Trolltally Strange

I wrote this post a while ago, but in the interest of Christmas and toys and such...here it is now!

Right now I'm watching a YouTube video of a screechy person opening troll doll toys.  I'm sitting with my three-year-old niece, and this is one of her favorite "shows."  It's not a show.  It's a person opening toys.  The voice is...how can I describe this?  Think of the high-pitched voice that people use when they talk to babies, but then raise it another octave, make it way too excited, and then put it on the living room surround sound.

"THE NEW TROLL DOLLS ARE OUT! AAAEEEEEEEE! WHICH ONE WILL WE OPEN?  OOOO!  LET'S LOOK AT THIS FASHION GIRL, WHO HUGS ALL OF HER FRIENDS EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR!"

I'm sorry, are the excessive capital letters annoying you?  I promise it sounds a thousand times worse if you're listening to it.

Also, whose brilliant idea was it to make a character who hugs all of her friends every hour on the hour?  If anyone tries to hug me at three o'clock in the morning, they're probably going to get punched or kicked.  Ask my husband if you don't believe me.

Hold on, we have a new toy:

"WOWIE ZOWIE!  LOOK AT THIS NEW NAKED GLITTER TROLL!"

To be fair, if my skin was glitter I would probably be naked all the time too.

I'm supposed to be getting work done right now, but I can't tear my eyes off of this spectacle.  My face is a mix or horror and intrigue.  This video, my friends, has almost a million views.  A MILLION.  Apparently this is a whole channel dedicated to buying toys and opening them.  This culture of three-year-old consumerism is completely new to me.

Oh no, the one year old is trying to plug the laptop cord into his mouth.  Gotta go.

In case you want to view the horror for yourself, I'm putting the link here.  Warning: if you open this at work, make sure no one else is around.  Everyone who hears you watching this video is going to think you're a freak.

CLICK HERE IF YOU DON'T VALUE YOUR EARS

The Well-Trained Dog and the Living Cardinal

How much do you know about grouse hunting?

If your answer is, "What the heck is a grouse?" then you are in the vast majority of humanity.  I was you once.  Then I met my husband.  Now I'm married with a hunting dog and a coop full of training pigeons.  Life comes at you fast.

**Note** In case you care, a grouse is a bird.  It's about the size of a chicken.  Also, since we get this question a lot, no our pigeons do not die in the course of training.  They're homing pigeons, so once the dog finds them in a field then we launch them into the air with a pigeon launcher (yes, this is a real thing), and they fly home.  Okay.  Glad we covered the logistics.  On to my story.

Yesterday I tried to get our dog Ruby to come in from the back yard.  I called her, but she wouldn't come.  I went outside to investigate, and she was on point.  This means she was frozen in place, pointing out a bird for a non-existent hunter to shoot.  I think it was a cardinal or something.  Definitely not a food bird.  I didn't take a picture, but here's what our type of dog looks like when she's on point:

My husband wasn't home, and I couldn't remember what he usually says to make Ruby break point.  I tried a few things:

"At ease!"

"Un-point!"

"You're free!"

"GREEN LIGHT!"

Nothing worked.  She moved only her eyeballs to look at me like, "Hello...shoot the bird..."

She's fifty pounds, so I wasn't about to go pick up her frozen-in-place body and haul her inside (on second thought, it would have been hilarious if she tried to hold the pose while I was carrying her!).  Suddenly, I had the perfect idea.

I went inside and pulled out our Wild West board game called Bang.  There's a cap gun in that game that's really loud.  I walked back outside and tried to call Ruby in again.  She stayed on point (shocker).

I pointed the gun in the general direction of the bird and shot.  BANG!  Ruby was satisfied and immediately ran to me happily like, "Did you get it?  Wasn't that awesome?!"  Whatever, dog.  I probably gave the poor bird a tiny heart attack.

Now our neighbors probably think we're the nutter house.  Well, that ship probably sailed long ago.  They're simply marking this up as one more reason to move:  "Hey, Maude! Crazy chick next door is shooting cardinals!  Did you call on that house over on the other side of town yet?"

IT WAS A CAP GUN, PEOPLE.  NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG POST.

Living in the Inside of a Butt (and How I Avoided It)

"Does our house always smell this way?!"

I had just gotten home from an overnight trip, and my house smelled disgusting.  If I had an air freshener to describe the smell, I think it would have been called "the inside of a butt."  Or, alternatively, it may have been closer to "food someone put in a garbage disposal...five weeks ago."  Whatever it was called, it was bad.

This made me wonder - what if our house really smells that bad all the time, and we don't notice it because we live there?!  Are we known on our street as the stinky people?  Do my clothes smell like that?  This was completely unacceptable.  My husband said it wasn't that bad, but he also has no problem with the smell of pickled eggs or deer guts.  He's not a very good judge.

The next day, as soon as I got out of work, I went to the grocery store and bought all of the cleaning supplies.  I bought a dishwasher cleaner, a garbage disposal cleaner, a refrigerator cleaner, new cat litter, new bedding for the rat (long story on the rat...), something to wash surfaces...cleaners I'd never heard of but that looked pretty clean...the person at the checkout must have thought I was nutty.  I went home and went on a cleaning rampage.  It was an all-out war: me versus the smell.

I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.  I went through all of our food and threw out anything questionable.  I cleaned out all of the pet areas.  I threw the rat in a pot of water in order to clean her.  I couldn't catch the cat to clean her, but also I think she would have scratched my face off if I'd tried.

By the time my husband got home, I was a bit ragged.  My hair was in a messy pony tail, and I was wearing stained sweatpants and a neon green crew neck sweatshirt.  I thought my house was much cleaner (even if I was dirtier), and I couldn't smell the smell anymore.  Still, I wondered if maybe I'd just gotten used to it because I'd been wallowing in the stench for a few hours.  My husband asked if I could run to the grocery store with him.  PERFECT: the opportunity to exit the smell chamber and then come back.

At the grocery store, I discovered an aisle that I forgot to pillage previously: the air fresheners.  How did I forget the air fresheners!?  I squealed with glee and started pulling things off of the shelves.  Did I want my house to smell "fun and flirty" or "crisp and clean"?  "Sweet and sassy" or "floral and frisky"?  How does something smell frisky?  Is this the same base scent as flirty?  I could also choose scents such as clean linens, midnight woods, Hawaiian flowers, or new car smell.  So many choices, so few rooms in my house.

I started throwing things in the cart.  There were wall plug-ins, order absorbing gels and beads (better buy both to see which works better), spray scents, wax melts... I wanted them all.  My husband walked into my aisle and said, "What are you doing!?  We do not need that many air fresheners!"

I got a wild look in my eye, waved my neon green arms around, and said (a little too loudly), "I WILL NOT LIVE IN THE INSIDE OF A BUTT!  I WILL NOT!"  Some other people in the aisle gave me a strange look and scuttled quickly away.  My husband laughed, put his hands up in surrender, and said, "Whatever.  You are strange."

I asked him which sounded better: clean linens or fresh linens?  Because you want linens to be clean, but also everyone likes the scent of fresh.  How was I supposed to choose?!  Here's how: buy them all.

I ended up going with a linens theme and basically bought all of the linen scents.  I put a plug-in in one room, some scented beads in another, gel in another, etc.  I still don't know what originally caused the bad odor, but I can confidently say that my house no longer smells like the inside of a butt.  Instead, it smells like someone recently hung up fresh, clean linens.  It smells just like that, assuming that the place they hung the fresh linens was in a chemical factory.

Here's a thought I just had: what if the unfortunate smell was simply my husband farting right when we walked in the door from our trip, and I did all of this work for nothing?!

Alas.  We shall never know.  In other news, come on over - my house is clean, and it smells great.

Man Oh Man

Sometimes living with a man can be difficult - just ask anyone who's been married to one.

Living with TWO men?  Oh boy, that one's in a league of it's own.

For the past month, I've been living with two men: my husband and also his best friend Jake.  I got a text while on a grant trip in New York that Jake needed a place to stay for a while, so could he move in with us?  I really need to stop taking these trips.  Last year when I was in Japan, Rex bought a truck.  I tried to make a "no major decisions while I'm out of town" rule, but so far it isn't going great.

So I got him from the trip, and - voila! - a new roommate.  He's cool and fairly low maintenance, so in all reality I really don't mind him living here.  In case you were wondering, though, HERE are some ways my life has changed now that I live with two guys:

1. The toilet seat is never down, ever.  I have to always remember to look before I sit.  Rex was pretty well potty trained on this one before Jake came, but the convenience of having the seat up all the time must have been too alluring.  All progress has been lost.

2. Table manners?  What table manners?  Dinner at our house is always fun, but let's just say I'm glad my grandma never comes over for dinner.  She could out-manners Emily Post, and these guys couldn't out-manners most first graders.  First of all, we have to cook a LOT of food.  Probably 8-10 servings of whatever we're cooking should be good...for the three of us.  Then, while my napkin is neatly folded in my lap and I'm taking dainty bites, they have their phones out, they have their elbows on the table, they burp (which is apparently funny) and fart (which is apparently hilarious).  I sometimes look around, hoping that one of my girlfriends is going to drop in from the ceiling or ninja jump off of a wall to rescue me from yet another discussion about guns, fishing, or poop.

3. Man Code.  I don't understand man code.  To the best of my knowledge, guys use it to prove macho-ness on completely random and pointless things.  Case in point: I went grocery shopping with Jake, and when we got home I planned to take the groceries inside in two trips.  He said, "Sorry, man code only permits me to take one trip.  Hand me that case of water bottles...and that other case of water bottles..."  I told him we should really take two trips, but I've learned that man code trumps logic.  We ended up with water bottles sprawled around my garage floor and me glaring at Jake, but he kept to the code.  Apparently this is a win?  Men are a strange species.

4. Bewbs (and Other Funnies). I have a very nice display on our fireplace mantel.  I used gold frames to frame four pictures of letters: W-E-B-B.  How sweet, right?  Our last name proudly displayed in our first home.  Well, I came downstairs the other morning, and Jake had turned W-E-B-B into B-E-W-B.  That spells bewb, which isn't even a word, but it sounds like "boob" and therefore hahahahaha that is so, um, funny? *squinty eyed annoyed emoji here*  Rex thought it was belly-laugh worthy.  Our last name is an anagram for a misspelled body part!  BWAHAHAHA.  Man sense of humor is weird.  Fortunately, I teach junior high boys.  I am well-versed in fart jokes and the fact that the word "naked" is comical.  I guess I always thought they grew out of that at some point, but I was clearly mistaken.  Either that, or it takes longer than twenty-seven years.  Time will tell.

5. For the Love of Dogs.  I love dogs.  I love the dogs I have, and I preemptively love the dogs I will one day have (here's looking at you, pug!).  The thing is, though, that there's something about a man and his dog.  Dogs are "man's best friend" for a reason. It's sweet to watch the guys love on their dogs, but when Jake tries to train Moon to bite my leg off and Rex lets Ruby sleep in our bed YET AGAIN, then sometimes I wonder if it's possible for this love to go a little far.  The other day Jake's underwear was all over the house because he was trying to train Moon to pick up underwear.  It apparently didn't go well. I'm drowning in dog fur, and I constantly have to watch my back while cooking because someone is always trying to steal the food (mostly dogs, sometimes men).

As much as I laugh at Rex and Jake (which is a lot), I have to admit that there are perks to having two men around.  I never have to open my own jar lids.  If I want to do a home improvement project (like the stairwell project I've been putting off for a year), I've got two guys to help me out!  Also, I don't have the opportunity to take life too seriously because I'm always laughing.  I'll be stressed for a second, but then the two of them are over in a corner laughing about the fact that the burnt piece of pie filling looks like poop, and isn't that funny?  And then I start laughing too because no, it's not funny, but the fact that two grown men are laughing about it is a little funny.  Then I have to walk over and turn all of the magnets on the refrigerator right side up because Jake has turned them upside down again, and by that time I've forgotten what I'm stressed about.

If I have to live with two men, at least I'm living with two pretty awesome ones.  It's a bit odd as a living arrangement, true, but we're having a lot of fun.

Almost Hipster

I like to write in a hipster-type coffee shop downtown in my city.  It's pretty fabulous: think exposed brick walls, floor tiles older than me, and a teal and neon green ceiling.  The ceiling almost distracts patrons from the metal pipes zigzagging right below it.  The shop has fair trade everything, baristas who wear skeleton shirts and call you "dude" even if you're a girl, and a clientele including mostly millennial generation tattooed people with Coexist stickers on their cars and backpacks.

Today I decided to try to fully assimilate with this crowd.  I can be one of them! I thought optimistically.  This came about because our car broke down (again).  If we were rich, my husband might have bought me a new car so that I could stop driving mine.  It's as old as a high school junior.  We're not rich, however, so he bought me the next best (aka most affordable thing): a bike lock!  I have a bike I bought for $10 at a garage sale  earlier this summer, and that bike paired with my new shiny bike lock gave me UNLIMITED FREEDOM!  Unlimited freedom within about a ten mile radius around my house, that is.  Hey, at least I don't have to stay home all day.

I quickly decided I would bike to my coffee shop.  Showing up on a bike would be so hipster, I decided.  I'm protecting the environment.  People who drive cars are melting the polar ice caps and clearly hate baby polar bears.  I am proving my love for baby polar bears by riding a bike instead of driving today.

Armed with that wonderfully hipster thought, I decided to continue my trend.  What else could I do to fit in?  I tried to find my husband's thick-rimmed square glasses so I could wear them while working.  I think thick-rimmed glasses always make people look suave and intelligent.  20/20 vision is for idiots.  I don't actually need glasses, but I could have worn them for a while to get the right "look."  Alas, I couldn't find them.

Then I decided to put on a temporary tattoo, because everyone here has tattoos.  I know I have some from an old bachelorette party somewhere.  They're mostly cheesy hearts or dice that say "lucky in love" or other weird things like that. I would have to hope people didn't look too closely at my tattoo.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find the tattoos.  My hipster look was not going as planned.

While looking for the tattoos, I found a great scarf that my grandma gave me a while ago.  It's made of 100% all natural materials, and I bet in a pinch I could probably eat it or smoke it.  It would be perfect for a place like this!  The problem with the scarf was that it's the middle of August (aka HOT), and I would be riding across town on my bike.  In retrospect, though, I regret not bringing the scarf.  I could have rocked it.

I finally decided on faded jeans, a neon green shirt, and a ponytail.  I was going to wear no makeup (because natural is beautiful, dude), but then I had to put on a little makeup.  I mean, you never know when you might run into an ex-boyfriend or the mayor or something.  I didn't want to look scary.  Me without any make-up is a little scary.

Now I'm sitting here writing this blog and drinking my iced tea.  I almost ordered my tea "on the rocks" to sound cool, but I wasn't sure if that would make me sound hipster or just vaguely alcoholic.  I decided I'm still a Level 1 hipster.  I might even be below Level 1 if that's an option.  It's a while before I will be advanced enough to try zippy lingo and wear no makeup.

Once I'm finished writing this blog post I'll go back to working on my novel.  When people ask why I go to this shop so much and I say, "to work on my book," they get all judgy.  They give me the sympathetically amused glance that adults give to high schoolers who say that they're "in a band" and they're "going to make it someday."  You know what I think?  I think that for every garage band that didn't make it, they had countless hours of fun banging away on keyboards and feasting on dreams.  What's wrong with that?  It's better than binge-watching Netflix or smoking crack, amirite? (That's "am I right," but a hip and fun way to write it.  You'd understand if you were cool).  Anyway,  I like writing.  Even if my novels never see a bookshelf, I won't stop writing them.  Let me enjoy banging away on my keyboard and feasting on my dreams.  Different type of keyboard, same principle.

Gotta go.  My favorite indie rock song just came on (kidding.  I don't listen to indie rock.  I'm not even exactly sure what it is).

Going Native

“Going native” is a term anthropologists use when, while studying a group or culture, they end up becoming assimilated into the group itself.  They’re no longer outsiders, but truly become “one of them” with the group they’re studying.

I think I might be going native.

I wish I had before and after pictures of my trip to Key Biscayne.  When I arrived at my grandma’s house almost a week ago, I was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, sneakers, and very little make-up.  My hair was in a ponytail.  That night when I got ready for bed, I wore leggings and a tank top.  Pretty standard Michigan attire, right?

Well.  This morning I woke up wearing a long silky nightgown (because why would I wear a T-SHIRT to bed??  How terribly boring).  I went into my bathroom and changed into a flirty, sparkling pink sundress.  It is pale pink and sparkles wherever the light hits it.  It doesn’t have sequins on it or anything (because that would be terribly gauche, which is a new word I learned and now use a lot), but it has almost microscopic glitter pieces that basically make me look like a movie star.  I slipped on my strappy nude high-heeled sandals, and I smiled at the fact that my pearlescent pink toenails matched my dress perfectly.  I used my French-manicured fingers to apply a full face of makeup and sweep my hair into a horizontal French twist.  Nana taught me this hairdo, and it looks awesome.  Finally, I smiled at myself in the mirror, and I decided I was ready for breakfast.

FOR BREAKFAST.

We weren’t even going out.  I was eating breakfast with my grandma in the dining room off of her kitchen, and I was dressed for an A-list cocktail party.  Oh well.  Such is life here.  When I came out to breakfast, Nana smiled her approval and told me I looked great.  Yay!  We ended up spending the day at a botanical garden and then going to a bookstore.  At one point, Nana said, “It’s appalling how people don’t take the time to look nice when they go out anymore.”  I nodded my approval while daintily enjoying an expensive chocolate mousse with Fiji water (I PAID for water, people.  I’ve got it bad).  We also valet parked at a Barnes and Noble.  Why would I want to find a parking space and then walk all the way to a store?  That’s ridiculous!  Oh boy.  I think I'm getting a bit spoiled.

Stop judging me.  It wouldn’t take you long to go native here either.  It’s like you magically get everything you want, sometimes even before you know you want it.  I know that life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies, but today literally was.  I saw hundreds of butterflies at the gardens, and then while swimming in the ocean I saw a vibrant rainbow arch across the sky.  It was amazing.

I’ll be honest; I’m not really ready to go home.  At home, I have to actually cook my own food.  I don’t valet park.  If I wore today’s outfit to Barnes and Noble, people would ask me why I’m so dressed up.  I like living like a princess!  Is that so bad!?

Alas, the carriage always turns back into a pumpkin.  Magic doesn’t last forever.  I should just be thankful that I have an honest-to-goodness prince charming at home, and he’s never turned into a frog.  If I get to keep one piece of magic, I guess I’ll pick that one.  I’ll leave the rainbows and butterflies here for now, but I hope I’m going to come back again soon!

The End of World War II

Last night I sat chatting with my grandma, and I randomly asked what it was like growing up in England during World War II.  I'm not really sure why I asked...I guess because I did a lot of study on World War II last year in Japan and Germany, and I realized that there aren't that many eyewitness accounts left.

Anyway, I thought her answer was super interesting, so I'm blogging it here because I don't want to forget it.  If I ever teach history again, or if some future generation wants to hear this story, I don't have to try to remember back to this week and figure out what exactly she said.  I'm going to do my best to replicate the story, so here goes:

"I was three when the war started and nine when the war ended.  You might think it was an unhappy childhood, but it really wasn't.  You'd be amazed how much abnormal things can become completely normal over time.  Almost every night we would gather up our pillows and blankets, and amid the sounds of sirens we would walk across the yard and go into the bomb shelter behind our house.  I had a Mickey Mouse gas mask that I always brought with me.  Then we would climb into our little bunks in the bomb shelter and sleep there until morning.  Our area got bombed a lot because we lived near a large port, and Hitler didn't want resources to be imported or exported from England for obvious reasons.  We didn't get any food from overseas.  I didn't see a banana or a tangerine until after the war was over.  You could only eat the things you grew yourself...every family had a victory garden.  My dad knew a local doctor, so we got some treats like butter.  We were happy.  We had what we needed, you know?  But I will never forget the night the war ended.  I couldn't believe it: we had the biggest bonfire, and it was OUTSIDE AT NIGHT.  That was so crazy because we were never allowed to have any lights on at night.  Not even a flashlight or a candle.  We didn't want the bomb planes to find us, you know?  So every night was completely black for years and years, and suddenly we had this huge bonfire.  It was the craziest thing.  The entire neighborhood came to the bonfire; everyone was laughing and dancing.  Even the neighbors who didn't like each other or used to gossip about each other didn't care about anything except celebrating.  My parents said my siblings and I could stay up all night long if we wanted.  We said we definitely would!  Of course, we didn't actually do that because we were kids and kids get too tired, but I wanted to for sure.  The next day there was a huge block party because everyone wanted to continue celebrating, so we had a big potluck and spent all day outside with our neighbors again.  Everyone was so happy - you wouldn't believe all the joy and happiness."

I guess war stories are always so sad that it was nice to hear one that was pretty happy.  I wish I could have been there on the night of that bonfire.  I wish they all had smartphones back then and Nana could show me the YouTube videos of that night,  I guess all I can do to get information about her life is to spend a lot more time asking and listening.  I'm lucky that my grandma is so healthy that I still have the chance to do this!  If you have living grandparents, don't miss these opportunities.  Think of all of the stories that could be lost if you don't take the time to ask.