Anxiety is a hell of a drug.

     Well not really. I just like to sound like a jaded 70s club queen sometimes. Keeps things interesting. So, anyway! I'm back from my adventure! I went gallivanting off to Louisiana to visit mon petit ami, which was a really big test for me to see how far I've come in dealing with my anxiety. As you'll know if you've been reading for a while, homegirl has problems. Problems interacting with people, or being haunted by slightly embarrassing mistakes for years longer than is strictly necessary, or worrying myself to the point of physical illness over all the things that could potentially go wrong in a given situation. So you can see where flying alone across five states and a time zone, with a layover in the middle, could be a bit of a challenge for me. But in the words of the great Meatloaf, I would do anything for love (but he wouldn't do that. He sucks. Ipso facto, I'm a better girlfriend than Meatloaf. Schwing!), so I put on my big girl pants (they're leggings) and did it anyway. And I was really pleasantly surprised by how non-anxious I was! Airports are designed for dum-dums in the first place, so navigating them wasn't difficult at all, and it wasn't even stressful to interact with the people working in them or on the planes, because in a place like an airport, you know the employees have all seen some shit. They are used to the stupidest, most belligerent people on earth; you'd have to do something incredibly, catastrophically, brain-meltingly stupid for them to even remember it. So it doesn't matter if the question you need answered really is stupid. 

     Aside from those sort of organizational, "be in place A at time B" aspects of traveling, it was completely stress-free. That's what makes me say "Anxiety is a hell of a drug." It's so amusing to me that my brain decides talking to the nice old dude at the ticket counter is cause for abject terror, while hurtling through the sky at 500 miles per hour in a tuna can with wings is a totally chill delight. It's like all the fear I was allotted in this life was assigned to people and the passage of time, and there was none left to go towards normal things like fear of, oh, I dunno, literally any situation that could lead to my death. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Brains are funny little things. 

     So yes! I can now officially boast having traveled alone without getting irreparably lost (keyword irreparably. I got lost driving once, but I figured it out, so it doesn't count) or having a panic attack. The only issue I ran into is the part during takeoff where it feels like your head is squashing down like a Barbie face under a shoe. I still don't love that. 

 Yes, like dees.

Lemme tell you a story.

     A story of brain fog. A story of loss. A story of how I'm getting stupider with each passing day and should not be trusted to attempt general life without proper supervision. A story of breakfast. 

     Picture it: Virginia, 2014. Jen called and woke me up bright and early to tell me, basically, "GET READY NOW AND COME TO MY HOUSE THIS INSTANT." So I put on the things most closely resembling actual clothes I could find (basically a transition from jimjams to slightly more acceptable loungewear), made a quick but unenthusiastic attempt at taming my hair, and was just about ready to go when I realized wait! I hadn't eaten breakfast! The most important meal of the day (Trailed closely by second breakfast)! But I didn't have any time; the alarm was set and you have 30 seconds to get out of the house before your presence will alert the hounds after you set it. So I figured I'd grab a Toaster Scramble out of the fridge in the garage and toast it at Jen's house. 

     Then my old arch-foe, packaging showed up. No matter how hard I pulled apart that stupid plastic baggie they come in, I could not gain access to my savory tasty breakfast. But I didn't give up. I just kept pulling. I channeled my inner athlete to gain dominance over this bag. But I guess I channeled a little too much, because I went full Hulk-hands and absolutely EXPLODED the bag open, sending Toaster Scrambles flying in every direction. One on the floor, one on the hood of the SUV next to me, one that I managed to catch mid-air. I swore a blue streak, but picked them up within five seconds (Hi, I'm disgusting and don't care about floor germs) and shoved them back in the box, then got on my way. 

     Then this morning I returned to the scene of the crime to see if today I couldn't fetch myself some breakfast without catastrophic failure. I noticed there was one less in the box than there would have been if only the one I had were eaten, but figured someone else must have had one. 

     Halfway through the day yesterday, my mom walks up to me and drops a Toaster Scramble in my lap. "Guess where I found this?" she asked. I shrugged, but had a feeling I was about to be in trouble. "Behind the bug guard on the hood of the car" she said incredulously. This was yesterday, I remind you. The exploding bag incident was on TUESDAY. Which means I left a Toaster Scramble on the hood of a car for two days. And it stayed there through two days of driving! I showed that Toaster Scramble more sights than it had any hope or expectation of seeing. I gave it a good life. Showed it the world. 

     I don't even know how it managed to stay there for two whole days. That seems like it ought to defy physics or something. Like we're lucky it didn't come shimmying up the windshield after a short stop and scare the shit out of someone. Or like if nothing else, a tenacious bird should have run off with it. 

     How do these things even happen to me? I don't even feel like there's a lesson to be learned here. Don't use your Hulk-hands on breakfast-food packaging? Always check your car's exterior for stray pastries? Maybe it's a metaphor for perseverance? I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU GUYS. 

Way harsh, Facebook.

     I've noticed that the ads on my Facebook page have gotten increasingly insulting lately. Here's a few I had recently.

     I mean, Facebook has always kind of been like that one relative that's aggressively over-invested in why you're still single, and when are you going to get married because your eggs won't be good forever in case you didn't know, so tick tock. But I've only recently noticed it becoming a direct command -- GO ON A DATE! -- which is annoying first because DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO FACEBOOK, YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, and second because it's kind of like when you tell someone you haven't been sleeping well, and then when you're saying goodbye they say "Bye, get some sleep!" like you're going to turn around all wide-eyed and astonished, and say, "My God, you're right! The answer's been right in front of me all along! Go to sleep! Brilliant!" Oh, you noticed that I'm gearing up for a life of spinsterhood, eh Facebook? You're right, I should just go on a date! Nevermind that there's no men within fifteen years of my age in the surrounding wasteland of cows and moonshine stills, I'll just go on a date. Maybe one of the cows will go with me. That solves that problem. I'll just burn this stack of cat adoption papers. The pairing of that ad with the one for bridal photography is both baffling and kind of pushy. Baffling because clearly it knows that I'm single (you know, because I post my status every weekend as "Baying at the moon. #foreveralone") and obviously I have no need for a wedding photographer. Pushy because hey, let's take things one step at a time, Facebook. It's a pretty big leap from "Go on a date!" to "Plan your nuptials!"

     The menstrual pain study ad is...unsettling, to say the least. Mostly because I'm pretty sure I've never actually said anything about my lady sicknesses on Facebook. Granted, anyone with a lack of more rewarding and less creepy hobbies could easily learn way more than they needed to about the state of my uterus based on the alarming regularity at which I suddenly spend a week tweeting things like "Million dollar idea: someone start a business where I can pay an hourly fee to sit and brush a miniature pony when I'm sad," but that's not even the same social network. 

     I guess, though, based on the last ad there for experimental treatment for bipolar disorder, maybe something about my profile just gives off an "unstable" vibe, and they figure I must either be hormonal as all hell or straight-up mentally ill. And that's probably why I'm still single, I guess? I dunno. But until Facebook gets it together and finds an advertising algorithm that's slightly less openly acrimonious, maybe I'll just start posting a bunch of statuses about puppies and world travel until it picks up on the keywords and brings me some ads that don't imply I'm a crampy bipolar recluse with no concept of appropriate relationship pacing. 

Freezer cooking!

     Since Jen and Jason are going to be so busy with the new babies, I thought it would be nice to prepare a couple of meals that could be kept in the freezer and just tossed into the oven whenever they realized "Oh wait, we need to eat!" So I spent the whole afternoon Sunday cooking, assembling, labeling, and freezing. And disaster-ing. But I'll get to that in a minute. First, here are the recipes I made. They're all from thepioneerwoman.com because she happened to have a post all about making freezer meals that popped up when I googled it (and because I've seriously never made a recipe from her website that wasn't delicious). 

Sour Cream Noodle Bake Super easy and fast to put together, and I know Jen and Jason will love it because they are sour cream fiends. I made it in a disposable foil pan so it can be heated easily and they won't have to deal with washing a casserole dish afterwards.

Roast Beef Sammiches Ok, they're not actually called sammiches, but as long as I'm around they are. I knocked these out pretty fast too, once I got a good process going and became a one-woman assembly line. I individually wrapped them in foil so they can be popped right into the oven to heat up.

Calzones These were a little more time consuming, but I did try one (it was the ugliest one of the batch, and I was a little too ashamed of it to give it away and let other people witness its horror) and it was delish, so I would say worth it. I used mild sausage and didn't add any onion (didn't feel like chopping one), and I think that made it so that these calzones would even make a good breakfast. 

Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork I made this recipe in the slow cooker so I could get it started, then move on to working on other recipes, and it turned out perfectly. Fell right apart, I barely even had to shred it! I figure this will be a good thing for Jen and Jason to have in the freezer so they can heat it up for nachos, sammiches, quesadillas, or even just to be eaten by itself, hastily shoved in one's mouth.

     There was going to be a fifth recipe (my Grandma's chili) but that's where the disaster-ing comes in. See, I had rather a time of it in the kitchen. First I sliced open my finger doing something stupid (I'm not gonna say if it was cutting open a bottle of mayo to get it all out for the special sauce that goes on the roast beef sammiches....but it could have been that) and had to take a time-out to bandage everything up, then the lids to the foil pans I'd bought REFUSED to snap onto the pans (only one out of the three-pack actually fit) and I had kind of a rage-blackout about it, then I ran out of foil halfway through the whole cooking extravaganza, then....and this is the worst, most truly dreadful part....I BURNED the chili. Yeah, burned it. It's an unscrewuppable recipe, but I found a way to screw it up. Basically, after I browned some ground beef and vegetables in a pot and added some tomato-y liquid goodness, I forgot to turn the heat down to simmer. It sat there cooking on medium-high for about 45 minutes before I thought, "Something smells like burning. It must be the sausage for the calzones, because surely it couldn't be the chili, that's un-possible. Unless...oh..." and by that time I had already made a chili-and-carcinogen-flavored brick. Oops. I'll probably grab some new ingredients and try again tomorrow, but this time I won't be making five things at once, so hopefully I won't ruin it again. 

     So, all-in-all I'd say that four out of five successful freezer meals made in one day is a pretty good turnout. I think it'll be really helpful for Jen and Jason to have a few ready-to-go food options for themselves when they're juggling feedings and diaper-changes for the babies (hopefully not literally, as that would get real messy real fast). These recipes are all also good comfort-food options, I think, which I imagine will be nice when they're tired and cranky and yearning for the sweet sustenance of carbs and meat (am I projecting too much here? Probably). And last but not least, since these meals are all made with basic ingredients and designed to make a big batch to keep around, they're all very cost-effective. Thirteen bucks for a big-ass pork butt (are you enjoying that word-play? You're welcome) that makes about 18 servings boils down to under 75 cents per meal, aka really, really, ridiculously cheap. So if you're thinking of making these for yourself before you have your own babies, or you just want to save money on groceries (who doesn't), this is a great way to go. 

     Thus ends my cooking marathon! Hopefully I'll have better luck with the chili tomorrow...otherwise I may have to start building a botched-chili-brick house of shame. 

America is England's Bratty Teenaged Child

     A conversation (about who will end up making it to space and other planets and junk, one day far in the future) that happened today:

Me: I would think that's how it'd happen, anyway. America and China, last two superpowers standing.

Amanda: Maybe Europe.

Me: Ehhh, I dunno.

Amanda: Well we'd take them with us, anyway. England at least.

Me: But France, no way. We'd jet off, all, "YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN, FRENCHIES!" You're probably right about England though, we'd take them. We tight with England. It's funny how we're all buddy-buddy with them now when just, like, 200 years ago we were all "EEEENGLAAAAND!"

Amanda: Yeah, but they were only hard on us because they cared.

Me: Sure, "We only oppress you because we love you!" "Leave us alone, Britain, we know what we're doing! We don't need you!" We're the bratty teenaged child of England, aren't we?

Amanda: Oh my God, we are.

Rocky Raccoon

     Today's "Thing that popped into Jacki's head and made her laugh out loud so that she looked like she was on drugs to everyone around her" is brought to you by the humble raccoon.

     See, we've discovered, with the help of modern technology (the future is now!) that a raccoon has been stealing all the birds' food.

He ain't even sorry.

      So, naturally, Amanda has decided she wants to feed him and love him and keep him forever as an outdoor pet (I, for one, have little to no trust for raccoons since I saw a show once about how they can open almost any container you put in front of them. The combination of adorableness and ability to open a bottle of poison to put in your food is one I generally dislike).

     Anyway, so she asked me to do a quick googling and figure out where raccoons live. And after finding the answer (dens, hollow spaces in tree trunks, POSSIBLY YOUR ATTIC, in case you were curious), I kept reading and found this gem:

"The raccoon uses the fingers of its forepaws to feel around. As it feels around, it sometimes finds food. That’s how a raccoon can catch fish without even looking. A raccoon often stares straight ahead as it puts its hands into the water. It holds its hands there until it feels something move." (animals.howstuffworks.com)

      And then I died laughing. Because that's a funny enough factoid to begin with -- I mean what kind of hunting strategy is that, raccoon? To stick your paws in the water and just space out while you wait for some dumb fish to bump into you? -- but when you add in the fact that raccoons look like they're constantly preoccupied with something and that mental image becomes hilarious.

That really escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand fast.

     The reason for the Anchorman reference in the title will become apparent later. It will aaaalll make sense one day, I promise (but by "one day" I mean "later in this post" and by "aaaalll" I mean "specifically this one reference and nothing else").

     As you may have noticed, when I can't think of anything to write about here, I sometimes like to just tell you a little story. And my brain is really just not working correctly enough to write anything amazing today (I mistook the sound of someone blowing their nose for an electric drill. That happened. This brain is having a day off). I blame this on the fact that I am so tired that at several points throughout the day I felt like I might pull a Sims move and just fall over onto the floor for a nap. This whole "readjusting of the sleep schedule" shenanigan does not appear to be going well.

     Because of the aforementioned doziness, I had what I call an "empty day," which is a thing that I'm not sure mentally sound people actually have. Basically, it's a day when you're not sad or depressed or anything (though it might look that way to others), but you're not particularly overjoyed either. You're just kind of cruising through the day, waiting until bedtime. I have these days once every few months, and it's almost always when I'm just overwhelmingly tired. It's like being too tired to have any strong feelings.

     So I spent the whole day playing Fable 3, because that's what I felt like doing, and Sundays are for doing what you feel. And while I was playing, I made a bit of a woopsie.

     First, let me set the scene for you. I'm doing a favor for one of the townspeople. Her husband has changed over the years into a verbally abusive, philandering jerk, and he looks like a hobbit, but not one of the cool ones. She wants a divorce, but he won't divorce her because he doesn't want to give her half their money and he's content to just cheat on her, I guess. So she asks me to help her out of her situation. Immediately, I'm thinking, "You want I should kill him?" but it turns out she only wants me to seduce him and tell him about how rich I am so he'll divorce her to come mooch off my hard-earned cash. But then the scheme will be revealed before I actually have to embarrass myself by marrying him, leaving him poor and heartbroken and still a douchewagon. I am wholeheartedly on board with this plan, because it is deliciously soap operatic and also because it benefits me (I get "points," kind of, if I do it). Chaotic neutral fo' life, yo.

     So I go through the motions of seducing the Ugly Wee Hobbit: we dance, we play Patty-Cake (sensually, I guess? I dunno, it's a weird game), I buy him a ruby, take him on a lovely date to the town bridge, leave him there overnight while I run off to do some shopping and have a nap (as you do), come back and propose. Mind you, the whole time, he is an insufferable ass, telling me how nice it is to spend time with me instead of his wife, who "spends too much time reading" and ruins his whole life with this thing she does called "talking." My original intent to kill him resurfaces and quickly solidifies into a definite future occurrence. And he runs off to give his wife the divorce papers.

     When I catch up with these two crazy kids, he's given his wife the papers, and she's told him her whole plan, like an amateur super-villain. But he's still stupid and full of himself, remember? So he turns to me and says something along the lines of "Well, you're pretty despicable, I see. How despicable are you? Kill her before she can turn the papers in and I'll keep the money, then you'll be marrying a rich man!"

    At which point I sit on the couch yelling at the tv, "Did he just call me despicable? Oh hells no. I am the melonfarmin' Princess of this MondaytoFriday land, you best step down, son." (Those are Snakes on a Plane censored-for-tv style swears, I don't actually farm melons in between Princess duties on weekdays.) And obviously, I'm going to kill him. At this point it just has to happen. It's the only way to give this story a happy ending.

     L'il Wifey is aghast. "You can just leave, this doesn't concern you anymore! Please don't kill me!" she says to me. And I'm thinking, "Chill, girl, I got your back. Ovaries before Brovaries. Uteruses before Duderuses. Just let me kill your soon-to-be-ex-husband, because he is a walking stink-suit of misery and woe."

     So I whip out my sword .... and ACCIDENTALLY KILL THEM BOTH IN ONE MOVEMENT.

     Now,  if you have ever seen me genuinely shocked before, you will know that when surprised, I make the same face as Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead when he accidentally kills his first zombie. So I sat on the couch like this for a minute.

     Then I quietly back out the door, lock it behind me, and flee town before anyone can find them.

     As far as I know, I'm not in trouble, but maybe they just haven't had any visitors or overly inquisitive Girl Scouts or Jehovah's Witnesses come looking for them yet. I'm hoping to save up enough money to buy the house so no one can ever investigate and find out what happened (a thing which most assuredly does not happen in this game, but which I have convinced myself is going to happen anyway, because if I'm gonna commit accidental videogame murder, might as well just let it all spiral into madness, right?).
    
     The weird thing is I still got the "points" for doing the mission, and the message that popped up with it said that what I had done was "ultimately fair," so it didn't even affect my morality and make me more evil. I feel like the game said to me "Yeah, it's cool. They were both kind of annoying anyway."

     I told you it was a weird game.

My New Eyeballs

     The dark deed is done! The LASIK is now behind me. Let's talk about how it went. Two warnings though: one, this is probably going to be a very long post, and two, if you're easily squicked out by eyeball things, this maybe isn't for you. I'll try not to get too graphic or anything, but I know some people just can't stand hearing about eye stuff.

     The actual procedure took less than ten minutes and is basically just a bunch of staring at various lights. First I got numbing drops in each eye, which makes your eyes feel like they're slightly more solid than they ought to be. Like they're normally a gelatin texture, and the drops make them feel like bouncy balls. Weird. Then, after the doctor gave me a few standard-issue disclaimers, I was led into the laaaaaser room, which is very cold and drafty and oddly lit, giving the impression that I was walking into the lab of a spaceship. Probably because when they reverse engineered LASIK technology from a crashed spaceship they weren't sure how important the decor was so they decided not to risk it by changing anything (come on, like you'd even be surprised to learn that's what happened. It's easier to believe than the story that an actual human woke up one day and said "I bet if I shaved part of my corneas off with a laser I could see better. Let's try it out!"). 

     Then I settled in for step one of the process, where they cut the flap that goes over the part that gets its shape changed. This is supposed to be the uncomfortable part, because it involves putting suction on your eye. Apparently this really bothers some people. They put eyelid holders in (which I obviously didn't feel, but I get grossed out if I think about what that must have looked like) and told me to stare at a light until my vision went black in the eye they were working on, and then the suction part happened. It felt like when you press the heels of your hands into your eyes, so I told my brain that's what we were doing. "Nothing to see here, brain, just pushin' on the ol' eyeballs. Makin' sure they're the appropriate squishitude."

     When step one was done, I had to relocate to another reclining chair for step two, which was difficult because after step one, my vision was even worse than when I started (which is normal, they assured me). Then I had to stare at another light while the doctor opened the flap, which, for me, was the worst part. I didn't feel a thing, but seeing everything get blurry and weird and knowing what was going on was just squicky. It wasn't like step one, where I could tell my brain something else was going on, so without an alternate explanation, my brain just screamed "MY FLAAAAPS! EYEBALLS MELTING! TURNING TO JELLY! WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!" But it didn't last long, and I was able to get through it by focusing on my breathing and promising myself that if I sat still until this was over, I could have a nice long freakout later. Then there was a buzzing sound and a god-awful smell, like the odor of burning hair if it had personified into a noxious cloud capable of farting in a person's face (are you imagining that smell now? I hope you are, I need my misery to be shared). Fortunately this part was only 10 seconds long, and the nurse counted it down, so I held my breath after getting the initial first whiff and deciding it was not something I could feasibly breathe without gagging. Also, smells are particulate based, and the idea of getting eyeball particles in my lungs is just freaking messed up.  Then the doctor put my eye-flaps back in place, put some drops in my eyes, and it was all done!

    Then, on doctor's orders, I went home and immediately tried to go to sleep. It's supposed to jump-start the healing process and help you avoid being miserable while your eyeballs figure out what just happened and throw a tantrum. It was hard to fall asleep at first because the numbing drops wear off after about fifteen minutes, and it took at least twenty to get home. So my eyes felt kind of like I was staring at a bright light and they wanted to water and close, only they were already closed and watering. A LOT. The protective eye mask they gave me kept filling up with tears.

Go ahead and admit it: you're jealous of the new hotness that is these goggles.

But I managed to get to sleep before too long, and when I woke up a few hours later, I could see!

     Now I just have to put a boatload of drops in them every day for a week to help them heal, then keep using wetting drops for a month, since screwing around with concentrated light-waves in your eyes apparently makes them a bit dry. Go figure. At my follow-up appointment on Thursday, I learned that my vision is already 20/20, but it's still a bit hazy because my corneas are swollen. That seems justified, given what they've been through, so I ain't mad. I only notice the haziness in my right eye, and it's no worse than having a cloudy spot on a contact lens. Once the swelling goes down and my eyes do some more healing, my vision should be perfect. I also have to be very careful to not touch my eyes at all. I have the protective eye mask to wear while I sleep, lest I accidentally rub them in the middle of the night, but the thought of rubbing my eyes and displacing the corneal flaps is so incredibly disturbing to me that I'm anxious about it literally 100% of the time. I've been sitting on my hands a lot, in case I fall asleep or stop paying attention to what I'm doing or develop alien hand syndrome and rub my eyes against my own consent. I'll probably never rub my eyes again as long as I live, so powerful is the imagery of displacing one's corneal flaps.

     The unfortunate part is that -- and please, if you are one of the people who is sensitive about eye stuff, please skip this paragraph -- the suction part of step one of the procedure bruised my eyes, and my right eye in particular looks like it's bleeding. It is EASILY the grossest thing I have ever seen. Ick, ick, ick. It's a common thing, and it should go away within a week or two, but that doesn't make it any less disgusting. It looks like I have the rage virus and am halfway through turning into a zombie, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that I am twice as scared as normal that I'll get pulled over while driving, because I think if a cop thought I was driving poorly to begin with, then saw my terrifying bloody eye, he'd shoot me on sight, convinced that the zombie apocalypse had begun. The advantage is that nobody even thought about reaching rudely in front of me in the grocery store. Not once I swiveled my freak eye around at them with a dangerous look on my face. Am I the scariest vampire in all the land, out to pick up some vampire-nummies? Did a gypsy spell gone wrong give me the power to see into your soul, but disfigure me terribly in the process? You'll never know, so don't even think of reaching in front of me like you're afraid I'm gonna buy ALL the Nutella and you just have to grab one first.

     Overall, it wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be, and it was definitely worth it. It was amazing to wake up and not have to immediately reach for my glasses this morning. The experience was a lot like taking Polyjuice Potion with the hair of someone with perfect eyesight in it. Both in terms of how quickly I could see, and because parts of it smelled bad and were really unappealing.

The Girl Who Cried Creeper

     It's good to be able to laugh at yourself, right? I feel like that's a thing people say. I hope so, because I had an incredibly stupid moment recently. Actually I've had several, but let's keep a sense of mystery there, at least for today. Let me tell you the ridiculously idiotic thing I did.

     A few nights ago, in the midst of one of my fits of tossing and turning while I tried to let the soothing sounds of Golden Girls lull me to sleep, I rolled over and looked out the window. It's usually pitch black outside because there's nothing around except cows, and they're not exactly going to be prancing around at night wearing light up sneakers. But on this night, there was a strange light outside. A very bright, yellow light.

     Because I am nervous freak with an overactive imagination, I immediately convinced myself that there was a madman standing outside with a flashlight, watching the house, probably contemplating where to splash gasoline to get the most efficient burn going.

     Or maybe the light of my tv was illuminating my room enough that he was watching ME, thinking about the best self-tanner to use on the suit he planned to make from my skin!

     Paralyzed with fear, I tried to come up with a plan, but nothing came to mind. All I knew from my limited exposure to scary movies was that if I fled to an upstairs corner while being chased or engaged in a sassy lingerie pillowfight with girlfriends, I'd be dead for sure. Feeling relatively safe from the latter point, and pretty much screwed on the former (Hi Mr. Serial-Killer, I've made your job super easy as my room IS an upstairs corner! Ain't I a peach?)

     Now feeling the cold fog of imminent doom seeping under every door and window, I decided I'd have to wake someone up to help. After all, I'm blonde. Blondes never survive to the end of the movie. I slowly rolled over to face away from the window-- slow enough, I thought, that it might look as though I was just rolling over in my sleep to any creepy creepers creepin' creepily outside. I reached slowly for my glasses so as not to betray any movement, pulled them carefully onto my face, then WHIPPED around as fast as I could to hopefully catch a glimpse of the shadowy outline of the  would-be ax murderer/arsonist/all-around weirdo so I could at least possibly tell if he was an armed creep or a more benign entry-level creep artist.

     And do you know what I saw? What was stalking my home with bad intentions?

     .......

     It was the moon.

     THE FREAKING MOON. 

Aaaghhh, MOON, you cheeky bastard!

     It was setting over the hill across the street in a way that, to my shoddy glasses-less eyes, had looked like a yellow light floating in the middle of the road.

     But you know what the worst part is? I'VE DONE THIS ONCE BEFORE. The exact same thing, a few months ago. Fool me once, moon, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third time and I'll just go set myself adrift on a polar ice flow because clearly I'm too stupid to survive.

     Thank God I'm getting my vision corrected in a few days, before I get a chance to confuse a tree for a dragon and die of a heart attack.

Tippy Tumbles

Like this, except it went on for a thousand years.

     Somebody took a tippy tumble down the stairs (every last one of them, from the very top step). Guess who it was? Yeah, it was me. It was the worst. Slick hardwood stairs + socks + just took out my contacts and switched to glasses so my depth perception was a little whack = OUCH, MAN. I'm pretty positive it happened in slow motion, since I definitely had time to spend the first few steps desperately grasping for anything to stop or at least slow my fall, then change strategy halfway through and just go limp like you're supposed to do before a car accident. I also distinctly remember hearing Amanda already laughing about halfway through the fall, instead of waiting until after she knew I wasn't horrifically disfigured or maimed, then laughing. 

     Apparently everyone around was very confused because it sounded like I was falling down the stairs, but they thought it couldn't possibly be that, because it was taking too long. I think the noise they were hearing was just the shattering of my ass-bones. (Not really, nothing was broken except my pinky nail.)

    So now my entire right side is useless. My entire right buttock (please read that in Forrest Gump's voice, you'll be happier for it) is bruisey and sore from fighting the noble battle against slick hardwood floors, and my right arm is sore from trying so hard to grab something/stop gravity from being such a turd.

     All of this is to say I didn't finish the skeleton dress yet because I was in a sorry state. So I sat in bed watching my bruises bloom and drawing you this gif.

It's only a brain wound!

     I still have the same headache and I can't think of a thing in the world to write about and it's already almost two in the morning and I'm really tired but this post is supposed to go up in the morning, so I'll just tell you a story, ok? Cool? Cool.

The story of how I had the worst shower ever outside of the movie Psycho:
    
     Yesterday when I was taking my shower, I flipped my head over to shampoo the part of my scalp that cannot be reached while upright through the stupidly huge mass of wet hair on top of it. As I flipped, though, I had the most horrible searing pain in my head, which I can only assume was my brain beating on the walls of my head screaming "FINALLY WE'RE MAKIN A BREAK FOR IT! USE THE GRAVITY, JUMP OUT AN EAR!" (My brain refers to itself in the royal "we," obviously). I understand now how Harry Potter felt when Voldemort came swanning up to him and poked him in the head all "I can touch you now, bitch!" 
    
     Then, upside down, clutching my head and making a face like a pug eating a lemon, the sudsy water ran directly onto my face and into my nose, straight through to my sinuses and out my eyeballs (Anatomy 101, fools). So I flipped my head over and stood up to lower my chances of falling out of the tub and becoming a LifeAlert reenactment as I sneezed wildly, trying to evacuate all of Spongebob Squarepants' poop from my nasal passages.

     But it gets better! When I opened my eyes from about the 8th sneeze in a row, there was blood EVERYWHERE. It looked like Dexter had been by to enact permanent justice on me for the time I left a fifteen percent tip instead of twenty because I didn't want to leave the last five percent of the tip in pennies. Naturally my first thought was that I must have nodded off for a second under the warm water and Freddy Kreuger had swung by to callously murder me. But then I remembered "wait, I don't sleep." So that wasn't it. No, it was just that the violence of my sneezing fit had triggered a nosebleed. And I wasn't done sneezing yet, either. So I stood in the shower for five more minutes, sneezing and spurting blood like the Black Knight, except it WASN'T only a flesh wound. I think it was an all-the-way-to-the-brain wound. I shampooed my insides, surely there is some internal damage.

     I guess if you're ever going to become a living, breathing personification of every low-budget arterial spurt effect ever, the shower's the place to do it. Easy clean-up.


    

Quick Fixes: Shiny collars!

     Confession: I have a serious weakness for anything with a Peter Pan collar. I also love the idea of collar necklaces. Both of these things will come as no surprise if you've ever seen my clothing board on Pinterest. 

     Today's Quick Fix is inspired by these two obsessions, as well as being sort of inspired by this video, in which Youtuber (a word which I felt stupid typing, then decided I liked enough to leave in the post once I started imagining a potato that makes youtube videos for a living, because tuber, get it?) MissGlamorazzi, aka Ingrid, made a few collar necklaces of her own. (You can watch that video right here.)

     I say "sort of" because I watched this video weeks ago, thought, "I'll never make that" then decided a few days ago that these collars might be what's missing in my life and ended up making them after all. But of course, mine aren't nearly as classy and restrained as Ingrid's, because she has good taste and shiny hair, and I have no sense of refinement and a big-ass jar of rhinestones. Because of the aforementioned large quantity (in this case, "big-ass" is a quantity equal to one pound. A WHOLE POUND OF RHINESTONES, CAN YOU IMAGINE? No seriously, please take a moment to imagine it, because sticking your hand into a pound of rhinestones and letting them fall through your fingers like you're Scrooge McDuck is one of life's great pleasures) of rhinestones I had in my possession, I thought I'd make two. A white collar and a black collar, for use with the wide variety of colors in my wardrobe, namely: black and white. Here's how the black one ended up, shown over a black sweater so you can get an idea of what it looks like in action, sitting around pretending to be a real collar when really it's a cheap imitation.

And here they both are together.

 

     Now, if you're looking at that picture and wondering how they're supposed to stay on....well, then let me tell you, sweet gentle reader. They're supposed to have a strip of ribbon attached to each end that ties in the back like a necklace. You will notice, darling angelfaces, that mine do not have any ribbon. Would you like to know why not, my lovely sugarplums? Then sit back, my fuzzy little lambs, and I will tell you why not. 

     Once upon a time, a beautiful, if slightly neurotic princess picked out the prettiest sheer black ribbon for the black collar she was making, and simple white ribbon for the white collar. She sat the spools of ribbon on the kitchen table while she glued rhinestone after rhinestone onto the collars (full disclosure: Amanda glued the white one while the princess made cookies because she was tired of inhaling glue fumes), and when the last crystal was in place, she left them overnight to dry. But when she returned in the morning, her spool of black ribbon was missing! Where could it have gone? Did some feisty sewing mice steal it to gussy up her Christmas present? Did a friendly neighborhood bird swoop in through the window and pick it up to use in her nest? Did a dark sorcerer steal it in order to lure the princess into his foul clutches?

     NO, none of those things happened because fairytales aren't real and the ribbon couldn't have been used for any of those purposes because it was INSIDE THE CAT. Yup, our stupid, stupid cat (that's not even me being biased or unkind, it's just factually TRUE. The sky is blue and the cat is stupid) COMPLETELY CONSUMED six yards of ribbon, straight off the spool like a ribbon junkie. The only evidence that remained was about six inches of black ribbon found in the floor and the two days of ribbon-filled cat puke that followed. 

Look deep into the eyes of a creature so stupid it will eat something that ISN'T EVEN FOOD literally until he is sick.

     Don't worry,  he's fine. I mean, he's still stupid, but we're pretty sure all the ribbon's out, and he's not sick or anything. Apparently feline pica (the urge to eat strange, nonfood items) is pretty common, and oriental cats in particular are predisposed to it. The more you know...

     So anyway, the pretty black ribbon's gone. I could finish the white one, as that ribbon is still untouched (our cat's a ribbon-racist, he targets black ribbons), but the black one was the one I was more excited about, since I know I'll use it more on account of the ridiculous amount of black clothing I own, and I kind of lost steam after the whole incident. But I figured I'd post about it anyway because they're basically done and I wanted to tell you that story. 

THE END.

OR IS IT?

     Edited to add: The lost ribbon has been replaced, and the collars now have ribbon! So they can actually be worn! Yay! They're attached with a little bit of hand-sewing (that my Mom thoughtfully did for me, because hand-sewing? I ain't about that life). 

 THE ACTUAL FOR REALS END.

 

New Low

Ever since I updated the Sims 3 to the latest version, it's been really glitchy. As in, it crashes. It crashes a lot. This leads to some really obnoxious losses of progress, since I'm in the middle of forcing my Sim-self to read cookbooks 24 hours a day in order to become a master chef (as one does). Like last night.  I'd just sent sim-Jacki to the bookstore to get more cookbooks, when lo and behold, outside the store stands a handsome-ish sim! If you don't play the Sims, note that finding a decent-looking one can be somewhat...challenging. Finding one is definitely cause for putting militant book-reading on hold. 

So we got to chatting, and it turns out he's in journalism, and some of his traits include "bookworm" (at a bookstore? You don't say!) and "good" (so I know he's not a sociopath. Would that dating was so straight-forward in real life) and is single. Oh, yay! I thought. A hursband for mah see-im! We "enthused about books" and "asked about career" for a while before saying our goodbyes.

Then my game crashed, losing everything I'd accomplished and effectively un-meeting my boo.

So I did everything again. Re-read all the cookbooks I owned. Went back to the bookstore. Re-met Sim-Boo. 

And it crashed again. At this point I decided I'd be fanatical about saving from then on. 

So, for a third time, I re-read all my books. And went back to the bookstore. But, what's this? Sim-Boo wasn't there! So I waited.....

Who's that lurking 'round the corner? Oh, it's me.

....and waited.....

Gettin' dark out here.

....and waited....

Ow, there's something in my eye...I think it's a bit of despair.

...and lurked in the bushes and waited some more....

Hi!

FOR FIVE DAYS. FIVE DAYS OUTSIDE THE BOOKSTORE. Reading my books quietly in the shadows to pass the time, shooing away anyone who tried to talk to me, I lurked. But he never came back. Finally I gave up and went home, cleared the pile of moldy newspapers off my driveway, and went to bed. (I'd been using a cheat to just pull my energy and hunger and whatever else meters back up when they got too low, but I was starting to feel guilty about suppressing my Sim's hunger and sleepiness instincts like an amphetamine addict.)

And if you think the "new low" referred to in the post title was stalking my Sim-boyfriend that I hadn't even technically met yet at his favorite hangouts, you're wrong.

Because the new low is actually the part right after that, where I went around the entire city looking for his house (they're labeled by last name, see, and I did know his name...) and then straight up WENT TO HIS HOUSE at like, midnight to introduce myself, then use that same meter-dragging cheat to immediately drag our relationship-meter to the top, making us super-close so that we can fall in love and get married. That's basically the Sim equivalent of hiding in the shrubberies by his front door with a choloroform-soaked rag.

And then I saved, so that I will never have to sink to that low again.