Just when they raised my ER deductible to $100…

With Little A coming into this world in less than a month’s time I have been browsing around the interweb for a very tiny pair of puma’s to assure she will be dressing just as fly as her Aunt A. I finally found the perfect pair which match both her mommy’s pumas and mine, are pink so The Future Mrs. My BMF will approve and….they were for the low low price of only $14. Score one for the home team! Needless to say I was pretty pumped, but being the shoe-hoor that I am I of course had to browse around a bit more…

While on the site, I clicked on the Heelys link just to see what they had. Honestly I have wanted a pair of these for years but could never justify spending 50 to 60 bones on a pair of shollerskates, I’m ridiculous, but not quite that level of ridiculous. Plus if you really wanted to talk about total cost you would have to add in my ER deductible, so basically we are talking about a $160 dollar pair of shollerskates. Honestly, you could probably buy a slightly used kidney for $160 on the black market or at the very least an asian baby. I digress. Much to my elation I stumbled upon a pair of Heelys for 22.75! SOLD!

Here I am four days later with no more coordination than that of asian baby, or any baby for that matter, and unwrapping a size 8 concussion. Here’s to short lines at the ER, wish me luck!

“Almost” Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades…and Broken Hips

I can only hope that when I’m just a few days shy of my 62nd birthday that I will be as hilarious, fun, and willing to try new things as my Momma.

Last week, I had the brilliant idea to pull No-Longer-Easy-E’s rollerblades out of the back of the garage and to strap them onto the feet of my 61 year old mother. I won’t lie; she put up a bit of resistance at first, but quickly realized that a broken hip would secure her a much longer stay in sunny Florida; as she was slated to leave on a jet plane back to the blistery north the following day.

As I climbed past the random assortment of cob web covered sporting goods we have sitting in our garage, I nearly knocked over momma’s beach bicycle which I have been meaning to put training wheels on. My pause to stabilize the bike should have provided enough time to think back to her describing the not one, but two separate wrecks she has had on it….and in turn to realize her lack of stability on a bicycle might just transfer to rollerblades. Nay. I continued my progression to the back of our cluttered garage and within ten minutes I was attempting haphazardly to pull her out of her beach chair and get her up on 8 wheels.

I don't know that she ever actually rollerbladed that day, it was more like a guided tour of my driveway on wheels; pushing and sometimes pulling interrupted by noises like "whoooooo!", intermittent cursing, and flailing arms reminiscent of a someone who doesn't know how to swim getting tossed in the deep end.

In the end there was only one close call. After which I was yelled at for pinching the back of her arm when deep down we both know she should have been thanking me for saving her from a broken hip and fractured skull. But hey, who am I to complain, the next day she was off to the airport with both femurs moving just how they should be in perfectly sound hips.

Law and Order

No-Longer-Easy-E found a purple piece of confetti shaped like a man's genitals on the floor of her room last night.

The question....where did it come from?!?

Was it tracked in or was it left by a visitor?

Who has the motive?!?

Suspects that can be placed at the scene include:

No-Longer-Easy E's Shoe: Lacks a brain to have a motive, but also has no control over whether things stick to it or not.
Lumberjack: Her name is Lumberjack, she might be scared to even touch something shaped like the male genitalia.
Tree-Hugging-Sister-of-Lumberjack: Not to be ruled out, opposite of sister, love for trees and everything 'wood'.
Too-Old-For-A-Lip-Ring: Too much interest in the Tree Hugger to plan the placement of the item in question.
The Bearded One: Sense of humor which rivals a 6 year old, not to be ruled out.
MILF Magnet: Is roommate and bff to The Bearded One, likely accomplice.
SLBDJT: Usually is rendered unconscious by around 10pm, could use comma like state as an alibi.
Katrainwreck: Due to hormone levels during pregnancy she has recently had a general lack of interest in male genitalia. Solid alibi.
My BMF: Much like the Bearded One, his sense of humor puts him in question, yet his lack of motor skills while near No-Longer-Easy-E's room provides question.
Kissy Faced Booty Shaker: Had access to area, but lacked motor skills much like My BMF.
Momma: Enjoys shiny things including confetti, inappropriate jokes and items shaped like the item in question. Also had access to the area while no one was around.

The case has yet to be solved but the top suspects include: Momma, The Bearded One, Tree-Hugging-Sister-of-Lumberjack, and No-Longer-Easy-E's Shoe.

A's Yearbook

In an effort to help you get to know the wonderful individuals that are daily players in my life and in this blog, I thought I would introduce you to them ‘yearbook’ style.

Best Butt:
My BFF

I met My BFF during my (1st) senior year of college. My BFF and The Gray Lining had speech class together and as it turned out My BFF and I also had Nutrition together. Now, even though we did have a class together we had never seen each other there due to my unique ability to fall asleep in a tiny lecture hall seat while still holding my pencil up as if I were taking notes---a pair of sunglasses and I would have had some real Weekend at Bernies convincing shit there.

With most people it’s hard to define or nail down the moment when you became friends, harder to determine when you became best friends and probably harder still to put a moment on when you became family. With My BFF I know exactly when we became friends, or at least exactly when I knew we were meant to be friends. We went to go see a movie and in the preview someone said “Delaware”, out of nowhere My BFF quoted Wayne’s World “Delaware, we’re in Delaware”. Seems simple and almost idiotic but as The Grey Lining and I drove home that night we were both like…She’s perfectly weird, this friendship will certainly blossom. I can’t pin point when she became my best friend or when I stopped seeing her as a friend and just simply as family. Maybe there wasn’t a moment but a series of them; good times and shitty times that we somehow made it through and she became like luggage (you buy a set and you’re done, no one throws out luggage).

My BFF, though completely adorable and somehow managing to become cuter with age, alleges that she is in possession of a butt. No one has seen this mythical booty, and I think a call to Myth Busters may be in order. To be honest, I’m not sure how her pants actually stay up, for she is made of a back which turns into a seriously long set of sticks. However, I’ll hold off on the call to the myth buster guys and let her delusion live on, after all she is family. For the booty that you claim to have My BFF, I award you Best Butt. Congrats.

Buy me a green beer and maybe you'll get to see my blarney stones...

St. Patty's Day holds a special place in my heart, not only because it is a holiday that is celebrated by dressing in a color that makes my eyes 'pop', getting kissed, and drinking green beers but also because it marks the anniversary of yours truly becoming a Floridian. It was four years ago today that my white behind moved south and never looked back. In honor of the wonderful mood this day puts me in, I would like to talk a little bit about love.

I never had a hard time saying I love you. I like the yucky love stuff, which is odd because I tend to surround myself with people who don’t so much enjoy it. Nonetheless, I’m a lover not a fighter, and not just because most 6 year olds could kick my ass (yeah, I can only do 14 pushups in one minute). Truth be told, I don’t love easily, but when I do get to the point where a relationship has evolved and is filled with trust, communication, and the happiness that love brings, I feel like it’s important to tell a person you love them every chance you get. That being said…

Beer, I adore you. I want to write you poems and send flowers to your office. I want to stand outside your window, hold my stereo above my head and blast love songs all night. I want to throw pebbles at your window when you’re grounded, and stick love notes in your locker. In a word the feelings that I have for you could be summed up simply by ‘love’. Just thought you should know.

Happy St. Patty’s Day everyone, and Happy Florida Anniversary to No-Longer-Easy-E.

I may actually be sleep typing this..

Today I rolled out of bed at what felt like 6am, though the clock indicated that it was in fact 7am, and I quickly became angered at Day Light Savings for robbing me of an hour of sleep. I guess my true anger should have been aimed at Benjamin Franklin as he was the a.hole who came up with it in the first place.

Here's the thing, I don't live on a farm and require the extra daylight to pick my crop, nor as Ben intended am I saving money on candles. I actually grew up in a state that never participated in Day Light Savings time and honestly, now living in a state that does participate, not really seeing much difference aside from the fact that one day a year I wake up exhausted.

I know I'm not the only person in the world suffering this morning as my office was basically zombieland up until about 1 o'clock. Today, there was no discussion of the fun things people did on their weekend off, only blank stares at computer screens or in some cases at the wall. I popped out of my exhaustion induced haze only after using my lunch hour to take a nap in my car, another person said f it and went home, and two others actually forgot about the time change all together because they only use cell phones as clocks and just plain didn't understand why they were so tired.

And I was like baby baby baby oh...

Up until about a week a half ago I actually thought the small child who sings that age inappropriate "Baby" song's name was Justin Wiener.

As a side note...I can not get it out of my head, catchy song singing little bastard. That song is like waffle house, you know you shouldn't like it....but you do. I haven't felt like this since I couldn't stop singing about Jordin Sparks's Tattoo.

Hmmm

Today I received the magazine "Get Married: the shopping and trend guide for the savvy bride" in the mail. For some reason I believe this was in error, or someone thought it would be funny to buy me a subscription.

I'm perplexed.

The art of keeping up with yesterday

I’ve always been a believer that there is nothing like the last minute to get things done, to let panic take over for inspiration, if you will. Well in this fashion I have waited until the last month to obtain the around 30 continuing education hours I need to maintain a certification that I hold. Luckily there are a wealth of classes online that, while boring, will make it possible to complete this task and ultimately reward and encourage my procrastination. Really, I’ll never learn a lesson if I can continue to get by.

While taking the aforementioned interweb classes this week I saw a slide that just made me laugh out loud and I thought I would share. From a course on epidemiology:

Below is a list of actual chief complaints collected from participating hospital systems:

-Stuck bead in nose
-Fish hook in ear
-Fell and laid in yard for a couple hours
-Fell onto cactus
-Squirrel bite
-Right foot pain, dropped turkey (2 days before Thanksgiving)
-Run over by golf cart
-Odd behavior after eating fresh peaches
-Blue plate special
-Talking to dead people

I’m not so sure what exactly I was supposed to learn from that, perhaps that it is quite difficult to determine whether there is an epidemic or outbreak of a certain disease when this is what is actually reported by people. However, I can confidently say what I did learn is that people are hilarious and god made a lot of them aesthetically intelligent.

A's Yearbook

Most Likely to Succeed
Ten Key Ninja and Patty Cakes

Ten Key Ninja

I met Ten Key Ninja through Intern about a year ago. She is a regular visitor to FMB and consequently Intern’s personal travel agent. We hope she will one day be a full time resident of the sunshiny state but until then she will be ten-keying like a pro in the blistery north. She enjoys comedy shows, diy cosmetology, and travel.

Patty Cakes

Patty Cakes is the newest edition to my family after marrying The Gray Lining in September. He is the brother I always wanted and I couldn’t make a better match for The Gray Lining. If this little tid-bit from their pre-wedding dance lessons isn’t a metaphor for their marriage then I don’t know what is….The Gray Lining was continuously told to not lead and let Patty Cakes be ‘the man’.

Both Ten Key Ninja and Patty Cakes are accountants in the bright lights big city of Chicago. They dress up to go to work and ten key all day (at least that’s what I think). For that, Ten Key Ninja and Patty Cakes I award you “Most Likely to Succeed”. Congrats!

How to take a road trip…

There are a lot of things I want to do in my life, many of which should be on my Murtough list, because as young as I am at heart, my body sometimes actually feels my age. The story I will share today is one that should be chilling pretty high on that list but being the ‘peter pan’ that I am I will share with you, the tale of my most recent adventure.

As you may have read recently, the Kissy Faced Booty Shaker decided to take a big leap and move all the way across the country to a little town called Los Angeles to take up residence with her honey whom we will call “Furry Chopra”. This being said, I offered to make the trip with her to her new residence because I apparently have nothing better to do with my vacation time, have an undiagnosed mental condition and enjoy sitting on my behind in a car for 10 hours a day. Truth be told, taking a cross country road trip has been a desire of mine, though I hadn’t thought about it in years….so perhaps I should say taking a cross country road trip was a desire of the younger, more able bodied A. Nonetheless, an older, more distinguished (aka: gray haired) version of A woke up last Sunday morning with a hangover the size of Texas (I can verify that as I have actually seen the size of Texas with my own pretty green eyes), got in a car, and drove 3,000 miles to L.A. with the KFBS and all her worldly possessions.

It was hashed out that if we were to take a road trip it would be a true road trip: lots of stops, lots of junk food, lots of photos with the “world’s largest fill in the blank”, restaurants we’ve never heard of, and being sucked into every tourist trap imaginable.

The first stop on the trip after a painstaking (remember the size of texas here) 12 hours in the car was New Orleans. It was everything I imagined it to be….streets full of drunk people even though it was a Sunday night, the smell of vom and beer left over from mardi gras which had wrapped up the week prior, beads, and delicious tummy tearing up cajun food. I will without a doubt be making a trip back to take in a little more of the New Orleans life.

The second stop was in Houston, where we visited the “Beer Can House”. I mean, come on, I’m A, of course I stopped here. It was wonderful and shiney and I imagine a lot like what my retirement will look like.

Next stop was River Walk in San Antonio. It was entirely too chilly and snowy to truly enjoy the beautiful area but we tried with all our might anyway. At the Kissy Faced Booty Shakers request we ate at an authentic Texas restaurant called Texas Roadhouse. If you are ever in Texas and want some local fare, be sure to check it out. After that I was excited for our next stop for dinner in Arizona so we could try this hidden gem a friend told us about called Arizona Pizza!

Fort Stockton Texas provided an opportunity to see the world’s second largest roadrunner, and Arizona provided the prettiest of skies I had seen in quite some time.

Our last days were spent in Big Bear where two of the world’s clumsiest girls decided to give snowboarding a try. FYI: For those who think if you can surf, you can snowboard, you are wrong. By the end of the day I was calling myself a badass snowboarder and the KFBS was nursing her bruised behind. Post snowboarding it was a trip to the store for a bottle of ibuprofen and a six pack of blue moon to chase it down.

Finally, I got to experience my first red eye flight. It made for a rough Sunday afternoon baby shower after getting a collective three hours of sleep obtained in 45 second increments on an airplane. All in all it was a fantastic trip, I got to see places I probably never would have otherwise, stay in some of the nation’s finest motels, I got to spend some great QT with a fantastic friend who I adore, and I have a head full of memories that will last a lifetime.