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

Brrrr.

It’s cold, it’s cold, it’s really really cold.

And I’m told it’s not even the coldest it’s going to be.

Now, I like cold weather.  I much prefer it to hot weather.  It’s just that I’m from Southern California, where I was able to get by with a winter wardrobe of jeans and sweatshirts.  I rarely had an umbrella, which was fine because a hood mostly sufficed (plus, I’ve had a lingering dislike for umbrellas since high school, where umbrella-level for everyone else was face-level for me, which got pokey fast).

Every time it rained, I would mention vaguely that I should buy some galoshes, but since it probably wasn’t going to rain again until the next year, I never got around to it, and so my footwear mainly remained less-than-waterproof sneakers.  But now I’m living quite a bit north of home, and apparently my not-so-winter clothes just aren’t going to cut it.  Because I am freezing.

I kept trying to write this post earlier this week, but my fingers got so cold so quickly that I gave up multiple times and opted instead to watch TV just so I could sit on my hands to warm them up.

A bonus is that when my hands get cold, they turn blue.  It starts in my fingernails, and if it’s REALLY cold, the color starts creeping down towards my knuckles.  It used to happen a lot in my classrooms that way overcompensated for the summer heat by setting the air conditioner to Antarctica.  I almost started bringing gloves to class mid-summer.

And it's not just my hands that change color like a mood ring.  My legs turn purplish, as I learned in high school when stretching before basketball practice in the winter.  My lips turn blue too, especially when I'm swimming.

Which I will not be doing any time soon, for fear of turning into an ice cube.

Basically I’m like a tree, only instead of turning orange for autumn, I turn blue for winter.

Speaking of trees:

Goodbye, yellow, orange, and red trees!  I will miss you when you’re gone!

EVERGREENS ARE LAZYGREENS!

AAAAA PRETEND IT'S NOT MONDAY!

Yyyyyyyeah, I am not improving on my time management.

SO.  Kindly pretend today isn't the day that I'm supposed to post something new--oh, wait.  Dang.  It's not the day I'm supposed to post something new.  It's the day after already.



Whoops.



Um.

Sorryyyyyyyyy!  Something better than this will be posted tomorrow (er...later today?) or WEDNESDAY AT THE LATEST.

OKAY BYE.

What the--HOW IS IT MONDAY RIGHT NOW!?

I must have inadvertently discovered time travel!  It’s absolutely the only explanation, because I could have sworn that it was Monday just yesterday.

HELLO, MONDAY, I AM COMPLETELY UNPREPARED FOR YOU!

My very deepest apologies, World.  I seem not to be adjusting very well to having actual responsibilities again.  In the time between graduation and finally finding a job, I had nothing but free time, and now I suddenly have stuff to do every day, which seems to be messing with my ability to do Very Important Things like draw pictures illustrating my rambling love for things.  To be honest, even my newfound employment isn’t really an excuse for my not being productive.  I still have plenty of free time, I just seem to have misplaced my time management skills.

I should probably look for them.  But not now.  Later.

So today will have to be another day of posting random old drawings that have nothing to do with anything!  Enjoy!

The weather has been pretty cold here recently.  Today isn't, though.  Today is warm and sunny with LOTS OF WIND, which is, I think, my favorite type of weather.  I like wind.  It's like a fan that follows you around outside. I think I'd feel differently if I still wore contact lenses, since wind is a pro at throwing stuff in a person's eyes, and that hurts when you wear contact lenses.  But now I wear glasses, and those basically function as a shield against the otherwise agony-inducing wind-blown debris.  So I'm good with this weather.

I don't play softball.  I'm pretty sure I'd be terrible at it.  I have enough hand-eye coordination for basketball, but that ball is about ten times as big as a softball.  I think I'd lose track of the little ball really easily and would only find it again once it hit me in the head.  And then I'd be left wondering why it was called softball, because I am certain that would hurt a heck of a lot.

Have a super duper day!

GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU HOOLIGANS.

It's November and it is cold.  Mostly I like cold weather, but one aspect of it that I could do without is the fact that it makes my right knee ache like an old person's.

This pain comes from my freshman year of high school, when I hurt my knee playing basketball and had to have surgery.

When I played basketball in high school, I was a super duper shot-blocker.  This may sound like bragging.  That’s because it is.  It’s okay, though, because I’ll also freely admit that I was pretty near useless on offense.  I could shoot the ball well enough when I was by myself, but in an actual game I almost always panicked whenever the ball was in my hands.

BUT!  Back to what I’m good at!  As a kid I played in a league that had the specific rule that you were not allowed to block shots.  You were supposed to stand between the basket and the kid you were guarding with your arms straight up in the air.  You weren’t allowed to swing down and I’m pretty sure you weren’t even supposed to jump.  I think the grown ups in charge didn’t want any kids getting discouraged by having their shots swatted away all the time, and they were probably also trying to cut down on children being smashed in the face by an over-zealous defense.  Playing this way weirdly taught me how to block shots better because I learned how to get in the way just enough to mess with people’s shooting abilities without fouling all the time.

Plus I have the arm span of a pterodactyl, which helped more than a bit.

Aaaanyway, I tell you about my shot-blocking abilities mostly just because I’m a braggart, since it is only veeeeeeeery loosely related to how I hurt my knee.

It’s seriously the least impressive story of a sports injury ever.  It was during a scrimmage (and it wasn’t even a real scrimmage.  It was me and four other freshmen on a half court, playing two-on-two and swapping in the fifth player every made basket).

I was on defense.

I leapt into the air to block a shot.

My knee snapped straight much much much too sharply and a flash of “AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!” ripped through me.

I landed (very luckily on my left foot, otherwise I would almost certainly have crumpled onto the court in a pile of ouch) and hobbled over to the coach, who I told that I really really wanted to go home.

I didn’t even block the shot.

My mom took me to a doctor who had us make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon, so I was walking around on my busted knee for a few weeks or so before getting it taken care of.  During that time my leg went through a couple of different stages of hurt.

First my knee mostly just felt a little weak, except that every once in a while it would simply buckle under my weight and a burst of the most painy pain I’ve ever felt would shoot through my leg.  

I believe it might even have been worse than a paper cut.

After a few days of these sneak attacks of hurt, I resorted to simply walking with my leg completely straight.  It would only do its weird buckling thing when it was bent, so I locked my knee and wobbled around like a pirate with a peg leg.  This worked pretty well until the day I woke up unable to straighten my knee all the way.  My leg would get almost there, and then would hit some sort of hurty blockage and would go no further.  So then I had to limp along with one leg bent, like a pirate who had jumped into the air too enthusiastically during a basketball scrimmage and now walked with a limp.  

Pretty soon after this development, we went to see the orthopedic surgeon, who discovered that I had somehow managed to break off a few fragments of bone in my knee.  This bone was now floating around without a care in the world, presumably tearing its way through my cartilage along the way.

I had to have surgery to remove the bone chips, stopping them from doing any more damage.  I was told I’d be on crutches for a few weeks (partly bummer, partly cool because I’d never broken a bone before and secretly thought crutches would be super fun), and also that I’d probably not be able to play basketball anymore, since my cartilage was most likely pretty chewed up.  Once the bone fragments were removed, I’d also be left with a good sized hole in my bone, and the doctor informed me that bones with holes in them ought not to be run with (ALL BUMMER AND NO COOL).

I’m sure my surgery was very suspenseful and exciting, just like all the ones on TV, but I slept through the whole thing (would you believe it!?), so I’ll just have to give you the main points:

My surgery was supposed to take 1.5 hours.

Instead it took 3.

The doctor took one peek inside my knee and was all, “OH WAIT.”

(But don’t worry!  It was one of those rare good OH WAITs.)

He was like, “OH WAIT. These bone chips are still connected to some ligaments.”

This was good for a few reasons:

1.  The little bone chips were still alive.

2.  The fragments hadn’t been able to move freely throughout my knee, so the cartilage was in much much better condition than expected.

3.  Because of numbers 1 and 2, these pieces of bone could be fit back in place like a really icky jigsaw puzzle.

Which is what the good doctor did.

So I was on crutches for the whole summer instead of only a few weeks, but I also didn’t have a gaping hole in my knee, which was definitely a plus because it meant I would be able to keep playing basketball.

Three months later I was off crutches, but still super not ready for the running and jumping that is integral to the sport.  This was a pesky time for me.  I couldn’t play yet, but I could do a bunch of leg-strengthening exercises, which included me pulling myself around the gym on an old creaky office chair with a missing wheel, using only my weak leg.  

I HATED THAT OFFICE CHAIR WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND STRIKE ANYWHERE MATCHES. 

I also spent a lot of time doing lunges back and forth across the gym.  I also hate lunges, but probably only with the fire of one small BIC lighter.  Some of the freshmen thought I was being punished, since I wasn’t allowed to play with the rest of the girls, and so I had to explain (a few words at a time as I lunged past their lay-up practices) that NO, I wasn’t in trouble.  I was just BROKEN.  

NOW.  Back to my favorite pastime:  bragging.

The first game after my surgery that I was allowed to play in, I blocked seven shots.  This was mostly because I was so excited that I was being allowed to run around again that I went a little bit crazy and simply DID NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO STOP.  I only got to play because for some reason the JV team had been scheduled for two games at the same time that day.  Poor planning, perhaps, but it ended up working out really well for me because it meant that our team had to be split in half and only 6 girls (including me) went to one of the games.  And that meant that either those other five girls were going to have to play the entire game with no substitutions, or I WAS FINALLY GOING TO GET PUT IN.  The game started and I sat excitedly on the bench, just waiting for someone to get winded (I’m nothing if not a team player).  FINALLY someone got tired, and I was sent in to give her a short break.  

I hadn’t really run in over four months, and I felt like I was going to barf or fall down most of the game, but I was so very very happy to be playing again that I just KEPT GOING, like the Energizer Bunny if the Energizer Bunny had a slight limp.  The coach was apparently impressed with my maniacal enthusiasm, so he let me play the whole rest of the game.

Aaaaaanyway, the whole ordeal was a pain (LITERALLY! BAH!) and it’s still annoying when the rain starts a-raining and my knee starts a-aching, BUT it did make for an excellent college entrance essay.

And who could ask for more than that?

The Evolution of My Work Socks

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I got a job (and since then I've obviously begun introducing myself to people as "Kendra B., employee").  Well, last week I had my very first day at this new job.

On Wednesday I looked through my closet and picked out the clothes I was going to wear for my first ever day at work.  The pants and shirt were super easy.  But then I got to my socks.

And there my troubles began.

I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I like colorful, mismatched socks.  To demonstrate this love for unsynchronized stockings, here is a picture of my sock drawer:

I clearly have plenty of socks to choose from.  The problem was that I had no idea whether there was some kind of secret sock policy at my new job that I didn't know about just yet.

The dress code had been explained to me over the phone, and it’s really very relaxed.  We wear jeans and sneakers and the only restrictions I was told about were that nothing could have holes in it, and you're (WEIRDLY) not allowed to wear obscenities scrawled across your chest.

But we’re also supposed to have some semblance of presentability, and I had no idea whether crazy socks just happened to be a SERIOUS SERIOUS offense, dress code-wise.

And so, just to be safe, I scrounged around for my nicest pair of boring solid matching socks for my first day of work.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO THE VIEWER:  Do not worry!  My pants aren't actually that short.  I used my thinking and realized that if I drew my pants their normal length, you wouldn't be able to actually see my socks, which are the very things I'm trying to show you!  That seemed less than helpful, so I shortened my pants for the purpose of clarity.  If these nerd pants offend your fashion sense, please simply imagine that I am lifting normal-lengthed pants up in the picture above, and in those following.  Thank you for your consideration.  We now return to our regular scheduled programming.

Not surprisingly, at no point in my first day orientation did anybody mention socks (mine or otherwise).  I noted that the dress code was very much geared towards comfort, and even less strict than I had previously assumed, and so the next day I felt comfortable risking some color:

I kept it all matching, though.  It was only my second day, after all.  No need to go crazy just yet.

But by the end of Thursday, I realized that nobody was dwelling upon my choice of sockwear even one quarter as much as I was.  And so I showed up to work on Friday in all of my Happy Sock glory:

I think me and this job are going to get along.

Happy sort of almost Halloween!

I like Halloween, and autumn in general.  I like orange leaves, cool weather, and basically everything pumpkin-related.  I like baking pumpkin cookies, I like making pumpkin seeds, I like eating pumpkin pie, I love carving pumpkins, and I enjoy calling people Punkin.  And since Halloween embraces pumpkindom enthusiastically, me and the holiday, we’re pals.  I also enjoy the costume-making, even though I’ve never really been all that good at coming up with my own costumes.  I think the problem is that I am a master procrastinator, and so I rarely start planning for the holiday in time to put together a respectable outfit.  Even so, I’ve decided to share with you some of my more memorable costumes.

1. MOOSE

At my elementary school, they let us to dress up for Halloween, under ONE EDUCATIONAL CONDITION:  We could only dress up as a character from a book we had read that year.  It was called Cast of Characters, and the day ended with the students putting on a parade through all the other classrooms and up onto the cafeteria stage, showing of their literary costumes.

Now, the “only characters from books that you read this year” rule was pretty clearly meant to encourage kids to stick to their reading level for costume ideas.  When I was a 6th grader, however, I took it to mean instead that picture books were totally fair game, since I could read one of those the morning of Halloween and still meet the “read this year” requirement.  So I decided I was going to be the moose from If You Give A Moose A Muffin, written by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond (the reading level of which, by the way, is ages 4 to 8).

So I found some brown pants and a brown shirt, dug reindeer antlers out of the Christmas box at home, and I was all set for the Cast of Characters parade.

My teacher actually didn’t say anything about my almost junior high school self wearing a costume ripped from the pages of a children’s book, somewhat surprisingly.  I suspect that since I was a pretty avid reader, and he knew that I had read plenty of age-appropriate books that year that I could have chosen from, he didn’t really care if I wanted to be a weirdo and dress up as a picture book moose.

The other kids, though, were a little bit confused.  First, they all thought that I had dressed up as a reindeer (I’m just speculating here, but that might be because I was wearing reindeer antlers.  It’s admittedly just a guess, and I might be completely off base, so don’t quote me or anything, but it's a definite possibility), and were concerned that I didn’t understand that Halloween and Christmas were two separate holidays.  Once I showed them my book and explained that I was a moose, the confusion lessened, but I think they still thought I was a little bit crazy for bringing a 32-page book to the Cast of Characters parade, when they all had books hundreds of pages long.

Whatever.  Moose are supercool.

2.  SNOWMAN

Some of my very best costumes were last-minute ideas that I threw together right before leaving for my church’s Harvest Festival (a carnival-like event with games and candy that was meant to provide kids with a safe place to go on Halloween).  One of these last-minute costumes was when I opted for season-inappropriate confusion and dressed up as a snowman (the kids from my elementary school would not have approved, considering their reaction to my possible reindeer outfit).

I was running around the house, trying to think of something to wear.  I started digging through our dress up box (which mainly held old costumes from dance recitals) and I found a karate outfit.  I have no idea where this outfit came from, since neither my sisters nor I ever took karate, and I don’t know why we would have some other kid’s clothes in that box.  Anyway, I found these white pants and shirt and my brain made the (MOST LOGICAL EVER) leap to SNOWMAN.

Next I dug through our linen closet and found an old white sheet to put over my head.  I don’t know why I didn’t just use a pillow case, since I ended up tucking most of the fabric into my shirt anyway.  Maybe I had ghost costumes in mind, so the giant piece of fabric seemed more holiday-appropriate than the more wieldy pillowcase option.  Incidentally, this was the same year my older sister made her costume out of bed linens as well.  She made a Tinker Bell costume out of a pillowcase.  Specifically, she made a Tinker Bell costume out of my flannel winter pillowcase. I remember being a little bit upset that she had decided to cut up my sheets, but she explained with unshakeable logic that they were the only green linens in the closet, and so I had to accept that she had clearly made the best decision for us all.

Anyway, I cut eye holes out of my sheet, drew a coal mouth and a carrot nose (I remember drawing the orange nose while the sheet was already on my head, because when I took the costume off, I still had an orange nose where the marker had bled through the sheet).  I put the sheet over my head, tucked all the extra fabric into my karate shirt (which actually made for some nice snowman padding), donned a scarf, snowboots, and a plastic top hat that I’m pretty sure was left over from a New Year Party, and my costume was complete.

I strutted into my church for the Harvest Festival, saying hello to everyone I knew.  I must have greeted 5 or 6 people before someone asked somewhat tentatively, “Who are you?”  I hardly ever wear masks for Halloween, since masks are creepy and I've seen that Goosebumps movie so I knew better, and so it hadn’t even occurred to me that people wouldn’t be able to recognize me.  That was when I realized that I had inadvertently made probably my scariest ever Halloween costume, with my hidden face, creepy peering eyes, and frozen snowman grin.

3.  UNCREATIVE PAJAMA-CLAD CHILD

One year I was similarly rushed for a costume, and I decided to just wear pajamas, forgetting that you’re actually supposed to BE something for Halloween.  The first time someone asked me what my costume was, I faltered, then answered, “I’m...wearing pajamas.”

“Yes, but what are you?”

“...tired?”

I didn’t get much candy that year.


EVERYONE HAVE A HAPPY SAFE HALLOWEEN AND EAT TONS OF PUMPKIN TREATS AND CANDY!

THWARTED.

Good news!

I got a job!
I won’t tell you where though, because I like to feign anonymity here, even though pretty much anyone who reads this knows very well who I am.  But I’m going to pretend it’s top secret anyway, just for funs.

Bad news!

For some reason the program I use to make my drawings is acting super weird.  I updated it and now when I try to fill in color this happens:

I bet you’re wondering what story THAT picture was illustrating!  Well now due to my technical difficulties YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.

Well, you’ll NEVER KNOW until I fix this problem.

WHICH WILL HOPEFULLY BE SOON.

So I guess I’ll just be posting some old pictures today, with very little commentary because I’m a bit frustrated and also I drank too much coffee and it feels like my brain is playing hopscotch.  So here goes:

I wish I had words about this picture that I could put here, but I don’t, so here are some other words instead: This weekend my garbage disposal broke and I had to call emergency maintenance to come fix it, which the guy managed to do in about five seconds.  We had accidentally ground up a shot glass or two, which is an action garbage disposals apparently frown upon.

Live and learn.

Lady frog, lady frog, what are you staring at, lady frog?

All right, that’s all from me!  Sorry about this sad, sad post.

I hate technology.

OKAY BYE.

I Hate Spiders

When I was a little kid, I briefly had dreams of becoming a politician so that I could give Alaska to the spiders.  I thought it was the perfect plan.  Humans would agree not to trespass on this new spider territory, and the spiders would agree not to trespass on human territory.  It was a total win-win: spiders could live without fear of being smashed by a shoe, and I could live without fear of waking up with a spider atop my nose.  It’s probably for the best that I never became a politician, though, because I imagine there would be considerable outrage at my proposal, not just from the Alaskans kicked out of their home state, but also from the cold, cold spiders.

I hate spiders.  When I see a spider it feels like my very soul is shuddering.  But--despite this--I really try not to kill them.  If I’m startled by one crawling on me, it might fall victim to my panicking, flailing arms, but for the most part I refrain from squashing.  To be honest, though, this decision developed more for selfish reasons than any noble understanding of every creature’s right to live:  as a kid I had a deep-seated fear that if I killed a spider, all of its friends, relatives, neighbors, and dentists would band together and seek revenge for the loss of their dear arachnid friend.  They would come after me and make me pay for squishing one of their own.  So I usually just got my mom to smash them, so at least I wouldn’t be held responsible for their deaths.

WHAT?  I never claimed to be a hero.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to feel like a jerk for killing something (whether directly or indirectly) that doesn’t even know that what it’s doing is bothering me.  So now I just try to ignore and avoid them.  If I see a spider on a wall, I just move to the other side of the room and go about my business (never letting it out of my sight lest it launch some sort of attack).  If one is hanging out above a doorway, I just pretend like I was PLANNING on staying in that room ANYWAY so I don’t have to walk under the 8-legged beast.  I don’t kill them, but I’m still afraid of them.  I once tried to simply decide not to be afraid anymore.  I told myself that spiders are little, their poison most likely wouldn’t hurt me much, and even if I were bitten by one of the monster black widows that inhabit my back yard, I would just go to the hospital and come out with a good story.  My fearlessness lasted exactly until the next time I saw a spider.

I’ve never even really had a traumatic encounter with a spider--well, except for that one time when I flipped over a bucket in the back yard and found a black widow the size of Jupiter less than an inch from my hand.  But I was already afraid of spiders at that point, so I can’t reasonably blame that incident for my hatred of the creatures.  I think it just  comes down to the fact that spiders are naturally terrifying creatures.  There is nothing about their appearance that does NOT strike fear into hearts.

I spent an entire day once researching different spiders on Wikipedia, and every single one was terrifying.  I had noticed these huge monster spiders that had been making huge monster spider webs all over the outside of our house, and I was concerned that they might be poisonous.  So I took to the internet to try to identify the beasts.  The only spiders I can identify on sight are black widows, and these were definitely not black widows.  For one thing, they were about three times as big as any black widow I had ever seen.  For another, they were brown.  Plus, they were all still married.  So, pretty clearly not black widows.  And “Not Black Widows” is really as far as I got in identifying the monster spiders outside.  For a while I thought they HAD to be brown recluse spiders, which are super super poisonous.  But then I realized that was just me being my paranoid self because brown recluse spiders don’t live on the West Coast.  Plus the spiders in my back yard weren’t being particularly reclusive.  Oh, and also the picture on Wikipedia didn’t look anything like what was hanging out outside.  So, yeah, paranoid self.  And let me tell you, spending hours looking at picture after picture of terrifying spiders was not good for my paranoid self.  I never solved The Mystery of the Ridiculously Scary Spiders Outside (probably mostly because I was too afraid to get near enough to take note of any identifying features), but when I finally tore myself away from the computer, I thought everything was a spider.  Jumpy the rest of the day.

Ugh.  Spiders.

Books, Gum, and Pretzels

I love love love free things.

It doesn’t matter what form the free things take.  If I can have it and I don’t have to pay for it (and I won’t go to jail for this act of not paying for it), I love it.

During my four years in college I accumulated a good amount of religious literature because it was always being handed out on campus.  By the time I moved out of my apartment I had a nice little stack of New Testaments in my bookshelf, and when one man offered me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita as I hurried to class, I skidded to a stop, stared for a moment, and then blurted out, “I can keep this!?” (much too loudly, I remember, because he looked kind of startled and for a second I was afraid he was going to change his mind and take his book back).  I also once accepted a DVD that turned out to be about psychosomatic medicine, and I think Scientology (I never actually watched it, but just stuck it with the rest of my movies in the living room).  On the cover was a scientific-sounding quote about the value of the video which was attributed to simply “Medical Doctor.”  For a while I considered hiding the DVD somewhere in my apartment building for someone to find, but that idea sadly never came to fruition.

There was another time when there was a box of books sitting in some grass on campus with a sign that said “FREE BOOKS!  TAKE ONE!” and after a moment of pure excitement, suspicion set in.

You set out cheese to catch a mouse.  You set out honey to catch a Pooh Bear.

You set out free books to catch a Kendra.

But then I realized that was ridiculous, so I grabbed a book and went on my merry way.

I also got a lot of free gum throughout my time in college.  Every time I accepted a piece of sample gum from someone on campus, I was certain that this was the time the gum was going to be poisoned and I was going to die the painful death that results from loving free things too much.  But that didn’t stop me from going out of my way to grab some gum whenever I saw those people handing it out.

One time some guy gave me a full handful of Stride Uber Bubble bubble gum (I remember that it was Uber Bubble because I was in a German linguistics class at the time and my thoughts were: “Why, isn’t this interesting.  The word ‘über’ seems to have become an English word, as evidenced by the loss of its umlaut.  Since neither the letter nor its corresponding sound exists in the English language, we have altered it to fit our speech and adopted it as our own.  Fascinating!”  Just kidding.  It went more like this: “Oh, hey!  German!  I love German!  And I love the word über!  Oh, look, it doesn’t have an umlaut.  Weird.  I love umlauts!  I love gum!  I LOVE FREE THINGS!”).

Anyway, I pocketed my gum and walked away (making an annoying crinkling noise with every step) only to find someone else handing out more Uber Bubble bubble gum a little farther along my way.  I, of course, made a bee-line to this person (trying to walk less noisily so my crinkling pockets wouldn’t give me away as the gum hoarder I am) and held out my hands like Oliver (“Please, sir.  I want some more.”  “MORE?”  “I mean some.  Some gum.  I don’t have any so I can’t have more.  At least according to Alice.  The hatter might disagree.”  And then he would punch me for mixing my allusions.)  He gave me a handful of gum too!  I filled up my other jeans pocket and finally got to class, where I triumphantly moved my gum from my pants to my bag to be chewed at a later date.

More recently, I was ending a less-than-successful shopping trip (I hate hate hate shopping.  I probably hate shopping exactly as much as I love free things.  If there were a spectrum of things I like and don’t like, shopping would be on one extreme and free things would be on the other) and I decided to stop for a cinnamon sugar pretzel.

Cinnamon sugar pretzels would be placed just slightly below getting free things on my spectrum of likes.  I love ‘em like I love something I love a whole lot.

So I asked for my pretzel and was paying at the register when one of the guys behind the counter asked me if I had tried the place’s new cinnamon sugar sticks (I think technically they’re Stix, with an x, which incidentally was my nickname when I played basketball in high school.  Well, briefly, because it started out as Sticks, which then became Stix because x-es are space-efficient, and then it became Stixx because if one x is space efficient two x-es must be extra space-efficient.  Right?  Right?  Then it became Bamboo, but that’s a little harder to explain so we’ll just move on).

I said that no, I had never tried their cinnamon sugar Stix.  The guy then asked me if I would mind if he gave me some Stix too because my pretzel pretzel had been sitting there for a while and might actually be a little bit stale.  I hesitated while I tried to think of a response more appropriate than, “WHAT KIND OF A MONSTER WOULD MIND BEING GIVEN FREE FOOD?” and I think this pause made him think I might actually be offended by his offer because he gave the sort of awkward (but much appreciated) explanation: “They’re exactly like your cinnamon sugar pretzel, only...less twisted.”

So I rolled my eyes and said, “FINE.  You can give me free things, if you must.”

I lie, of course.  I’m pretty sure I just grinned, nodded, and shouted, “COOL!” because I was afraid he would take back my Stix if I acted too weird about it (I don’t know why I always think people who give me things are going to yell “PSYCH!” and snatch it all back, but if this post is any indication, that seems to be a regular reaction of mine).  So he gave me my pretzel and my Stix.  I was feeling so happy with my good fortune that I shoved it all into my purse and went and bought a pair of pants that I hadn’t been sure about earlier in my shopping trip, trying not to smell too much like a pretzel when I opened my purse to get my wallet out.

The cinnamon sugar Stix were super delicious too.

But the pretzel was a little stale.

These are the parentheses who have taken a few of my good friends hostage in order to persuade me to use their parenthetical family members a million times in this one post.

I don’t usually interrupt my(have a good day!)self this much, I swear.

Me and my pal Caffeine

Every so often I try to go a day without drinking any coffee.  Usually this idea doesn’t really materialize as a concrete plan, but more as a lazy and hazy unwillingness to go through the process of setting up my coffee machine or wait in line at a coffee shop.  I get myself up and ready, and since I’m able to remember how to open the front door and I don’t fall down the stairs on my way outside, I’m able to briefly convince myself that I am stronger than a morning cup of coffee.

Except I'm not.

I am, in fact, much much weaker, as becomes apparent after about half an hour outside my apartment.  I don’t know why I keep trying to fight it because it always ends up the same way: I get a headache right in the middle of my forehead, my eyelids start drooping, and this image takes up permanent residence in my mind:

It was especially bad when I was still in college because about five minutes into a morning lecture I would stop taking notes and would instead start drawing out elaborate plans detailing the quickest route to the best coffee shop, and counting out coins under my desk.  But now that I’m not in school and I have no job, it just means that I get to sit here in the public library, one hand supporting my nodding head, and the other wearily drawing a picture of an ideal world where I have a giant cup of coffee for a BFF and the sun wears fashionable eyewear.

You can't tell from the picture, but my sun also wears sunblock.

Since my head hurts, I think I'm just going to post some of my old pictures:

This is an artist.  You can tell by her funny hair.

Oh, and I guess also by her paintbrush and easel.

I just realized I forgot to draw her paint.  I guess this particular artist lives life on the edge, walking from the palette in one room to the canvas in the other, daring--daring--the paint to side with gravity and fall on the carpet along the way.

I feel like I should write something here.

DONE.

And now it’s time for me to cave like the weakling I am and go purchase an iced latte.  I think I’ll ignore the fact that I don’t have a job and buy the biggest size because I’m in an overcompensating mood.  Have a lovely day!

How Breakfast Ruined My Day

I started Saturday off with the very best of intentions: I was going to wake up early and spend the day writing my next blog post so that on Sunday all I would have to do is draw a few pictures.  I woke up on time and everything was going smoothly until I made the fateful decision...to eat breakfast.

Now, I’m not a monster--I know that breakfast is not in itself a bad thing.  It can be a very good thing--heck, along with lunch and dinner, it’s one of my favorite meals of the day.  But sometimes breakfast is a jerk.  This is one of those times.

The thing is, I cannot work while eating a meal.  In my brain, mealtimes are designated break-times and to even think about thinking otherwise is unthinkable.  So since I had decided to begin my day with a nutritious breakfast, I could not in good conscience start my intended blogging right away.  And this is where my productive day began to slide downhill.  Because before doing anything else I had to take a break.

...from sleeping.

After slaving away in the kitchen for five minutes, I came out with a bowl of cold cereal and a mug of hot coffee, and set up my laptop to watch an episode of Firefly online.  When I finished my episode, I decided to check my email, you know, since I had the internet open and everything.  But, as always happens, checking my email quickly turned into checking my Facebook and wandering aimlessly around the internet, and before I knew it, I heard my stomach grumbling again.  I looked at my watch--I lie; I don’t have a watch--I looked at the upper right-hand corner of my computer screen and saw that it was lunchtime.

Well, we’re all familiar with the no work while eating law that governs my existence, and so obviously I had to watch another episode of Firefly.  There really was no other choice.  So I ate my lunch and I watched my show, and then I decided it would be best to ease myself into getting to work by washing the dishes that have piled up in the sink since I moved in.

I hate washing dishes (even though you might not be able to tell it from the picture) and so by the time I was done with them, I felt like I really really deserved a break.  I’d worked hard!  I’d cleaned dishes from when I cooked chicken the night before, dang it!

And so I returned to my laptop for a Facebook and internet-wandering break.  I didn’t set a time limit for my break, though, so by the time I remembered there was something I was supposed to be doing, it was late afternoon, I was still sitting on my bed in my pajamas, and I had not done any work at all on my blog.  My brain was no longer in the gung-ho let’s write mood that it was in earlier, before that ill-advised breakfast.  It was more in the let’s spend hours on the internet doing nothing mood.  It was like I physically could not get myself to start writing.

I finally gave up and accepted that nothing was going to get done.  I’d have to do the whole blasted thing, drawings and all, on Sunday.

So I watched another episode of Firefly, cursing breakfast all the while.

Aaaaand because I feel like there weren't enough pictures this week:

Ponderous does not mean Wondering

Being in a new place with new people has caused me to be especially introspective this past week, contemplating who I am and what makes me me.  I therefore had the idea to make the investigation into the corners of my personality my next blog post.  But then I decided that would be super boring, so instead I just made a list of some stuff I like.

1. Giraffes.
I don’t know why I love them so much.  Actually I do.  It’s because they’re ridiculously ridiculous, with their spindly legs, blue tongues, and fuzzy do-nothing horns.  They appear at first glance to be the epitome of peaceful, quietly munching on their trees with their sleepy eyelashes, but then you YouTube “giraffes fighting,” and oh my goodness, you didn’t think it was possible for them to top their ridiculousness, but now you’re watching them hit each other with their noodle necks like monsters.  When I first saw it I was horrified, then a little bit heartbroken, and then I fell right back in love. Because of course giraffes do battle with their necks.  What else would you expect from animals who drink their water like this:

2. Art supplies.
If I ever get sucked into an addiction that leads to bankruptcy, interventions, and general devastation, I can almost guarantee that it would be an addiction to art supplies.  I just love them.  Even the ones I can’t really use effectively, like paints, charcoal, and pastels.  I just like having them around so I can pretend like I know what I’m doing while making a mess all over the kitchen table.  And markers and crayons will be my downfall.  I’m forever having to force myself to put a box of markers back on the shelf at a store, reminding myself that I already have a billion at home that are JUST AS GOOD.  And I love the neat sharp points of new crayons, which makes me just keep buying them.  Also, new crayons smell better than old crayons.  Yeah, I said it.

3. Socks.
I have weird looking feet, partly from playing basketball in high school and partly because of genetics (my mom’s got weird toes too) and I like wearing sneakers, so socks are my natural ally.  But plain white socks remind me of blank canvases, which could be art if only there was some color on them.  So I opt instead for colorful socks.  Also, when I was a kid, I was a proud member of the Weirdo Power Club, whose members made friends with fire hydrants, slept in my garage, and wore mismatched socks.  I believe the whole socks idea came from a sing-along type video tape that one of my friends owned that included a song about Happy Socks, which are--you guessed it--unmatched socks.  We kept up our happy socks for a long time, and for a while in junior high a boy in my homeroom class would helpfully point out my mismatched socks to me on a daily basis, honestly not understanding that it was intentional no matter how many times I told him.

It should be noted that in junior high I dressed like a boy scout.  It was an unfortunate consequence of my school’s uniform including khaki and the color green, and my fear that I would be sentenced to death if my shirt was untucked and my shorts didn’t reach the tips of my fingers.  Also for some reason I was really into hiking boots.  I don’t know why, because I disliked the outdoors even then.  If I had access to a time machine, I would go ask 12-year old me about my decisions concerning footwear and report back to you.  Oh, but the point.  The point is that bright, mismatched socks make my feet happy.

So, in conclusion, if ever I stumble upon a watercoloring giraffe in happy socks, I would implode of happiness on the spots.

The giraffe spots.

driving, moving, drawing

Goodness, I am not doing well keeping to my every Monday posting schedule at all.  In my defense, though, these past two weeks have not exactly been typical for me.  As I already told you, two Mondays ago I was helping my little sister move in to her dorm.  Well, this past Monday, I was moving myself in to my new apartment, seven hours away from home.  Even after moving into my apartment I didn’t really have much of a chance to update this thing last week, what with my apartment’s lack of internet, my focus on settling in, and a shortage of hard, flat surfaces on which I could set up computer and mouse (the following drawings were done on the touchpad of my laptop, so please excuse their somewhat wobbly nature).
So, as I said, I drove the seven hours up to my new abode last Monday, and I’m proud to say I only got lost two times.  I’m slightly less proud to say that both times were within view of my intended destination, but that's another story.  Oh, no, wait.  That's this story:
The first time I got lost was when I drove straight past my new apartment because I was so focused on not running over any bicyclists.

After realizing I was in the process of driving past the entrance to the buildings, I confused myself by trying to circle around the block (and at the time I was sure I had found the single weirdest block on the planet--if you had asked me on Monday, I would have sworn it took me five right turns and a dramatic loop to get back to where I started, but I retraced my path just a few days ago and found that the only weird thing about it is that the block is slightly curvier than is in fashion for most modern rectangles).

The second time I got lost I was actually already inside the apartment complex, trying to get from the leasing office to the parking lot near to my apartment.  What I didn’t realize was that the two parking areas are connected (by even more parking) and I could have driven straight across and I would have arrived in less than a minute.  Instead, it took me fifteen minutes to figure it all out.  I first drove out of the parking lot and circled back around the wavy block again (still more confused by the area than appropriate) only to find the exit to the parking lot.  So I drove around again and turned into the entrance for the neighboring apartment complex’s parking lot, thinking the two lots might be connected to each other and I would find the entrance on the other side.  And I did find that entrance.  And, as a bonus for my hard work, I also found a gate blocking that entrance off.

Luckily though, I could see past the gate to the connecting parking lot that I had missed before.  I used my finely tuned detective skills (learned from my good friend Veronica Mars) to figure out how the parking lots actually work and drive on over.

So it’s been a week since I moved up here.  Our boxes are mostly unpacked, I’ve discovered a few grocery stores (I have yet to find the elusive public library, but worry not!  I shan’t abandon the search!), and I’ve yet to run over any cyclists, pedestrians, dogs, cats, or geese.  I just have to find myself a job, and I’ll be golden.


Fingers crossed!