Green Queen Gets Pierced

When I was 16 years old, I did an exchange program that I didn’t realize would end up changing my life. It’s funny how insignificant things can become so huge like that.

That summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school, a girl from Northern Ireland came and stayed with my family and I for a month and, along with a bunch of other American and Irish students, we discussed some of the political and religious issues within the country.

And also, goofed off a lot and spent a summer doing insanely awesome things. Like theme parks, ball games, trips into Chicago, and countless other activities on top of the usual summer schedule.

The girl who was placed with me is still an exceptionally close friend of mine, Aisling. She was extremely quiet and shy at first, being careful and silent around me and my family, even when asked direct questions.

To be fair, she was also jet lagged. However, once I got her to come out of her shell (in case this hasn’t translated so far, I am NOT shy. I think I talked at her for 4 days before she could even get a word in so, that’s partly my fault), she REALLY came out. Man, understatement of the year.

We went shopping one day. And holy cow, KIND OF liked green is the understatement of life.

My green queen went from shy, sensibly dressed, brown haired babe to a chatterbox with new, mostly green, punked out clothing, and purple hair. I may or may not have had purple hair too…

We looked awesome, don’t even worry about it.

Even when the fuchsia flash went from purple to peach, we still were rocking out.

Anyway, once she was at ease with me, it was instant friendship. More like, instant soul mate. We keep in touch, and are even married on facebook (which we all know means a LOT). Since that first summer, we’ve spent 4 more summer adventures together. Pretty good, considering the oceans apart and the costs of tickets on student budgets. Aisling and I have hundreds of zany stories together but, this post is about the time we both went to get our ears pierced with my mom.

As I mentioned, we were feeling rather punky that summer and we wanted to get our ears double pierced to keep the personality flowing. We planned to go to Claire’s to get it taken care of and were about to go ourselves when we realized the flaw in our plan. I was 16 at the time, Aisling 15. We had to have a parent sign their approval for any piercings. And one of our parents was in Ireland. Cue begging and plans for lying.

The plan was set. My mom called Aisling’s mom to make sure that she was okay with Aisling getting piercings. Once that was done, we got ready to go to Claire’s. Aisling could do a really great American accent so, she was going to pretend to be my sister. Which, for those of you who don’t think there is such a thing as an American accent, you’re ridiculous. Although, contrary to a lot of the Irish kid’s  American accents I’ve heard, we aren’t ALL nasally, dumb, or harsh in tone.

As fantastic it always is to have that portrayal.

As we rode to the Claire’s, Aisling was carefully rehearsing her flattering accent as my mom and I just kept repeating “just don’t talk too much”.

Once we were there, everything was going pretty great. They didn’t ask to see our student id’s or licenses or whatever so, Aisling was just accepted to be my mom’s kid. My mom signed our waivers as we picked out earrings and Aisling was even convincingly chatting with the piercers with success, (or at least no questioning looks). However, when I got my ears done, Aisling seemed to go a bit paler than normal.

Which is hard since, being from Ireland, she tended to be so pale she reflected light.

She got slightly shakey, turned even slightly green at the gills. She was sitting down at her chair when I took her hand encouragingly and she gave me a weak smile in return. We both hadn’t had piercings done since we were in our single digits. Although they were pointless, nerves are nerves.

And being as obviously nervous as she was, her piercer couldn’t not ask if she was “feeling okay, hun?”

I was laughing so hard, I had to leave the store. Aisling emerged shortly there after with freshly pierced ears and my mother, who was also in hysterics. To this day, the panicked and nasally “I’m finnnne!” is still used to taunt my exceptionally un-stealthy Irish pal.  

Valentines

However your Valentine’s Day may have been, I hope at least a large portion of them were sweet. I don’t have an amazingly great career of Valentine’s Days. As a kid, my family and I tended to accidentally make my mom cry every Valentine’s by inadvertently ruining her dinner in some (or several) ways. As an adult, it’s a day that always has hype or some aspect that it can’t quite match. I have had some rather perfect Valentine’s days in my past, some rather flat ones as well. Thankfully, no huge disasters. This year was exceptionally fun as we had a “therapy of smashing hearts” party with a heart piñata that was destroyed. Let all the frustrations of the holiday’s commercialism out while being with people we loved and then copious amounts of celebrating what love and friendship should mean. What it would always mean to be loved without Hallmark brainwashing us with the hearts and frills.

My favorite part of this entire holiday is sending out/receiving Valentines from loved ones. Ever since I was little, I always thought it was great. Remember when you’re a kid and you make your own mailbox and swap with your whole class? Very sweet memories for me. Fun times making and buying cheesey Valentines and building them with my siblings and my mom in our kitchen. I still make Valentines for my friends every year and try and send them out. This year, I found some pretty great ones at Target and sent them out to some of my awesome loved ones. Pretty late, I don’t think a single person got them before the day itself, but better late then never! While the various Target cards were cool, I couldn’t help thinking as I browsed the paper collections that Valentine’s could be made so much cooler.

Here would be some of my products if I was in the Valentine business. (Best. Business. Ever.)

And for all of you single folk who celebrated the love of your friends instead of in a significant other:

Design by: http://www.redbubble.com/people/krisvahl/t-shirts/5757736-5-chewie-and-han

Happy Belated Valentines :) 

My Roommates, Part 1: Taylor

I have always lucked out with having exceptionally awesome roommates. My freshman year I was matched with Annie, who would later become one of my best friends, and then from friendships we created throughout our freshman year and one long time friend, the rest of our living situations went smoothly.

My roommate Taylor, I miss terribly. This post is an explanation as to why.

I met Tay when she lived in the single across the hall from Annie and I. She was quiet but seemed nice, and then as time went on, she quickly revealed herself to be awesome.  

Voothies are a mixture of smoothies and vodka. Remember how I said she was awesome? Told you so. Taylor custom ordered this at Max and Erma's one night and we've never looked back from the delicious, frozen, bliss that this beverage provides. The waitress may judge you as she did Tay and I, but you should probably try it.

Tay and I bonded over geek television shows, bad movies, and quirky drinking games. Especially senior year, when our work loads were more demanding than ever (Taylor with her intensive degree program finishing, applying to grad school, trying to figure out moving in with her boyfriend, and work as an EMT. Me with two jobs of my own, my major and minor wrapping up, and going through the final stages of an unhealthy relationship), when we had time to spare, we would vent, try breathing, and play a round of Penny Can, trying to make sense of our lives.

Penny Can is able to solve all.

While I could go on and on about our favorite places to go around town, midnight movies, excessive amounts of sugar, dining hall brunches, feeding squirrels, our plans to get a puppy by planting grass on our balcony in a baby pool (which worked, btw, even if we never got the puppy), worrying servers, attempting to grill and giving up in favor of cupcakes being easier, and infinite trips to Wal-Mart... this post is just going to focus on our drinking games. Particularly in relation to television, a central component to our apartment.

Not because we drank a lot. Frankly, quite the opposite. Drinking for drinking's sake never appealed to us, and with our work and schedules, would never have worked out in our favor. But rather because, when we did, we thought our methods were hilarious.

One game that sticks out in my mind is when we decided to take a drink every time the words "baby", "pregnant", "pregnancy", all variations of "mom", or "you just don't understand" were used during the Lifetime movie The Pregnancy Pact. 

For those of you who don't know and who also did not click that link, this movie is ridiculous. It's about a bunch of teen girls who get pregnant together due to a flimsy plan they all have... Also, we went through a cowboy hat phase for awhile.

Essentially, our game ended disastrously for us. The hats and the Lifetime movie. We had given the Lifetime screen writer much too much credit at coming up with lines. Our key words were used in rapid sucession and repeatedly. As we were both somewhere in between the categories of lightweights/occasional drinkers, we were goners before the first half. 

We liked to make up games moments before watching some of our favorite television shows sometimes too, but that was put to an abrupt stop after an episode of Castle fit our exact predictions and caused us to be tipsy on a Monday night.

We had seen part one of the two part episode and, at the end of the episode, our heroine is in her apartment taking a shower and then the scene cuts away to our hero running down the street trying to call her and tell her that her place is going to explode. As he runs, the apartment explodes! No sign or mention what happens to Detective Kate Beckett!

So, we were talking throughout the course of the next week and decided on various crazy methods in which she could have survived. Run out the fire escape and avoided the blast, been showering at her hot neighbors place and just been fooling us, or maybe even just having her be BA and stroll out of the flames like it was no big thing. We decided that we'd take a drink for any of those and a couple others... and then we were talking right before the episode and decided that if she had filled her tub with water and dove in to avoid the flames, we'd waterfall our entire glasses.

Shocked, we had done our own dares. And then proceeded with the normal drinking game throughout the course of the episode, (for Castle: "murder", "hot", any cliches about the victim's profession, any sexual innuendo relating to the death, any suggested scenes of flirty tension between Castle & Beckett). Twas a fun, tipsy time.

Out of all our television drinking games, however, one is more memorable than all the rest. The Maury Drinking Game. 

We would play this whenever Maury came on and we could manage it. In Ohio, it's usually around 5PM so, it was rarely great timing but, when it was, oh man. The rules were typed out and laminated on our coffee table for just such ocassions. I will share the entire rules with you guys and leave it at that. 

Next time you watch Maury, I promise this will make it even better. Enjoy! Hope you guys have some friends as awesome as my Taylor to play it with :)

Maury Drinking Game (EXTREME Paternity Test Edition)

Drink when any of the following occur:

1.     A man says he can’t be the father because he “doesn’t make disabled babies.”

a.       Same goes for if he “doesn’t make boy babies” or “doesn’t make girl babies”…and so on (basically, anytime he reveals his lack of knowledge on the topic of genetics)

2.     A woman discusses how the alleged father is her one true love and soul mate…then proceeds to tell the story of how she cheated on him with his best friend/brother/cousin/etc., therefore, he may not be the father of their child.

a.       Take 2 drinks if the woman has waited more than 2 years to tell him

3.       Maury says, “You ARE NOT the father.”

4.     Maury says, “You ARE the father.” (Let’s be honest, this isn’t much better than him not being the father – the kid’s screwed either way)

5.      When the alleged father’s mother/sister/cousin/girlfriend/etc. comes on the show and is just so sure that he isn’t the father, as if she was there and knows.

6.       Anytime someone’s age is listed as 19 (in an attempt to avoid the lawsuit of saying they were underage when they had their baby with the 30 year old)

7.      A woman is “1000% sure” the man is the father or vice versa, e.g. the man is “1000% sure” he is not the father

8.     During the pre-taped segment, the alleged father says the woman “is a ho and knows for a fact that she was sleeping with at least insert ridiculous number here other men while they were together.”

9.       When someone runs backstage and falls to the ground crying/sobs against a wall upon hearing the results

10.   When someone jumps for joy and starts cheering upon hearing the results

a.       Take 2 drinks if they go into the audience for high-fives

11.   When the child has been named after the alleged father (i.e. Tyrone Jr.), but the results prove he (i.e. Tyrone) isn’t actually the father

12.   When the words “The results are IN” appear on the screen (because you just get so friggin excited for the reveal…don’t deny it, you know you do)

13.   When the “Tell it to Maury” question appears on the screen

14.   Anytime Maury asks the alleged father if he’s “going to step-up and provide for/take care of this child” if the child is proven to be his

15.   Anytime the woman compares the side-by-side pictures of the child/alleged father and points out how much they look alike

a.       Take 2 drinks if she does this and it turns out he isn’t the father

16.   Anytime the woman demands an apology from the now proven father

17.   Anytime someone yells at the television screen to talk to the people backstage

2 Norberts

So. This week was... 17 kinds of crazy. Michael Jackson's nose levels of crazy. Packers going to the super bowl levels of crazy. Oh wait... dang it. Anyway, I have to apologize. I do not have an epic silly story to share with you. I have been dealing with crazy.


As such! No time to illustrate/tell any tales. Not much time to breathe. I posted some recipes on my cooking blog but, even those are just silly- both having poorly shot pictures and exceptionally simple recipes. Don't judge me, I'm trying!


I will be simply leaving you with the image of Norbert the man eating chicken this week. And that is all. Make it last.


Thanks, Aisling, for the doodle that started this post. Hopefully you readers chuckle as much as she and I did upon the creation of said dual Norberts. Next week, I promise something legendary. Or at least of more substance than two pictures/paragraphs.

Get it?! Good.