Ec circa 1992, chicken = disease, salmonella, and possibly HIV. Oh, Mrs. Matthews I love you for teaching me how to sew a pillow that looks like a pig, but I hate that you made one of my biggest fears raw meat; now my future husband will have to learn how to survive on nachos alone.) (Don't worry John Krasinski, I will learn how to make some sort of stew before then!), but I guess I don't get too worried about missing a hand washing here and there, or eating warm cheese because it's really not that bad.

Some people like to tell me that will all change when I have children. That suddenly I'll be obsessed with expiration dates and hand washing and general cleanliness of my cleaning supplies themselves. But a) I'm not pregnant; and b) I don't think it's gonna really change my mind that much. I mean, how can you actually make sure everything is super clean before it gets near your baby? Plus I heard nursing mothers put cabbage leaves in their bras, and weird lotions, and stuff that you should not be putting around your boobs - roots and things. What am I supposed to do then? Wash my nipple every time before it goes in for a feeding? No. That's crazy talk. I'll tell you what's gonna happen - that sucker is going straight from my baby daddy's mouth into my baby's. If anyone needs to worry about cleanliness it's the lucky dude who decides to knock me up then have up-top sexy time in between baby naps. Because do you know where that child's mouth has been or what's been in it? Yeah, I don't either, that's the point.

Ok, I might wash my hands a little more, but I refuse to throw away milk five days before the expiration date. I'll just freeze it and save it for later. Maybe something to mix the formula with.*


*kidding

Rainy

I love when it rains here, mostly cause it never happens so when it does So Cal-ers go ape shit crazy and start wearing wellies and carrying umbrellas around inside their houses (my OCD with bad-luck-avoidance just FREAKED OUT), and people suddenly think driving is a sport wherein you try to avoid each individual rain drop by swerving out of the way of the rain and into each other, like bumper cars in a pinball machine that's been filled with water and Botox and Wee Man from the Jackass movies (he lives here and seems to be everywhere you ever want to go, including setting up his own taco shop where the Taco Bell used to be that I single handedly kept in business from 1994-1999). And yes, I'm from here but I handle the crazy differently - I drive like an 80 year old at the nice pace of 15 mph, and I brake if I see a stop light five miles ahead.

So, since it took me forty five minutes to drive the three miles to my work this morning, I got to see a lot. But my favorite wasn't the guy who strapped an umbrella to his dog's back for their morning walk - which really only protected the back half of the dog - it was a woman I saw getting off the bus. She missed the last step, like completely missed it, almost as if she just shut her eyes and jumped, and then fell straight into a pool-sized puddle, flat on her back. My instinct was to leap out of the car to help her - I mean, I was only going like 5 mph, I could just roll out - but then she started laughing hysterically flapping her arms and pretended to do the backstroke. Then came the fake synchronized swimming moves. Then some more backstroke. I'm pretty sure if the bus didn't have to move, and if she hadn't just realized she was soaking in a pool of brown acid rain water, it could have gone on like that forever.

Oh my gosh I love her so much. And if I didn't have to keep my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel to avoid imminent death by rain-driving, I totally would have taken a video of her. And then asked her to marry someone in my family so we could be related.

Note:

If you get into bed with a glass of wine and an episode of Cougar Town on your laptop, and wake up hours later with the whole situation still spread out like that, it IS perfectly ok for your sister and dog to be judging you, but also they should be admiring of how you managed not to spill a single drop because you thought this might happen and so you wedged said glass under your arm propped up with pillows. Way to go you!

(I actually woke up a half an hour later - just enough time to not have to watch Courtney Cox ruin Monica as my favorite - and cheered for myself a little bit. I don't ever not spill! Sometimes I just look at a glass from across the room and it knocks itself over. And I don't ever fall asleep with lights on, when there's still wine to drink, so clearly starting eleven hour work days again is hitting me harder than I thought.)

P.S. I can't use the word 'situation' now without thinking of Jersey Shore, and how much I wiiiiiiiiiish I could pull off a seven inch hair poof and battling on anything that might resemble a dance floor. While I was in Fresno this weekend I demonstrated battling for Gige, starting with beating up the beat and moving on up to all the fist-pumping, GTL body-flailing glory* and I totally think I'm ready! I especially love the part where the guys lift up their shirts on the dance floor to show the girl they're dancing with their bodies. What are the girls supposed to do to that? Applaud?

The 30 second mark is where the magic happens:



*GTL stands for Gym, Tan, Laundry - which is apparently the Guido creed for looking hot. Go to the gym, go tan, make sure your clothes are clean. I wish this show would never end.

Fire Engine Red

I got nothin against working early. (Thousands of my English teachers around the world just cringed and died a little inside at that sentence structure.)(And then my college friends cringed at my use of hyperbole.)(See that! Hyperbole. I did learn something in grad school Mom!) In fact, I like to get to work early because I tell myself it means I get to leave early. Get in at 6am - well then I get to leave at 3pm and have the whole afternoon to myself! But it never works that way because 3pm will roll it's pretty little self around and I'll be balls deep in some sort of tax something and suddenly it's 7pm and I'm starving because all I've eaten since breakfast is a half a pound of See's candy and some gum. So, I aim for 8am because it's early, but not so early that by 7pm I want to saw my own arm off so I have something to chew on on the ride home.

But, calling me at 6am to see if I'll be in soon? Too early Boss-Grandma. Too early.

But I answered, because I'm a sucker, and explained I'd be in as soon as I went for a run.

"You're going to run? It's pouring."

"I have a boob shelf now."

"What?"

"What?" Note to self: don't answer phone and try to talk to your grandma at six am, you will be inappropriate.

"Just get in as soon as you can. Make it a short run."

"Fine I'll just do ten miles then."

"Amy Michele, I swear to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. . ."

"I'm kidding. I'll be right in."

**click** she hates goodbyes.

"I love you."

So, I got in super early only to find out she'd called someone else in early too and now she didn't need me. And so, in retaliation, I painted my nails at work. On company time. Take that early-waker-up-er!

It's small and weird retaliation, but it made me feel better. (And just to be clear, the nail painting took all of sixty seconds. It was clear polish I found in the first aid drawer we have here - because chipped nails is a bigger emergency item than band-aids I discovered last week after an encounter with the stapler and some lotion.)

When my mom rolled in at her usual hour of 11-ish, I told her about the horrid call time, and she nodded sympathetically - being my mom, letting me vent - and then after I was done, told me how her client called her at one am to let her know about something she forgot to tell her. ONE. IN THE AM. This is taxes people, not organ transplants. Trust me, even if it was organ transplants you don't wanna be waking me up to tell me which lung it was you needed, because I'm gonna forget and then I'm probably gonna make a your-mom joke to it while I'm scrubbing in.

I'm bringing in some red polish tomorrow, just in case. That should take at least two minutes. Two minutes of pure renegade painting. You don't wanna mess with me - I take it out on you by making my hands look better. And giving my future therapist a lot of weird things to work through.

New Boots

So, I'm wearing boots right now that, I shit you not, make me so tall that when I just went into the bathroom I inadvertently saw over one of the stalls and looked a small Filipino woman in the eye as she pulled her pants down. I swear to God it couldn't have been avoided unless I had gone into the bathroom with my eyes closed to start my bathroom-napping just a few seconds earlier.

I was so embarrassed about just seeing her naked from the waist down that I started blabbering apologies all over the place while still standing there, glaring down at her from atop my gigantor perch above her stall door like some sort of creepy behemoth of a woman who goes around using her height to check up on the goings-on of office building bathrooms, and maybe the occasional bedroom window or two. She quickly said it was ok, and then when I looked away she proceeded to start peeing (probably out of fear) and so I took my cue and walked into my own stall while looking down at my feet the whole time.

We met back up at the sink, where I apologized again and pointed out that I wasn't used to my new boots, and I love them, I love them so much, but two inches taller makes me very weird.

"I mean, even sitting on the toilet felt awkward because my knees were all up here, and I'm used to them right about here." I demonstrated while standing, what it might look like if I was sitting, to this poor, poor woman who was probably four foot nine and afraid I was going to either knee her in the face or follow her around and hoover gigantically all day.

I let her go, then got out of there quick with my hand over my eyes because someone else walked in and I didn't want her to sit down and look up to see my head floating above the door like some sort of human Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.

These are the new boots and I love, love, love them. I just need to figure out how to work myself in them.


And no, you don't need to adjust your screen. That is the actual color of the chair in my cubicle. And that tropical floor? That's the actual carpet. My office: where the 70s went to Vegas and and stayed at the Tropicana - for life.

Phonetography

So I was really excited about this picture I took with my phone (otherwise known as: the phone that sends people three of the exact same text or none at all just to make me seem vaguely like a psycho when I'm responding to things like a request for dinner - "I vote for m.f.ing MEXICAN food dang it! And I left my underwear in the kitchen." "I vote for m.f.ing MEXICAN food dang it! And I left my underwear in the kitchen." "I vote for m.f.ing MEXICAN food dang it! And I left my underwear in the kitchen." Note: No one wants to get that text three times, and my underwear were there because I didn't have anywhere else to let them dry after I washed them. Note #2: Those are not my only pair, I wasn't underwear-less, I was just taking note of where I'd left them.)

Anyway, I was excited about the picture because there was this weird blue haze in the air when we went out for breakfast the other week, and my phone captured it! But I noticed my screen was a little messed up, like there's this black spot on it, but I thought, No worries! I'll email it to myself and all will be well with the blue haze picture!




But the black spot wasn't just on my phone! It's some weird glitch that stuck when the picture was taken, or not a glitch, but as if it was blurring out something inappropriate to children on Becky's chin. (Makes sense, that is where she keeps her porn.)

So, I have to get a new phone soon. Because censoring my sister - not on my watch Verizon Wireless! Her chin can get naked and be derogatory to women other minorities if it wants to be. You know, just so long as it's not hurting anyone, and I can take a decent picture.

String Cheese and Capri Sun Was On The Previous List

This morning I was cleaning out my pockets and noticed my grocery list from yesterday, the list didn't seem odd to me yesterday but this morning I gave myself a dirty look and shook my head in dismay at . . . myself.

Ralph's: (It said, because apparently I need reminders of where to buy groceries)

Raisin Bran
Fudgsicles!

That's it. That's all that was there, raisin bran and a very excited fudgsicle request. Because I like to eat like a six year old. The good news is, if a kindergartner comes wandering into my yard all disheveled and hungry I'll have plenty of string cheese and popsicle-like things to feed him.

Ok, that's a lie, those weren't the only two things on the list. At the bottom of the post-it there was this:
porn (soft)

Yeah, and that's why I was shaking my head at me, because I added a joke item to my own list. Not even like tacking it on to my sister's, which is what I really wanted to do, but didn't because she wasn't sitting near me when I thought of it. My jokes are getting lazier and lazier.

In other news it's raining this morning and I went for a run anyway because I love running in the rain (ok, and I love running past the army base because they always cheer for me - as if running in the rain is the same thing as risking my life for my country! If that gets them proud wait til they see me taking out the trash in my socks!) Anyway, when I got back I noticed I was soaked all over except for the middle section of my shirt. Like, from just under the boobs to my waist was totally dry - which led me to the only logical conclusion - my boobs are big enough to act as a shelf!

"F yeah! I have boobs that can block rain!" I yelled to Crystal (the dog), and then did a little dance of breast-victory around my kitchen while eating a spoonful of peanut butter (I showed the spoonful to my boobs first and said, "This is for you.") Crystal didn't give me the sort of reaction I needed, but I was still sort of happy about it when I went into work so I decided to tell one of my co-workers about it because I have to listen to her talk about mattress shopping for fourteen hours a day so she can hear this.

"And it was totally dry! From here, to here."

"Huh."

"Pretty cool huh?"

"Well, are you sure you weren't just hunched over when you were running?"

"Yes I'm su . . . wait."

"Let me see your stance."

"It's like this."

"Jog down to the end of the hall."

"But I just got coffee."

"How can I tell then?"

"Fine." (**jogs to end of hall**then back**)

"You're pretty slow."

"I'm at work."

"Still."

"Was I hunched?"

"Oh, totally."

Well of course I was hunched over! I have shelf-like boobs. Rain-stopping boobs. Boobs that look deceptively tiny, especially in a smashed-them-down sports bra, and even more so in real naked life, but still! Clearly I was hunched because of them, so my theory still stands. And later, at lunch, you better believe I'm gonna be checking to see if any crumbs get stopped by those suckers. Anything can happen.

Sleep Deprived

I get insomnia once in a while, and it always varies between popping up once a month or so, or a few times a week. I'm on a few times a week kick right now - which is fun for my laundry and tv show catching up, but not so fun for the people who are trying to explain something to me at 3pm while I slowly let my eyes droop, just for a second, until I'm woken up a few minutes later with my head on a three ring binder and some paper clip imprints clearly formed on my forehead. Actually, that only happened once, after that I took my sleepy time in the bathroom, cause nothing says exhausted like taking a nap while sitting on a public toilet.

Anyway, last night was one of those nights, and once I realized I wasn't gonna fall back asleep by counting backwards from a hundred (Mom, that doesn't work - I think that was just your sneaky trick to make sure we could actually do something like count backwards) I got myself a big glass of warm milk (wine) and settled in with Anna Karenina (7 episodes of Modern Family). It usually takes a few hours but I know it's time for me to try and go back to sleep when I'm giggling so much at my laptop that I start to drool.

It may seem slow but I just got drooly-giggly again at work at around the 1:15 mark so it's totally worth watching the whole clip.


So, needless to say I was a little out of it this morning and decided I needed to stop and get coffee because I couldn't even get my brain functioning enough to want to remember where we keep the filters. But after I stopped and got my coffee I had that feeling - you know, that feeling you get when you're fairly certain they gave you decaf instead of regular and you now want to march back into the coffee shop and make that 16 year-old barista stare at the dark circles under your eyes until he starts to cry.

Plus what the heck is a 16 year old doing at work at 8am? Why isn't he at school trying to mack on Cindy in the back of the band room where they store the large instruments before first period?! I didn't march back in and make him stare, but I did ask why he wasn't in school (young man) while he was scraping the whip cream off my latte (because it's the new year so I can have a toffee nut latte, but I can't have the whip cream - ah, girl logic.)

"Mack on?"

"You kids don't say that anymore?"

"No. And we don't wear bell bottoms either."

"These are boot cut!"

I go in there a lot so it's ok that he talked to me as if I was an elder, I forgave him. And then he explained he was in fact 19, and gay - no Cindy, no high school band macking. It's probably for the better, I told him. Those band room romances only last so long, and then there's imminent heartbreak and pretty soon someone's emptying their spit valve into your Pepsi when you go to get some more powdered donuts at snack time.

"I wasn't in band," he said for the third time.

And I don't normally admit I made out with boys who said they wanted to 'warm up' for trumpet/sax/something-blowy practice with my mouth, but that's what two and a half hours of sleep will do to you. It makes you admit to virtual strangers how geeky you really are, and then later - not much later, like, thirty minutes later - makes you seriously consider the benefits of sleeping pills. If not for your health, at least to help keep your street cred in check.

Oh Yeah, I'm Totally Doing It Again, But With A Helmet Next Time, And Maybe That Mesh Body Armor Knights Wear

Christmas time with my family is . . . there wasn't as much alcohol as there was last year so . . . this might be the fact that my present to myself this year was to have Jack in the Box seven days in a row, but things were a little nicer and a little weirder than usual.

I love my family. I really do. I really, really love them. I do (she says repeating it as a mantra, a reminder to herself that she does not want to go looking for her birth parents, but does in fact love when her grandma's house narrowly escapes catching on fire because the 70 degree day wasn't enough - the people wanted to start two fires at the same time; and she loves when her little brother decides to try and jump out of the car doing 50mph just to make Christmas eve interesting, and then because said brother is still trying to wildly jump out of the car and, I don't know, run around on the highway spreading the Christmas spirit (?) she and her sister spend the majority of the evening standing in the cold in nothing but flip flops and t-shirts, waving to the passerbys and shouting, "No, no, we're fine. That's our brother we've got locked in there. Merry Christmas!"; and she loves that her cousins got her noise stoppers for her bedroom door so that she can't hear when the dog pukes just outside her door as a little wake up present for her feet.) (Apparently she also loves talking about herself in third person.) (She's so obnoxious.)

Anyway, I love my family, but there are two times a year that I'm so overstimulated with the 20,000 people crammed into one room that by end of day three of this the familial joy and love fest has started to wear off and is slowly replaced with a deep urge to commit a major crime and then act out in the prison mess hall so I can get some solitary confinement.

So what do I do for some peace and quiet? I decide to go hurtling down the side of a mountain with my feet trapped into long, sliding things they call skis - I call sticks of terror - and nothing to hold onto except two long poles I discovered are really good at swatting away children you don't want to murder with your 90 mile an hour, six foot one, a hundred and blah blah body. You know how James Bond says his body is a weapon? Or maybe it's ninjas and not James Bond. Well, mine is too, except less in a sleek and sexy strong sort of way, and more in a flailing, awkward blinding sort of a way.

The woman teaching me to ski was soooo nice, and soooo patient with me, and repeatedly let me crash into her at the terrifying speed of 5 mph. That sounds pretty slow but 5mph in my head, and with my complete lack of control over my own limbs, can turn into 75mph and gliding treacherously like a flying squirrel with my jacket puffed up to the perfect sail-like size over the middle of a cavernous glacier headed toward my rocky death in about 2 seconds flat. In fact I narrowly escaped one such death in which I almost went off a cliff by making the graceful move of going crotch first into a tree, and probably would have impaled myself on a stomach-high branch if I hadn't tried to use one of my, uh, ski canes (?) as a weapon to attack the branch as I fell to my back and slid with my legs in a position I haven't used since prom night into the huge trunk of the pine tree. (If I get pregnant I hope they look like him.)

(Just kidding about the prom night thing, I'm pretty sure I just curled up in bed with Gige that night and let her boyfriend share the other bed with mine because they both passed out before we even made it to hot tub time - but did manage to wake up in time for Denny's the next morning, during which we ordered seventeen plates of Moons Over My Hammy and then stopped for Taco Bell about an hour after that. *sigh* I miss teenage metabolism.)

Anyway it was a really great experience - life danger or no. And I just kept telling myself that if these three year olds zooming past me could do it then I could at least try to go down again without wishing I had some sort of harness they use in plays to make people look like they're flying. Plus when I actually let myself get a little speed and found that I didn't immediately explode and die it was so much fun. Totally terrifying and awesome all at the same time, which I quickly realized is not unlike spending lots of quality time with my family. They are terrifyingly awesome - with the added bonus of not leaving me bruised and shaking from fear at the end of the day. You know, most of the time.