I am becoming my parents' child...

I am becoming my parents' child.  How can I become something that I already am?  Good question.  What I mean to say is that I am suddenly becoming the child my parents tried to make me be when I was an actual child.  Does that clear it up?  Yeah, didn't think so.  So when I was kid, my mom nagged me a lot.  It was sort of a hobby.  Nagging and making me miserable.  When the weather got cold, I was always that dorky kid wearing a huge winter coat and gloves and scarves and hats and boots. 

I looked like that kid from The Christmas Story.  I couldn't put my arms on.  I had to pack my shoes in my backpack and then change from my boots into my regular shoes.  "But whhhhyyyyyy..."  I used to whine each winter.  "I want to look cute during winter like the other kids.  I don't want to look like the marshmallow man."    My parents always gave the parent answer, "because we love you and we want you to be warm enough on the bus to school and at recess.  And what if the bus breaks down and you have to walk somewhere to get help or to another bus."  My response was also always the same, they aren't going to make some little girl walk for help.  I am adorable and the big kids will always carry me.

Now that I am older and wiser, I realize I am suddenly following my parents advice.  I wear snow boots to work when it snows or is really cold.  I even go as far as to wear an extra pair of thicker socks.  I wear a big winter coat that goes down to my knees, I wear gloves and a hat and a scarf.  I even take it a step farther.  I carry extra socks, hats and gloves in my car.  Along with a snow shovel, salt, tire pump, car type tools, battery charger and about a million other things that I never need.  But I really believe that I never need those things because I am always prepared.

Oh my god... Am I becoming my parents?  NNNNNOOOOOOOOOO........

Crap I Did This Year - 2013

Like all great ideas, this one is also stolen.  I read, off and on, a number of blogs.  I stumbled across ComfyTown Chronicles: TToT Don't Call It A YIR which then led me to Considering: Not Ten, but TWELVE Things of Thankful.  I liked their versions of the year in review a lot and decided to try it out.

So here is my Year in Review also known as Twelve Thing of Thankful which I have renamed as Crap I Did This Year.  I haven't been blogging a year yet.  Well, I started in 2011 then stopped and restarted in October 2013.  But here is a list of a few other things I did that maybe even you didn't know about.  I apologize that it seems a little late.  But better late than never.

January

In January I left my old job in commercial real estate to start a new adventure in affordable housing.  Everyday since has been an adventure.  Working for a non-profit is different than anything I have ever done before.  There are all the goods and bads of any other job but there is this additional layer where at the end of each day, we did good for someone else.  We put people in homes.

February

An outing with a friend takes us to an improv show.  I have taken improv classes in the past but this show changes my fate with improv.  After this show, I take an additional class.  That class leads me to an improv troupe and performances in front of actual people.  People who paid money to see me perform.  Pretty cool.

The Smooch and I have an Oscar Party.  We went all out.  We decorated the house and had swag bags for all of our guests.  We even dressed the dogs up.

Yes, I made an evening gown for our cement goose.
Yes, we have a cement goose, but it is The Smooch's and not mine. 
No way I would own that awful thing.

Best Dressed goes to....

March

I have been very luck up until this point but in March I lost a good friend.  This was the first funeral that I have gone to that was for a friend.  Not an old relative, not the grandmother of a friend, but my friend.  Someone that was brought to me randomly by fate.  I should maybe add here that she was 90 when she died.  But it still hurt me in my heart.  I met her when I worked in a nursing home right after college almost 10 years ago.  We became fast friends and spent many years playing Scrabble.  I miss her dearly.

April

The Smooch and I went to see Elton John in concert.  It was my second Elton John concert and The Smooch's 18th.  I don't think it was our last concert.

I discovered roller derby and attended my first bout.  The Smooch and I attended a bout of the Ohio Roller Girls.  I hate sports.  I have a short attention span and get distracted by cheerleaders, bands and time outs.  But I could not take my eyes of this sport.  I am in love.  I later attend a couple Wanna Be clinics where you get to practice your roller derby skills.  Being a novice, we learned things like how to fall and stop.  Why do I would need to learn to fall.  I know how to do that.  You read Tricknee right?  I fall down just fine.  But I needed to learn to fall without hurting myself.  The Smooch and I also have season tickets to the 2014 season and I can't wait for it to kick off in March!  Boom!!

I stopped pinning stuff on Pinterest and actually made something that I pinned.  Pretty awesome right?

May

As I stated in January, I was reintroduced to the wonderful world of improv.  In May, I had my first performance.  It was quite an experience.  The crowd was not huge, but full for the venue.  I was so nervous I could have died.  But I am glad that I did it.  I conquered a fear and love performing.  I actually have a show on Friday!

My Office Plant Died.  This was very traumatic for me.  The plant was thriving and doing well.  Then after an extended period away from work it died.  It was determined it died of lack of light as my office has no windows.  Afterwards, the office plant doctor took all the rest of my plants out of my custody and determined me an unfit mother.  She nursed them all back to health, except the one pictured below and gave them back to me.  Now I have to get a babysitter for my plants anytime I am out of the office for more than 3 days.

June

My parents and in-laws engage in a war for my love during my birthday.  In a surprise turn of events, my parents sent me a birthday card.  This may be the second or third card I have received from my mother EVER.  The card held one slightly wrinkled $1 bill.  This may be the largest and most expensive birthday gift I have received from my parents in years.

Not to be outdone, my In-Laws "upped the ante."  Not only did they send a card, they sent a wrinkled $5 bill.  I am hoping this tradition continues until I am getting $100 each birthday.

I spent all that money on lottery tickets and won NOTHING!!  Lesson learned: people can't buy my love, it just doesn't pay.

July

July was the month I became famous, for about 15 minutes.  While eating out at a local hot dog restaurant, me and my coworker we approached by a news reporter.  They were doing an article on hot dog eating for July 4th.  I was interviewed and then I was video tapped eating a hot dog.  Now when you Google my name, this article comes up in the top 10.  So it is my Facebook page, my LinkedIn page and then a video of me eating a hot dog.  Can't wait until I look for my next job and future employers find that little gem.

August

August is the month that I decide to start blogging again. This led me on an adventure.  I know realize that I know nothing about nor do I understand SEO, PageRanks, analytics etc.  I had no idea there was so much more to blogging.  As I stated in my post My Blogging Goals for 2014 are......, I am going to try to ignore all of that stuff and just blog about whatever moves me.  I am not trying to get a book deal or get the most pins on my recipe on pinterest.  I just want to ramble aimlessly.

August is also the month that I discovered the best pants in the world.  I totally love these pants and will wear nothing but them.  Check them out at Button Free, Zipper Free, Care Free.  Yes, I wear elastic waist band pants.  Don't judge me until your fat ass has been in these pants and you were like, oh yeah.

September

September marked the two year anniversary of The Smooch and myself.  It often times feels like it has been much longer.  This is also the month wear rumors really started flying that I may have killed him.  I did not kill him, he had only been kidnapped by his mother.  If I had killed him, no one would ever know.  Read more here...  The Smooch has left the building...

I also got to meet Alex Newell who plays Unique on Glee.  This was one of two nights this year that I was up past midnight.  The other being New Year's Eve.  I am always amazed by the confidence of drag queens.  That was a drag....

October

October was a month that brought even more improve into my life.  Columbus had it's annual improve festival and I did nothing but watch, practice, workshop and perform improv.  It was a crazy weekend.  I guess that's all I really did in October.  Slow month.

November

The Smooch and I hosted a Halloween party and in our usually fashion, it was late.  We had it the first weekend in November.  It is partly Halloween's fault since it was on a Thursday.  We had a great time at the party.  I dressed up as a Wrecking Ball and The Smooch dressed up as Miley Cyrus.  He was wearing clothes but not very many and it was an interesting sight.  There are no pictures because every picture taken immediately broke the camera.  This party gave me a Flashback to college and I realized I am getting old and may now need to be on a no drink limit.

December

In December, The Smooch and I went to New York to visit my In-Laws.  Trips at the In-Laws are always interesting.  Each time The Smooch and I visit New York we always try to spend at least on day in the city, New York City.  This visit we took a look at the 9-11 Memorial.  It was a very somber place.  The first time I had ever been to New York was many years after 9-11 happened so I never saw the towers in all their glory.  And it is really weird to stand in a place where these two towers used to be.  It's hard to imagine what that space must have been like with the towers.  We also walked down to Battery Park and I got to see the Statue of Liberty.  I had never been to NYC before I met The Smooch and I love that we try to see one part of the city each time we are in New York.  It is really fun to see all these sights with The Smooch.

 

I grew up in a zoo...

That may be a slight exaggeration but not far.  I didn't actually grow up in a zoo.  I did, however, grow up at a house with tons of animals.  You may remember from the blog post Random Stuff That Happened This Week - Week of September 9, 2013 that my mother (not my father, even though they live together) has a ton of dogs.  Now it may seem a little abnormal to have 9 dogs living in one household but it never seemed abnormal to me.  I grew up on a farm.  We did some farming when I was a kid but we did not have a big huge factory farm.  Just a small one.

Country life is different than city life.  I guess the same can be said about city life being different than country life.  Both are fine, they both just have their pros and cons.  In my country life, there were always tons of animals around.  Below are a list of animals that we had at our house at one time or another.  We didn't have all of these animals at once, they all over lap.

• Horse - Just one, Sunshine Jim

• Cow - Joey.  He made a good burger.

• Goats - Burt and Ernie.  I was four when we got them.  Give me a break.

• Dogs - Too many to count.  I do know that we had so many over the years that we had to start reusing names.

• Cats - When we first moved into our house, there were a bunch of feral cats.  This happens when you live in the country because assholes think that because you live in the country, it is okay to dump there unwanted cats at your house.  It's not dickhead.  That's not cool.  Love your animals.  Anyway, so we had a bunch of feral cats that we couldn't touch.  They didn't like people.  Since we couldn't catch them.  We couldn't remove their reproductive organs.  We did spay and neuter all of the kittens.  But for year's we couldn't catch the original cats and those cats kept on multiplying until they final died.  But at one time, we did have 17 cats.  In the immortal words of Bob Barker,  "Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered." 

• Hamsters - We had two, Bud and Bart.  Naming was not our strong feature.

• Guinea Pigs - Just one, Sandy.  We would let her run around the bathroom, not all the times but sometimes.   And she loved to squeak.  That thing about drove you crazy with all that squeaking.

• Chinchilla - We only had one of these.  I can't remember it's name.  The curse of having a lot of pets is that you can't remember all there names.  But that critter was fun.  We loved to give it dust baths.

We also had a ton of birds.  I am not sure why but there were always birds roaming the property.

• Guineafowl - Not sure what to say about these.  They are like chickens but not at all.

• Parakeet - His name was Petey.  Yes, like the parakeet on Dumb and Dumber.

• Cockatiel - His name was Max.  He loved the blow dryer.  We would give him showers with a spray bottle and dry him off with the blow dryer.  Anytime you blew dry your hair he would go crazy because he wanted a blow out as well.  We kept Max in the bathroom.  With a house full of cats, small animals live in the room with a door that closes tight.

• Pheasants - Boring old garden variety.  When I was a kid my grandfather* was very active in the local conservation club.  One of the projects they worked on was bringing back pheasants to the area.  Apparently there were not many in the area.  They would deliver hundreds of baby chicks to my grandfather's house and he would put them in this HUGE cage in his backyard.  I can't even describe how big it was.  The cage was bigger than the second house I owned.  Then when they were all grown up, we would round them up.  Each person would take a dozen pheasants or so and release them in different parts of the county.

• Golden Pheasants - Not sure where we got these but they were pretty cool looking.

• Quail - Bob White - About as exciting as they sound.

• Doves - We had one really ugly one that we named Steve Urkel.  He was popular at the time.

• Peacocks - Peacocks are beautiful but the make crazy noises.  Their screeches sound like women screaming.  When we first got them the neighbors would stop by just to make sure we were all okay.

• Geese - I hated those things and they hated me. They once chased me through the yard peeking at me the whole time.  They cornered me in the barn until someone came out of the house to rescue me.  This story always gets big laughs but I am telling you, that shit was traumatizing.  I hate geese to this day.  NOT FUNNY.

• Chickens - We had a ton over the years.  But we did have this one rooster that hated men.  I didn't know a rooster could have those kind of emotions.  But he did and he hated my father.  If my father was walking around the barn, the rooster would run the other way around the barn so he could attack my father at a corner.  That thing was evil, pure evil.

• Ducks- We started out with 5 but had over 100 in a year.  They would hang out at our house in the spring and summer and then every fall they would migrate, well I guess I don't know where they went but they came back the next spring.  The story of how we got them is also quite funny.  When I was a kid, we had a Schwans Man.  He drove this huge freezer truck and drove around selling frozen goods (pizza, ice cream) out of his truck.  My dad mentioned to him once that he wanted some ducks.  The next time the Schwans Man came around, he had a box of ducks in the front seat of his truck.  I guess he was full service.

* Mutters under breath - Son of a Bitch

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...