The Stanley Incident

This is Stanley Yelnats V:

He’s a Build-A-Bear pig whom I made in Downtown Disney.  He’s named after Stanley Yelnats IV from the book Holes, by Louis Sachar.

I got him the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school.  At that time my older sister Button had just graduated from high school and was getting ready to go off to college, my little sister Booger was about to start junior high, and I had just been moved up to the varsity basketball team.  My mom decided that she would reward us all for being so awesome by getting us each a Build-A-Bear.

Button got a classic teddy bear named Taphy (short for Epitaph because she’s weird), Booger got a rabbit named Basil Stag Hare (named for the hare from Brian Jacque’s Redwall).  And I got Stanley the pig.

It worked out pretty well because in just a couple of years I was going to be going off to college, and like any other newly-pretending-to-be-an-adult college student, I needed a stuffed animal to take with me.

When I was a little kid I had tons and tons of stuffed animals, but I never had any one that was My Stuffed Animal whom I took everywhere with me and needed for comfort.  Instead I had a blanket.  It was called my Rabbit Blanket (or my Rabby Blanky) and it looked like this:

Nowadays it’s more like this:

It looks like it’s been through a blender because it’s a ridiculously old baby blanket.  It’s actually older than I am.  It’s 25 years old, just like my sister Button.  It’s her age because it was originally her blanket.

When she was two years old and I was born, my parents asked her if she would like to be a good big sister and give the new baby her baby blanket, and she said, “Why, certainly, Mother and Father.  I would be honored to part with this symbol of infancy for the good of my recently acquired sibling.  I shall henceforth go blanketless into the great world!”

(So I might be exaggerating a little bit, but I’m sure I’m not THAT far off.  Button has always been super eloquent, and one time she startled her doctor by using the word “actually” at an inappropriately young age.)

Anyway, toddler Button gave her blanket to me.

Four years later, Booger was born and my parents asked me if I would like to be a good big sister and continue the tradition by giving the new baby my baby blanket.

I said, “No.”

And so it’s stayed mine for 23 years.

And I don’t regret my selfishness one bit.

I love that blanket.

A blanket is the perfect kid’s security item because you can hug it like any other stuffed animal, but you can also wrap it around you if you’re cold.  Or you can spread it out on the carpet for a pretend picnic, or you can use it as part of a furniture fort.  Try doing all of that with a teddy bear.  I’ll give you a hint:  YOU CAN’T.

It’s always been one of my most prized possessions.  For some reason I used to be terrified that my dad was going to burn our house down whenever he lit a fire in our fireplace during the winter.  I was SURE we were all going to die, and so I would always gather up all my most important belongings that I couldn’t live without and stand on the stairs, ready to run at the first stray spark.  My most important belongings always started with my rabbit blanket, and usually also included whatever allowance I had and an extra set of underpants.

I loved and I love my rabbit blanket, but there was no way I was taking it to college with me.  It was just a little too blatantly a baby blanket for a dorm room.  So I left it behind.

Stanley, however, was the perfect replacement.  A pig in corduroys was exactly the right amount of ridiculous to come with me.  And so Stanley Yelnats V went to college.

Maybe halfway through my first year, my roommate Alias got her own stuffed animal.

He’s either a chick or a ducky—I’ve never quite been sure which—and he’s made of that stretchy spandex-y fabric and filled with little Styrofoam beads.  He wears a bow tie and his name is Mr. Fabulous. 

Shortly after Mr. Fabulous was introduced to our dorm room, Alias was experimenting with him and his weird flexible body.  She put him in Stanley’s clothes.

She flattened him into a fabulous puddle.

She threw him against the wall. 

He bounced harmlessly back onto her bed. 

It was funny, so she did it again.

It was still funny, so I picked up Stanley and threw HIM against the wall.  He hit with a dull THUD and slid sadly down the wall and onto the floor, where he lay face-down in a dead heap.

Alias and I were both horrified by my heartlessness.

We swore never to talk about The Stanley Incident ever again, which of course meant that Alias told everyone she knew and ever met.

And…now I’m telling you, for some reason.

Anyway.  Now you know my deepest darkest secret about the deepest darkest day of my life—the day I hurled my beloved Stanley Yelnats V against a dorm room wall and let him fall in a heap to the floor.

MovingMovingMoving

I have once again moved apartments.

And this move has been a stressful stressful time of uncertainty, let me tell you:

The end of our old lease was fast approaching, but my roommate and I put off finding a replacement home for a number of reasons.  Well, no, that’s a lie.  There was only one reason: overwhelming laziness. 

So we hurtled towards homelessness, and finally started frantically grasping for somewhere--anywhere--to live.

Luckily, after lots of stress and frustration and driving back and forth between cities, we snagged us a pretty cool little place that isn’t exactly ideal in its location (it adds about fifteen minutes to my commute to work), but has what Calvin’s dad would call “character.”

It’s even got a real live mailbox, little red flag and all.

Another problem, though, was that months ago I had planned a trip home to LA for my birthday, which ended up being the exact same week that my old lease ended and my new one began. 

Clearly my mom was only thinking of herself when she decided to go into labor right when 23 years later I was going to need to move apartments.  Honestly, the lady’s never thinking ahead.

Anyway, because of the convergence of my move-out, my move-in, and my trip to LA, I ended up packing my entire apartment into my car (which is not a particularly big car) and driving it to and from work like a game of Tetris on wheels for a good couple of days as I went through the process of vacating and cleaning the premises of my old place.

I’m actually a little bit proud because everything I own fit into my car pretty easily--with the exception of my bed, my mattress, and the falling-apartest dresser you ever will meet, which all went with my roommate to her boyfriend’s garage because there was simply no other way.  But everything else was transferred from my apartment to my car with hardly any trouble, and I was even able to squeeze in my roommate’s chair and lamp, which she couldn’t fit into her own car.

Either I’m learning to keep my clutter to a minimum or I’m unknowingly driving a clown car.

But packing my life into my car made me super nervous that someone was going to stroll past my car, see it jam-packed with cardboard boxes and garbage bags and bits of furniture and realize that parked before them was a nicely packaged life, just waiting to be seized. 

I’m honestly surprised that nothing was taken.  It was really very stupid of me to drive around like that for so long.  It was painfully obvious that I was in the process of moving and that there might be considerable treasures awaiting a motivated criminal passerby.

Although that passerby would likely be disappointed.

I don’t really own anything all that valuable, except my computer, but I wasn’t taking any risks with that, so I never left it in the car.

The most valuable thing a person would find in my car would be my car, and I would think that a car thief would be better off selecting a vehicle that wasn’t nearly bursting with trashbags of old clothes and half filled notebooks and melted crayons.  The acquisition of my car honestly wouldn’t be worth the hassle of having to empty all of its contents into a dumpster (where, truth be told, most of my possessions probably belong).

And yes, you read me correctly: “melted crayons.”

 I had a big ol’ box of every color of crayon you could ever dream of, and I didn’t think through the decision of leaving them packed in my car for 3+ days in 90+ degree weather.

Melted, the lot.

I could probably stick a bit of string in the box and make the world’s ugliest candle, with its blobs and swirls of every waxy color of the rainbow and the scraps of crayon paper that are drowning in the mess.  Maybe there’s an untapped market for hideous crayon candles, forged through a lack of common sense and the ridiculously hot heat of Sacramento summers. 

I’ll be a millionaire.

Anyway, I guess if a tragedy had to occur, it’s better that it was the destruction of my beloved art supplies and not the theft of my car and my life packed within.  The lesser of two devastating catastrophes, even if just barely. 

But there was also a gap of a few days between me being scheduled to leave for LA and us actually being able to move into our new place.

So, like the crazy person I am, I just drove everything down to LA with me.

Yes, I could have asked someone to let me store my junk at their house.

Yes, I could have taken up my roommate’s offer to use her boyfriend’s garage for temporary storage.

Yes, I could have taken up my manager’s offer to leave all my worldly possessions at the store (my response to which was, “I’m pretty sure that would be a weird thing to do…”).

But all of that would have involved unpacking my car, packing it back up in a week, and then unpacking it again when I finally got to move in to my new place.

So I took the somewhat stupid and somewhat gas-inefficient route of driving my heavy life home with me.

...where I ended up unpacking most of it anyway so that I could drive to places without trashbags fluttering  their red plastic ties in my face the whole trip.

Whatevs.

I ended up using a lot of stuff from my car during that week at home that I otherwise would have had to go without, so it worked out.

 ***

So I had a lovely week at home, and then I had to drive back up here.

I like driving and all, but seven hours is just too long a drive for me.

I can usually get through five and a half, no problem.  Then I start getting the antsies and I start testing myself to see whether I might secretly have the power of teleportation (which so far I do not).

And then I got lost trying to find my new apartment (which I had only ever been to once before in my life) because Sacramento freeways are super weird and I hate them.

I’m sure I’ll figure them out soon enough and I’ll laugh at my current confusion, but seriously.  They make no sense to me.

Being from LA, I generally don’t have many problems with freeways.  It’s kind of a point of pride, being able to figure them out and deal with the traffic and all that jazz.  But what in the world is this Business Loop, and why does it ruin my life EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to go somewhere in Sacramento?

It’s like a freeway for the freeways.  Regular freeway taking too long?  No problem, we’ve got this extra one to solve your commuting problems!

Unless you’re me, in which case it just causes me to not be able to find my exit ANYWHERE, even when I turned around twice to try again.  Nothing.

Luckily Sacramento has lettered and numbered streets, so I was able to exit on...N Street, I think?...and logic my way home from there.

There was some further confusion when I mistook Q Street for a second O Street and thought that maybe P was in the middle and then the city continued on to A on either side, which would be madness and if that were the case I would have gotten right back on the freeway then and there and driven the 7 hours back to LA, giving up on NorCal for good, signed lease and job or no.

Anyway.

Point is I’m here.  Lots and lots of boxes, no internet (I’m here at my good friend the Library), and a longish drive to and from work.

But I have a place with a real mailbox and a hallway with a pull-chain lamp.

I’m golden.

 ***

Here’s a picture of Icarus:

I like Icarus, even though he’s kind of a big ol’ dummy who couldn’t keep it in his brain that wax and high temperatures don’t mix (says the girl who is still mourning the loss of the crayons she let sit in her car for half a week in the middle of summer.  Maybe I like him because I sense in him a kindred spirit).

Also, apparently in my brain’s version of the story, Daedalus is a soul-crushing villain whose goal in life is to drag his son down to mediocrity.

MORAL SCHMORAL--YOU GO, ICARUS! YOU GRAB THAT SHINY SUN!

So a funny thing happened

and I basically forgot that I had a blog.

It was weird.  One day I was updating and wondering what my next post should be about, and the next...well, the next I wasn't.  The fact that this thing even exists was simply erased from my brain until my mom was eventually like, "Sooooo I've been checking on your blog, but there hasn't been anything new for a while now."

And I was like, "...blog?"

And then it all flooded back to me and I was all, "OH I HAVE A BLOG."

But by that point I was so out of the rhythm of updating (not that I ever really settled into an actual rhythm anyway) that I couldn't get myself to sit down and make something new.

Plus, this has been me all day every day for the past couple of months:

That and folding towels.

But hopefully now that I've updated again I'll have it back in my brain that I HAVE A BLOG AND A BLOG IS NOT A BLOG IF NO ONE IS BLOGGING IT.

Productivity Schmoductivity

Often I sit down with some paper, a pen, and the intention of being an artist.  Often I also can't think of anything to draw, and so I inevitably end up doodling the same few doodles over and over again, every day.

Here are some of my go-to doodles:

1.  A lady face in profile, usually with no body because I can't be troubled to go to the effort of finishing the picture.

2. A crazy-eyed stick figure in a skirt, either waving or shrugging.

3. A relatively new addition to my repertoire of repeated scribbles is a monster fish saying distinctly non-threatening things.

I also draw rabbits and giraffes a lot and sometimes end up just writing familiar phrases and sayings over and over again (some people like the sound of their own voice; I like the look of my own handwriting), which is probably a weird thing to do, but whatevs.

ANYWAY OFF TO WORK.

what.

how is it still morning

Hello there, World!

This past week I was off doing inventory for my store.

Well, not MY store, but for ANOTHER store of the same company.

Which was oddly fun for what a tedious job scanning every single piece of merchandise in a giant building is.

But that’s not the point.  The point is that these were overnight inventories, starting at 9:00 pm and ending most days at around 8:00 am.  So I basically went nocturnal for the week.

But today (last night) was the last day (night) and so now I need to kick myself back into a regular sleep schedule.  And so I WILL NOT SLEEP TODAY UNTIL A REASONABLE BEDTIME.

Today will be a day of lots of caffeine.

Which actually won’t be all that different from a normal day.

Anyway, I’ve decided to draw some pictures in all the extra time I have, since I'm actually awake at a respectable hour today.

I've decided that if I ever get a tattoo, it will probably be a giraffe.  I love those animals just that much.  The problem is that I can't really figure out where on my body to place a giraffe.  My first thought was that it would go on my upper arm because it made me chuckle to think that my giraffe's head would be covered up whenever I wore any shirt with sleeves (which is basically always), so you'd only be able to see a giraffe body sticking out.  Then I thought that doing that would be the only thing stupider than getting a giraffe tattoo in the first place.  So I think I'll need to do some more thinking before doodling on myself with the most permanent of permanent markers.  Plus, I want to design the tattoo myself, and I still have a lot of trouble drawing giraffe bodies (even after all these years of giraffe doodling!).  That's sort of why the above picture conveniently captures the beast only down to its neck.  No artistic reasoning.  Just laziness.

I have a theory that very sketchy pictures look more impressive than not-so-sketchy pictures.  I think it creates an illusion that I know how to draw better than I actually do.

This one is called "ACTUALLY".

Lalala, I think that's all the drawing I'm going to do today.

Have a wonderful day, you.

LONG TIME NO TYPE!

Well, hello there!

It's sure been a while.

Here's the thing: in addition to the previously explained facts that I'm not great at time management, super lazy, and a terrible person, I also got a new toy.  It's a tablet thingy that makes it so I can draw without a computer mouse (if that's not the technical phrasing, I don't know what is).  I draw with a "pen" on the tablet, and it shows up on my screen.

Which is potentially awesome.

Once I figure out how to use it.

The best I've managed with it so far is this:

The moral of this picture is that I apparently don't know what frogs look like.

Anyway, hopefully by next week I'll have figured this newfangled technology out and grown some discipline.  Toodle pip!

I love dogs.

They are happy and loyal and friendly and awesome, and I am a fan.

Sometimes at work people bring their little dogs into the store, and the other day I accidentally greeted the puppy wagging his tail in the cart instead of the customer who was actually pushing the cart.  I think I recovered somewhat gracefully, though, because I refrained from asking the dog what I could help him find today and turned my attention instead back to the human being with the wallet.

I have a dog too.  His name is Fezzik (after the giant in the book turned movie The Princess Bride).  He’s supercool.

We think he’s a springer spaniel-chocolate lab mix.  We’re not sure though because we got him from a shelter, so we don’t really know his history.  I’m bummed that we didn’t get to know him when he was a puppy because he was probably the most adorable thing in the world, as puppies are wont to be.  Also, we suspect that he wasn’t treated very well as a puppy, since he’s sometimes jumpy and is afraid of a lot of not-so-threatening things.  So it would have been nice to have had him way back when so he wouldn’t have had to go through whatever it is he went through.  But I digress.

Fezzik isn’t very well trained.  He knows how to sit, so long as you’re holding food and have made it clear that you’re willing to share said food with him if he just puts his butt on the ground for half a second.

He doesn’t know how to fetch.  He gets properly excited, chases after whatever it is you’ve thrown, looks at it lying in the grass, looks back up at you, and then wanders off to smell very important things.

He knows how to jump up on the sofa, but he’s not really supposed to do that, so I probably shouldn’t count that as evidence of his being well-trained.

Long story short, he’s awesome.

I wanted a dog forever before finally getting Fezzik, though.  I begged for years.  

Every Christmas and every birthday, the first item on my wish list was “DOG.”  The other items were usually things like “Food bowl FOR DOG” and “Dog collar FOR DOG.”

I even remember giving my mom a wish list of “DOG” for one of my sisters’ birthdays.

The problem was mainly that we don’t have an enclosed back yard.  The yard ends in a little hill that goes up to meet the edge of our neighbors’ back yard (whose view is awkwardly straight into our windows HAY THERE NEIGHBORS!).  The walls separating our yard from our next-door neighbors don’t go all the way up the hill either.  They sort of go straight into the hill, leaving a good amount of unwalled hill behind my house.  So a dog would have a really easy time running off up the hill, and from there he would have access to pretty much every yard on our side of the block.  So my mom didn’t want to get a dog before we had a place to put him.

In the meantime, we had lots of other pets.  We had a feeder goldfish that we won at a carnival who lived for a good six or seven years, which was a good six or seven years longer than we really expected him to.

We also had a million rabbits.  We started out with two female rabbits, Smoky and Snow (not super surprisingly, Smoky was grey and Snow was white).  

Then we noticed that Smoky was pulling out all of her fur and building a kind of nest in their cage.  

Then we noticed that there were little baby rabbits in her nest in her cage.  

Then we noticed that Snow was not a lady rabbit.  

So our two rabbits quickly became six, and we decided to go and get a second cage.

One day I went outside in the morning before school to feed all those bunnies.  As I was closing the door of the rabbit hutch, I heard a rustling in the bushes on the hill behind me.  

I turned.

All was still.

I started to go back inside, but I heard the rustling again.

I spun back around and saw that the bushes were very clearly moving.  

So, naturally, I dropped the rabbit food in my hands and ran shrieking back into my house.  I slammed the sliding glass door shut and locked it, yelling at my mom to come quick, there was a monster in the yard.

My mom hurried over and we peered out at the movement on the hill.

And out jumped a rabbit.

A big rabbit, but still just a rabbit.

He hopped happily up to our door, where he sat, gazing at us through the glass, waiting patiently for us to let him in.  

Which we did.  We named him The Big Rabbit and put him in with all our other bunnies.  We posted Found Rabbit signs, but nobody claimed him, so our number of rabbits was now up to seven.

We also had a parakeet named Sweety, who was the coolest bird ever.  He’d fly around our house and land on our heads.  Our bannisters were always covered in bird poo, which was gross, but whatever.  He was a good bird.  He lived to be pretty old, and  after he died we got two new parakeets named Kara and Pete.  They were both mean and liked to bite fingers.

I had a hamster named Casper and a rat named Isabella and two tadpoles who didn’t have names, but did start growing legs and then one day mysteriously vanished from their bowl.  I’m afraid to know where they hopped off to.

We had lots of good pets, but I didn’t finally get my dog until my sophomore year of high school, when we solved our backyard problem by fencing off a corner of the yard so that at least while we were away from home Fezzik would have a place to run around without escaping up the hill and trampling the neighbors’ gardenias.

I have no idea if any of my neighbors grow gardenias.

Aaaaaaaaaanyway, the point is that my dog is supercool and I miss him because I couldn’t take him with me when I moved, so he’s all the way at home.

Look what I made!

A superflower's super power is its super sour super glower.

My plan for today was to post a sort of timeline of the shirts I've made (and by "made" I of course just mean "purchased and drawn all over").  I was going to start with the giraffe one that I drew in Sharpie (which was surprisingly not as permanent as I expected permanent markers to be.  After the first wash, my giraffe was considerably less yellow, while the rest of the T-shirt was considerably more yellow.  But Sharpies never claimed to be fabric markers, so who am I to complain?).  Then I was going to show my other shirts, made with actual fabric markers.

The problem is that while I remembered to bring my camera up here when I moved, I seem to have forgotten to bring my camera's battery charger.

And so my plans were dashed to the ground.

I tried taking all the pictures with my computer's camera, but they were all ugly, and I'm a quitter.  So I'm just going to limit myself to showing off my Superflower until I manage to  either replace or transport my camera's battery charger.

In other news, I believe that this is one of my first computer drawings that made me realize that I'm fond of a-doodling:

I didn't used to (..."didn't used to"?  ..."didn't use to"?  That sentence structure is weird-looking written down.) understand written music (and, really, I still don't) and I didn't realize the lines behind the notes were actually sort of important.  I'd also always draw the notes backwards, thinking they looked prettier that way.  Then my mom (who sings and can read music) would laugh at my drawings because they made no sense musically.  And that is how I learned the very very basics of what those dots on those lines in those books on the bookshelf meant, and it is also why I can sort of kind of play Yankee Doodle very slowly on the piano today!

Move Along, Move Along

Nothing to see here.

Celebratory 2011 glasses looked weird

What an awkward-looking year we’ve just begun.

2011.  2011.  2011.  2 0 1 1.

It just doesn’t look like a year to me.  It looks more like the non-word "zoll."  BUT.  Moving on.  Here’s my obligatory list of big events of 2010:

1.  GRADUATION

Yay, I’m a graduate!

At the ceremony I had vaguely blue hair and I had cut up and resewn my gown again, so that was classy of me.

It wasn’t too bad, really.  My hair was more of a greyish brown than full-on blue (apparently the “semi-permanent” in “semi-permanent hair dye” doesn’t mean it’ll wash out completely in a couple of months, it means it’ll mostly wash out in two weeks and then stay a weird, dull, faded color for about a half a year more.  Live and learn).  Plus my cap covered the worst of it, where my dyed hair met my not-dyed roots and formed a nice little halo around my head.  It was only noticeable when I was all, “HEY LOOK MY HAIR’S STILL SORT OF BLUE ISN’T THAT FUNNY!?”

Which I did do a few times.

And I did do a pretty good impersonation of a seamstress, if I do say so myself.  Especially considering my last attempt to sew was when I, as a kid, threaded two pieces of scrap fabric together ever so carefully, then cut the thread ever so neatly, and showed my mom ever so proudly.

Then she laughed at me because I hadn’t realized I was supposed to tie the end of the thread before cutting it, so my masterpiece was already falling apart.

I cried.

AND I NEVER SEWED AGAIN.

Until this June of 2010 when I ignored the recommendations of all who said, “MAKE SURE YOUR GOWN IS THE RIGHT SIZE BEFORE PAYING FOR IT BECAUSE ONCE YOU LEAVE THAT ROOM IT IS YOURS FOREVER AND YOU CANNOT TRADE IT FOR THE RIGHT SIZE NO MATTER HOW WEIRDLY IT FITS, KENDRA!”

I think the real problem, though, is that I’ve been lying about my height since high school.  I’m somewhere between 5’9’’ and 5’9 1/2’’, but it’s just easier to say 5’10’’, and I used to play basketball, where sounding taller is never a bad thing.  So I still just say 5’10’’ out of habit.

One time maybe junior year of college I measured myself with a tape measure.  It said I was 5’8 1/2’’, which IS LIES I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU SAY.

Anyway, the point is that when I was filling out the form for my graduation gown, my pride grabbed the pen from out my hand and marked the 5’10’’-6’0’’ box instead of the perhaps (definitely) more accurate 5’7’’-5’9’’ box for me.

And then I didn’t bother to try the robe on carefully before leaving the room with it.

This left me with a far too flowing graduation gown.

AND SO I HAD TO FIX IT.

I went and bought myself a little sewing kit from Rite Aid, grabbed my scissors, and set to work cutting off the bottom of my robe.  I was very very careful and I remembered to tie the thread when I finished, and the result was at least nearing what one might consider decent.  I ended up actually overcompensating and making it a little too short, and by the time I finished the bottom hem, I was sick of sewing (it is time consuming!) so I just left the sleeves long (and they proceeded to get caught on the banister both on my way up onto the stage and back down from the stage during the ceremony).  But whatever.  I had something to be proud of at my graduation the next day.

Whether that something was my newfound mediocre sewing abilities or the diploma in my hands, I think we’ll never know for sure.

2. MOVING MOVING MOVING

I now live 7 hours away from where I’ve lived all my life.

It’s a little bit weird.

3.  BECOMING A BONA FIDE EMPLOYEE

The last couple of months of college were terrifying because I was all, “OH MY GOODNESS THE SAFETY OF SCHOOL IS ENDING NOW I HAVE TO GET A REAL JOB AND SUPPORT MYSELF WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT!?”

And then I graduated.

And then I moved 7 hours away from home and people and so I had ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to fill out applications and pretend like I know how to dress nicely and go to interviews.

AND THEN I GOT A JOB.

And I like the job too.

It even came with a name tag.

(My apologies for this less than awe-inspiring picture of a name tag.  My mouse decided it was done for the day, then my computer froze, then my picture of a name tag shut itself down, and so HERE WE ARE.)

HAPPY 2011, y’all.

But a new calendar means CHANGE!

You know what?  I’m just going to embrace the fact that 2011 is probably going to be much like 2010.  I'll almost certainly continue running behind on everything in life.

Well, everything except for actually arriving places.

I am always early everywhere, no matter how hard I try not to be.

I know.  It’s hard being me.

Anyway, the point is I haven’t done my drawings yet and probably won’t have them done until Wednesday.

Yayyyyyyy New Years Resolutions failed in the very first week!

Holiday Rush

I work in retail and let me tell you, it is crazy busy this time of year.

It’s interesting, though, because I hate shopping and I hate crowds, so if I were to try to get some presents bought in my store right now it would be a terrible terrible nightmare for me. But for some (lucky) reason, working in the rush there doesn’t bother me at all.  Probably because I don’t have to deal with the stress of finding the specific item I’m looking for while maneuvering my cart through aisles and around other customers, and waiting in long long lines to finally get out of the store.

And a bonus of the holiday rush is that I’ve been getting pretty good hours, which brings me to my next point: TODAY IS AN OLD DRAWINGS DAY!  I’ve been working a lot and trying to figure out Christmas presents and just generally ignoring my blog.  So old, random pictures it is!

It doesn’t snow here.  It rains, but that’s not the same.  I want eventually to live somewhere where it snows, and where it has trees that take autumn seriously.  I like real seasons.

I went to college in Los Angeles, and my first year there it “snowed” one day.  It was more like very small hail, but everyone got super excited and started running around outside in their bathing suits.  Some people tried to make snow angels, but that just made it melt faster and they were shouted at for ruining winter, so they stopped.

I don’t know anything about dance.  I took ballet and tap and some jazz as a little kid, but I was never very good at any of it (there are some pretty funny video tapes of my dance recitals where everyone else is grinning their Performance Smiles and I’m scowling in concentration as I lag one beat behind).  So probably what the lady in this drawing is doing isn’t any kind of real dance move at all, and so  I apologize to any Real Dancers in the audience.  I was just playing with reflection.

One time in dance class the teacher asked us all how many beats you counted before starting over again and I expected everyone to know the answer so I shouted out “EEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIGGGHHHHTT” in that elongated sing-song way that you do when you expect to be speaking along with a class.  But apparently I was the only one who knew the answer, and so I just ended up whale-speaking the number at the teacher by myself.  There was a kind of awkward pause and then she said, “Yes...very good, Kendra...eight,” and moved on.

This is an uncompleted picture that I just found in my folder of drawings.  Yes, you are correct: it is a picture of me sniffing crayons.  I’m pretty sure it was meant to illustrate my addiction to art supplies, but it somehow got lost and forgotten.  SO HERE IT IS NOW because I think it’s funny.

Okay, that’s all.  BUT:

 Next week I’ll probably not be posting anything because I expect to be exhausted.  The minute I get out of work Christmas Eve, I’m starting my long long drive home to SoCal, which is going to be long longer because it’ll probably be raining like crazy and also the roads will be filled with all the other holiday crazies who are hunched over their steering wheels with “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” blasting on repeat. Then I’ll have Christmas Day at home, and I’ll be spending the 26th driving back up through rain and traffic so I’m able to show up on time for work the next day (unless my manager manages to work the schedule like she’s trying to do to give me next Monday off too, which would be awesome, in which case I’ll be making my mad journey on the 27th instead of the 26th.  But I’m still not going to be posting anything next week, SO THERE).  Just thought I’d warn you, since I tried to sneakily miss last week without saying anything and a few people surprisingly called me out on it.

Which was rather flattering.

Anyway, have a good pre-Christmas week and try not to go nuts if you still have shopping to get done!

OKAY BYE.

The Day of Laundry

What a debacle it is doing laundry in an apartment building.

The very first matter of business is, of course, quarters.

Quarters quarters quarters.

Quarters : Apartment Dwellers :: Acorns : Squirrels

They are a thing to be hoarded.  When I moved up here and found out how expensive laundry is, I began planning out purchases specifically so I would get quarters back for change.

“I could buy a soda!  No, I don’t really need a soda--I’d like to keep my teeth a while longer.  BUT if I buy that soda with two dollar bills, I would get THREE quarters back and that’s almost a load of laundry!  SOLD!”

(...three quarters is NOT almost a load of laundry.  It is exactly half of one wash cycle.  WHY IS LIFE SO EXPENSIVE!?)

After a month or so of seeking out quarters everywhere and feeling a rush of joy every time I spotted one in a handful of change, one of my roommates informed me that you can buy quarters at the grocery store.

WHAT!?  You can buy money?  What will they think of next?

Well, this made laundry less of a treasure hunt, but it was way more practical and so I went over to the grocery store and bought myself ten dollars in quarters.

The next week my building announced that they were moving over to card-reading laundry machines.

And so I have a sad sad sock-full of quarters sitting in my room, their dreams of providing me with clean clothes dashed to the ground.  Hopefully they will soon accept their new fate of providing me with lots of soda from the vending machine at work.

What can I say, Quarters?  Sometimes life throws lemons your way, and when that happens, you just have to make me a Dr. Pepper.

Anyway, our new laundry cards provided a new problem because the office only gave out one card per apartment.  I live with three other people, so figuring out how we’d make sure we were all paying for our own laundry was a bit of a hassle.

My best plan was a somewhat complicated "Laundry Jar" that would hold money from which a person could take when he or she loaded money onto our card, and to which a person would pay when he or she did a load of laundry.  I was trying to iron out the details of my plan (namely, how to start the jar) when one of my roommates swooped in and simply wrote “BALANCE ON CARD” and all of our names up on the fridge.

Pure genius.

So now we’ve solved the whole paying-for-laundry problem, but there still lingers the whole getting-all-my-laundry-from-my-apartment-to-the-laundry-room-across-the-complex problem.

Yes, I could and should just carry it over.  The distance between the two points of interest is very walkable.  But add an overflowing hamper of laundry and a giant jug of laundry detergent and it becomes a struggle.  A struggle that I would struggle through if it weren’t for two incidents which have served to allow me to justify my extreme laziness:

1.  The first time I did laundry here, I grabbed my hamper, gathered my accumulated quarters, and snatched the laundry room key down from its hook in the kitchen.

I carefully maneuvered my way down the stairs and shuffled along the sidewalk and through the parking lot to the laundry room, opened the door, dragged my stuff inside, and realized that I had forgotten my laundry detergent.

So I gathered up all of my stuff again (in hindsight, I have no idea why I didn’t just leave my laundry in that room.  I was going to be gone ten minutes tops and the laundry room was completely empty).  For whatever reason, I decided that it would be best to lug my heavy laundry basket all the way back to my apartment.

So I dragged my stuff back through the parking lot, down the street, up the stairs, and into my apartment.  I set down my laundry, set down my keys, set down my quarters, and got my giant bottle of detergent.

I grabbed my laundry, grabbed my detergent, grabbed my quarters, and headed back down the stairs, back up the street, back through the parking lot, and to the laundry room door.

Which I couldn’t open.

Because I had forgotten my keys.

Why I had even taken them out of my pocket at my apartment in the first place, I don’t know.  But now I didn’t even have the option of leaving my laundry by the washing machines, so I hefted my laundry back into my arms and trudged back across the parking lot, down the street, and up the stairs.

Then I dropped my laundry on the floor for later and watched some TV instead.

2.  The next time I did laundry was right after they installed the fancy new card-reading machines that enable my soda habit.

I did the whole routine, careful to remember both detergent and keys, gathered my laundry, and made the treacherous journey to the laundry machines.

Where there was a big white van and a bunch of maintenance people milling around.

I approached with my dirty clothes and detergent and asked, “Are the machines working?”

To which they said, “NO.  AWAY WITH YOU, FIEND.”

(It might actually have been “No, sorry, give us about half an hour and everything should be up and running again" but we'll never know for sure because the records were destroyed in a freak refrigerator fire.)

So I lugged my heavy laundry back to my apartment, gave them an hour, just in case, and then drove all my laundry over.

And that is how I became the terrible, lazy person who drives her laundry the .1 mile from her apartment to the laundry machines (Yes, I clocked it.  In my car.  Today.  While being a terrible, lazy person and driving my laundry .1 miles to the machines).

I’m sorry, Universe.  BUT YOU DROVE ME TO THIS DRIVING BY TAUNTING ME WITH UNSUCCESSFUL LAUNDRY DAYS.

Oh, whoops.  I have to go.  My laundry is done and I want to get it out of the dryer while it’s still toasty.

Not tasty.

Toasty.

Although toast is tasty.

And toasty.

Please don’t eat my laundry.

Okay bye.

Here, take some Thanks.

Well, hello there!

I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a super duper one, and I hope that everyone who does not celebrate Thanksgiving had a grand November 25th anyway.

This year was my first ever year hosting Thanksgiving.  My mom drove up from Southern California, my little sister Booger came over from college, and we three had a feast.

My holiday started on Wednesday, when Booger and I made some awesome late-night Thanksgiving decorations.  Remember a while ago when I joked that I’m likely to develop an addiction to art supplies?  Yeah...on my way to get Booger from school, I stopped by a Michael’s and spent way more than could ever be appropriate on felt and glue and buttons and pipe cleaners and thread and cloth and toothpicks and styrofoam balls of various sizes.

DEBT, HERE I COME.

But it was totally worth it because we made some fantastic place mats, complete with hand-turkeys, hand-dinosaurs, and hand-octopuses; and some crazy-looking turkey centerpieces.

I woke up early-ish Thursday morning to go to the grocery store to pick up my pre-cooked, pre-packaged Turkey dinner.  I am as far from a chef as it is possible to be, and there was no way I was going to risk Thanksgiving by trying to actually cook anything, so I ordered a dinner package from the local grocery store, where I headed Thursday morning.  I prepared myself for horrible lines of stressed and frantic people trying to purchase all of their forgotten Thanksgiving supplies.

Nope, the grocery store was pretty much empty.

I was pretty sure I was supposed to go over to the deli area to pick up my dinner, but there was no line to tell me for sure if I was in the right place, so I asked a guy who was rolling some sushi where I should go, and he shouted for someone to come help me out.

The guy who came out asked for my name, which I gave, and then flipped through his folder of orders.

Then he flipped through his folder of orders again, a little more slowly this time.

Then he flipped through his folder of orders again, rubbing each page carefully between his fingers to make sure none of them were sticking together.

Meanwhile, I stood at the counter, frozen in horror.

The guy said he couldn’t find my name, and called a lady over to help.  She looked through the folder, flipped over a purple divider, and pulled out an order form with my name on it.

Apparently my order was for Wednesday, not Thursday.

(I would just like to say that I am absolutely certain that I said Thanksgiving Day on the phone when I placed my order for that dinner, because I first said Wednesday, but then remembered that I didn’t have my work schedule yet and didn’t know whether I would be working on the 24th or not, and so I said, “You know what, let’s change it to 9:00 Thursday morning, since I know I don’t work Thanksgiving Day.”  So it’s all totally their fault.)

(But it doesn’t even matter anyway, because they still had my turkey in the back.  No harm, yes fowl.)

“Don’t worry,” the lady told me (I must have looked like I was going to collapse).  “Your dinner wasn’t going to go anywhere.”

So I happily took my meal and drove back to my apartment, where I broke open my box and took a look at the included instructions.

“Place breast side up in roasting pan.”

...

“Roasting pan?”

I took a look in the drawers and cupboards in my kitchen and didn’t see anything that screamed “roasting pan.”

“Whatever, I’ll just use a cookie sheet instead.”

...

Luckily my trusty friends Alarm Bells started going off in my head, and they politely informed me that using a cookie sheet as a roasting pan would probably create more of a disaster than I was prepared to deal with my very first time hosting Thanksgiving.

So I put the cookie sheet away, got back into my car, and drove back to the grocery store to pick up a roasting pan.

(Actually, I drove to a different grocery store, since I was a little embarrassed about the fact that I clearly had absolutely no idea what I was doing this holiday day and I didn’t want people who knew that I was making a pre-cooked turkey to see that I didn’t even know how to warm up said pre-cooked turkey without multiple trips to their store.)

I also picked up a baster, since I knew they have something to do with turkeys and  they were right next to the roasting pans anyway.

We didn’t use the baster.

Apparently precooked turkeys don’t need one.

Whatever.

ANYWAY, about that time my mom arrived (she left our house at 3:00 in the morning to get to my place in time for Thanksgiving--THANKS, MA!) so she was able to help me with the overwhelming task of heating up all the different foods included in my box in the right order so they were all ready to be served at approximately the same time.

With the exception of some mashed potato-related troubles, our dinner-heating went pretty smoothly, and soon we were stuffing ourselves with our delicious meal.

I think my first time throwing a Thanksgiving was mostly a success!

There were a few awesome individuals who were sadly missing from our mini-feast.

But thanks was given for them from afar, and I’m confident they had a good one, even devoid of my clearly awesome company.

Hope you all had a super one too!  <3