#tbt: Camping All-Star

As you read this, I am either getting myself psyched up to go camping, or actually driving to a campsite with my dear Evanshine. We will be celebrating our nation’s birthday as our forefathers intended: with grilled foods, fireworks, and sweat.

I get a little PTSD whenever someone suggests camping. You see, when I was a wee little girl, I went to camp Judy Layne Girl Scout camp. I got to take a mess kit, which is something that my doll Molly had in miniature, so I was surprisingly okay with the idea.

However, disaster seemed to strike soon after arrival every single year.

In 1992, I struggled mightily enough with outdoor sounds and bugs that I felt the need to describe it in my diary:

To add insult to injury, my parents took Ross to see Cop and a Half while I was away, which I had been wanting to see.

Then in 1995, I had a near-death experience in knife safety class. We reported to a shelter for class, where our teachers told us we would either be “honing” (haha) our skills on a block of soap or a tree branch. Obviously I elected tree branch, since I am an artist and artists don’t work in soap. The teacher told us: “The First Rule of Knife Safety is never cut toward yourself. Now, before we start class, go get yourselves a stick.”

I headed out into the woods and looked carefully at nature. Each stick candidate had something wrong with it – one was broken, another bendy, too little, etc.

But then I saw it. The Stick. It lay on the ground, seemingly bathed in the glow of angelic light. Only one tiny branch stuck out to the side, marring what was otherwise the perfect medium for the masterpiece I was about to create. So I whipped out my trusty Swiss Army knife and cut that branch off – cutting toward myself.

The knife, which had probably never cut anything before, went straight through the wood, through my thumbnail and into my thumb. It didn’t even hurt, which was nearly as surprising as the enormous amount of blood gushing into the leaves. One of my fellow Scouts screamed. I screamed.

A counselor came running, wrapped up my hand in a bandage and told me we’d go talk to the camp manager’s husband, who just so happened to be a real live EMT and could bandage me up properly. This was reassuring, but still I burst into tears, fearing the worst. I was losing a LOT of blood.

“Am I going to DIE?” I asked through my sobs.

The counselor looked at me like I was the crazy one. She was the one voluntarily working at a camp for an entire summer! “Uh, no.”

Despite these comforting words, I know that I barely survived Girl Scout camp that year. It is only by the grace of God that I somehow survived losing gallons of blood and am here blogging to you today.

My mom even noted this camping trip in my School Days book...
Not only did I slice my thumb open, I also got 80+ chigger bites!!

 

So you can see why I struggle with the idea of camping, even at my mature age. Wish me luck that I come back with all my fingers and toes. God Bless America, and God Bless air conditioners and hot showers when I get home.

(IF I get home…)

Lola Goes to Chicago, and Other Tales of an Absentee Blogger

Yoo hoo!

I'm alive! I took an unplanned hiatus from the old blog just because. I am sure that your life hasn't been the same since. You probably also have been wondering what I've been up to lately. Well, lucky for you, I'm here to recap the last couple of weeks.

When we weren't watching the Bachelorette, doing back-breaking yard work, or making babies cry --

 

Evan and I hit the wedding circuit, and we hit it hard. First up was Katie, my best friend growing up, who got married in the prettiest Nashville wedding (no, I didn't see any characters from Nashville the show. The last time I was down there, I did see Deacon in a bar, though. I think he's off the wagon.)

 

Susan strikes back.

 

This wedding had a photobooth, which is pretty much all I need to have a good time. I was so pumped about the photobooth, in fact, that I did not take one single picture on my own camera. You'll have to take my word that everything was beautiful.

 

Next up, my friends Courtney and Keith got married in Chicago, the City of Love.

 

Before I can explain the exciting happenings at this wedding, you first need to meet Courtney's cat, and my best friend, Lola.

 

 

As you can tell by the look in her eyes, Lola is Crazy. In fact, she makes Mabel look semi-well-adjusted, which is quite difficult to do. Anyway, Courtney told me before the wedding how sad Lola was that she couldn't celebrate the union of her parents with them, screaming during the ceremony, scratching people during the cocktail hour and just destroying things at the reception. So, being the good friend that I am, I decided to take one for the team and bring Lola Dear along.

 

And that leads us to a new segment here on the tudor house:

 

 

Or, The Story of Lola and The Big White Wedding.

 

The three of us -- the three best friends that anyone could have -- hit the road Friday after a long day at the office for me and Evanshine and a long day terrorizing people for Lola.

 

 "I'm going to wreak so much havoc at this wedding, it will go down in the history books."

 

 

As you know, the Kentucky countryside is a beautiful thing, and we all enjoyed some stellar views.  We got tired, though, and stopped at a roadside hotel in northern Indiana to rest up before making our triumphant arrival in Chicago on Saturday morning.

 



Lola requested extra pillows from the concierge because she is high maintenance.

 

 

The next morning was more of the same, and before we knew it, we had arrived in Chicago, the City of Light. We quickly got ready, threw on some jewels, and headed to the wedding.

 

Miraculously, Lola behaved herself at the ceremony, and then we all headed to the reception, where Lola was so happy to see her parents that she actually got a little bit drunk and kind of embarrassed herself by hanging out in a vase of flowers all night.

 You can tell by the crazy look in MY eyes that Lola had rubbed off on me a bit here.

 

The happy fam



 

It was such a fun wedding, capped off by delicious Chicago popcorn! Lola and I are working on convincing Courtney and Keith to do it all again next weekend.

Post-Christmas Boasts

Welcome back, my dearest readers. I hope you had a great Christmas, full of cat naps, gossip mags, and napping cats. Oh, and family time, and most importantly of all, gifts.

I did. After spending Christmas Eve gorging myself on a feast from the land and the sea, I worried that I would not be able to partake in the Christmas Day meals my and Evan's families had in store. Not to worry. I rose above the full stomach and nausea to conquer all of those meals, too.

Before I get to bragging about my Christmas gifts, let me tell you about yet another similarity between Kate and myself (me? I don't even know. It's late. I've spent the last 4 hours creating my new blog header ... please tell me you noticed?). Kate was not allowed to bring sweet Lupe with her to Christmas with the Royals, apparently because the Queen's little corgis are total jerks and would have eaten him alive had he shown up. In a similar snub, my own mother barred Mabel from our family's Christmas celebrations.

Why, you ask?

Like the Queen, my parents have a dog with a bad-itude. Meet Buddy Jr.:

Who, me?

Buddy is not welcoming of guests in his home. He is particularly averse to small children, my brother, and Mabel. The last (and only!) time he was invited into the tudor house, he snuck out of my mom's eyesight and chased Mabel all over the place, causing a serious relapse in anxiety and leading her to move into the bathroom sink temporarily:

If it weren't 12:24 a.m., I would have made a hilarious speech bubble on this photo. Sorry.

Anyhoo, my dear mother refused to let her own grand-cat attend Christmas, which certainly put a damper on things. Like Kate, I am quite fond of my furry child, and I couldn't enjoy the days as much without her on my lap, biting my wrists, etc.

And poor Mabel was forced to stay home, drowning her sorrows under the empty tree.

On a lighter note, I am proud to brag that for Christmas I received a flying pig, permission from Evanshine to buy myself a pet hedgehog*, and my favorite gift of all:

No, your eyes are not deceiving you! My own piece of Royal Wedding Commemorative China!

 

Despite the Queen's my mother's best attempts to spoil my Christmas spirit, it was a wonderful mid-week holiday made even brighter by the fact that approximately everyone I work with took Thursday and Friday off! Now I'd better get to coming up with a list of resolutions before tonight at midnight...

See you next year!

* Technically, I have not received this gift...  Yet. 

Who Dey

What did you do this weekend? In addition to buying all of the milk at my local Kroger, I went to the Bengals game. You might have heard, but this friendly little winter storm named Cleon visited Kentucky and half the rest of the United States this past weekend, making travel a little … shall we say, dangerous. But a little wintry mix couldn’t stop me, Evanshine, and our friends Courtney (after whom poor Courtney, Jr., may he rest in peace, was named) and Mike from making the trek to cheer our Bengals on to victory. I know of several things worth risking life and limb in a treacherous car ride, and Bengals games are clearly at the top of that list.

If you’ve had the pleasure of attending a Bengals game or marrying one of their superfans, you have heard their ridiculous “fight song.” I think that a Barney (as in the purple dinosaur) employee may have been fired for writing dumb lyrics and then hired on by the Bengals to pen this little ditty. It’s truly silly, as you will see. No offense to Evanshine, who sings this song around the house from time to time. But maybe that songwriter did have a little musical genius in him, because as I lived the life of a dedicated Bengals fan yesterday, I realized that the lyrics actually described my day! Or should I say, my who-Dey. See what I mean:

Hear that Bengal growlin',

This would be me. I was growlin’ as soon as I woke up and heard the freezing rain on my roof. I growled some more when I looked at the temperature (24°) and then the forecast high for the day (27°). Me no like cold weather.

  

Mean and ang-a-ree,

Still me. I tend to get mean and ang-a-ree when I’m cold. We picked up quite a few hand and food warmers, but my toe warmers malfunctioned when they got wedged too tight inside my weird and ugly “hiking boots” that I was lucky enough to find in my basement left over from my middle school Girl Scout Camp experiences. I use the term “hiking boots” loosely because they are Candie’s brand. See?

  

By the way, when you decide to pull your middle school fashion mistakes out of storage, I highly suggest pairing them with skinny jeans. Great look if I do say so myself. 

Here he comes a prowlin',

We were pretty much prowlin’ as we drove up I-75 to Cincinnati. If by prowlin’ you mean going 45 and sometimes being momentarily blinded by the disgusting goop flying off of maniac truckers passing you in the slow lane. I think I’ve discovered a new anxiety of mine – death by snowstorm. I hereby apologize to my fellow passengers for screaming “TRUCK! EVERYBODY FOCUS!” when truckers tried to pass us.  But hello, haven’t you seen the terrifying results of a wreck with a semi? No thanks.

Please note the ice on the sunroof.

Lean and hung-a-ree,

I was pretty hung-a-ree all day long. I ate approximately 25 donut holes on the drive up, then two “chili wieners” as the Skyline employee pleasantly called them when she delivered them to my table, then some cheese fries at Cheddar’s back in Lexington as a celebration of surviving the game.

We were not, however, looking our leanest with approximately all of our clothes on under our puffy coats. You see?

An offensive brute,

These would be the fans sitting directly behind us. They did not care for me and Courtney, who they said “acted like we just came from church.” I wonder if they would have changed their minds about us if we’d taken them up on a sip from their colostomy bags filled with Buffalo Trace? They were kind of offensive, but I also kind of loved them. They went to a strip club after the game. Too bad they didn’t invite us to join.

They did like Evan, though, because of his sweet ‘fit:

Somebody still has stage fright about being shown on my blog. 

Run, pass, or boot,

Boot? Did I mention my boots?

And defensively he's rough! Tough!

You know what else was tough? Scraping the sludge off my car at a gas station on the way up. Thanks, Evanshine. You’re a peach.

Cincinnati Bengals,
That's the team we're gonna cheer to vic-to-ry!

Touchdown Bengals!
Get some points up on that board
and win a game for Cincinnati!

Indeed we did. The Bengals defeated the Colts and solidified Evan’s place at the top of his fantasy league for another week. Sorry, colts. I do wish Cincinnati would take after you and build an indoor stadium, though. I might be a better, less ang-a-ree fan if they did.

Today, I'm Thankful For...

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! I've spent the morning slaving away over a corn pudding recipe (by the way, multiplying a recipe that serves eight by three is a little difficult at 8 am, in case you haven't tried that yet), and now I've got to find the perfect pair of stretch pants to head over to my parents' house to gobble gobble. I'm afraid I haven't followed the trend of listing everything I'm grateful for for the last 27 days, so in hopes of making up for that, here are the top three things I'm thankful for this year:

1. I'm thankful for the millions of dollars I have in the bank.
2. I'm thankful for my mansion.
3. I'm thankful that I have a Lexus, because they are the safest cars ever made, and it's important to be safe at this time of year.

... Just kidding. I don't have any of those things. But don't some of the "I'm thankful for..." statuses you see on Facebook make you feel jealous like those three did? Well stop your worrying, folks, because the three things I'm truly thankful for won't make you jealous at all.

1. Robitussen PM, Robitussen daytime, Tylenol Cold pills, and cough drops. This time last week I was just coming down with the self-diagnosed cat scratch fever.

Probably caught it from Mabes. I was worried I'd be banished from this year's festivities because of my gross cough and runny nose. But thanks to the miracle drugs listed above, the fangs have gone away and I am healthy as a horse. Plus I have a nice healthy appetite to stuff myself with as many mashed potatoes as possible. I hope whoever made the taters this year bought in bulk.

2. Evanshine's beard is starting to itch. Haha! Evanshine's version of No-shave November may just be coming to a close.

3. Mabel doesn't seem to have peed on anything for the last two months. That's what it's all about, folks.

Well, I hope you are all with your families, friends or dear pets, packing on the pounds today. If you don't over-indulge on Thanksgiving, how are you going to resolve to lose weight in January? 

I hope by the time you read this, you're all looking like this:

And in honor of this joyous occasion, I leave you with some poetry:

I'm happy on Thanksgiving Day,

I've eaten till I'm sore! 

I wish I were an elephant, 

So I could eat some more!

Unsolved Mysteries

I had some photos taken of myself this weekend.

The photos were taken by Evanshine, at my request, to show you, dear readers, a little mystery that has popped up in my life lately.  You might notice that I appear to be missing a large chunk of what used to be my bangs. This is unfortunate for many reasons, including the fact that bangs are located on the front of your face where people tend to look at you in everyday life. 

I first noticed this problem when I was getting my hair cut and Stephanie asked me what happened to my bangs. I didn't really have an answer for her. Since it's Thanksgiving, and I would be thankful for my bangs if I still had all of them, I've put together a list of the most likely suspects so that I can get revenge on them. Because that's what Thanksgiving is all about!

In compiling my list, I considered (1) motive, (2) access and (3) other suspicious circumstances. In no particular order, the top three suspects are:

1. Evanshine. 

In a murder, they always say the first suspect is the spouse. I think it's the same in this situation. If Dear Evanshine would let me post his photos on this blog, you would know that he has recently decided to grow a beard. He would like you to know that this is not because of No Shave November, but because he is original and thought up growing a beard entirely on his own. 

I was looking at his beard the other day and noticed that, while most of the hair on his head is brown, there are a few strands of blonde hair as well. Where they came from, I don't know. Unless they came from my head. He certainly has the access and suspicious circumstances abound. However, I'm not sure what his motive would be, but that's what they always say about a spouse on spouse murder when the investigation is just beginning.

2. Mabel.

If something bad goes down at my house, Mabel is generally at the top of my suspect list. She has the motive, since we have a love-hate relationship and it's always possible that she is in the hate phase. She has the access, too, obviously. And suspicious circumstances?

Definitely. Check out her latest photo. She's been shedding more than ever, lately, but she still seems to have a full head of hair.

3. Wills.

And as much as I hate to suggest it, my dear friend Prince William is my third suspect. He has the motive: I have a much stronger friendship with Kate than he does. Access? I WAS just visiting Apartment 1A in Kensington Palace the other day for Baby G's christening. And suspicious circumstances?

We all know he has been having some...coverage issues with his hair recently. But check out this recent photo of my boy Will. That comb-over looks familiar.

I wish I could give you some closure on this, loyal readers. But, based on my list of suspects, this case is far from closed. I can only hope that, come Thursday, I can be thankful for one more mystery solved.

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION THAT WOULD BE RELEVANT TO THIS INVESTIGATION, PLEASE LEAVE YOUR CLUES IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. IF YOU DO, I'LL BE THANKFUL FOR YOU THIS HOLIDAY SEASON.

Happy Half-iversary, Dear Evanshine!

Today, Evanshine and I have been married for six months and are halfway to being able to ethically keep all wedding presents that we received! We haven't been doing the best job of remembering each month-iversary, so to make up for that I've created the best half-iversary present ever, posted below. I don't know if you knew it, but the traditional gift for a six-month anniversary is blog posts. Or so I've heard.

In honor of our six month-iversary, I've put together a sampling of some of my favorite wedding photos. Now, it wouldn't be right to give you, dear readers, a full viewing of these pictures, since it isn't yet our full anniversary. In six more months, I hope that Evanshine will be over his blog stage fright and ready to make an appearance, and at that time I shall post the photos in full. At this point, however, as it is only halfway to our first anniversary, I am only able to give you the following, half of which are only halfway untouched by my skilled Photoshop hand. Does that make sense?

To play along at home, dear readers, see if you can tell which half are the real pictures and which half have been tweaked.

By the way, our photographer was Honey Heart Photography here in Lexington, and they were wonderful to work with. We absolutely love the pictures, and have many framed at home sans my personal touch. You'll see in another six months just how great they are :)

The groom and the ring bearer, just shooting some pool before we head to the church. 

 Me and my wonderful bridesmaids! I must say, some of them were a little difficult. Pippa was kind of a B and wore white dress, Miley refused to put on a dress at all, and Fat Amy was so lazy she wouldn't even stand up with the rest of us.

My mom had a blast. Helping me with my bustle was probably her favorite task.

True love.

Just a few of our guests. Princess Kate would have been in the bridal party, but we weren't sure when Georgie was going to arrive so she just sat this one out. Obviously she did a reading, though.

By the way, True Story: Evan really did try to send Pete Rose an invitation. I refused. I had a feeling that if he showed, Evan might pay more attention to him than me...

My brother Ross, not holding any cats.

  

You know you make me wanna SHOUT!

And finally, my favorite part of any wedding: PHOTOBOOTH! 

Guess which one of these was really in the picture? 

As you can at least halfway tell, it was a wonderful night! Happy half-iversary, Evan! Love ya like a husband! Check back in 6 months for the unedited version :)