road trip playlist

in may of 2006 i took a road trip to new orleans with 4 other friends. we went to see gomez at tipitina's on cinco de mayo. there was a lot of partying crammed into the 1.5 days that we were there. the drive home was a little miserable, to say the least. we were listening to my ipod through one of those little radio transmitter thingies and i came up with a fun idea. i created an "on the go" playlist and handed the ipod off to let everyone pick 3 songs. then we listened to it. it was really interesting to see what songs everyone picked. it was pretty random! of course, when we got home, i burned the playlist onto cds for everyone and made custom "album" covers too. the mix was called the t&c mix after our rental car which was a chrysler town and country mini van. the album covers will make no sense to anyone else but that's okay. 

carter bless you!

kelly as a bunny rabbit

from bitter with baggage seeks same, "samantha looked around the playground in amazement. her mother had been right. she really was the smartest and the prettiest." 

provigil 

oh, you want the playlist, don't you? 

1. counting crows-round here

2. iron and wine-such great heights

3. johnny cash-hurt

4. the new amsterdams-proceed with caution

5. thievery corp-lebanese blonde

6. xavier rudd-9 times a day

7. coldplay-fix you

8. cyndi lauper-girls just wanna have fun

9. death cab-i will follow you into the dark

10. sia-breathe me

11. flaming lips-free radicals

12. men at work-down under

13. alanis morissette-hand in my pocket

14. tenacious d-wonderboy

15. modest mouse-the good times are killing me

what a trip that was. 

this post was inspired by one of mama kat's writer's workshop prompts. 

nightmare!

i was pretty young when my grandparents moved "to town" from the farm. maybe around 7? i don't remember. what i do remember is my anxiety about sleeping in their basement at the new house. on the farm, we slept upstairs. not "upstairs" like the ground level, but the 2nd floor. it was awesome. we had a little window we could look out and see for what felt like miles. it was the prairie after all. it was the bedroom (and the 2 twin beds) that my dad and uncle grew up in. the beds were moved to the basement in the new house but it wasn't the same. after that, the only time i was excited to sleep there was winter because that meant we got to use electric blankets. i'm from texas, y'all, so electric blankets are still pretty uncommon to me.

i rarely had nightmares as a child. in fact, i only remember one and that's probably because it was a reoccurring number. this nightmare first made its debut while i was sleeping in the basement. i never woke up remembering much about it other than a woman (who honest to god looked like the evil version of mary poppins) breaking down the door from the kitchen to the stairs leading to the basement, knife in hand, coming to kill us all. it was scary as shit! i can't remember if i ever even told anyone about this dream when i was little. i'm pretty sure in my little kid brain, i thought if i talked about it it would really happen.

now, believe it or not, 20 years later i still have that dream from time to time. i would say that i probably remember having it less than once a year. but the fact that i have it at all is so bizarre to me. i don't have any other reoccurring dreams. i have the teeth dreams all the time but the circumstances are always different in those. i've never had the same teeth dream twice. i'm still pretty terrified by evil mary poppins, too i wonder if that will ever go away?

10 things that put a smile on my face when i'm sad

this isn't a top 10 list or anything, it's just the first 10 random things that came to mind. 

1. under pressure by queen and david bowie
2. danaburger
3. looking at pictures from my wolfpack's trip to san francisco
4. wayne's world
5. hearing my sweet friend robin's voice
6. thinking about the time that we had the windows rolled down in kelly's car (i was driving) and a plastic bag was being whipped around inside the car by the wind and he thought it was a bat. i seriously have never laughed so hard in my life.
7. ian and buddy singing cuts like a knife
8. my darling nephew
9. the "doorman" scene from knocked up
10. reminiscing about all the episodes of reno 911 that joshua and i used to watch together, "xanadu it into the car..." "xanadon't it!"

via

this post was written for

because we can can can!

i know what you're thinking, "two writer's workshops in a row?!" but another one of the prompts caught my attention so i had to do it!

Open your pictures folder...find a random "February" picture from a past year and tell a story.

i have some fantastic february pictures. seriously, it seems that i have the most fun in february and march. who knew? for example, my favorite day was a day in february. and one of my favorite sunday fundays happened in february last year. but those days have already been covered! this wasn't exactly random, i didn't close my eyes and move my cursor onto a picture but...i bring you a picture from february 2005:

one of my best friends from high school was going to school at loyala new orleans and, her senior year, i decided to go visit during mardi gras. it was kind of a last minute decision. i flew there on a thursday, and alison and i drove back on monday. i woke up thursday morning feeling like complete death. i managed to be seen by my doctor, who prescribed a z-pack and some cough syrup with codeine. my flight was in the evening so i didn't get into new orleans until pretty late. we ate some dinner and then went to bed. i felt TONS better when i woke up on friday morning. 

i would be lying if i said that the rest of the weekend was a clear picture in my head. we did a lot of drinking and standing around but it was so much fun! some friends of alison's lived about a block off the parade route so we all used their house as our headquarters. we could go back there to use the bathroom and make fresh drinks as often as we wanted. it was pretty fantastic. one of my favorite moments from that weekend was during a movie themed parade, we saw one that said something like, "we drink because we can can can!" (from moulin rouge) i'm pretty sure we wore than one out for the next couple of days!

that picture was taken on friday evening and it features 2 of my favorite items i caught from parade floats. one, a beanie baby goat. yeah, i don't know either. two, a plastic beer mug hanging from purple beads. in fact, i will leave you with a bonus picture because i'm so generous:

god, i was so young in those pictures! it's hard to believe that 5 years have passed since that weekend. where does the time go? 

let me tell you about my scar

it's been a while since i've been inspired by one of mama kat's writing prompts but i was just talking about the scar on my leg last week so i figured what the hell!?

in july of 2005 a bunch of friends and i set off to tube the upper guadalupe. i guess if you're not from this area, you may have no idea what that means. well, check out this site to get a brief understanding. it was my third weekend in a row to go to the river and the previous 2 trips had been eventful, and not in a good way. i really shouldn't have gone at all but at that point in my life i couldn't resist a trip to the river, especially if i didn't have to drive.

immediately upon jumping in the river, something happened and it did not feel good. it took me a few minutes to realize that i had hit a rock and cut my leg. only, i didn't just cut my leg, i sliced the whole damn thing open. something that you should understand about tubing, if you've never been, is that the tube people drop you off up the river from the rental place so you can float back and return your tubes with ease. we had just been dropped off in the middle of nowhere and the only way to get anywhere at that point was to get in my tube and float. unfortunately the guadalupe river is full of urine, feces, vomit, and other bodily fluids. i tried my best to keep my leg out of the nasty water but it didn't matter. i ended up getting a horrible infection and missing several days of work. ugh.

but here's the real reason for this post...the pictures! they're not too nasty but they certainly aren't rainbows and bunny rabbits.

right after the incident, which occurred on july 2

july 4

july 8

july 12

july 15

july 17

and i guess that's when i stopped taking pictures of it. the healing process was very, very long. i had nerve damage surrounding where the actual wound was. it was awful. the whole experience was a nightmare and i haven't been back to the river since then. i don't really miss it at all either. maybe someday i'll tell you about the 2 trips leading up to the sliced leg day. 

writer's workshop: signs

i'm doing mama kat's writer's workshop this week because one of the prompts was perfect for something i've been thinking about for the past 24 hours.

If you were the type to believe in "signs," describe a "sign" you have received from someone.

on monday night i had the pleasure of seeing sam in several of my dreams. it was so good to see her again. i posted about the dreams on twitter and one of my friends replied to me that the vietnamese believe if a loved one passes away, then appears in your dreams it means that they truly loved you and have used your dreams as a way to say goodbye. i did some googling and found that a lot of people believe this to be true.

i can't think of any reason not to believe in it as well. some people even believe that our deceased loved ones try to communicate with us throughout the day, too, but for some reason when we're asleep we're just more receptive to it. i've always been a little "extra-sensory" so i'm actually looking forward to seeing signs of love from sam when i'm awake too :)

writer's workshop trial

i've seen a couple of my friends participate in mama kat's writer's workshop but i've never had much to contribute to any of her prompts...until now!

so the prompt that i have chosen is to describe the most destructive thing your pet has done. and this story is quite unique, i believe.

when i was 7 years old i begged my parents for a hamster. i'm not sure why. i must have had a friend who had them or something. anyway, we finally went to the pet store at northcross mall and picked up an adorable little guy that i named hammy. obviously, i didn't hit my creative stride until later in life. hammy didn't live in one of those crazy plastic cages (like sam had in garden state...haha!). he lived in a white wire cage with a red plastic top and bottom.

i don't know how familiar you guys are with hamsters but if they can squeeze their little heads through an opening, they can squeeze their fat bellies through too. it's pretty fascinating, really. so, as you can guess, hammy started escaping from his cage on a nightly basis. i have no idea where he would go or how we ever found him but we always did.

one morning (the day ann richards became governor of texas) i woke up to some terrible news. hammy had escaped his cage once again but this time, something bad happened. i guess now would be the time for me to tell you all that we also had a dog, a big german sheppard named fritz. apparently fritz sat on hammy and squished him to death.

i was devastated. i don't know if my mom had been planning this all along or if the death of the family hamster triggered it but she kept my sister and me home from school that day. she took us to ann richards' inauguration and on the way home we went to the pet store and got a new hamster.

i have a feeling that hammy didn't meet his maker quite the way the story was told to me but i don't care. i'm glad my parents shielded me from the details surrounding hammy's death. as it was, i grew up feeling sad for fritz because he had accidentally killed another animal. and that's the way i prefer to remember it. i would later end up resenting fritz for another reason anyway.