Fun with Charts and Graphs!

BINGO!

Momma has peaced out of the Sunshine State....In true snow bird fashion she has flown North as Summer has come a'knockin on our door. For her last day here I decided to take off work and do a 'Momma's Favorite Things' day. Not surprisingly that consisted of sleeping in, cocktails, tanning, games she thinks she can beat me at, antiquing, and BINGO! Being old and retired is kinda exhausting, honestly I can't figure out how she squeezes all that in day and manages to do my dishes. While the day from start to finish was wonderful (of course, just in case she's reading this, I was spending time with my favorite Momma) I definitely was more psyched for the activities earlier in the day, namely the sleeping in and tanning. As for the last activity, bingo, don't get me wrong. I like the idea of it, snack bar, opportunity to win money but bingo is intense. I'll just start from the beginning.

The day before Momma's last day in town I sent her an email with the names and numbers of some different bingo places around where I lived. She called and got the skinny of them, liked the sound of one in particular. Probably liked it because Denise, who ran the place, and her chit chatted on the phone for about a half hour. We showed up at 6pm and upon opening the door none other than Denise herself greeted us with Momma! A!, WELCOME! Guessing at this point they don't get a lot of new people. After Denise asked me if I was old enough to legally play bingo (she won me over right there) we were ushered in and introductions began. We were seated with Ann and Betty #2. Yeah, I have to number my Bettys in this story, there were a handful. Ann was a true bingo'er. She had a seat cushion, homemade I'm assuming, which was covered in fabric with bingo cards on it. She had at least 12 dobbers which came in different dobbing sizes. It might be easier to tell you what Ann didn't have in her bag, because if you needed something it was there. Wet nap? Indeed. Hard candies? Hell to the yeah. Ink pen? What color do you need. She knew all the games (Hatpin? 3x3? crazy 8's? lucky leprechaun?), which sincerely did come in handy because this rookie could have had bingo's all night and been none the wiser. Honestly she was my bingo savior. She even had a bingo wallet. It was crocheted and said "Bingo Money" on it. Apparently Betty #3 makes them (Her's said "Betty's Mad Money", I like her she's sassy); I was introduced to her later and told that if I kept coming she would make me one that said "A's Bingo Money". Might be reason enough to go back...well maybe if she makes me one that says "A's Bar Money", that would be pimp.

All in all it although I was anxiety filled through most of the evening it ended up being pretty fun. And I got a BINGO!, and won 35 whole dollars...big winner. At the end of the night Ann was quick to fill me in on another bingo hall she thought I should check out because of the big payouts (100-250) and told me she would see me there.

Not sure I'm ready for the big time, but who knows maybe the next time I buy a round of beers the money will come out of a wallet that says A's Bar Money.

Feliz Cumpleanos

A year ago today we ended Baby Watch 2010 when an miniature version of My BMF entered this world. It's hard to believe it's been a year since I held that little girl in my arms for the 1st time.

With the knowledge that a 1 year old really has no idea that their birthday is actually their birthday and the large amount of toys and clothes she already has due to being surrounded by friends and family who can't resist buying adorable things for an adorable little girl I thought I would take a different route with her 1st birthday gift....

With all the playing I've been doing on Pintrest I stumbled upon this amazingly cute idea and decided making 10 tiny polaroid magnets of the prettiest girl I know over the past YEAR (still can't believe it) of her life would be something her parents could enjoy and something, maybe one day when she old enough to understand, she will look at and think of me and just how much I've loved her cute little butt since she was born.

In case you're looking to mimic this idea, it has some great instructions but I made some minor changes to suit my needs, such as using a spray on gloss sealant as opposed to scotch tape to cover the magnets and using a little super glue to make sure the magnets stayed on for the long haul. The end result.....



Happy birthday Little A! All of mine

Where'd I put that dream dictionary?

I think I need a new dream dictionary...mine moved to North Carolina. Ok, so my dream dictionary wasn't so much a book but a roommate, who loved to analyze my dreams. I can't count how many times I woke up confused, sad, happy, or with some type of ailment (typically from physically kicking or punching the wall in response to what was happening in my dream) and explained it detail by detail to No Longer Easy E while it was still a vivid memory. She was either insanely insightful or I am insanely gullible. Either way, thinking back about those moments releases a little dab of dopamine into my average sized brain.

As you can probably tell, I have some pretty realistic dreams. I remember a Friends episode once where Phoebe is mad at Ross but she can't remember why. Turns out he did something mean to her in her dream. I feel that, I often wake up (even from non Tylenol PM induced sleep) not sure if something actually happened or not. Now, don't get me wrong even though the dream about me being the Whooo version of Iron Man's sidekick felt real I was fully aware that I was not part of the Avengers. Sometimes though, even the most outlandish of dreams trick me....

I dreamed I met Ellen at her show and someone (whoever I was with at the show and had gotten me there) told her I had this amazingly hilarious laugh. So Ellen gets right up in my face and just says "laugh", she didn't even have a smile on her face, very stern and un-Ellen like actually. So I am so very nervous that I can only muster what I call my fake work laugh. Ellen looks at me, disappointed, kind of the same way the Tiger Woods does on Wii's Tiger Woods Golf game when I make the digital version of him shank one into the woods, and then she walks away. I cry. I woke up so sad, I'd missed my chance. It all seemed so real. Analyze that.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This past Sunday morning while She's Bossy was watching TV with her daughter she heard the 2nd worst 7 words your little girl could possibly mutter "Mommy can I be a pole dancer?"

Didn't see a single flea for sale

Ah the interweb...I love it, I really, really do. It seemed for the longest time it was peopleofwalmart.com that commanded my attention. I think it reminded me of 'home', good ol Southern Indiana. Somewhere along the way I forgot about the the toothless wonders that so often brought me tooth-filled smiles and textsfromlastnight.com became the mistress that consumed hours of my time, especially on Mondays when the wonderful little website promised tales of complete strangers hijinks from the weekend. I haven't quite let go of my youth, and the ability to be entertained by life's more immature things, as I still sneak over to tfln now and again but I think my internet viewing might actually be growing with me as not one week ago I found http://pinterest.com. I'm in love, with DIY. This shouldn't come as a shock. Remember the clock and the bookcase, but this website essentially puts the best of the web DIY all in one place. Actually it puts the best of everything all in one place, and its all photos, none of that cumbersome reading stuff to deal with. Now, I find a picture I think is pretty and I'm one click away from the website it came from and hopefully instructions on how to make it myself!

And...it's exclusive. I'm not a fan of exclusive when it comes to clubs, be that unsa-unsa or country, but when it comes to websites I have to admit...I want in. Like facebook when the only way you could have it was if your college was amongst their list; something about that draws me in. Basically you ask for a membership and then a week or so later they let you know if you're in or not and you start "pinning" your favorite things of the interweb up for others to explore. I'm awaiting my invite but in the interim I've been perusing other people's pin boards and after only a couple hours I was in possession of a list of ideas and the necessary supplies to create!

This weekend it was off to the flea market with Momma in tow to find all my supplies to make my projects come to life. I had high hopes for our trip, and was willing to battle temps in the high 80's to make my DIY dreams come true. What I didn't factor in was that the flea markets here really, really cater to old people. If any of my projects had required 10 pairs of socks for a dollar, readers or genuine leather fanny packs I would have been in heaven. Sadly, they did not. Momma was in heaven, came home with two new pairs of readers (for the low low price of $8 I might add) and said if she lived here she would come to the flea market every day it was open.

I don't want to get old.

Absolutely mad wi' it

So, I've been gone for awhile...vacation, needing a vacation to recover from my vacation, catching up with friends I hadn't seen since I was on vacation, and sleeping off a 12 hour time difference have kept me away. I feel like I've been cheating on this little blog here, having a torrid affair with life that kept me away. The affair's not over, but I have realized that I can make room for some two-timing.

Where to begin...my vacation this year was spent in Thailand. For those of you who aren't geographists, if you went out in your backyard and started digging you would eventually end up there, or relatively close to there. Basically what I'm saying is that it is far from here, really really ridiculously far. To quantify that even further, it is a 23 hour plane ride away. Throw a couple layovers in there in very interesting and exotic places like 'Detroit' and 'Tokyo' and you're probably looking at spending well over a day getting your happy ass to the land of the Thai people. Honestly after spending 27 hours traveling there I seriously considered digging my way back to the good ol USofA instead of taking delta, but I'm lazy so I took the plane.

After arriving in Thailand it was a big hug for J-Nelly, straight to bed, and up in the am to catch a van to Kanchanaburi. This extremely long named town was home to the Bridge over the River Kwai, some adorable baby tigers which I got to snuggle, waterfalls and more than a few elephants. I don't really know how to wrap that up in words to I'll let some pictures do the talking for me here.

While I can't seem to piece together the experiences I had into sentences that would actually do them justice I will tell you about the bit of my trip that was by far the funniest.

On our 2nd day in Kanachanaburi J-Nelly and I were awoken by Jose holding a helmet and a set of keys. After rubbing the sleep from our eyes we figured out that he had rented a motorbike for for the day for something like 5 cents (everything in Thailand is like 1/100 of the cost it is here) and we would be making a 45 minute trek to The Tiger Temple on two wheels. Having never driven on the 'wrong' side of the road I decided riding shotgun would be best and let J-Nelly man our whip.

After spending the day snuggling baby tigers and hiking through a good bit of nature to locate a poorly mapped cave we arrived back at the guest house parked our whips and set out to get cleaned up for dinner. Being that the bathroom was set up so that you could sit on the toilet while showering and brushing your teeth at the same time, we opted for a dip in pool as it would likely get us just as 'clean' and it afforded the opportunity to drink a couple beers.

In the pool we met a couple, a Scottish guy and a British girl. Most people know I'm mesmerized by accents and immediately think everything they say is more humorous by at least 10 fold. After putting down several beers and chit chatting with them we learned they got absolutely mad wi' it, I mean just blootered, smashed drunk the the night before last and had woken up with tattoos of each others names in Thai. She predictably got his name on her ring finger and he unpredictably got hers on the back of his ear. Yeah, and when I say the back of his ear, I mean the outer rim of his ear. This alone was asinine. After another beer, the drunk 50 some year old bartender stumbled back to the pool and started up a conversation with Jnelly, none of which we understood as it was in Thai. This led to a great amount of excitement on the part of the Scot. What unfolded was this... "You speak bloody Thai?!? Pointing feverishly to his ear as he splashed haphazardly towards her "Tell me this doesn't say twat!!!! Tell me this doesn't say twat!!!", Janelle kindly spoke the truth and told him it did in fact say his wife's name. I will admit that I was a bit disappointed that her kind heart did not take advantage of these people by telling them it his read 'twat' and hers read 'David' (which was not her husbands name). Regardless, for the remainder of our time in Kanachanaburi they were known as Dave and Twat, and they were marvelous.

That night we went out for dinner and drinks together with the mission to find three other random travelers to split a ride with us the next day to the waterfalls. We were met with success and found two girls who had just graduated from university in Holland as well as a German woman. I have to pause here and provide a side note on the German woman. She smoked, a lot. I, with no exaggeration, can say she smoked for 87% (I may be underestimating there actually) of the time we were with her. It was if she did not stop smoking from the time we met her until the next day when we dropped her off. Now we didn't stay at the same guest house but I'm pretty sure she has constructed some type of machine that pumps smoke into her lungs while she sleeps, she was that dedicated. Honestly, I don' t know that you're getting it...I mean, I can't figure out how she did it but she was directly under a waterfall with a lit cigarette, smoking. Ok, that has absolutely nothing to do with the story but it was so uncanny that I had to mention it.

Flash to the next day. We all show up to catch our truck to the waterfalls, some feeling a little bit hazy from the night before (twat, dave), some bright eyed and bushy tailed (me- I'm impervious to hangovers on vacation- its like magic!). Dave's tummy hurt so before we took off he hit the bathroom taking advantage of the western style toilets and the toilet paper available, then we were off. J-nelly offered Dave a dose of Imodium to put a plug in it for the ride and the day at the waterfalls. Apparently the Imodium didn't have time to work because twenty minutes into the ride he started sweating, cursing curry, and honestly probably would have traded his first born for a bathroom. We got the driver to stop, the Holland girls offered up their roll of TP and he was off the back of our truck in a sprint, holding his asshole the whole way.

We took this opportunity to use the restrooms ourselves and buy some weird food to snack on for the remainder of the trip. After about twenty minutes he came back to the truck, exhausted, and looking much better as some color had returned to his sunburned face. He explained the ordeal in a way only a Scotsman could. "It was a bloody massacre, it was like an explosion. I barely got me pants down before I could sit." This went on for several minutes to erupting laughter from his travel companions. Honestly it took a couple minutes before J-nelly picked it up but then the questions started coming....

Jnelly: "Did you say sit down? Um, those were squatting toilets."
Dave: What the f#ck's a squatting toilet?"
Jnelly: Like they have everywhere here, you squat over them, you don't sit on them"
Dave: "I thought me balls were a wee bit close to the water"
A: "What did you think the little ribbing was for, so you didn't slide off?"
Holland : "Wasn't it dirty from people standing on it"
Dave: "Everything is Thailand is f#cking dirty


Aye Dave, Aye. Everything in Thailand is f#ckign dirty. Best part of this whole thing is, they had been in the country for at least 3 days and I bet that wasn't the first time he'd had to make a dookie....



Kudos to my tour guide. The trip was amazing and provided a wealth of experiences I won't soon forget. Looking forward to our next adventure my friend...



Oh, and this sign was in the cab and I couldn't get over it. In cabs in Thailand you are apparently not allowed to: smoke, poop, be a baby jacking it's wenis, do it doggie style, or eat smelly fruit. Damn.