Sunday, November 30, 2003

Wow, I’m a dork. I’ve been trying to learn to crochet for years, though... well, it was just bad, but today I managed to get some straight-from-mum lessons and already I’ve made something. I call it Lumpy Ball. I was trying to make a flat square thing, but it had a mind of it’s own. It looks like a hacky sack on a string and it's stuffed with scrap material so it’s really soft. It’s also baby blue. I like to swing it around and hit things with it. Pretend I’m Xena’s side kick. She’s on one side fighting the bad guys with her Chakram, and I’m on the other side, swinging around my Lumpy Ball in an impressive arch knocking people to the ground with a dull thump to the head. Now I just need to figure out a battle cry that can compete with Xena’s screaming, clicking, mess.

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Fire.... zap!

You know that one day, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, when the whole family hangs out, puts up the Christmas tree, eats Thanksgiving leftovers, and stays in their pj’s all day? Well nothing screws that up like getting a phone call from a paranoid mother saying your younger brother was doing drugs with her son last night. Of course it’s not true, but yay, what a way to damper the Christmas spirit.

What is it with moms always accusing kids? I remember my neighbor was always calling my parents and telling them she saw me smoking pot after school. My best girlfriend’s mother used to check to see if her eyes were dilated and was always worried when she wore certain shirts thinking she was trying to hid a pregnancy, marks from shooting up, or cuts on her arms. Maybe it’s the “stay at home” part of these moms. Maybe they’re just a little stir crazy, have some cabin fever or space dementia. They just all seem nuts.

I love this site. They don’t have the word “thong”, but I think I can improvise.

Friday, November 28, 2003

Docheck!

I redesigned my site the other day. Yes, I know, I have no life.


Thrusting your bare hand though broken plate glass, kiddies, don’t try this at home. It’s not at all bad though. At first there was all this blood and it hurt like a bitch and I almost started crying thinking I would have to get stitches, but after I cleaned it up, it just took some band aids. I am such a big baby. It’s a curse, the injuries, not the big baby part. The women in the Kayt family line have always had the misfortune of smashing, breaking, cutting, burning, and overall screwing up their hands. My grandmother, and now my mother’s hands and wrists are covered in light scars. I had just hoped this curse would skip a generation. If I don’t get some kind of scar from this I’ll be pissed, I want a war wound to boast about.

Thanksgiving. Fun, fun. Usually we have it at our house and all the family comes over but things have changed since my nana died. Family gatherings have become kinda sparse. This year we had Thanksgiving dinner at John’s house, the guy that owns the company that my mum, dad, and I work at. He’s not so much our boss, just the guy that bosses us around and we tell to go to hell, then we all argue and yell and some of us laugh behind the corner.

Our family has known John and his for over twenty years. We spend Christmas Eve with them, they come to our birthdays, graduations, weekend lunches, etc, even more often than my real family does. John and his wife Chloe owned the dance studio that my mother worked at for many years when I was a kid, and the two of them plus their son, Kenny, all danced with my mother in competitions. Sometimes today I can still get them to dance with me, but after ten years they’re like to step on my toes.

Their house is a little strange. I’m betting it was a pretty kick ass house in the fifties, but now it’s stuck there. John and Chloe spend almost every waking hour at work so in the last 19 years that I’ve gone over to visit them their house has never changed. NEVER. The same plastic bag with the same McDonalds toys are in the same exact spot they were in when I played with then when I was five. It’s a little comforting in a way to have that home, with all the memories I have of it, and they’re always there, always the same. John has always been mean to most people, rough and a little trollish, but nice to me. And since I can remember, Chloe has been crazy. Because of an aneurysm she had years ago, she‘s unable to remember anything new now. It’s sad when I really think about it, but she doesn’t know what happened, she can’t remember when she’s told. She is always asking me if we’re in Mexico, if it’s Christmas, and telling me that my books are hers, that the gifts we’ve given her were made by her long gone mother. In the beginning, before I can remember much, I think people tried to correct her, but now, we play along and all laugh, Chloe most of all.

She was the one that taught me to knit. She brought out a piece to show me, one she started working on a few years ago. I started looking at it, admiring the stitches and asked her what it was. She told me it was a baby’s sweater… it had three arm holes that intertwined so no three armed child could wear it. After a few minutes she told me it was men’s underwear, the third “arm hole” is for the mans, you know. Just a little later it was an oven mitt. Oh she’s fun.

Snow update: Though we got or first snow days ago, it hasn’t stuck to the ground until today. Two inches! Not that it just snowed two inches, but we have two inches on the ground! I’m sledding tomorrow, baby!

Oh, and my friend Blackstar just started up a blog, The Best Laid Plans.

Monday, November 24, 2003

"WET PAINT (this is not an instruction)"

It snowed!

First snow of the year!

Yay!

And finally this year it’s snowed before Christmas!

I don’t know why that’s important, but for some reason it feels like it should be. As kids… okay, still today, we make bets on when it will snow, if there will be snow on the ground for Christmas, and how long it will last.



A few years ago we made a 9 foot tall snowman, and even though he melted a little though the weeks, he stayed a big ball of ice in early May. We’ve tried to recreate that sweet snowman in the past, but the urge to crush them, topple them, and roll them over unsuspecting little kids has been too great. Also, the fact that we haven’t gotten much snow lately has made it difficult.

It used to be that we could make great snow castles, tunnels, forts, thrones, sculptures, and battle fields. For hours the neighborhood girls worked on their fort on the left side of the drive way, and the boys worked on theirs on the right side. Both groups helping to shovel the driveway first so they would have a clean sheet of ice to fight on.

The boys were agreeably more practical in their battle plans. Piles of snowballs sat behind short, thick protective walls that had rough holes in spots so they peek though if need be. Garbage can lids were shields. Shovels were fixed into catapults. Their only decoration was a flag made of a piece of paper with a pencil thrust though it. Their fort was finished in a quarter of the time it took us girls. They were ready for a war.

The girls took their time with their fort. They crafted tall walls with decorative spikes of snow on top and pretty carvings on the façade. We each had our own room to fight from, sleds lined the bottom to keep us dry. We sculpted little shelves to place our snowballs in and searched long and hard for the best snow to use.

When the time came to fight the rules were drawn up.

1. No aiming for the head.
2. Timeouts can be called twice for each team.
3. No rocks.
4. You can’t cross the crack in the driveway and come onto the other teams side, you have to throw from your own side. If so much as a toe crosses the crack you get a penalty. (We never did come up with a penalty)

And it started.

After all the work did, all the planning, and preparation, the snow ball fights sucked at first. We were all so tired from making our defenses that we didn’t have much energy to fight.

Only after our second wind kicked in, near the end when the boys were throwing great scoops of snow from their shovels, the girls were out of prettily formed snowballs and resorted to throwing handfuls of their fort, and at least two people were crying because they got snow down the back of their coat or in their ear, was it fun.

After the forts were destroyed in the battle we stomped them down and mushed them into ramps. It worked out that after a running start you would land on your sled, race bumpily down our hill, (a small one, but it still attracted all the kids in the neighborhood) you would hit one ramp (the girls old fort), slide across the ice of our paved drive way, hit the next ramp (the boys old fort), whoosh over the grass, try to miss the pine tree, and sail into the icy street and down the hill.

All it took was to have one kid always near the adjoining main street so he or she could scream down at us when a car turned on it’s blinker to turn onto our street. That of course caused all of us to run around wildly and try to pile up on the current child who would be sledding down the hill in hopes of stopping him or turning him before he reached the road. It was always a glorious occasion when we succeeded, and only once did we fail. The kid was my cousin and she crashed into the big back tire of a truck on her yellow sled. Thankfully the driver had stopped when he saw her coming.

Oh, I love the winter.

Right now I’m sitting in my bed fully dressed. Blue jeans, sweater, boots, scarf, hat, gloves, and all covered up with two big comforters because it’s so damn cold in here.

It‘s not really bad, though, I’m used to it. For 12 years my room didn’t have a heat vent or any other kind of heater in it. Every once in awhile I’d bring the outdoor thermometer in my room and leave it on top of my TV for a few hours. I think the coldest I remember my room recorded at was 38 degrees. Yeah, I think I could of survived with the wolves in the artic. Run around naked and at night curl up in a little ball in the snow and sleep.


And, have you’ve done something wrong, but the police still haven’t found you? Do you have pent up guilt about this incident? Well don’t worry anymore because the this site will help.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

After a long day at school and spent running around town the first thing I saw as I trudged into my room was a beautiful bunch of flowers! Not from a secrete admirer mind you, but still marvelous.

The card read: “We are so proud of you, lips! Love, the rest of your clan.”

My family is too sweet. I not sure what’s put them flower-giving-proud mood all of a sudden, but I’ll not argue, let them be happy and let me have flowers.

And, to continue the cycle of happiness…. Ever felt the need to maim a mime?

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

"Most fools think they are only ignorant"

Today was a good day.

The upstairs pluming is working again, thankfully saving me from having to give myself a sponge bath in the kitchen sink. I won Photoshop tennis in my digital art class, yay for me! Dad tweaked some widgets in the Mazda, so my car is up and running. I’m almost back on track with pre-history and psychology. I painted my toenails blue and sparkly. And I’m sitting here drinking hot chocolate and eating a hoc-o-choco-pot-o-thing (think big hunk of hot uncooked chocolate brownie in a bowl with chocolate syrup and fudge… oh god, yum) while I‘m chatting with my wonderfulmus #Firefly friends. Just lots of little things like that have made today a good day.

On the way to school today I passed a van load of Amish who were eating McDonalds. Why don’t they just drive themselves? That had to be the most hilarious thing ever, though… a van load of them. Heh. My little shoulder devil told me to flash them my boobs, my shoulder angel told me to wave, so in the end I just ignored them. Then the next 30 minutes were spent behind an Ashley county ambulance. It was kinda creepy but like my own personal ER. I could see people, though the back windows, kneeling over a person, giving them a shot, and holding a mask over what I assume to be their face. It was intresting but sad. Some poor old person was all alone, no one was speeding to keep up with the ambulance like we did for my grandmother so we could be there the second she got to the emergency room.

Ohhh, grrr. That brings me to a rant. I won’t go on about it right now because that would ruin my good day, but I just found out that my Aunt, who is an author, wrote a piece about my grandmothers death. It pisses me off all to hell. It’s just wrong on so many levels, mostly because she wasn’t even in the same state as my grandmother most of the time. Oh, grrr.

Think happy thoughts, happy thoughts.

Well, happy site atleast.

This one’s mostly for the splendiferous Mag and her Bandersnatch, over at The Rubble.

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

"Life is a sexually transmitted disease."

I didn’t think I’d get time to write but my ever thoughtful car, the Mazda-bug, decided not to start today, so subsequently I can’t go to class. Usually this would be a time to shout “yay”, but I haven’t been to my anthropology class since the 6th. I’m kinda starting to miss it.

Something spooky must be going around here, my car won’t start, our truck won’t start, the upstairs pluming is out of wack, and three light bulbs in my room went out this morning (Euh, I can already see the shadowy spots of dead ladybug bits in at least one light). I give you fair warning, soon it will be raining fire and Ohio will be swimming in locusts.

Once again back to the topic of bugs-- my cat, Cleo, caught a fly in my room the other day. My first reaction was “ew!” and to shoo her away from the poor, innocent creature but I decided against it. Let the mighty hunter stalk down her unsuspecting prey and feast upon it. She batted it around with her clawless paws, pushed it up against the wall and sniffed it.

I watched with maternal pride. My baby is all grown up, a hunter.

Then, as she was sniffing it, the injured but still live fly got stuck in her whiskers. She tried to bite at it but couldn’t reach it. She started to spin in circles trying to turn enough to reach the bug on her left. It was like watching a dog try to catch it’s tail. My pride was wavering. After some spinning the fly fell loose, back to the floor. She covered it with her paws, let it free to crawl a few inches, then pounced on it again repeating this process until the fly could barely crawl any further.

All pride I had in my cat was now gone and replaced by sheer confusion. This didn’t seem to me to be the most efficient way to hunt. Eat the damn fly already.

Finally she picked the fly up in her mouth, only to drop it and smush it with her paws again. The fly was dead. There was a moment of silence, but no words spoken since neither me nor my cat knew much about this particular fly or how it lived it’s life. Now, the creature is killed, we can feast. She sniffed at the corpse, and walked away.

Sadistic bitch.

And yet another site, useful for when you find yourself overrun with zombies and at a lost as to what you should do.