14 September, 2011

Metamorphosis

I.  Hate.  Change.

This has been true of me since the womb.  And I don't mean that in the hyperbolic sense in which it is usually said.  I have literally hated change since the womb.

I already know you don't believe me, so strap in for story-time, y'all!

The story of my birth has been repeated to me so many times that it's almost as if I remember it firsthand.  I don't, though; my memory's not that good.  But I should warn you that this story was not told so many times as a warm-fuzzy, nostalgic, how-awesome-is-it-that-Rose-was-born? type of story.  Oh, no.  The story of my birth has been recounted for years for one reason, and one reason alone: to scold me.

Unlike my brother -- who came right on time and practically on his own, and then was fighting and squalling from the moment he hit the chilly hospital air -- I was a late, late baby.  I was supposed to be born in September, but I guess I wanted to be my dad's birthday present, because I didn't end up coming out until October, three days after Dad's birthday.

There are many reasons I might have been in there so long.  It's possible that the doctor's original estimate for my due date wasn't entirely correct.  But that's just like me, to assume that they were wrong, and not me.  Never me.  I'm always right.  To borrow from Gandalf: I'm never late; I always arrive precisely when I mean to.

However, I admit that's probably not why.  By the time October 14th rolled around, My Superhero Mom was swelled up like a miniature Hindenberg and ready to pop, suggesting that I'd probably been cooking for quite a while.

When that route fails me, I usually try to blame it on my Dad's family.  Dallases have always carried their babies a little longer than the average human woman, giving the term "Momma's boy" entirely new meaning in our family...  But that theory usually gets busted because of Brother's eager entry into the world.  That and because Mom is not a Dallas (our necks are pretty red, but our family tree does fork... most of the time).

So what I end up left with after all that is the probable reason for my late and dramatic emergence into life: my complete aversion to change.  Seriously, when my Dad tells me this story, he always ends up coming back around to how much I hate change.

So here's how it went down:

I'm a fetus, chillin' in My Superhero Mom's kick-awesome womb.  I was pretty happy there, yo.  You could tell by how much I would dance around in there.  Drove Mom crazy.  (On a completely unrelated sidenote: I was made entirely out of Mexican food.  Seriously.  My mom couldn't get enough of it).  So of course, I'm sittin' there, treating my mom's bladder like a soccer ball, and thinking, "This is a pretty sweet set-up."

I am a big believer in quitting while you're ahead.  If you are in a good situation, there is absolutely no reason for that situation to change in any way.  Heck, if you're in an acceptable situation, or maybe even a slightly bad, but tolerable situation, I don't really see the need for change then, either.  Change for the better, change for the worse -- doesn't matter, it's all undesirable in my book.

So little fetus-me is thinking there is no reason for me to leave this nice dark, warm place where I am constantly fed and happy.  And Mom clearly loves me in here, so I'll just hang out.

Then on October 14th, Mom threw me out.  She went to Centennial Hospital and had me induced.  Some chemical came along, popped its head into my cozy uteral home without knocking, and promptly evicted me from the premises.

Here we come to my knee-jerk reaction, and the reason for all the scolding.  Whenever change foists itself upon me (which, as anyone could have predicted, is unfortunately all-too-often), my automatic response is to curl in on myself and throw a fit.  We're not talking about a cute little foot stomping, or a sweet little lip sticking out in a pout.  Oh, no.  We're talking kicking, screaming, flailing, I-won't-do-it-and-you-can't-make-me explosions of unwillingness.

The first manifestation of this somewhat stupid coping mechanism occurred upon my birth.  While I was still on the way into the world -- before my tiny, purple little head had even tasted its first breath of polluted oxygen -- I threw a fit.

Angry with my mother for ousting me, I started breathing long before I was supposed to.  It was my only way to spite her.  Big surprise -- that did not end well.  You see, when you try to breathe when there's no air, it doesn't really work right.  So I basically ended up nearly drowning myself... before I was even born.

At this point, my Aunt Karen usually takes over and explains how when I came out all blue and wrong-looking, they rushed me off, but since my Aunt Karen was a nurse at the time, she got to be special and go with me...  Now, as a smoker for decades, I don't really think my Aunt Karen has the right to scold me about not breathing right.  But she does, all the time.  And my parents, grandparents, cousins, other aunts and uncles, and sometimes the random friends they've brought along do it, too.  So I guess I shouldn't have breathed in all that fluid.

Of course, I survived, as you probably deduced, being literate individuals.  But that's never the point of the story.  The point is that I hate change.

I hate change.

And, honestly, I didn't learn anything from nearly drowning myself almost 23 years ago.  Anytime anything changes, I still want to breathe prematurely just to spite the powers-that-be.  I want to curl up and spin a nice little cocoon, where I'll be able to sleep until the change is over.

I just want it to happen without me -- is that so hard?  I wouldn't mind so much if I could just wake up a couple months later once everything's settled again, and adjust to the aftereffects.  But noooooooooo, human girls aren't allowed to sleep for a couple of months to escape their problems.

So, here I am, in the midst of my biggest obstacle.  I'm changing jobs.  My family left for Texas on Monday, and as a result, I'm changing homes.  Last night, I even finished one journal and had to change over to the next.  Ch-ch-changes!

That's why I haven't written for a few months.  Well, and because I haven't had Internet.  But mostly because I hate change.

Did I mention that I hate change?

13 June, 2011

Request

When you work in a retail environment, you get the chance to people-watch extensively.  Since I am a people-watcher anyway, and since my overactive imagination likes to draw obscure conclusions, I have noticed something about the way children ask for candy.

If you've ever watched House, you know that there are five psychological stages a person passes through on his way to death.  You begin with Denial,  transition into Anger, cycle into Bargaining, fall into Depression, and then finally make your way to Acceptance.

House has all the answers.

What I have come to realize is that, when a child asks for candy, he goes through those stages.  In reverse.  I shall explain.

The last stage of death is Acceptance.  Basically, the child starts out dead, following his mom around the grocery store while she gets all the boring things that she has to cook before they are edible.  But when he enters this first/last stage, he wakes up from his stupor and accepts the following facts: 1) he is a child, 2) there is candy nearby, and 3) the combination of candy and child would be superhero-making.

The child will then exclaim, "Mommy, I want a Butterfinger!"

Normal moms will probably ignore this petition, which triggers the transition into the next stage: Depression.  The child can see the candy, and reach the candy, and touch the candy, but he cannot have the candy.  This causes whining, which stems out of the child's depression and is designed to cause depression in others.

The child will then wail, "Please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeease can I have a Butterfinger?"

If, at that point, the mother has not capitulated, a seamless switch into Bargaining occurs.  The child begins to barter with whatever is at his disposal.  Does he have a younger sibling?  Why yes, yes he does.  Does that younger sibling belong to him?  Why yes, yes he does.  Little brother = bargaining chip.

The child will then offer magnanimously, "I'll share it with Barrett, Mommy!  I'll share my Butterfinger with Barrett, if you get it for me!"

Hopefully, most moms acknowledge the child's generosity in offering.  However, if they still refuse to purchase the treat, the child will grow frustrated, which leads directly into Anger.  At first, the only way the child can express this anger is to pull a sour face, stomp his feet, and growl.  But once that phase has passed, he decides a threat will represent his anger well enough.

The child will then proclaim, "I won't stop asking you until you get me a Butterfinger!  Get me a Butterfinger!  Please, please, please, get me a Butterfinger!"

By this time, the mom usually has the excuse of having finished the transaction, thereby making it all a moot point.  She will most likely reprimand the child for his petulance, while gently explaining that it's time to go, and maybe he can get a treat next time if he behaves.  In order to process this acute rejection, the child slowly reaches the final/first stage of Denial.  He blocks the incident from his memory.

The child will then take his mother's hand and sigh, "I didn't really want a Butterfinger anyway."

The moral of the story is: Candy raises children from the dead.

Children can't live without candy.

That's a bunch of psycho-babble anyway--candy is a child's crystal meth.

Taking candy from a baby is as good as abortion.

There is no moral.  I'm just insane.

17 May, 2011

A Mighty Few

When I was in high school, I was on the newspaper staff.  It was a tiny little newspaper, powered entirely by its student members.  We designed the layouts, wrote the cheesy headlines, took the grainy pictures, cropped them to fit, spent hours searching for just the right piece of appropriate and amusing ClipArt... and yes, we wrote the articles.

In my first year as a member, my junior year, we were made aware of a significant event.  A previous alum, a Marine, had been given the Bronze Star after seeing combat in Afghanistan.

It just so happened that I knew The Marine, not through high school, but rather through church.  I had known him for years in that our-parents-run-in-the-same-circles way.

I could remember being over at their house when the boys (The Marine and his twin brother) were still in high school.  I can't remember why we were there or what I was doing.  But I do remember that the twin was on the computer, listening to The Marine, who was talking even then about his plans to join the military.  He even showed me how to do a real push-up.

Because of that connection, hearing about this high honor being conferred upon him made me ridiculously proud.

The time came to decide which of us would write the article, and although part of me really wanted to write it, the other part of me was scared to death of screwing it up.  But no one else felt up to the task, either; this was the most serious, most important news article we had ever written.  Eventually, I bit the bullet, and volunteered.

Other than an installment of the fictional story I was writing with PurpleFriend for the issue, the article about The Marine was my only other writing responsibility.

I won't lie.  I procrastinated.  Which is something I am very good at.

But I knew I had to write it.  I wanted to write it, and write it well.  So I got my mom involved.

My Superhero Mom got me The Marine's phone number by way of His Awesome Mom.  I sat next to the phone for two hours writing and re-writing my questions for him.  I was less-than-thrilled about talking on the phone, but for this purpose it seemed not only necessary, but also worthwhile.  I picked up the phone and dialed.

For the next 45 minutes or so, The Marine patiently answered my questions and explained the events leading up to his award.  I was overwhelmed.  The situation he was describing was far too intense for me to imagine, but you can bet my imagination did its best.  I was scared for my friend, so much so that my mouth went dry, and the pencil I used to record his words shook in my hand.

"I could feel the prayers," he told me near the end of the interview.  "There was no way I could have survived that without God... I was convinced those prayers were saving me."

Only a few minutes later, I hung up the phone, and cried.

The next day, I set about composing the article.  It began with The Marine's childhood dreams, and what followed was gunfire.  The story I wrote then was unique to my repertoire, being the only such story I'd ever set to paper that wasn't fictional.  The Marine, brave in a way I would never fully understand, put his own life in danger, while his fellow soldiers fell back to cover, to call in the coordinates for air support.  His efforts led to victory.

That ridiculous pride only grew stronger as I put the finishing touches on the article and cropped the picture of the ceremony provided by His Awesome Mom.  That article remains one of the best things I have ever written, merely because of the subject -- the character and courage of the subject.

A few weeks later, The Marine was actually in town.  He came to church with His Awesome Mom, who wanted to put the two of us face-to-face after our phone conversation and the article.  I just remember being nervous as all get-out, standing there in front of this person.  I'd known him for years, sure, but now he was a Marine, and a hero to boot!  I couldn't speak.  I just smiled like an idiot.

He held out his hand for a handshake.

It is pertinent to tell you at this juncture in the story, that The Marine was not very tall.  I think I was 5'7"ish as a junior in high school, and height-wise, he didn't top me by much.

But good Lord, did that boy have muscles.

He held out that hand to shake mine, and I could feel my eyes going wide.  I was sure his bicep was as big as I was.  I was also sure he could crush my hand by accident.  But I swallowed, took that hand, and shook it as firmly as I could.  (I am absolutely certain he was not fooled in any way.  The Marine definitely knew I was a wimp).

I think after that, we exchanged a few words about life, the article, and tattoos, but my memory of the conversation is honestly a little fuzzy.  I was half-focused on his words and half-focused on the color rising into my face.

Our paths crossed a few more times, but for the most part, my knowledge of The Marine after that was indirect.

I knew when he got married.  And my parents helped him out quite a bit when he moved.  And through his twin brother, to whom I was and am much closer, I was fortunate enough to hear about him, his wife, his two adorable little girls.  I knew him that way, and loved him because of it.

I am just a wanna-be writer, with extra words tucked into every corner of my head.  Those words could never be enough to describe the kind of person he was, the amount of love and prayers that surrounded him daily, the pride he incited just by being what he was born to be.  But I wouldn't have felt right if I didn't at least try.

God rest you, Kevin Balduf.  You were more than a hero to me.

16 May, 2011

Diplomatic

In honor of my blog's redesign, I hereby confer upon you a new post.

You're welcome.

Let's begin with a story from my childhood.  Yes, that's right.  Another one.  Let's face it, folks-- I had a long and eventful childhood, and I retain useless memories like Arnold Schwarzenneger retains a very good lawyer: just in case.

This particular gem has stuck with me through the years because it was a realization that was relevant to my daily life.  You see, at my little elementary school, we got an hour of recess every day.  As a child, I utilized every moment of my time outside, as you may remember from previous posts.

One day, I was playing with a group of similarly adventurous children, when we decided to go past the boundary.  This was a big no-no.  But all the teachers were occupied watching the littlest kids struggle with the monkey bars, and all the high grass looked like a huge adventure waiting to happen.  So, like the intrepid explorers of olde, we stepped over the log benches and into the unknown.

We frolicked around in the grass for almost the entire hour of recess, until a teacher realized that half the first grade class was missing, and came to find us.  For most of my classmates, it was too late.

Don't worry-- nobody dies in this blog post.  They just get really bad boo-boos.

You see, the next morning, when everyone arrived at school, they had all these welts and red spots all over them.  Our teacher took one look and diagnosed it as poison ivy.  But I, who had been the forerunner of them all (no, literally, we played Follow-the-Leader, and the Leader was moi), did not have a single spot to show for my midday romp through the forbidden grass.

Later on in life, I learned that through an accident of genetics, no one in my family is allergic to poison ivy, unlike the majority of the human species.  But at the time, I was SuperGirl.

This is where I change the subject in a way that seems completely random, but which will eventually circle back around to the original story, thereby making this a (somewhat) coherent blog post.

I got pulled over tonight.  By a cop.  With blue flashy lights and everything.  Also, I was five feet away from the gate to my apartment complex.

Somehow, I have only been pulled over four times in my life.  That may seem like a lot for a 22-year-old, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I break traffic laws.  Like a lot.  Particularly speeding.  Sometimes I run lights late at night.  And sometimes I roll right on through stop signs (like I did tonight).  But usually, I don't get caught.

Incident #1: The first time I got pulled over, I was speeding over the Interstate in Monteagle, a little podunk town where everybody, but everybody, speeds over the Interstate.  At least 50 (in a 35).  Anyway, I was going 50, and I got pulled over.  BrownFriend was in the car with me, so it was super-embarrassing that I got pulled over for the first time with someone there to witness my shame.  However, at the time, I was not too concerned about it.

I had just found out that my mother had breast cancer.  Again.  So you can imagine my distress.  BrownFriend and I were actually on the way to the CVS so that I could buy pink hair dye, to show my solidarity.  I was crying.  I probably shouldn't have been driving while I was crying, but... oh, well.

So the cop pulls me over, tells me how fast I was going, sees that I am incredibly upset, and takes pity on me.

End Result: No Ticket.

Incident #2: Same place, about a year later.  Remember how everybody speeds over the Interstate?  Still true.  And I was following one such everybody to a Retirement Home.  I had never had occasion to visit the Old Folks' Home before now, so I had to keep up with this OneSuchEverybody.  We go 50 in a 35.  Blue lights hit my rear view mirror.

In my car with me are three very scared little freshmen, members of my a capella choir (which is going to perform at the Old Folks' Home).  They sit timidly and make themselves as small as possible as -- yes-- the very same cop who had previously pardoned me strolled up to the window.

I believe I squeaked out something along the lines of, "Evening, officer."  I was just proud that I wasn't crying this time.

I explain the situation, that I would be lost with OneSuchEverybody, and he laughingly admits that it was a "crapshoot between which of [us] [he] was going to pull over," since OneSuch was not only speeding, but also had a tail light out.

End Result: No Ticket.

Incident #3: We'll be back in the Music City for this one.  There is a spot on one of our main roads where it is really easy to speed, since the stretch of road is levelling out from a rather substantial little hill.  Unless you ride your brake on the way down, you'll probably be speeding by the time you reach this little patch of highway.  Naturally, I am not one who is often inclined to ride her brake.  Also, it was 3am.  So I was speeding.

Blue lights.  Little siren blip.  I pull over, shut my engine off.

A red-haired cop with braces -- braces!  And he was at least 30... -- comes to my window.  I hand him all the usual documents and cards.  We had a very simple conversation that went something like:

Officer: Do you know how fast you were going?
Me: Yep.  55.  [In a 45.]
Officer: Oh.  Um... do you have any medical or other reason to be going so fast?
Me: Nope.
Officer: Oh.  Uh, okay.  Wait here.

He runs my license through his little whatever-they-have-that-runs-those-things.  He comes back.

Officer: You've never gotten a ticket before, have you?
Me: Nope.
Officer: You'd like to keep it that way, I'll bet, wouldn't you?
Me: Uhhhhh, yeah!
Officer: Slow down, okay?

He handed me my license back.

End Result: No Ticket.

Incident #4: Tonight, after getting off work at 11pm, having slipped magnificently (flying shoes and all) and hurt my tailbone rather badly, I was in a little bit of a hurry getting home.  Normally I am quite careful on the road I take to my apartment complex.  It's a speed trap, and PurpleFriend can attest to the fact that police cars often camp out by the one stop sign along the road just to ticket innocent people who maybe roll a little bit instead of fully stopping.

I rolled through that stop sign like it was a yield sign that was just pretending.

Blue lights, all that jazz.

I pulled over, turned off my engine, got out my license.  However, he asked for my registration also, and when I opened my glove compartment to get it, my whole glove compartment fell off the dashboard.  I fished my registration out of the wreckage and handed it to the police officer, who explained that I really ought to stop at the stop sign.

When he returned two moments later, he handed me my license, my registration, asked me if I knew which stop sign he was talking about, and upon hearing that I did, bid me a good night.

End Result: No Ticket.

I wish a cop would give me a ticket.  I deserve a ticket.  I feel pretty guilty about the fact that I have gotten away with this four times.

But, in the end, I guess it's not just poison ivy I'm immune to.

22 March, 2011

Whispers

I think my air conditioning can tell on me.

Where have I been, you ask?  Oh, losing a job, finishing a novel, experiencing the numb faces of dentistry... Basically, life happened and it sort of caught me off guard.  But that's not why I am writing today.

I am writing because my A/C is a tattle-tale.

As far as I knew, my air conditioning and I were getting along just fine.  Sure, there was a little rattling sometimes.  And yeah, it's definitely been hotter than I'd like in my apartment of late.  But overall, I thought our relationship was pretty good.  If not good, definitely functional.

Apparently I was wrong.  While I was slumbering the morning away, peacefully and deeply, my air conditioner must have been complaining to a higher power.  I know it was telling on me, because I was awakened fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to go off by some fairly persistent pounding on my front door.

By the time the pounding finally broke through my dreams and propelled me out of bed, my cats were extremely curious about my visitors.  I lured them away from the door before cracking it open.  Outside were two guys with toolboxes.

"Hi there," they greet me, and the one closest to me clearly has a laugh in his voice.  I can't really blame him.  I was wearing penguin pajamas.

Squinting in the spring sunlight, I clear my throat and say something like, "Hi.  Can I help you?"

LaughingGuy squints back at me.  "Yeah, we're here to fix the air conditioner."  He says it with authority.  I frown in confusion.  "What's it doing?" he asks me, all solicitation and concern.

I make some hems and some haws.

"Nothing, huh?" he laughs.  He seems to like to do that.

"Nothing that I know of," I agree.  After a moment of hesitation, I figure these guys look pretty legit.  "Come on in," I offer, and open the door.

The next few minutes saw me trying to get my cats into a different room (they were quite uncooperative), and saw the toolbox guys taking apart my air conditioner (they were quite unconcerned about my cats).  But they needed a tool from the truck, so while they went to get that, I got my cats into my room and changed into regular clothing.  Well, as regular as ever, anyway.

And then five minutes later, they had fixed whatever I didn't know was wrong.

LaughingGuy wipes his hands on his jeans.  "You keep an eye on your filter, huh?"

I just repeat that last word back, "Huh?"

"Your filter.  It's really clean."

"Oh, yeah."  I don't know anything about that filter.  The fact that it was clean was pure dumb luck.

LaughingGuy nods in approval.  "Most of these people don't even know they have a filter."

Little does he know that I am one such "most people."

"It's kind of scary."  LaughingGuy jokes around with OtherGuy as they leave, and then they are out the door.  My morning interruption is over before my alarm has even gone off.

Vaguely, I wonder if they made up the thing about the A/C and the loose connection just to get a look at what they can steal later, but then I remember that they've seen my vicious guard cats, so they probably won't try anything.

I suppose it is possible it was making some kind of ungodly racket that only my neighbors could hear.
Still, though, I don't know how they knew to come.  Unless Big Brother's name is Lee.

I'm going to be a lot more guarded with my air conditioner now that I know it's got a big mouth.  And a filter.

05 March, 2011

Monstroffity

I have finally figured out what I should do with my life!

I have discovered a product with huge potential, as yet overlooked by most marketing agencies.  There are a few independent chains, mostly headed up by moms, but in the market at large, it remains quite obscure.  This product is going to sweep the parental demographic.  This product is going to make me millions!

This product was invented by my grandmother.

When I was a child, I was relentlessly pursued and harrassed by a veritable phalanx of monsters.  These monsters were masters of disguise, friends of darkness.  They hid in my closets, under my bed, in my drawers, under my pillow, in the faucet of the kitchen sink, beneath the living room carpet... everywhere.

Thankfully, these monsters had one weakness, that I knew of: light.  Sleeping with a night-light on left me completely unplagued by the photophobic creatures.  Also, I could make shadow puppets on the wall to protect me.  I had bodyguards of the llama, dog, butterfly, and giraffe variety, but no monster was a match for my shadow brachiosaurus.

This was all very well and good when I was at home, but on the rare occasion that I would spend the night with my grandmother, I had no choice but to sleep without a night-light.  I did my best to be brave.  I had a habit of growling softly until I fell asleep, and then growling some more anytime I happened to wake up for a few minutes during the night.  I thought that would be at least a little intimidating for any potential attackers.

Even as a child, I had extremely vivid, realistic dreams.  I remember them very clearly, and there are even some dreams that have repeated themselves since I was a child, popping up every now and then.  Trying to run away from wolves/coyotes is one such dream.  Another is getting a glass of water, only to realize that your return path to your room is littered with red-eyed crocodiles.  I also have a strange tendency to dream about post-apocalyptic worlds.

But when I was little, my dreams were simpler.  They were brighter.  They were scarier.

I remember one night, in particular, when I was staying with Grandmother.  We had both gone to bed early, and I had been sick not long before, so my rest came in fits and spurts.  After one such fit, I woke from a nightmare, thinking I was about to be devoured by some heinous creature.

I ran screaming for Grandmother, who was of course more than a match for any monster merely because she was too awesome for words.  Obviously.

This was not the first time I had panicked.  Grandmother had lots of experience calming me down and keeping monsters at bay.  But on this particular evening, for some reason, she decided I should sleep in my own bed.  So, she got out of the bed, slipped her feet into her blue houseshoes, and went to the kitchen.

She returned with a spray can.  Showing it to me, she told me she was getting tired of all the monsters in her house.  The last time I had been there, she said, she realized what a big problem it was.  So she had gone out and gotten some 'Monster-Spray.'

Awed, I listened as she explained that this Monster-Spray would chase away all the monsters, ghouls, ghosts, creatures, and thingamajigs in the whole house.  Not one evil thing could withstand the spray's deadly aerosol formula.

I padded around behind my grandmother as she sprayed every nook and cranny in her house.  We must have been monster-proofing for at least an hour or two, but Grandmother was very thorough.  She even let me spray it sometimes.  And after we were done, I drifted off into blissful sleep, confident that the only non-human creature still present in the house was my Grandmother's cat, Shasta, whom Grandmother assured me was immune to Monster-Spray.

I have invented my own brand, based off of that experience.  It is sure to be a hit with all the little children facing similar problems to those of my young days.


Castle in Ireland, here I come!

Thanks, Grandmother.

03 March, 2011

Dig

When I was six years old, I told my grandmother I was going to be an archaeologist.  For at least two years before that, I had been set on being a paleontologist.  But after a trip to Arizona, during which we visited the great Mesa Verde ruins, I was now convinced that I liked Native Americans way more than dinosaurs.

The movie Jurassic Park had inspired my initial interest in dinosaurs.  The first time I tried to watch the movie, I admittedly couldn't make it past the T-Rex escaping and terrorizing the Jeeps.  But my grandmother insisted I would love the movie, and as a four-year old, I trusted my grandmother completely.

We watched it again.  I covered my eyes during the scary scenes, and sat fascinated for the rest.  The brachiosauri, the triceratops, the gallimimus, and even the dilophosaurus caught my imagination, and although I was quite terrified of the tyrannosaur, I thought he was pretty awesome too.

We won't talk about the velociraptors.

From then on, I became that nerdy kid.  I was the kid with the dinosaur books, and not the fun ones where some little boy has a dinosaur as a pet, but boring ones with hardly any pictures.  At five years of age, I could discourse intelligently on several different theories of the dinosaurs' sudden extinction.  When I was in kindergarten, the second grade teacher asked me to come in and teach the lesson about dinosaurs.

I knew all the most common dinosaurs, what periods they would have lived in, what they ate, their social behaviors... I was a dinosaur encyclopedia in miniature, fun-sized for your convenience.  I maintain much of this knowledge even today -- I can't begin to tell you my dismay when they announced that the brontosaurus was a hoax.

Pluto isn't a planet.  Tomatoes aren't a vegetable.  Indigo isn't a color.  And brontosauri never existed.  Our modern world is a killjoy.

You can imagine, since I displayed such devotion to my paleontological pursuits, that the experience I had at Mesa Verde was quite powerful.  It caused me to rethink my life plan.  Whereas most little six-year-old girls wanted to be princesses or supermodels or the first female president, I was now absolutely certain I would be an archaeologist.

As my fascination with history grew, I spread a wide net.  I took in American history, world history, prehistoric theories, myths and legends of prominent cultures.  But my real passion was for Native Americans, particularly those of the nomadic and puebloan southwest.

Very soon after declaring my archaeological ambitions, I developed a healthy fascination for a southwestern Native American symbol: Kokopelli.  His legend permeates most of the western region of the United States, and goes as far south as the Mayans in Central America.  Legend has it that an actual, wandering flute player travelled around the region's trade routes, playing his wooden flute and trading trinkets (mostly jewelry and precious materials like turquoise, obsidian, and shells).  This paragraph actually has nothing to do with anything -- I just wanted to tell you about Kokopelli.

My family and friends were all very supportive of my career choice.  When I was in middle school, my mother even enrolled me in an archaeology program at the Belle Meade plantation.  I was thrilled.  Over the span of two summers, I spent about a month digging stuff up.

I learned how to grid a dig area, how to dig by level, how you ought to sift the dirt to make sure you aren't missing anything.  I got pretty frustrated with the number of buttons and nails we uncovered our first summer, when we dug at the site of an old tool shed.  But even more frustrating was when we found a complete hinge, rusted through, and had to continue to dig by level around it, rather than simply pulling it out triumphantly.

I learned (with less enthusiasm), how to catalogue, label, and describe each and every item you unearthed, no matter how modern or boring or small some of those items happened to be.  In my second summer, I bagged and recorded everything from pig bones to a bottle cap from an old school, 20-oz. glass bottle of Coca-Cola.

I learned how to research your area in relation to your finds, so as to form an educated and plausible theory about what you have uncovered.  We were fortunate when we dug at the tool shed to already have historical records indicating its location on the plantation.  We were less fortunate with our information during the second summer, when we were the first to dig on newly reacquired land.

We knew the land had once belonged to the plantation, that it had been sold sometime in the early 1900s, and that it had been mostly farm and pastureland.  So you can imagine our surprise when we dug to only Level 3 (not very deep at all) and uncovered a layer of rocks, clearly man-made.

We speculated about its usage, trying to justify it with the smaller artifacts we had already gathered.  Nails, bones, and bottlecaps aside, there wasn't much to give us clues.  Perhaps a farm road, or the foundation of a small cabin?  But afer much speculation and digging an entire four-square grid of next-to-nothing, we found our answer in the photographical archives of the plantation -- a barbecue pit.  It was invigorating.  (I'm sure that longwinded explanation wasn't boring for you at all).

I remained glued to my dreams of working in the dirt all the way until my freshman year of college.  As it often does with people far more motivated than myself, college changed me.  I realized I had a penchant for languages, and a serious weakness about homework.

I quickly understood that an anthropology major would be a lot of hard work, and also kind of awful.  My first and only anthropology class was taught by a professor who officially turned me off to the entire department.  Within a month, she had informed us that we knew nothing about Scotland, and we were stupid if we thought we did.  She also succeeded in teaching me that, according to gender stereotypes, I should have been a guy.  I loathed that class, and all its stereotypes.

So I changed my tune.  Yet I still found myself connected to certain quirks I had developed as a budding archaeologist.  Two, in particular, stick with me even now.

1- Trash.  I have a thing about trash.  Maybe that's why I am so fascinated by litter on the roads, or by what my apartment neighbors throw out.  You can learn a lot about people from their trash.  Thousands of years from now, when our civilization is just dust, future archaeologists will be conducting major digs in our land fills.

2- Journals.  Although they can be rather unreliable, journals are a huge historical resource.  They are often very informative without even intending to be.  Because of this conviction, I decided that I ought to keep journals myself, for the benefit of the future historians and archaeologists.  My journals are completely wacky, but I do throw in tidbits about the news of the day sometimes.  If you can sift through the crazy, you'll find some historical gems, I think.

Similarly, I wrote letters during college, since many records can be traced back to an exchange of letters.  This has faded over time, but I still wish that snail mail was the most common communication method.  I like it way better than email, and infinitely more than the phone.  But it's not, so this paragraph is a moot point.  I'm just full of useless paragraphs today.

Now that I've dropped out of college and started paying off my Exorbitant Money-Sucking Loans, I find myself coming full circle.  I still want to be an archaeologist.  That childhood dream is not dead.  It's fitting, in a way.  When I declared a Russian major, I considered my archaeological aspirations to be ancient history, and here I am discovering them all over again.

I guess what I'm saying is, we have to chase our dreams while we're still young.  Responsible Adult Limbo sucks in so, so many ways, but the only way out is up.  We're allowed to use this time to figure out what we're doing.  We can make mistakes, we can learn, we can still be growing up.  This is the time for adventures.

My adventure started in a barbecue pit.  Who knows where that road will take me?

01 March, 2011

Frazzled

Sometimes, I randomly get overwhelmingly nervous about:
  • the overpass collapsing on my car.
  • whether the bug I am investigating might be poisonous.
  • the fact that the GPS in my phone is making me a magnet for government conspiracies.
  • trees falling on my house (worst case scenario: it's also raining).
  • the fact that I don't know how the internet works, but I use it all the time anyway.
  • how I legitimately cannot stop biting my nails.
  • the possibility that I might inadvertently alienate all my loved ones and end up alone.
  • being forced to give up sugar and meat (my dentist told me I had to stop drinking Dr Pepper-- he doesn't understand that it's literally ALL I drink).
  • whether the world really is ending.
  • losing my job.
  • never losing my job.
  • animals escaping from the zoo.
  • the fact that it will be winter again at some point.
  • the possibility that I don't own every recorded piece of music by Kate Nash and/or Parachute Musical.
  • brain aneurysms.
  • nuclear war.
  • a bird pooping on me.
  • whether or not the people in the car next to me can hear me singing.
  • rabid dogs.
  • whether blue eyes can see into my soul.
  • the existence of chupacabras.
  • spontaneous combustion.
  • wearing shoes too much (worst case scenario: my feet shrivel up from lack of oxygen/blood and I never walk again).
  • whether turtles bite.
  • self-destructive word vomit.
  • the fact that I will be donating blood at some point in the next three years.
  • the sun never coming out again.
  • the inevitable literacy issues of the next generation/the degeneration of the English language.
  • whether people are keeping huge secrets from me.
  • whether the meat I'm cooking has gone bad.
  • losing my ability to smell.
  • time and relativity theories.
  • whether my freckles are multiplying.
  • talking on the phone.
  • crashing my computer on accident (not unprecedented).
  • America becoming a dictatorship.
  • time travel paradoxes affecting my reality (for this one, I blame GreenFriend).
  • going to jail on trumped-up charges.
  • whether the guy in front of me in the grocery line is packing heat.
  • where I left my iPod.
  • the fact that I am responsible for two feline lives.
  • becoming my CrazyAunt.
  • what would happen if McDonald's went out of business.
  • someone actually succeeding in a world domination plot.
  • dying by suffocation.
  • when my pen runs out of ink.
  • sitting on something gross.
  • how I don't burp.
  • the fact that I don't own pepper spray.
  • coming into contact with acid.
  • losing all my Word documents.
  • not remembering things.
  • how I am pregnant (despite the fact that it is physically impossible).
  • my toes cramping and then getting stuck that way.
  • the possibility of crying in front of other people.
  • sneezing (worst case scenario: when your heart stops, it doesn't start working again)
  • whether the road kill is still slightly alive.
  • being attacked by a vulture or a goose.
  • bedbugs.
  • my complete inability to believe I might get a happy ending.
  • what it would feel like to pierce your ear with a staple remover.
  • other people reading combinations of words that were written by me.
  • if I have something in my teeth.
  • what I look like when I've been injected with Novocaine.
  • whether an important person in any given situation can read my mind.
  • what fashion will be like when I'm old.
  • how animals don't use toilet paper.
  • experiencing impale-ment, directly or only as a witness.
  • whether there are actually situations in which it is acceptable to end a sentence in a preposition.
  • how I can't veto males from my friends' lives.
  • being a disappointment.
  • if inanimate objects have feelings.
  • leaving my curtains/windows open at night (worst case scenario: the ability to see a glimpse of my apartment entices home invaders to climb in).
  • misspelling things.
  • being the only person available to respond to [insert crisis/emergency here].
  • being annoying.
  • being forgotten.
  • ever being in a situation in which I require an IV.
  • losing my hair.
  • offending someone by double-dipping a chip.
  • how camels and deer walk with backwards knees (it just makes me really uncomfortable).
  • coming in contact with my arch-allergen for the first time, causing anaphylactic shock/instant death.
  • what to do with leftovers.
  • what I would do with three wishes.
  • being trampled by/crushed in a crowd.
  • never amounting to anything.
  • being this nervous forever.
  • everything I'm nervous about coming true.

27 February, 2011

Carcinogens

THINGS THAT CAUSE CANCER
(And Whether or Not I Agree)

1.) Air Pollution
I am inclined to agree with this one.  Air pollution certainly causes respiratory problems.  And I find that a large part of cancer is the build-up of gunk in places it shouldn't be.  When you breathe in the gunk, there's not many places it can go...

2.) Global Warming
Since I am one of those people who believes in cycles (as I've said before), I don't believe that global warming or climate change is something that humans are affecting.  It seems to me that humans are alarmists, in general, and now that we're taking records of everything in the universe (literally), we're scared we're somehow negatively affecting the planet that routinely kicks our butts with natural disasters.  Ergo, I do not believe that global warming causes cancer.

3.) Pesticides
This one seems quite plausible.  I am far more likely to subscribe to a general belief in man-made cancer causes.  This one has been linked to many sicknesses, cancer only one among them, and I have to say it probably did have a hand in a few cases of cancer.  Once again, the gunk where it doesn't belong...

4.) Toothpaste
The toothpaste they mean is the kind with fluoride or bleach (the same things that make our tap water murderous).  I disagree with this one entirely.  I think a little fluoride is good for you.  A lot of it isn't, I'll grant you that.  But that's easy to avoid -- just don't swallow a whole tube of toothpaste, m'kay?

5.) Tobacco
Yes.  Cigarettes and chewing tobacco most certainly cause cancer.  That is a lot of gunk in a lot of places where it just really shouldn't ever be.  Honestly, who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to draw smoke into your lungs?

6.) French Fries
Sorry, McDonald's.  I mean, I don't think they cause cancer.  But adding cancer to a long list of other reasons that fast food is unhealthy... well, that sucks for you.  Good thing I'll always be a loyal customer (multiple blockages, here I come)!

7.) Bottled Water
Tap water kills us, and bottled water causes cancer.  Water destroys us all.  Dr Pepper inherits the earth!

8.) Cooked Foods
We're doomed.

9.) Aspartame
That nasty sugar substitute they put in diet drinks definitely causes cancer.  I whole-heartedly agree.  I've also heard, however, that drinking anything out of an aluminum can leads to cancer.  That is patently untrue (if it were true, I would have been dead long ago).

10.) Dairy
As the milkman's (legitimate) daughter, I must take issue with this one.  Sure, lactose intolerance sucks, but dairy cause cancer?  Come on, now.  I don't think so.  Milk makes you big and strong.  I know 'cause my daddy told me so.

11.) Pet Birds
Having seen the living state of some pet birds, I am willing to believe they carry/cause diseases in humans.  So I'll agree with this one.

12.) Chewing Gum
Every cheerleader on the face of the earth would drop dead of cancer if that were true.  I highly doubt chewing gum causes cancer.

13.) Winter
Winter definitely causes cancer.  I agree fully.  Winter will kill me, one of these days.

14.) Toasters
Despite men's tendency to cover up anything important when activating toasters, microwaves, ovens, etc., I really don't think that electric heat causes cancer.  Sorry, guys.

15.) Celery
Ha!  It causes cancer!  I do not have to eat it!  Take that, veggies!

16.) Left-Handedness
You would think that in a world that has created the iPad, we would be past the archaic bias against the left hand, which is born out of customs we abolished when we invented toilet paper.  Being left-handed has absolutely no effect on your health.  Left-handers have rights too!

17.) Peanuts
Have you seen some of the bars where they have peanuts in open containers?  Yuck.  Maybe peanuts themselves don't cause cancer, but I think those places just might.

18.) Gingerbread
Maybe an ulcer.  Definitely cavities.  But cancer?  You're not gonna sell me on that one.

19.) Hair Dyes
Having been the victim of permanent hair dye myself, and having seen permanent hair dye cause hair to literally break off, I have to say this one isn't totally unfounded.  The things we do for beauty... or rebellion.

20.) Brooms
Apparently, some people believe sweeping causes nose cancer, because of the particles you kick up during the process.  Those are the same people that believe drinking from aluminum cans screws up your mouth. I'm going with a no on that one.

21.) Baby Food
As much as I would like to say Gerber isn't laying the groundwork for horrific disease, that nasty pudding-like perversion of solid food is chock full of preservatives and chemicals.  Gunk.

22.) Wallpaper
I am not sure how people think this is possible.  Maybe if you stared at it long enough you could get eye cancer... but no, not even then, I don't think.

23.) Flying
I can sort of see how one might think that changing altitudes so rapidly, repeatedly over a span of time, might cause some problems.  I am not sold on the idea that it causes cancer, but inner ear problems?  Circulation issues?  Nosebleeds?  Yeah, it causes problems sometimes..

24.) Exercise
Wait.  I thought I was supposed to exercise.  Now if I exercise, I'm risking cancer?  Sorry, but I just don't buy it.  Not when those endorphins are telling me otherwise?  Endorphins don't lie -- that's why chocolate should be its own food group.

25.) The Sun
I hate that this one is undeniably a factor in some cases of skin cancer.

The fact of the matter is, we live in a world where everything causes cancer.  I have come to believe that the main cause of cancer is The Fear of Getting Cancer.  Therefore, I choose to live it up, avoid as much gunk as possible, and believe with all my heart that I am going to be the crotchety old lady handing out candy to my favorite little kids.  I defy cancer to happen to me.  Let's see if my theory is right.

25 February, 2011

Modus Operandi: Part 2

(Director has now eaten breakfast and has been forced to change out of her pajamas.  But she is now ready to continue the story.)  Ken bursts into Barbie's house.

KEN: Kelly!  Kelly, where are you?!

He doesn't really look for Kelly, though.  He heads straight for the kitchen and the telephone.  (Director makes all appropriate noises).

POLICEMAN: (also Greg, in a lesser role) 9-1-1.  What's going on?

KEN: My girlfriend just got kidnapped.

POLICEMAN: (gasps) I'll send someone out there immediately!

KEN: Thank you!

Ken hangs up.  Now that he has called the police, he feels free to look for Kelly in earnest.

KEN: Kelly!  Kelly, where are you?!  Your sister's been kidnapped!  We have to help her!

Ken is louder than Barbie, but Kelly still can't hear him in the incredibly high attic.  She continues to play.  Ken also thinks that Kelly is too short to get into the attic, so he looks everywhere but where she actually is.

Meanwhile, two policemen arrive (played by Greg and Ariel, without her fin) and knock on the door.  Ken opens the door, harried and nervous.

KEN: Thank goodness!

POLICEMAN: What's the deal here, sir?

POLICEWOMAN: We heard someone got kidnapped?

KEN: Yes, my girlfriend, Barbie.  And I can't find her sister, either.  They might have kidnapped her too!

POLICEMAN: Did you see who did it?

KEN: Yeah, some guy dressed in black.  He grabbed her and put her in his van.

POLICEWOMAN: Where did he go?

KEN: He went that way.

(Director grunts with the effort of making Ken point.  His right arm is sticky because of that one time when she played Barbies while she ate her peanut butter and jelly sandwich).

POLICEWOMAN: Thanks, we're on it.

KEN: Wait!  Who did this?

POLICEMAN: Well, we can't be sure, but we think it was probably Larry Ferguson.

(One of Director's classmates has the last name Ferguson.  They don't get along).

KEN: But, Larry Ferguson is Barbie's stepfather!

POLICEWOMAN: Yeah, but what nobody knows is he's her evil stepfather.  We've been trying to catch him for weeks.

POLICEMAN: He's really smart and sneaky.  So if you're going to try to rescue her, be careful.

KEN: Oh, I will.  Thank you.

POLICEMAN: Keep looking for Kelly.  Tell us if you find her.

POLICEWOMAN: We'll go after Ferguson.  We'll let you know when he's in jail for good.

KEN: Thanks.

The policemen leave.  Ken sits down on the front porch and drops his head into his hands to think.

Cut to Barbie, who is now blindfolded, gagged, and tied to a chair.  (Director tried to actually do all those things, but only succeeded in getting a ribbon over Barbie's eyes and making her sit in a chair.  Unfortunately, Director doesn't have any Barbie-sized furniture, so the chair is a full-sized one, and Greg has to walk around on the chair with her to talk).

GREG: Did you think you could get away, Barbie?  You know I have spies all over the place.

BARBIE: Mmph, grash asph sjqwmff.

Greg takes off her blindfold/gag.

BARBIE: (gasps) But... you're my stepfather!  How dare you?!

GREG: I know you know where the treasure is.  Your mom told you, didn't she?

(There's ALWAYS treasure involved).

BARBIE: I don't know what you're talking about.

GREG: Well, fine!

He stomps on her foot.

BARBIE: Oooooouch!

GREG: Do you know what I'm talking about now?

BARBIE: NO!

(Director spends an inordinate amount of time making Greg pace back and forth while she decides what to do next).

GREG: How about NOW?!

Greg pushes Barbie through the slats of the chair, where she falls the the ground and hurts hurself badly. (Thankfully, Director subscribes to the George of the Jungle method: "Nobody dies in this movie.  They just get really bad boo-boos.")  Barbie gets up and tries to limp away, still tied up (Director squeezes Barbie's hands together behind her back while she hops away, ignoring how Barbie's arms weren't made to do that).

Greg jumps nimbly down from the chair and lands in front of Barbie, cutting off her escape.

BARBIE: Let me go!  I don't know where it is!  Let me go!

GREG: We'll just see about that, Barbie.  We'll just see about that.

Cut back to Ken, formulating a plan on the front porch.  Suddenly, Sabrina appears. (Sabrina is actually a pretty scary doll, having been dumped in mud multiple times, and covered in marker from a recent makeover.  But boy, does Sabrina think she's pretty).  Sabrina poses in front of Ken.

SABRINA: What's wrong, Ken?

KEN: Sabrina!  Thank goodness you're here!  Do you know where Barbie's stepfather lives?

SABRINA: Of course.  But why do you want to go there?  We should just go to the mall.

KEN: I don't want to go to the mall.  Barbie's been kidnapped, and I have to find her!

SABRINA: Why would her stepfather kidnap her?

KEN: I don't know, but I'm going to find out!  Can you take me to her stepfather's house?

SABRINA: Yeah, whatever.

Ken follows Sabrina to the general vicinity of the chair, where Barbie and Greg still fight inaudibly.  They watch until Greg leaves Barbie, forcing her to do some kind of housework (probably clean the room.  Director hates cleaning her room.  Usually when her Barbies are forced to do menial labor, they have to clean the room or mop the floor).

Seizing the opportunity, Ken starts to climb through a window to get to Barbie, but Sabrina pulls him back down.  She holds his arms behind his back and marches him into the house to see Greg.

SABRINA: He was trying to rescue her.  Do you think he knows something?

GREG: Maybe.  Put him in the basement with Barbie.  We'll make them talk.

SABRINA: Yes, sir.

Sabrina marches Ken down the longest hallway ever at a snail's pace (so they can converse).

KEN: Why are you doing this?  I thought you liked me!

SABRINA: I do like you!  But you're in love with Barbie!  Why should I help you when you won't even go to the mall with me?

(For Director, the only good thing about the mall is the Hello Kitty store).

KEN: You should help me because you know that Larry is wrong!  He's treating his own stepdaughter like a slave just to get to some stupid treasure!

SABRINA: It's a lot of treasure!  We're gonna be rich!

KEN: You won't be rich if you can't find it.

SABRINA: What's that supposed to mean?  Do you know where it is?

KEN: Why should I tell you?

SABRINA: 'Cause if you don't, we'll kill you.

KEN: Then you'll have to kill me.

Sabrina pushes Ken into the basement with Barbie.  He tumbles down (invisible) stairs and hits his head when he lands.

SABRINA: You asked for it!

Sabrina walks away, cackling.  Barbie and Ken are reunited, but scared and uncertain how to get out.  They try to escape through the window, out a back door, and even try getting back through the house to the front door, but are always thwarted by Sabrina and/or Greg.

(By this time in the game, Director is getting really tired of playing Barbies.  But not wanting to leave Ken and Barbie in such a perilous situation, she rushes through the rest of the story).

Greg and Sabrina torture Barbie and Ken by way of quicksand, trying to find out where the treasure is.  (The torture is always quicksand or water.  The quicksand is actually colored sand from a sand art kit Director got for her birthday a while back.  The water always comes from the bathroom sink).

GREG: Tell us where the treasure is and we'll pull you out.

BARBIE: Why should we believe you?

GREG: You don't have a choice!

KEN: I think you're gonna let us die either way!

SABRINA: You're dumb!  Shut up!

GREG: Tell us where the treasure is, now!  You have to!

BARBIE: No way!  We'll never tell you!

(Even though Barbie is the one always getting kidnapped, Director has a habit of making her the strongest character in the story.  Ken is usually just along for the ride.  This probably has some kind of deeper meaning to any psychologists reading out there).

GREG: Then the quicksand is gonna eat you and I'm not doing anything about it!

KELLY: (appearing out of nowhere with the policemen) Hi-ya! (kicks Greg)

GREG: WAUGH! (falls into the quicksand)

SABRINA: Hey, you can't do that!

KELLY: Yes I can!  Hi-ya! (kicks Sabrina repeatedly)

SABRINA: Quit it!  Stop!  I'll help you!

KELLY: (stops kicking) Good.  Hold me down to Ken and Barbie.

SABRINA: Okay.

Sabrina holds Kelly down over the quicksand, pulling Ken and Barbie to safety.  All watch in horror as Greg sinks beneath the surface.

KEN: Phew!  Glad that's over.

BARBIE: Kelly, where were you this morning?!  How did you know where to find us?!

KELLY: I was in the attic playing with Great-Great's dresses.  Then I got hungry and came down for lunch, and everybody was gone.  So I called the police and they told me where you were.  I came to get you.

POLICEWOMAN: And she did a great job rescuing you.

POLICEMAN: (with some colored sand still in his hair) Yep.

POLICEWOMAN: Miss, you're gonna have to come with me. (arrests Sabrina)

SABRINA: But I helped!

POLICEWOMAN: Sure you did, after you kidnapped Ken and put two innocent people in quicksand.  You're gonna be in jail for a long time.

POLICEMAN: Let's go.

The policemen take Sabrina to jail, where they also take Larry Ferguson, after they un-bury him.  Ken, Barbie, and Kelly return home, where Barbie makes a delicious lunch of sandwiches for them all.  And then of course, Barbie and Ken share a dramatic kiss (Director hates it when their noses bump together.  She wants them to kiss right -- no eskimo kisses will do!  So she squeezes some of the air out of their heads.  That makes it possible for their heads to cock, so they can get a good angle on the kiss).  Finally, Barbie and Ken are safe!

Later on, Kelly will go to the bank, where the treasure is hidden (Director kept Cheerios in one of her dresser drawers, since she thought that's what treasure was, thanks to Michael of Disney's Peter Pan).  Once she has the treasure, they live happily ever after.

THE END

Since that was one of the milder adventures, you can imagine the traumatic events my Barbies often lived through.  Sometimes they would go on adventures with me throughout the whole house!  And those adventures were nothing compared to what would sometimes happen during my bathtimes.  Those Barbies were excellent swimmers, which was a good thing, since shipwrecks were so common back then.

Later, I passed those Barbies and all their remaining effects on to another cousin, who undoubtedly was much kinder to them than I.  But I like to think that maybe those Barbies enjoyed their wild adventures with me.  They always got a happy ending, after all.  Even Sabrina and Greg sometimes ended up living happily ever after, instead of serving life sentences behind bars.

I hereby dedicate this post to Barbie -- that acrobatic, hardy doll -- who put up with all my ridiculous games.  Even though when you left me, your hair was matted and you had only a fraction of your original wardrobe, you still survived with that perfect smile on your face.

To Barbie, Ken, Kelly, Sabrina, and Greg: Thank you.  My childhood would not have been the same without you.

23 February, 2011

Modus Operandi: Part 1

To be my Barbie was no easy task.

Since I was a wildly imaginative child with a penchant for dramatic plots and dinosaurs, when I played with dolls, it didn't look quite like the typical little girl's Barbie playtime.  Whereas normal Barbies played dress-up and got their hair brushed and went to the mall, my Barbies were most often stark naked (or in the one outfit I could find for them), their hair was pulled up or braided (poorly), and they were usually in some kind of mortal peril.

As in many loving families, I had received my Barbies as hand-me-downs, from a cousin who undoubtedly used them the way most little girls did.  But after I got ahold of them, things changed drastically in their little plastic worlds.  Four of these Barbies I called by their actual brand names: Barbie, Kelly, Ken, and Ariel (from Disney's The Little Mermaid).  The other two went by various aliases over time, but I believe their most constant names were Sabrina and Greg.

In one respect, I will admit, my games were much the same as the other little girls': Ken and Barbie were always meant to be together.

My family have always been big on movies.  My father and I especially so.  Legitimately 86% of my daily conversation is either centered around movies, the people who star in movies, or quotes from those movies.  I recently tried to ban movies except on the weekends, failed miserably, and went back to watching a movie a day (since then, my overall mood has shown signficant improvement).

Since my love for movies was primarily a learned behavior, you can imagine that my father watched a lot of movies when I was a child.  And he had no qualms about watching R-rated movies right along with the Disney ones.

I specifically remember being six years old, having just finished watching Thunderheart, one of the best movies of all time.  I turned to my mother and asked her what the F-word meant.

There was also the time I was watching Conagher on TV with Mom, Dad, and Grandmother, at an age even younger than six.  There is a part in that movie where Sam Elliott (as Conagher) has reached a particularly frustrating point in the plot.  And at that heavy moment, his horse chooses to abandon him.  The cowboy expresses his frustration with a couple of choice words.

As the channel cut to commercials, I very confusedly turned to my grandmother and asked quite innocently, "Where'd Dammit go?", thinking that Conagher's words were the horse's name.  I have often thought that if I ever get horses, I might just name one of them something quite unorthodox...

But this blog post isn't about how I learned about cuss words.  It's about my poor, innocent Barbies.  We'll return to that subject by way of a brilliant transition.

I digressed to the discussion of movies so that you might understand Little Me's violent brain.  The most exciting stories had bad guys and action!  So of course those elements appeared in my rainy day entertainments for myself.

(I only ever played Barbies on rainy days.  All other days I was outside.  Mom stopped letting me take my Barbies outside after I covered Sabrina in mud and hung her by her hair from the swingset.  I tried to explain that she was training for a special top secret mission, but that didn't seem to make the process of washing her any easier for my mother).

I think I have prepared you as much as I could for the next logical step of this blog post.  Some of the following events are somewhat fictionalized, but I can assure you, my Barbies went through much worse scenarios than this.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BARBIE,
During the Dark Days of Her Ownership by one Rose Dallas,
Complete with Scene Notes in Italics,
And Director's Notes in (Parentheses).

Today's Story:
Kelly's Disappearance

Scene opens on a rainy Saturday morning.  Barbie is sleeping late, as all grown-ups do.  Kelly is up early, and decides she wants to spend the day in the attic, playing with all the dresses in her Great-Grandmother's old trunk.  (Director places Kelly on a nearby desk, where the little sister will stay for most of today's story).

At last, Barbie awakes, gets dressed, and heads into the kitchen for some breakfast.  (Director, being very thorough, actually goes through the motions of getting out pots and pans, placing them on a fake stove, and cooking something.  Probably bacon.  And oats).

BARBIE: Kelly!  Kelly, wake up, it's time for breakfast!

Kelly, playing in the attic, cannot hear Barbie's calls.  So she does not answer.  Besides, she has already had breakfast.  She had Cheerios, with milk on top.

BARBIE: Kelly, I'm not kidding!  It's time to get up!

Kelly is still playing in the attic, still can't hear Barbie, still doesn't answer, and is still full of Cheerios.

BARBIE: Kelly, if you don't get up by the time I count to three, I'm coming in to get you up myself!  (This threat always works on Director, because it is usually followed up by tickling from Dad, and that is something to avoid at all costs).  One!

Kelly plays on, blisfully unaware.

BARBIE: Two!

When Kelly still doesn't answer, Barbie puts down anything she might be (sort of) holding and starts to walk towards Kelly's bedroom.  (Director tries multiple times to get Barbie's legs to move like she's walking without having her bend over backwards.  When it doesn't work, Barbie starts to hop everywhere).

BARBIE:  Three!  I'm coming in, Kelly!

Barbie bursts into Kelly's bedroom and is shocked to find it empty!  Standing in the middle of the room, she looks about confusedly before starting to look for her baby sister.

BARBIE: Don't play hide-and-seek right now, Kelly.  It's time for breakfast.  We'll play hide-and-seek later.

Barbie searches under the bed, behind the door, and in the closet (Director's best hiding places).  But Kelly is nowhere to be found.  Barbie starts to panic.

BARBIE: Kelly, this isn't funny!  Come out right now and eat breakfast!

Barbie searches the rest of the house.  She looks in closets, cabinets, behind all the doors, and even checks all the trees out back (Director used to have a brilliant plan to pretend to run away, but actually she would just sleep in one of the trees in the backyard.  Director and Kelly have a lot in common, probably).  She doesn't check the attic, though.  Barbie doesn't think Kelly is tall enough to get to the attic (Director isn't.  She wishes she was).

Now in a full-blown panic, Barbie checks the whole house again, running around like a whirlwind.

BARBIE: Kelly!  Kelly!  Come out!  Kelly!  Come on!  You won't be in trouble, just come out and eat breakfast!

Worried and unsure what to do next, Barbie calls her boyfriend, Ken (Director makes the dial tones, dialing, and ringing noises.  I already told you she is thorough).

KEN: Hello?

BARBIE: Ken!  It's Barbie!  I can't find Kelly and I need you to come over right now.

KEN: Did you check behind the doors?

BARBIE:  Yes!   And I checked under the bed, and in the closet.  I can't find her anywhere!

KEN: Okay, I'll be there in five minutes.

Ken lives next door, so it probably won't take him very long to get over there to help.  But he just woke up and he is still in his pajamas (Director's Mom never lets her go out in her pajamas.  This is obviously a law of the universe).  Ken starts to change clothes.

BARBIE: Kelly!  Kelly!

Barbie is laying on the floor at this point, completely helpless (Director only has so many hands, and they are currently involved in putting Ken's jeans on, which are way too tight for him.  So Barbie has to be dramatic for the sake of the storyline).  Meanwhile, Kelly's still playing in the attic.  (Director makes ringing noises again).  Ken thinks it's Barbie.

KEN: Hello?  Did you find her?

SABRINA: Find who?  Hi, Ken.

KEN: Oh, hey, Sabrina.  I was just talking to Barbie.  She can't find Kelly, so I have to go help her.  Can you call me back later?

SABRINA: That's awful!  Poor Barbie!  I was just calling because I was thinking about going to the mall later.  You could come, too.

(Director always makes the girls she doesn't like go to the mall, so you know at this point that Sabrina is a bad guy).

KEN: Um...

Cut to Barbie.

BARBIE: (still lying on the floor)  Kelly!  Kelly!  Come out now!

Cut back to phone conversation.

KEN: I don't know about that, Sabrina.  I don't really like the mall.  I need to go help Barbie, now.

SABRINA: Well, I'll call back later in case you change your mind.

KEN: Okay, bye!

SABRINA: See ya!

Ken hangs up and tries to find a tee shirt (At this point, the story is paused for several minutes while Director and Ken search in vain for a shirt.  Eventually, Director puts one of Barbie's bigger, plainer dresses on him and stuffs the hem into his jeans so it looks kind of like a shirt).  Finally, Ken is ready to eat some cereal (Director's Mom never lets her go out until she's eaten breakfast either.  This is clearly another universal law).

While Ken eats, Barbie gets up off the floor and decides she should look outside again.

BARBIE: Maybe I should look outside again.

Barbie goes outside to look around.  While she looks for Kelly behind the pile of firewood, she is suddenly grabbed from behind by a bad guy!  (Director is using Greg for this purpose, but Greg hasn't actually made his character role appearance yet.  At this point, he is only a henchman.  His is a small criminal operation).

BARBIE: Hey, let me go!

HENCHMAN: Shut up, butthead!

(Director sniggers).

BARBIE: Stop it!  Let me go!

Barbie is actually awesome, so she bites the henchman's arm and he lets go.

HENCHMAN: Auuuugggrrrrhhh!

Barbie turns around and aims a high kick at the henchman's face.  Then she starts to run (well, hop) away quickly.

By now, Ken has finished his breakfast and is coming out on the front porch.  While he stands there, immobile with shock (Director only has two hands), the henchman recovers from Barbie's kick and catches her from behind again.  Although Barbie struggles, she can't get free.  The henchman drags Barbie to the getaway car (it's a Barbie Jeep, but Director is pretending it's a big, clunky, gray van.  She has the Hot Wheels version of what she wants to use, and she drives it beside the Jeep so everybody knows what the Jeep is supposed to look like).

Barbie is tied up and gagged at this point (the henchman is obviously very fast at these kinds of things), and can only kick her legs as the henchman drives away.  (Barbie ALWAYS ends up kidnapped).  Ken runs after the car, but can't catch them.  Horrified, he goes into Barbie's house to try to find Kelly and to call the police.

(By now, Director's Mom is up, and Director has to go eat breakfast).

To be continued...

21 February, 2011

Bother

By now, you have undoubtedly realized that I have a somewhat heightened preoccupation with fairies.

I tend to think that when it comes to humans, fairies are, by nature, one of two ways: mischievous or indifferent.  I used to think there were helpful ones too, like in The Shoemaker and the Elves, but I am starting to think that was just a pretty old story.  I mean, no matter how many times I fall asleep without doing my laundry, I never wake up to an empty laundry basket.

The ice fairies that visited me are an example of indifferent fairies -- they didn't frost my window for my pleasure, but rather for nature's pleasure and their own.  The fairies that leave the mushroom dancing rings behind are also indifferent fairies.  I suppose you could call them good, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if we meddled with them, they wouldn't be so indifferent or so nice anymore.

And then you have the fairies like the Tunnel Vision Fairies, or the hobgoblin I call The Signal Thief opening my apartment complex gates from the signal box, causing trouble for the mortals they are forced to share the world with.  Those are the mischievous fairies.  Any kind of fairy has the potential to be a mischievous fairy, but pixies are by far the worst of this category.

I happen to have a pixie living with me right now.

This pixie has taken lessons from the Tunnel Vision Fairies.  He knows how to create an attention vortex.  But rather than drawing my eyes to a subject of his choice, this pixie (whom I call "Ticker") draws my ears.

Ticker earned his name with the first noise he chose to amplify: the ticking of a clock.  I had just settled down to go to sleep, early for once!  But I kept tossing and turning.  I had several times been on the verge of falling asleep, only to be awakened by the ticking of my clock, across the room.

It seemed ridiculous that my clock should be so loud, tonight of all nights.  It had never kept me awake before.  And now that I was finally getting in some well-earned and much-needed extra sleep time, my clock decided it was time to get noisy?

Well, now I was annoyed on top of sleepy.  But I stayed in bed, as the lazy person I am, hoping that I would be able to get past the noise and the annoyance and still get in some good snoozing.

In the end, I removed the batteries from the clock for the rest of the night.

It was then that I knew:  I had a pixie to deal with.  That pixie's name was Ticker.  And Ticker was a worthy opponent.

He stuck to ticking clocks for quite some time, perfecting his medium, I suppose.  But since then, he has branched out.  He has amplified such noises as running water, music from next door, and rattling in my air conditioning unit.  Lately, he's even taken to hanging out with the Signal Thief down at the gates, where he amplifies a sound that was already impossibly loud: a buzzing sound brought on by some kind of malfunction in the mechanisms...

I am beginning to suspect that Ticker takes particular pleasure from messing with me.  I say this because I am pretty sure he has followed me into my car a few times, zooming my ears in on the vibrations of aluminum cans, shuffling papers in the backseat, and the squeak of windshield wipers against glass that's too dry.

And it's possible he's followed me to work a few times, too, increasing my awareness of a significant majority of the annoyances that take place on an Exasperation Day.  Ngh, ngh, ngh.

I have spent the day thinking of ways to thwart Ticker's attempts to annoy me.  His success in frustrating me has undoubtedly made him cocky.  That arrogance, combined with my newly conceived plans to ignore him, might just give me the leg up on him for once.

I considered cotton balls in my ears, but then I remembered the consistency of cotton balls and decided against that.  Then I thought maybe ear plugs would be a better solution, but I realized that Ticker could probably use the sounds of my own heartbeat or my lashes against the pillow to annoy me, if he was really dead set on being obnoxious (and as a pixie, he usually is).

So I gave up on ideas that would block him out, and began thinking of things that would drown him out.

My plan of action is as follows: When I exercise tonight, I will wear earbuds and listen to loud music.  When I get home, I will watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a movie pixies notoriously despise).  After I am done laughing uproariously, I will go to bed, where the dull roar of sleepiness and the imagined sounds of dreaming will be my protection.

I'm like the Princess and the Pea, except with noises instead of bruises.  Does that mean that if I succeed, I get a prince?

Well, a prince would be nice and all, but I'd settle for a full night of uninterrupted sleep.

19 February, 2011

Proclamation

This is my favorite poem.  Ever.

A man said to the universe,
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
"A sense of obligation."
--Stephen Crane

This just in... This is my shortest blog post.  Ever.

(I kind of have the flu).

17 February, 2011

Surprise!

You know when you pick up your drink, and you think it's one thing, and then you take a sip and realize it's something entirely different?  Even if the entirely different something is a drink you like, you immediately grimace and sputter and double-check the label in shock.  It just wasn't at all what you expected.

Being an adult is like that.

We seem to spend most of our lives looking forward to the next thing.  When you're in middle school, all you want is to be in junior high.  When you're in junior high, the high schoolers are the coolest people that ever existed.  Once you get to high school, college is the only thing that matters.  And when you get to college, you simply can't wait until you turn 21.  Then you can't wait 'til you get an apartment.  Then you can't wait 'til you get married.  Then you can't wait 'til you have kids.

We spend so much time trying to get to the next step of life that we don't remember how hard it was to take the step that got us here, where we are now.  It's like that dream where you feel like you're running in glue.  Infuriating.

That first unexpected taste, high school, left me spluttering for quite some time.  I thought high school was going to be fun and awesome.  It turned out to be something quite different.  It was still a worthwhile experience, and overall a likeable one, but it definitely wasn't what I expected.  It was like reaching for Coke and realizing it was actually Pepsi.

College was another unsettling sip.  I believed college was going to be something like high school, academically, but way cooler because I was living there and my time would be my own, etc.  College is way harder than high school.  All that freedom makes it hard to concentrate.  And guess what?  Friends don't just happen to you -- you have to make an effort.  I pouted about that one for a good long while.  Reached for Dr Pepper, got a slurp of Sprite.

Now I'm in Responsible Adult Limbo.  I'm even at one of those awkward ages that doesn't mean anything, so you always forget how old you are.  I constantly tell people I'm 21, and then have to correct myself.

I have an apartment, cats, and a fish.  I cook my own food (when I cook), and make my own sandwiches (or popcorn).  If I want to, I can read on my balcony for an hour-and-a-half.  Or I can watch as many movies in a row as I want, without anyone getting bored or annoyed with me.  In that way, I very much enjoy the adult life.

Unfortunately there is also another side to adult life.  That side consists entirely of money, that awful human invention.  They don't mention this side to you when they talk about being an adult.  They don't mention the Exorbitant Money-Sucking Loans, or a monthly rent, or an electricity bill.  They don't tell you how cable packages cost an arm and a leg, how internet costs even more, or how groceries become impossibly expensive once you're buying them yourself.  They don't talk about how sometimes you have to cut out McDonald's for weeks at a time to make ends meet.

They didn't mention it, and we didn't notice.  Running in glue.

I think in this case, I definitely reached for some milk, only to realize it was orange juice.  Orange juice is harder to swallow, and just about as tart as a liquid can get.  In general, I like orange juice.  But I was expecting milk, and I guess it just... caught me off guard.

When I sat down to write a post, this was all that came through my fingers.  This posting every other day thing is not as easy as I thought it would be...  Maybe I thought that writing a blog would somehow make finishing a book the next step.  If that's true, I am definitely running in super-glue.  And I'm being chased by rabid coyotes to boot.

15 February, 2011

Ink Blots

My Superhero Mom likes to tell a story from the days when I was first learning to talk.  She always tells it with a grin and an indulgent shake of her head.  And although she wouldn't use quite this phrasing, I know she tells it as the memory of the day she knew I was going to be a weirdo.

To hear Mom tell it, I was always a very cheerful baby, unless I had an earache.  And in this particular story, my ears were fine.  So I was sitting cheerfully on the dining room floor, singing nonsense to myself as I often did, and peering out the deck doors to the world beyond.  It was a world to which my mother could not yet entrust me, since I was a wanderer even then.  I like to think Little Me had aspirations to be an explorer.

Anyway, as I was sitting there, staring out the window, singing away, I apparently startled my mother by interrupting myself with an exclamation of one word: "Duckie!"

I suppose I wanted to make sure someone acknowledged my astute observational skills, because I continued to say "duckie" multiple times, and added a pointing finger for emphasis.  My Superhero Mom obligingly came to look for the alleged "duckie."  But when she peered out into the backyard, she could see no wildlife of any kind.

Confused, Mom patted my head with a, "That's nice, dear."

Happier now, I nevertheless continued to point out the window and say, "Duckie!" every now and then. Maybe Little Me thought it would be a nice break from the usual 24/7 opera performance.

My persistence was intriguing for Mom.  She was used to me pointing out the obvious, but not for such a long period of time, and not when there was nothing actually obvious to be pointed out.  She came several times at my delighted cries of "duckie," only to be once again stymied by the complete lack of visible ducks.

---

Fast-forward to 22-year-old me, 30,000 feet in the air, 20 minutes into a 2-hour flight (that was a lot of numbers).  It's dark out, but I managed to snag a window seat, and the city lights below are astonishingly beautiful.  I start to catalogue what I see below, not just in my head, but in a notebook as well.

"A leprechaun with a bellyache," I write, grinning.  "Goblin in profile."  "Mushroom."  "Sleepy pig in flight."

These should be town names, I think with a secretive sort of smile.  If we named town based on what they looked like from above, like we do with constellations except in reverse, these would be the town names.


"Lightning strike."  "Butt-print."  "Duck foot."  "Trumpeteer."  "Stepping stones."  "Sword handle shaped like a goblin head."  "Rapier."

My personal favorite comes into view next: "Two Guys with a Trip Wire."  I actually giggle about that one, drawing a weird look from the large Latino man in the aisle seat.

"Seahorse King."  "Thunderbird."  "Electrocuted gnome."  Some of these towns lend themselves so well to the descriptions that I wonder if they were planned that way on purpose (as opposed to an accidental plan?  Shut up).

"Spider," I scribble as we pass a great cluster of lighted towns.  "Ankle boot with zipper."  "Water pump."  "Wyvern that just ate an iPod."

That one gets doodled with gleeful zeal.  Aisle Seat gives me that strange look again.

"Cartwheel gone wrong."  I spot the shape in between sentences.  "Kangaroo in moonlight."

With a sigh, I realize that not everyone will be as entertained by this little activity as I am, and that I should probably finish this blog post soon.  So, I set my pen to paper beneath my list, and pick up where I left off.

---

"Duckie!  Duckie!  Duckie!"

Just as My Superhero Mom was about to shrug the incident off and label me "The Girl who Cried Duck," she spotted something on the window.

A smudge.

Its placement on the window meant it was probably put there by a very small individual.  This greasy smudge on the window... vaguely resembled... a duck.

And at that moment, Mom knew that her daughter was going to be a weirdo.

She was right.  I rock at picking out shapes in clouds, yo.  And sometimes I tell people what my chicken fingers look like before I eat them.

Just be glad I told you that story, and not my dad's favorite story about when I was in the bathtub and the fire alarm went off.  We'll save that one for another day...

14 February, 2011

Jovial

You may think, due to yesterday's post, and due to the fact that I have never had a boyfriend on any of the 22 Valentine's Days I have celebrated, that I don't like Valentine's Day.  You'd be wrong about that, I'm afraid.

I actually love Valentine's Day.  I may be destined to be a husbandless cat lady, but I do believe in romance and love.  I genuinely enjoy celebrating the Hallmark holiday that has become all about love.  In fact, I will be eating heart-shaped pizza today.  I think that's pretty awesome.

In order to balance out yesterday's somewhat angsty post, I offer you this somewhat for-fun post.

FOURTEEN ENNUMERATED THINGS
THAT ALL
SORT OF
HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

1.) There were, apparently, three saints named Valentine.  They were all martyred in various ways, at various times in history, in various places across the globe.  These three saints were later accidentally combined into one St. Valentine (about whom the auspicious they purported a huge, fictitious, Romeo-&-Juliet-forbidden-love-type story).  So even though we call it St. Valentine's Day, it should technically be called St. Valentines' Day.  The difference in apostrophe placement is a very big deal in my tiny grammatical world.

2.) The hearts we put on everything look nothing like the actual human heart.  When I did some research about the heart symbol, I was made aware that the heart symbol may have originated as a mimickery of either plants, or early forms of herbal birth control, or simply stylized sex symbols.  That gives new meaning to that typical emoticon: <3.

3.) Although Valentine's Day itself dates back to years in the triple digits, it wasn't until the late 18th century that people began to use it as a means of courtship.  Guess how the love thing got spread around?  Fancy greeting cards.  I think we can officially call this one a Hallmark holiday.

4.) I think it means something that the kissing bears are fitted with magnets that force them to kiss.  Shouldn't they have a choice?  It's sick!  Sick, I tell you!

5.) PinkFriend's birthday is on Valentine's Day.  I cannot think of a more appropriate day for PinkFriend to have been born.  I have double the reasons to celebrate February 14th!

6.) I have always had this secret dream of receiving tons and tons of multi-colored roses from a guy who loves me on Valentine's Day.  I guess it isn't secret anymore.

7.) Valentine's Day could also be viewed as a day celebrating chocolate, in all of its delectable beauty and wonder.

8.) Ladies, don't ever get married on Valentine's Day.  It makes it too easy for your man to remember when your anniversary is, while it simultaneously quadruples the pressure for him to come up with some kind of uber-romantic rendezvous year after year after year...

9.) If you do happen to be single on Valentine's Day, and you realize that you're noticing more and more couples, until it seems that everyone on the planet has a match except you, don't be distressed.  Tunnel-Vision Fairies love Valentine's Day.  These fairies fly in patterns to create an attention vortex, drawing your gaze and making it impossible for you to miss the couple they used as a focal point.  They take every opportunity to make you miserable.  They follow single people around all day.  The best way to get rid of them is to pretend like it doesn't bother you.  If you concentrate hard enough on convincing the fairies of this, you might even convince yourself.

10.) Although St. Valentine's Day tries to be perfect, he definitely has his shortcomings.  A little known fact about St. Valentine's Day is that he is actually extremely jealous of his brother St. Patrick's Day.  St. Valentine's Day wishes he could be more laid back and fun, like good ol' St. Patty's Day, even though his brother is way undercelebrated.  Whenever it seems that Valentine's Day isn't going as well as you'd like, try to cut him some slack.  It might just be an off-year for the poor guy.

11.) One should only give out Valentine's Day cards if there is candy to back it up.  A card sans candy is as meaningless as The Pope sans his tall hat.

*By the way, if PinkFriend were Pope, I imagine it would look something like this:*


12.) Fellas, Valentine's Day might be a good day to make a move on that chick you've had your eye on.  My favorite pick-up line of all time is the classic, "Let's count shoulders" line, where he ends up with his arm around you.  The "Are your feet tired?" and "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?" types of lines are acceptable, though not ideal.  Try to be more creative.  But above all, don't ever use anything written by George Lucas (I shudder to think of the sand conversation in Attack of the Clones).

13.) No matter how much you want them to, your pets do not celebrate Valentine's Day.  Please don't dress them up like they do.  You will only confuse and annoy them, provoking their uprising all the sooner.  Let's avoid that, shall we?  (Also, if you don't dress them up like that, I don't have to coo and aww over the stupid pictures you took and insisted on showing me).

14.) As the final item on this list, I shall reveal to you that I have made it my mission in life to find Cupid some pants.