Today’s post stars a guest puppeteer, my very own sister cupCAKE. Not many people know about her advanced studies in the grand art of puppetry. She’s very modest about it, but she’s spent countless years perfecting her craft. Now, for the first time ever, she’ll perform in a new medium: styrofoam.
I hope everyone found time this weekend to hit the Sexy Yard Sale. I sure did!
cupcake: when you get home check the freezer
cupcake: there’s something there for you
My mom (rubbing her cheeks): I have sore lumps in my cheeks. You ever get that?
Me: Like swollen lymph nodes or something? Do you think it’s from your cold?
My mom: Maybe.
My stepdad: Maybe they’re adnoids?
My mom: They’re not adnoids. They took those out when they removed my tonsils. (To my stepdad) Do you still have your tonsils?
My stepdad: No, they took them out.
Me: I still have mine! I’m the winner at this table!
My mom: Let’s play a game! How many body parts have you lost?
My stepdad: My tonsils.
Me: Wisdom teeth!
My stepdad: I think they took out three of my wisdom teeth.
My mom: I had an ovary and a Fallopian tube removed.
Me: Man, you win.
My stepdad: My gall bladder is gone.
My mom: Once I sliced off a part of my finger.
My stepdad: What about your toes?
My mom: They didn’t take any of those off. But I did have bunions removed! But they don’t count.
Me: I had my ears pierced! Does that count?
My mom: (To my stepdad) Aren’t you missing some teeth?
My stepdad: No… well, yeah.
Me: Wait a second! The dog had his testicles removed! I think he wins. His probably hurt more.
My mom: Yeah! Plus his tail.* Oh, and his dewclaws!
Me: The dog totally wins. Although it’s pretty close there between you and the dog.
Note: This is a pretty fun game to play. I imagine it would work equally well at a party. It helps if you’ve had something weird removed, though. Otherwise you’re going to get your ass kicked.
(* Our dog’s tail is docked, which is sad, but we never had any say in the matter.)
Conference call to my sister in Costa Rica
Kiki: Oh hey, how’s your tattoo healing?
Our mom: What?!
Cupcake: Not too well, but I got a new one last night.
Our mom: You girls are bad to trick your poor mother.
Cupcake: It still hurts to sit down, though.
In other news:
… except it’s Tuesday.
Anyhow, important facts I need to share with the internet today:
Try it next time. I promise you’ll like it.
Does anyone else always type in a gift message when buying things for yourself online? Partly, I do it because I’m curious to see what a gift note would look like, were I to actually send one to someone, and partly, I like to pretend I’m opening a gift. A gift! For me! Why, I shouldn’t have!
Alan’s been buying himself gifts lately, too. Two weekends ago, we went shopping to buy him a Ridiculously Big Television. After scoffing at the aisles of 40″ and 50″ TVs, he settled on a 62″ Toshiba. It’s ridiculous. It’s big. It’s Ridiculously Big. Therefore, it’s awesome.
Anyway, after a stressful evening involving renting a Home Depot pickup truck (because the Ridiculously Big Television wouldn’t even fit into a friend’s minivan), driving to Best Buy before it closed, persuading burly employees to hoist Ridiculously Big Television into the truck, wrapping 40 feet of suspiciously thin rope around aforementioned TV, somehow managing to get it into the house, hurrying to return the pickup truck before Home Depot closed, frantically turning Allen wrenches to assemble a TV stand, and heaving Ridiculously Big Television onto said TV stand, we collapsed on the couch and stared at 62″ of glowing television deliciousness.
“It’s big,” I offered.
“It’s enormous,” Alan corrected.
“It’s going to spoil you for all future TVs,” I warned. “You’ve reached the pinnacle of television ownership.”
“My next television will have to have Smell-O-Vision,” he admitted.
My mom knows how to spice up the mundane with an extra spoonful of fun. Either that, or she has a repressed gambling streak. One way or the other, our days abound with contests, bets, and physical feats. When we’re driving in the car, listening to the radio, my mom will suddenly announce, “A nickel to the first person who can tell me who’s singing this song!” Depending on the contents of the coin holder, sometimes it’s a quarter. We also do a lot of betting. On a long trip, she’ll ask each of us, one by one, “What time do you think we’ll get home?” Once she asked what time it would get dark, and as the clock ticked closer to our guesses, we had to debate the exact definition of dark.
Anyway, tonight I was online with her credit card in hand, trying to find a deal on a camping backpack my sister needs. When I was done, I leaned over the railing on the second floor landing and peered down at her on the couch. “Would it be terrible if I just dropped your card over the railing so I wouldn’t have to come downstairs?” I ask.
“Throw it to me,” she replies.
“I don’t want to hit you,” I frown.
“Make it land right here,” she insists, patting her stomach.
“I don’t want to slice your eyeballs,” I fret.
She covers her eyes with her fingers.
“What if I hit Loki?” I continue, staring down at the cat beside her.
“Guess you’ll have to be accurate.”
Frisbee-style, I chuck the card over the railing. It bounces off the arm of the sofa and ricochets across the floor. “Oops.”
“Here, try again,” my mom offers. She picks up the card and flings it wildly up at me. Like a maple seed helicopter, it spirals crazily back down. She picks it up again and throws it like a ninja star. It sails over the railing and clatters onto the bathroom tiles behind me. “I think it’s in your bathroom. Hopefully it’s not in the toilet.”
Obligingly, she lies back down on the couch, and I aim again. I throw the card carefully and it sails toward her, but at the last possible moment, it veers off to the side, onto the rug.
“Should we do it again?” my mom asks. “It was closer that time.” She pauses. “Then again, there’s still some magnetic strip left on this card, so maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.”
I love my mom.
This just in: So I go to check out Fighting Sail and hand it to the librarian bookkeep. He examines the spine, then scans the barcode. “I thought this was a reference book,” he comments, handing it to me. “Now that I know it isn’t, I might check it out myself sometime.”
Update Number the Second: So you know how I made a big deal out of selling my textbooks online instead of at the student bookstore, all so I could make $26 instead of $17? So I get a confirmation email from Textbooks’R'Us, and they inform me that I’ll be getting $22. It turns out that I had accidentally indicated that I had two copies of one of the books, so my preliminary quote of $26 was based on crazy talk. So all this hooplah for $5. I guess it just paid for my grilled cheese sandwich.
Now that I’ve found occasion to use steamloller.gif and lollerskates.gif on my website, I can officially say my life is complete.
Today I will be checking out a library book entitled The Seafarers: Fighting Sail, by A.B.C. Whipple. It was published in 1978, and a cursory web search will summarize it thusly:
Horatio Nelson was 12 years old when he became a midshipman and turned out to be Britain’s chief protector, indeed, its saviour. This book tells of his initial enlistment into the navy and uses his naval career to examine the British Navy and its ships in the 18th century.
Why my sudden interest in all things nautical? Granted, the cover’s a little dusty, but the only thing that interests me about this book is that it measures 285mm x 240mm.
You see, I was a bit tired when I was packing my backpack last night, and I completely forgot to pack my notebook, my class readings, or even the paper that’s due today. I’d like to blame my forgetfulness on fatigue, but I wouldn’t be totally surprised if it’s a manifestation of spring fever. No more pencils, no more books/No more teacher’s dirty looks, apparently.
Anyway, I realized my mistake when I was reprinting my paper on the school’s laser printers, because I knew my inkjet copy looked ghettofabulous… the inkjet copy that I didn’t even bring! At least I now had a copy in my hot little hands. But without a notebook, what’s to prevent it from getting wrinkled and squished in the cavernous recesses of my backpack?
I could go buy a notebook, but it seems like a stupid reason to own a school-logo-branded piece of cardboard. I generally go out of my way to avoid emblazoning myself with faux school spirit. But wait! I’m in a library! There are shelves and shelves of lovely hard cover books I could house my paper in!
I began scanning the shelves. Never was there a better time to judge a book by its cover! Fighting Sail beat out all the rest with its thick cover and generous proportions. Harvard Business Review: Boards of Directors (1976) was just too narrow.
So Fighting Sail it is! Thank you, A.B.C. Whipple, for your literary accomplishment. It’s helping me out in a serious pinch.
Now I just need to dig around in the recycling bins until I find enough blank paper to take notes. You can call me Kiki MacGuyver.
