I'm Still Here!

I'm in the middle of finals and have been trying to keep up with school... That's my excuse for the HUGE gap in posts.

But I am working on another anecdote so hopefully that will be posted after the semester ends.

Thanks for hangin' in there!

YAY! BABIES!!

Congrats Jono and Brianna!  Welcome to the world little Charlotte Gail!

Sorry I couldn't do your gorgeousness justice Brianna.  Love you all!  You're both going to be amazing parents!

New Stuff

So I'm not the most html-savvy girl in the world... Which makes the creation and addition of my new banner and buttons to my blog quite the amazing feat!

All of the buttons are actually working, which is a happy thing.  I also started a twitter account.  The user name is Zooxie. (Duh!)  I believe my last mid-term is this week and then I have to play catch-up... after that, I should be pumping out blog posts a little more regularly because I wont have quite so many priorities above drawing in MSPaint!

I also want to thank everyone who has subscribed and commented.  Y'all are just plain awesomesauce!

How To Thank Your Mother For Saving Your Life

I always seem to be finding new and impressive ways to injure myself.  I tell people this all the time, but they never believe me until I tell them how I got the scar on my elbow (an accident involving a safety line) or how I saved my own life by learning to swim, or how I got the scar down the inside of my bottom lip.  I’m constantly running into door frames, tripping on shoelaces, sliding down stairways, and ending up on my butt on the floor.

On this particular occasion, when I was about three years old, I had done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to cause this particular accident.  I’m really lucky because it was one of those scary, ‘I-could-have-died’ accidents and I’m really lucky my mom was there.

Construction had just been completed on our brand new house in the suburbs!

My parents took me to go look for some furniture.  I can’t remember who all came with us, but I remember Grandma G was there. 

This particular store had a really crappy layout.  All of the furniture was crammed into a small showroom and stored really close together.  I remember there was this one really cool hall tree with a giant mirror.  I liked mirrors, especially making faces in them and dancing in front of them.

At some point during my grand finale finish, someone either bumped or fell into another piece of furniture on the other side of the show room.

My mom had about a split second to react to the impending doom bearing down on her then-only child in the form of a massive domino-effect taking the form of furniture.

Now, one fact about my mom you should know at this time is that she is TINY.  She has always been a very small lady.  Looking back at pictures from this time in my life, my mom couldn’t have weighed more than 110 lbs soaking wet… on a guilty cookie day… if she were wearing 5 pounds of jewelry.

That hall tree I was so blissed out dancing in front of was a SERIOUS piece of furniture.  So when my mom saw that giant hall tree of evil bearing down on her baby girl, the adrenaline must have kicked in because the next thing I knew…

My mom ended up breaking her leg… and not just a normal break on an ankle or other joint… and not just a little break like a hairline fracture.  We’re talking full on snapped solid bone in two break… All to save my precious little life from a falling hall tree.

I have no idea what happened next.  I briefly remember being out in the parking lot (it was dark out) and seeing flashing red lights (probably an ambulance).  I remember drawing on my mom’s cast with crayons and thinking it was *so cool* she got a body part that she could draw on.

In our new house, the entry way had a staircase that goes up a bit, then turns at a landing, and goes the rest of the way up.  There’s a little balcony over by the linen closet towards the top of the stairs.

For some reason, my little 3 year old brain just ACHED to throw stuff off of that balcony onto the floor below.  I don’t know why.  It just seemed like a good idea at the time… but I was ALWAYS getting yelled at for it.

So one day, when my dad was off running an errand, I got a sneaky idea.

My mom didn’t notice that I had stolen her crutches and hidden them somewhere in the next room… most definitely out of her reach.  When she noticed me climbing the stairs towards my room, she asked me what I was doing.  I, of course, said I was going to go play with my stuffed animals in my room!

I imagine that it wasn't that nice to wake up to the 'thud' 'thud' sound of numerous stuffed animals hitting the tile floor...

When my dad got home, BOY was I in trouble.  I’m surprised my mother even talked to me after that.  There she was, crippled because she SAVED MY LIFE… and how did I repay her?  By turning into 3-year-old Satan spawn and stealing her crutches so that I could be as naughty as I wanted without consequences.

I try to be extra nice to my mom now… but I have to admit… I am TERRIFIED that I’ll end up with a kid like me some day!

Mom, if you’re reading this, I AM SO SORRY THAT I WAS SUCH A BRAT!

How Daisy Duck Saved My Innocence

When I was in second grade, my parents took me to Disney World.  I was so excited!  I had never been on a plane before and I had somehow gotten it into my cute little 8-year-old head that meeting Daisy Duck would be the pinnacle of my whole life.

I do want to state, right here and now, that this was probably the best vacation OF MY LIFE.  There is no better vacation than Disney World as a child.  But several unfortunate events did take place…

On the plane, I didn’t understand what was happening when my ears popped.

For the record, chewing gum still doesn’t help my ears on planes… And it’s only gotten worse as I’ve grown older, as I recently found out.  The ear popping thing has started to send me into panic attacks and I’ve decided that I’d rather drive for a couple of days straight than fly.

Then there was the unfortunate experience of learning just how much I HATE roller coasters.

Then, of course, there were the ever-present demands for Disney-Swag.

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

And through it all, I just could not find Daisy Duck!  My parents and I looked everywhere for her.  I’m pretty sure we saw Mickey and Minnie about a dozen times.  We even ran into Captain Hook and Mr. Smee.  We saw Donald, but he wouldn’t answer me when I demanded to know where his girlfriend was.

And then… the worst.

Epcot in Disney World had this really awesome electric lights parade and laser light show.  I was so excited!  I was wearing my favorite new Daisy Duck hat and my parents thought that the next day was going to be THE day we would find Daisy.   I had gotten a hug from Chewbacca at MGM that day, and now I was going to get to see a kick butt parade!

What I wasn’t used to were such MASSIVE crowds.  Even during the day in the middle of the Magic Kingdom, I had never seen so many people amassed in one place in my entire life.  And then… well, some guy was wearing the same colored shirt as my dad and I had started following him.

My parents will insist to this day that I wandered off.  It wasn’t really anybody’s fault.  There had been a huge influx in the crowd in the street around us and we got separated.  I thought I was following my dad and then all the sudden I wasn’t.

I was actually a smart kid.  My first instinct after realizing I was lost was to start heading to the nearest structure.  Ignoring the panic that was steadily rising in my gut, I started walking towards a restaurant that was just across the walkway.  All of the sudden, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I spun around.

As it turns out, when my parents came looking for me, they couldn’t remember what I was wearing… except for that wacky Daisy Duck hat.  That hat was what made me visible to my Dad amongst hundreds of loud, moving families.  I shudder when I think of what could have happened to me if I had been wearing Mickey Mouse ears instead!

I was so ecstatic when I was reunited with my parents.  I think I must’ve just about hugged them both to death.  Both of my parents acted really impressed that my first instinct was to go get help with a park employee.  I enjoyed the parade safely tucked between my mom and dad.  And I’m pretty sure I didn’t take that silly hat off for the rest of the vacation.  All was good in the world!

Oh, and by the way, I totally met Daisy the next day!

Manatee!

I'm currently working on another long post, but I figured that I'd better do something quick or people are going to lose interest.

So, in the spirit of goodwill and many thanks for subscribing to/reading my blog, here's a manatee.

I'm particularly proud of the tiny little pink and green fish.  I named him Jimmy.

Coming Soon - How Daisy Duck Saved My Innocence

Wakey Wakey! Eggs and Bakey!

I love my boyfriend.  Not only is he made up entirely of awesomesauce, but he also somehow has this amazing ability to deal with my need to push buttons.

What most people see as a ‘Do Not Disturb Sign,’ I see as a green traffic light.  It’s a good thing I’m not in charge of shooting off bombs because I would’ve destroyed the planet YEARS ago.  We’re talking full scale apocolypse of doom.

When I see this

My brain registers it as THIS

And THIS is what ends up happening…

And That is how I will one day be responsible for THIS.

I’m hoping that the above visual representation will help garner some modicum of sympathy from you… But honestly, I don’t really deserve it. 

You see, I am what one calls an ‘Early Riser.’  This means that I get up by 7am on the weekends (5:30 on weekdays) and am as annoying as humanly possible first thing in the morning.  Especially if someone gives me sugary cereal.  Now, if it’s a school/work morning, I’m usually pretty low key because the days are long and I have to conserve my energy.  But on weekends?  Oh boy.

What usually happens on Saturday and Sunday morning is that I wake up at 7, turn over, and stare at my boyfriend for about 15 minutes.

Now Josh is my opposite when it comes to sleep.  He wakes up REALLY late and it takes him forever to wake up… not to mention that he’s a REAL grouch in the mornings.

Are you starting to see where that ‘do not push’ button analogy is going to come in?

This process usually continues until I get bored and go out into the living room to watch the news and fiddle around on Facebook.

Then… I get bored again.  And, about every hour or so, I’ll pick up the cat and toss her onto the bed, just to see if she’ll bat at his face to wake him up… mainly because I’d rather he yell at the cat than at me.

Sometime later in the day, I start whining.  I continuously whine until he wakes up…  Now he may look like this to the normal, untrained eye…

But to my uber-sensitive, disguise-detecting girlfriend eye, he really looks like THIS

This is usually when I either A) apologize profusely for being such an insensitive jerk or B) get defensive because I don’t like admitting I’m wrong… which I usually am.

The moral of this story is that you can pretty much get away with anything as long as there is a cute fuzzy animal nearby that you can use for emotional blackmail