Sit Com induced Nostalgia

Many people say that watching TV is an unsocial activity. Not true. I had a flashback tonight while after a marathon baseboard vacuuming session I collapsed on the couch and turned on the tube. There was Will Smith, not in a Pursuit of Happiness trailer but in all of his bright orange tank topped glory on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and immediately, I missed my brothers. We’ve watched many hours of TV together. My favorites were the ones we’d watch before church started (we weren’t one of those No-TV-on-Sundays Mormons) like Out of This World, Clarissa Explains it All, Salute Your Shorts, David the Gnome, Pete and Pete and Freaks and Geeks. Actually, I think some of those were aired on Saturday. Anyway, it made me start thinking of all the TV shows I’ve gotten into over the years and who I watched those shows with and I’d just like to say TV Buddies, I salute you. My husband, who somehow wrangles me into watching the Ultimate Fighting Champion marathon several times a year, you always get me hooked and right there cheering along our roid-enhanced favorite. And my Mom, who watched Wings and Quantum Leap reruns with me on summer afternoons while she folded laundry and during the commercials we’d run downstairs and make our lunch. To our Med School buds in Iowa, you made Alias and Lost all the more better with endless theories that were never right but always entertaining and the hours of gabbing afterwards topped the TV show. To my sister-in-law Sarah, you made me rediscover Scrubs and thanks to you we now have hour upon hour of Scrubs reruns DV-R’d. My brother-in-law Dan, even though we bashed every single thing those dumb kids said and complained how retarded the show was, we never changed the channel even during commercials when Laguna Beach the Real O.C. was on. My Dad, who watches more teeny bopper TV shows than an actual teeny bopper, thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world of the Gilmore Girls. And back to my brothers who howled through the UK version of The Office, memorized lines of the Wayans Brothers and delved into the prepubescent drama of Bug Juice with me, even though we don’t have much in common anymore we have our childhoods and the hours we spent watching cheesy sit-coms and there’s no two people I would have rather watched them all with.

Tales from the Laundromat

Arg! Last night our dryer broke. Curses! I had slacked on doing laundry and had about 7 loads to do. So all day long today, I washed load after load, then piled wet laundry into 4 different laundry baskets to take to the laundromat to do the drying all in one pop. Totally dreading going, I rounded up some things to take for the girls to do (well, just Ruby - all May wants to do lately is walk, walk, walk and reach out to strange men to hold her), and just an idea for all you other Mamas out there, I concocted a great toy - I glued a paint stirrer/stick thing to the back of a paper plate and then bought some balloons from the dollar store next door (imagine that - a dollar store next door to a laundromat) and Ruby ran around hitting the balloon all over the place and was COMPLETELY occupied for an hour - which probably has never happened in her life, so if you ever need to make a quick toy, remember that one. Anyway, so Ruby's running all over the place like a wild woman and May, like always, is making friends with everyone and of course takes a particular liking to the x-con running the money exchange in the back. An hour passes pretty quickly and it's time to get my clothes out of my dryers. As I am unloading clothes from a huge dryer that I put two loads in together, to my horror I discover that there was an orange crayon in Ruby's pocket or something because every piece of clothing has big orange smears all over them. Ugh. So on top of a broken dryer, a tight budget, and two wild kids to take to the laundromat until we get a new dryer, my family will now be sporting orange. Be sure to look for the smears in our Christmas picture, if I ever get around to taking a picture, etc. We might just have to take it at the laundromat, seeing as that's where we're going to be spending a good amount of our time.

"Sometimes when I get nervous..."

Back in June/July when we first moved to PA, we had to live in a rental house for almost 2 months. Everything we owned was still in storage save for our mattresses, some clothes, a couple of couch cushions, a couple of pots and pans, the TV (that couldn't get any reception for the first half of our stay there) and our computer, which also for the first month there, we didn't have the internet until I found a wireless signal from one of our neighbors and piggybacked onto theirs. Anyway, during that first month, it was pretty hard - we didn't know a soul, Brandon was working 110 hour weeks, it super far away from everything (like an hour) and everytime we got in the car, we'd end up lost. Ruby had just been diagnosed and I was still trying to figure out everything and having to do it alone, it was super hot and humid and the house didn't have AC - - it was just a really frustrating month to say the least. Anywho, the day that I started pirating my neighbors wireless signal was certainly a day of rejoicing and it was that day that I discovered this video on YouTube. I couldn't stop laughing. So now, 4 months later when I am in a much better mindset, I watched it and it was still pretty funny. Not like, laugh out loud, snort Diet Root Beer out your nose funny, but it's worth watching and then watching again while you show someone else the video. This vid brought me back to my Mary Katherine Gallagher days. Who gave me my MKG magnet by the way? Was it E? Was it Merz? Was it one of my brothers? Holla if it was you, dawg!

Fun with PhotoBooth Part Deux

Something tells me that Ruby figured out how to use PhotoBooth.

Neurosis

As a child, I had many more neurosis than I have now. For instance, if I used my right hand to hold the stair railing when I climbed the stairs, upon reaching the top I would have to reach over with my left hand and touch the railing so that my hands felt even. Whatever I touched for an amount of time on one of my hands, I would then have to even it out by touching something with the other side. I know - weird. I knew this was odd at the time and when I was about 10 I remember breaking myself of this habit - letting my hands feel uneven, even if made my skin crawl, but eventually it wore off and I didn't think about it anymore. Another example was that my arm hairs always had to be going in the same direction. If someone brushed passed me and mussed them, I would immediate have to smooth them over. This eventually ended when my brothers and their friends discovered this. I was subjected to many an arm rubbing and was basically forced to not care after the 100th arm hair mess up. Some others were constantly thinking I was really just in a dream, having to have my cuticles pushed back at all times, convinced that the blue I saw was a different blue than someone else saw - perhaps a red or a green - my red or green, of course. Another one of these quirks was really, really, really wanting to know what I looked like with my eyes closed. I would stand in front of the mirror and blink my eyes hoping to catch myself and get a glimpse. It never worked, of course. It was much like trying to lick your own ear or kiss your own elbow. Go ahead, try. Anyway, our computer has this feature called "Photo Booth" - kinda like a built-in web cam. The other day I was looking through all the pictures we have taken with it and found this photo. I now know what I look like with my eyes closed. One more neurosis down, a million more to go...

Chalkboard Wall Art by Ruby

A banana