My Dream of Chocolate .... A Children's Story

A gal that I went to high school with, Mindy McGinnis recently published a young adult book called Not A Drop To Drink.  This got me thinking, maybe I should write a book, a children's book.  I mean I totally have all the skills.  I've been writing a blog for about 20 minutes.  I don't have kids or want kids but I do see them on television and one time one talked to me at the park.  It was crying and lost or something but I just sent it away.  Wow that was close.  So like I said, totally qualified to write a children's book.  So below, for your eyes only, is my first children's book.  Enjoy!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Dream of Chocolate

I must be dreaming because I am in a room full of chocolate.  Chocolate as far as the eye can see.  There are all types of chocolate.  Dark chocolates, white chocolates, those delicious Mexican chocolates.  And it was all for me. 

I put the first delicious pieces of chocolate in my mouth.  Amazing.  Oh the sweet goodness.  I couldn't stop.  I was addicted.  I started stuffing as many chocolates into my mouth as I could.  Chocolate sauce spilled everywhere.  It was on my face and in my hair.  But I didn't care because I was so happy.

Then my mom walked in.  "What are you doing?" she shrieked.  "Get away from those chocolates.  What will people think about you putting all those chocolates in your mouth.  You should be more selective and pick only one chocolate.  And one day, when your are my age, you will realize that your delicious chocolates have turned old, white, and crusty."

And then I woke up....  Craving chocolate and wanting more.  Desperate for more, I thought to myself, maybe I can buy chocolate.  Where's my piggy bank?  I was on a mission...

THE END

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So that is my children's story.  After rereading it I thought to myself, wow.  Wow, that is awful.  What can I do to make that crap better.  And then it hit me, like a ton of delicious chocolate.  I needed a gimmick.  I don't need to make this story more appealing to children, they are stupid and have no money.  I need to make this story more appealing to their parents.  How do I do that?  I know.  Pick one word and have the parents' replace that word in their head when they are reading this crappy story.  I am a genius!!!  So reread the story above but replace the word chocolate with sexy men or sexy women depending on your sexual orientation.  I know.  Genius.  And, you're welcome.

That was a drag....

Saturday night led me to a nightclub in Columbus called Axis.  This is a gay bar.  I am not a gay person.  But the shocking part is not that I am a straight person in a gay bar but that I am a morning person in a night club.  Ouch.  So what led me to this fine establishment, you ask?  My own insanity.  I was reading the local magazine called 614 Magazine.  The article was entitled Fabulous & Unique.  The gist of the article is that Axis Nightclub was having a Pink Anti-Bullying Event featuring Nina and Virginia West (a mother/ daughter drag queen duo (I am not sure how that works either)) and Alex Newell who plays Unique on Glee.  If you watch Glee then you will know he is the one in drag.

Virginia West

I agree with anti-bullying no matter if it is aimed towards the gay kid or the nerdy kid.  Bullying ain't cool.  Just don't do it.  I also have a thing for drag queens so I grabbed a couple friends and off we went.  

Nina West

We originally thought the show started at 11:00 pm.  PM are you fucking kidding me?  You gotta be nuts, but I love drag queens so I took a long nap before the show and was ready to stay up till midnight.  But when we got to Axis we found out that the show was actually supposed to start at midnight.  WTF!!  I can't do this, I can, but I can't, I am so old, how will I go on?  I got here at my bedtime and now the show doesn't start till midnight.  But somehow I survived.  The drag queens were good.  I think I should be one.  They can't really dance and they just lip sync and that is right up my alley.  I even got to meet the fabulous Unique. 


Alex "Unique" Newell

A fun time was had by all.  But this blog isn't about the fun that I had.  Oh no...  This blog is about why I love drag queens. 

And here is the reason I love drag queens...  They are who they are.  They are exactly who they want to be.  They don't worry about what people think.  They know who they are on the inside and they are that person on the outside as well.  I am mesmerized by them on stage.  I wish I could be so bold.  I understand that they are in "costume" and playing a "role" but they still do some pretty amazing things.  Things that I don't think that I could do even with a costume to hide behind.  These women are advocates and role models.  They do all this while dressing in a manner that may not be accepted by society.  Makes me feel lazy.  I feel good about the person I am.  I have few hardships.  The only minority group that I am in is that I am a woman.  And with all these things on my side, I still can't compare to the accomplishments that these women have.  And so I tip my hat to you.


The Smooch has left the building...

Not only did The Smooch leave the building, he left the city, county and state.  The Smooch decided to drive to Long Island, New York to visit his family.  His dad broke his foot this summer and needed to get some stuff done around the house, so The Smooch decided to go and help out.  He planned on being gone about a week but it ended up being about 10 days.  Rumors started flying.  "I think she killed him and buried him in the back yard.  New York is just a cover.  He is never coming home."  That wasn't true, I assure you.  The Smooch is alive and well.  But as his trip kept being extended, I thought maybe The Smooch's mother had kidnapped him and was keeping him for manual labor.  She confirmed that he was locked in the basement.  But she finally released him and he is back home.  I assume at least.  Between naps and football, I haven't actually talked to him yet.

This is what our dogs looked like when I had to
tell them their daddy had extended his trip again.  So Sad.

But enough about him, this is my blog.  And below is the list of things that I had planned on doing vs the list of things I actually did while The Smooch was away.
 
Things I Planned Today While The Smooch Was Away

1. Sleep a lot.
2. Eat tons of Jeni's Ice Cream.  If you have never tried, you have never lived.  Get a second job before you try it because you are going to need it to pay for your new habit.  But it is worth every penny!
3. Eat Taco Bell every day.  Gross I know but shut up and get your own blog.
4. Work on all my projects.  The Smooch refers to these as "crafts" but they are not.
5. Relax.
6. Enjoy single life again.

What I Actually Did

1. Run around like a crazy person.  Before doing any evening activities, the dogs had to go out first.
2. Go to bed late every night.  After being gone all day and night, I felt bad keeping the dogs crated all the time.  So I stayed up late so they could play.
3. Eat crackers for dinner, because we don't have food at our house.
4. Water the new sod and new plants every day while being eaten alive by mosquitos.
5. Walk the dogs. 
6. Clean up dog poop and pee.  Mostly off the bottom of my feet because that's usually how I discover my dogs little surprises.
7. Had a very small taste of what it might be like to be a single parent.
8. Pee with six eyes watching me.  That goes for just about everything else I did that week.
9. I did actually eat a lot of Jeni's Ice Cream.  Because a girl's gotta eat and there was no food in the house.

Random Stuff That Happened This Week - Week of September 9, 2013

Blogging is an interesting concept.  The weeks that I do nothing mean I have lots of time for blogging but a lack of items to blog about.  And weeks were I am really busy, mean no time for blogging.  This week was a little of the former.  Not much going on with nothing to write about.  The Smooch is out of town this week, leaving me home alone.  I enjoyed the time without him but I do miss him.

This lack of nothing to do sent me up to my parents on Friday night.  Going to my parents house is something I have always enjoyed doing.  They live in the country and life in the country is a little quieter and calmer than city life.  Everything moves a little slower.

 

The above is true for the country but not my parents house.  My parents are a little on the crazy side and their house is always a little crazy too.  My mom loves dogs.  My entire life, my mom has always had a handful of dogs.  Recently she started working with a dog rescue group called Ohio Fuzzy Pawz.  This means that on top of the massive amounts of dogs she already owns, she always has a couple foster dogs that she is taking care of.  I really don't know how she does it.  Some of the foster dogs come with a lot of challenges.  They have behavioral issues and some of them have medical problems that need to be dealt with before they can be adopted.  My mom keeps track of all of these dogs problems and makes sure each one gets the right special dog food for a food allergy or the medication they need for a skin condition.  I don't know how she does it.

So, going to my parents' house becomes an adventure.  This weekend, my mom had eight dogs.  EIGHT!!  I of course had my three in tow.  Yep, you counted correctly that makes eleven.  Have you ever had to keep track of eleven dogs.  Every time you let them outside, or inside or whatever, you have to count and make sure all dogs are accounted for.  And if that's not bad enough, seven of the eight are Shih Tzus.  Below are pictures of all the dogs.  I am not sure if I got all the right names matched up with all the right dogs.

My Mom's Dogs

Sophie - The Non-Shih Tzu

Mr. T

Zeus - God of all dogs



Rhet

Laylie

The Foster Dogs - ADOPT A DOG!!
 


Bono - Currently up for adoption!!

Randi - Currently up for adoption!!

 

Andrew

 My Dogs

Harley (Back), Dominic (Front Left), Maddie (Front Right)

That's quite a house full.  But it is nice because there is always someone to love, someone to cuddle with and someone to play with.

But dogs isn't the only thing I did while home for the weekend.  My dad and I hit the local high school game.  It is always funny to go back to high school events.  The people seem to be the same except they are older and fatter.  I am now old enough to have friends with kids in junior high and high school.  That makes me feel old.  I hope for all the adults around when I was in high school that I didn't act the way high schoolers do today.  I am sure I did but I would like to believe that I was more mature than that.  Seeing them in their own environment (just call me Jane Goodall) makes me appreciate my life a little more.  I think every one of the cheerleaders had the same haircut.  Long hair down to mid back, big ass bow holding it all back.  Conformity much?  I just want to grab them and say "Try being an individual, it's pretty cool!!"  But they would just call me weird and they'd probably be right.  But the difference is that I don't give a crap's ass (I don't know what that means either) what they think.

I ended the visit with my parents with a trip to the local ice cream shop, Suz-E-Q's.  My parents go there every Saturday without fail.  I go for the ice cream.

 

My choice of the day



My dad's indulgence


One final note to send you into the week.  I read a lot of random stuff on the internet and Facebook.  Mostly random articles and blogs.  Well this week, I happened upon the funniest advertisement for a product I can't believe exists. I discovered PooPouri.  Watch the YouTube video.  It's worth it.  I haven't yet purchased this product, but I will.  And I'll let you know how it works.

 

Until next time...

Poke The Bear

The force that has become my husband (further referred to as The Smooch) and I has no one to blame but Match.Com. We met online. Match handpicked us and delivered us to each other's inboxes. The Smooch "winked" at or marked me as "interesting" or whatever the lingo is these days. And then of course, he did nothing else. I was notified that The Smooch was "interested".  I waited a couple days but he never emailed me. I finally had to make the first move and email The Smooch.

Our first date was a lunch date on Friday, January 14, 2011. We met in person, for the first time at Spagio in Grandview. I was very busy at work that day and actually scheduled lunch with The Smooch between meetings. The first date went well. The conversation was great. I texted The Smooch the next day to see if he wanted to meet up again. He said yes.

Four weeks later, I knew that I had met the man she was going to marry.

On February 11th, I gave The Smooch a CD. It was not a Valentine's gift, just a gift given right before Valentine's Day. The Smooch retaliated. I specifically asked him not to do anything for Valentine's Day. The Smooch also made me a CD and homemade brownies. He had them delivered to my work by his unsuspecting intern.

Not long after this, The Smooch and I began playing a game they lovingly referred to as "I Love You Chicken." It is like regular Chicken but instead of running straight at each other until one of us flinches, we try to "one up" each other in a loving way.
Ex. One of us might say, "I like you"
The other one would respond with, "I love you"
Then "Let's get married."
"Let's have babies."
"Let's have ten babies!"
And so on and so forth.

This game is what led them into a jewelry store for the first time. We were at Easton Town Center shopping.  And in the spirit of the game, they ended up going into a jewelry store and trying on engagement rings.  I hyperventilated. The Smooch laughed. Until he saw the prices of the rings I was trying on then he hyperventilated as well.

This is how our story began.

Random Stuff That Happened This Week - Week of September 1, 2013

This is the first episode of Random Stuff That Happened This Week.  This will be a weekly (or whenever random stuff happens) blog of funny random stuff that I witnessed.

The beginning of this week fell right in the middle of Labor Day weekend.  We did plenty.  I will save you the details of all the random labor day things but here is a cute picture of a goat.  My husband (The Smooch) and I went to the local fair where I grew up, the ever fabulous Morrow County Fair.  We saw lots of old friends, ate lost of greasy food, and saw some farm animals.  We thought about taking this little guy home with us.  But we have a two pet limit and already have three dogs.

Are you my mommy??  Am I your kid??

Tuesday was The Smooch and I's second anniversary.  I thought The Smooch was the most amazing husband in the world.  For my anniversary, he invited a couple guys to our house for a fantasy football draft. Not so amazing anymore. I even had to order pizza for the group.  Happy Anniversary Baby. I think I will invite over my knitting circle for our anniversary next year.  He later redeemed himself with flowers, a great dinner at G. Michaels and a show.  We saw Totem.  Totally worth the money.

So Sweet

My work week ended with a move day.  Part of my job is organizing the moves for all the tenants in an apartment building while my company renovates their apartments.  Friday was a move day for me.  Move days are always the most interesting part of my job. This week's move provided much entertainment for me.  There was the girl with the sink full of black sludge because she didn't want to call maintenance...  and the guy who used the spare closet like a trash can.  But my favorite must have been the guy who had a whacking stick by the front door for burglars and a knife under his bed for the burglars who got past the whacking stick.


The week ended with some adventures with sod.  Yes sod.  I will clarify for my younger readers.  When you are young, you get excited about things like shopping, sex and cheap drinks.  As you get older or more married, you get excited about home goods and lawn care.  You laugh now but just you wait.  Anyway....  our friends, decided to install sod in their backyard.  Being the great friends we are, we donated my dad's truck and our time.  I had to drive the truck, being the only one of the four to be able to drive a stick shift.  So the husband in our friend duo and I drove to the sod place to pick up the sod.  We had loaded all the sod into the truck.  The tires didn't look so good.  I called my dad to see what the weight limit was on his truck.  He said 8-900 pounds.  How much sod is there, he asks.  I tentatively say 1800 lbs and hang up as quickly as I can.  So getting the sod became a two day adventure.  But while we were getting the second batch, The Smooch and  the wife in the duo laid all the rest of the sod.  When we returned, there was no yard left and still lots of sod left.  So we drove the sod to our house and installed it there.  If you have ever laid sod, you know it needs lots of water.  I mean LOTS of water.  We had loaned our sprinkler to our newly sodded friends so we were in a pickle (metaphorically speaking).  Below is the results of some genius thinking, if I do say so myself.

New sod, no sprinkler? No problem. Good thing your wife grew up in hillbilly country.

And that is just a sampling of all the random things that happened this week.  Stay tuned for another exciting episode...

Detecting Illegal Drug Activity

That was the name of the class I took today at work.  I work in affordable housing or low income housing, whatever you want to call it.  But basically we take those without homes and give them homes.  This line of work often leads to interesting training classes.  I have taken a couple drug awareness classes and am embarrassed about how little I knew about drugs.  I thought I was pretty street savvy but it sounds like I need to stay on the sidewalk a little longer.  Or maybe I just need to watch some additional episodes of Breaking Bad.  I already watch Justified so I understand the hillbilly weed trade but that doesn't really help me understand the urban drug trade.

Today's class was how to tell if drug activity is happening on your property, what to look for and what the signs are.  A couple cops taught the class and they even brought in a dummy proof kit that showed what each drug looked like and they had "samples" on hand for us to look like.  All the class really taught me was that I will never be able to sell crack or cocaine because I can't cook.  I will never be into meth because I flunked high school chemistry.  And if the plant in my office is any indication, I will not be growing pot in a closet any time soon.



My Office Plant

I guess I better keep my day job a little longer.