For Jamie! and Andypants

1-5 Commute

I am going to tell you a story. During the telling you might think "that is sooo ridiculous. That must be a dream." It's not a dream...this is real life...today's real life, actually.
Some practicalities...Setting: I-5 Southbound, left laneCharacters: Me and Mr. Red ToyotaTime: Running a few minutes early on my commute to work.
The meat to the banquet...Just minding my own in the left lane this morning, I am met with the familiar even-though-this-is-the-fast-lane-I-will-stick-it-and-go-five-under commuter. There is no one in the right lane. I could easily just pass Mr. Red Toyota, but I proceed with my normal approach and tailgate JUST A LITTLE to give them a chance to right the wrong and move over. I like to give people chances to correct mistakes instead of just working around them. Ok, FINE. This is kind of a pet peeve, so I tailgate to teach lessons. Whatever.
So, Mr. Red Toyota doesn't move over. He DOES, however, pull out his sharpie written, cardboard sign that says "SLOW DOWN NOW." HA! He waves it in front of his rearview mirror for about 30 seconds. Laughing, I just keep on him (I'm a bit of a jerk, but I wanted to see what happens with this guy when the sign doesn't work). Irritated, he turns the sign around. I couldn't make out what it said, only that the last word is in RED. Is this guy serious?! Apparently. He pounded on his breaks. Now he's going 60. In a 70. People are passing, I should have followed suit, but still curious. In no rush to get to work (minutes early, yeah?) I go 60 with him...laughing.
He finally ends our tango by merging into the right lane. Yes! I broke him. Oh wait. Nope. Still holding signs. Disappointed not to see his face, yet pleased to see the mystery message from the cardboard's backside, he pressed the writing against his side window - "THE SPEED LIMIT IS 70!"
"Well then GO 70!" I yelled. I don't think he heard me. No matter. It was a good laugh.

I felt this story deserved more than just a roommate audience. Did I accomplish depicting the scene? Wasn't that ridiculous? Treasuring it. Still laughing!

Two Grown Men...

It was sometime last year or the year before. im not sure when, but halloween yesterday got me thinking about this. Anyway, one day my longtime roommate and now runner up best friend Oliver and i decided to watch a scary movie. So, on one rather normal afternoon in Oliver's room we decided to watch "the fourth kind".

Two grown men, sitting in a room together, in the middle of the day, nearly pissed their pants right where they were sitting all over the place.

The movie is "based" on real events of alien abductees being hypnotized and then sharing their repressed memories of their abductions. The premise is kind of corny. But the idea that these sessions were "recorded" and that the director actually used footage from these "real" sessions made it interesting... and in the end... soul crushing for two guys that thought they were pretty radical. The director would cut back and forth from dramatic representation (one of the saddest things about this whole situation was that i was thoroughly scared of a movie staring Mila Jovovich... i know... i couldn't be more ashamed of myself) to "real" footage. There would be a split screen with the actors acting out the parts of the people in the "real" sessions. And as soon as that split screen popped up Ollie and i would both breath in nervously because we knew something unbelievable disturbing and "real" was about to be shown.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1220198/

I like to think it was the "real"ness of this that turned us into 13 year old girls. To think that all this "actually" happened made me want to shoot missiles blindly into space hoping that one would get lucky and hit some space ship or alien planet or something just so there would be one less place to be abducted to. not to mention, it takes place in alaska which we all know is the most terrifying of all the states.

Ollie had been sitting in front of me the whole movie so i could hear the audibly nervous breathing but i could not see his face. Once the movie had ended he turned, slack jawed and wide eyed. He spoke between nervous laughs:

"Are you freakin serious"

Yeah i was freakin' serious. Freakin' seriously terrified. Freakin' seriously terrified out of my mind guts!

Two grown men. In the middle of the day. Yeah. Its embarrassing. And it lasted weeks. Sad.

So after posting and THEN reading that blaug, I felt a little embarrassed at how I was 18 and sounded so NOT like an 18 year-old. BUT I regretted posting only for a second. That was written in January. My birthday is in October. So I was only 17. So it's okay...

It is time I blaug. Here's the thing though. Andy, you are soooo hard to follow. This is my poor attempt (but attempt nonetheless) to contribute. Since "Memories" has been the theme recently, I decided to take a walk down my OWN lane and share a random (first one I flipped to) entry from one of my journals. No alterations. These spelling and grammar errors are legit (except for any missing "g's." My dinosaur computer has a thing against typing them out on first try)! I got a kick out of reading what was important to me that January 9th in 2005. I hope you are just as amused following my 18 year-old psyche as I was.

Dear Journal,

I ran over a squirrel two days ago with the car. I felt so bad. It was the first animal i've run over so far. I hope it never happens again. It was gross. I am back in school now, after my Winter Break (that was a nice two week break :)). We are reading Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain right now. It was an interresting; however sometimes I don't know what Huck is sayin because he talked like he is from Mississippi. We watched a movie in class about the controversy in it. Many are deffencive over the use of the "N" word. I must not really know the true derogative feeling that comes from it, because I don't see what all the fuss is about. These parents (a while ago), were trying to get it banned from required school reading lists. The "N" word was able to be used back then and not be found "shocking." Now it has a more negative ora, but considering Mark Twain's time, the book should not be banned because of terms used in a different time period. I don't know, purhaps I am bein too insensitive about it all.

Last night I went to my Zion winterball. It was a winterball for my choir (Zion Choir - the church one...). We had one, because one of our performances landed on a lot of our winterballs. So a girl in my choir named Rachael Frietas planned the whole thing and delegated jobs to everyone in the choir. There were a lot of people from the choir that were missing, but it was fun anyway. I wore a beautiful outfit. It was so cute. My sister Kelly, saw my dress at goodwill (a thrift store) it was $5. Then she bought me the most gorgeous shoes ever at Nordstrom Outlet for $35. THen we went to macys together and bought myslef a cute jacket (the dress was spagetti strapped), THen we went to anchor Blue and bought some flowers to match. The dress is orange (the pretty orange) with a little bit of orange shear at the bottom. It was spaetti strapped. It was a little big at the top (because I am lacking a little something there :)) So I safety-pinned the traps together, which made it a halter-top, and tighter (perfect :)). Oh, the dress went a little past my knees, and was"A" shaped (it flared out). My shoes were 3 1/2 - 4in heels; clear on the heel, silver on the shoe. It had one band that went right across the back of my toes (right avoce the ball of my foot). On the band, there were different lacquors and shapes of silver beads. The band was about an inch wide. (They hurt after a while...I danced bare-foot). My jacket was the peice of my atire that made it so cute. It was a bright lime reen. It was long sleeved (I pulled it up so it was 1/4 sleaved) and went down to the bottom of my lungs. I had buttoned the 2nd & 3rd to last bottens, which made it look like I filled my dress - and because it was cute that way. It had a pink butterfly on the left side, but I did not like it. So I cut it off and added a green flower. To finish my outfit, I put a green flower (there were two - one for my jacket, one for my hair) in my hair. I looked so cute, and got many compliments. I ot to dance with Brad Gill. He is so cute (and he is a ood dancer...when I say that, I mean he is not afraid to dance like me, and looks good doing it...hopefully like me). However, before the dance, nothing was really going well. To give a few examples, my shoe and flowers fell in a puddle, I got yelled at by another driver on the road, I was 45 minutes late going to Ariane Black's house because my mom needed the car (Britta Harline, Emily Kuykendall and I were oing over there before the dance to eat pizza and get ready together), and I could not find french bread to buy for the dance. But good thing it turned out well. I had a lot of fun!

Monte

I was pretty young, but not too young. i remember sometimes dad would take the kids individually surfing with him when they were young but not too young. on one of these occasions dad chose me to go surfing with him. he told me about this guy we were going surfing with, his name was monte and he was a firefighter.

i was young enough and old enough to know that firefighters were the manliest man people out there. they fought fires and scored chicks or something. they saved kids and cats from fires and trees and then went home and punched a bear in the face without even caring. they were it. and i got to go and meet one for reals with dad.

i remember he lived in santa cruz, or at least somewhere around there. we drove down a road that had a freeway on one side and a bunch of eucalyptus trees on the other. dad and i probably listened to dire straights which was the norm for trips to santa cruz in those days. i learned that you could get chips for free and that dire straights were sultans, just like babe ruth. monte's house was perched precariously on a hill. i remember i thought it kind of looked like a tree house but built for a hill instead of a tree.

i dont remember the exact moment that we met, but i definitely remember that monte's mustache was awesome. he had a thick handlebar mustache. most mustaches are handlebars to bicycles or pogo sticks, monte had a harley, like two caterpillars hiking up his chin and kissing just under his nose-- radical caterpillars. i remember him talking to dad. we were sitting at a table and i think we were drinking something, but i don't remember much more than watching his mustache move up and down. im sure monte had a nose, a mouth, ears, eyes, etc. i just didn't care, i had never met a mustache like that before and it mystified me.

i remember him saying we were going to surf at a place called sharks. i must have visibly shown the concern in my childish heart at the thought of surfing at a place called sharks cause monte's mustache turned to me. it started to move and words came out from underneath it, "dont worry kid. its called sharks because there arent any sharks there." I WAS YOUNG! of course i believed him. so, we went surfing at sharks where there werent any sharks.

i remember the ocean floor at sharks was rocky and there almost wasn't a single patch of sand to walk on as i made my way out to where the waves were breaking. once i got about 30 feet out into the water the rocks had been replaced with thick sea weed that grew out of the ground like grass, grass that grew too tall for the green house and was curving at the ceiling and creating a thick canopy of vegetable spagetti. i could catch spiders, i like catching frogs, playing in the dirt was a part of my daily routine, but for some reason this thick sea grass gave me the creeps. i remember my hands barely touching the water as i paddled out to monte and dad.

i was scared to try and catch the waves. the water was shallow and i knew that beneath the sea weed soup there were jagged rocks. monte must have used the same ESP as before when he saw that "sharks" scared me. he turned to me (what a glorious mustache) and said, "when you fall just make sure to go butt first. tuck your feet in and let your butt do the work. God made our buts soft for a reason." that reassured me. i probably surfed that day and, knowing that i have never been great at surfing, probably spent a lot of time jumping butt first into the sea weed forest.

we went home after that. my dad and i took highway 17 and probably listened to the free chips and babe ruth rockers while monte drove home in his red truck where he promptly punched a robot assassin in the face, roasted hot dogs over a forest fire, and put medieval turkey leg meats under his masculine rainbow and into his mouth and probably never realized he had changed me. the handlebar mustache was off limits. he never said it but i knew it, he knew it, and my dad knew it. monte owned the handlebar and to grow one would be like stealing the crown jewels of england, only worse cause he was a firefighter and could eat 14 lbs of bufalo meat without dying. you dont mess with that.

its sad that i saw the pinnacle of facial hair power at such a young age, now i have nothing to look forward to.

Chinese Snow

I think i was 6 or 7. I was pretty young. Our parents used to take us up to a cabin that we lovingly called laugenita. I think laugenita had something to do with the name laugenour and a plant called a manzanita plant. it was a cabin in the sierra nevada not too far from dodge ridge. memories of the cabin just kind of pepper my childhood memories as a loose collection of moments that i dont really remember chronologically and they seem to spread over the course of ten years and one week simultaneously. but i guess that is the case with most childhood momeries, they're like bread crumbs.

there is one moment in particular i remember. it had to be one of my earlier laugenita memories because i dont really remember how i got there or what happened next. one of the reasons we would go up to laugenita was to "go to the snow". i dont know what it is about kids that grow up in climates that dont get snow, but snow to me as a kid was something magical and i remember my parents telling me occasionally that we were "going to the snow" and it was like we were going to a solid gold fantasy land filled with dream wishes and chocolate cake pies. it was everything. you could have said we were going to the moon and i couldn't be any happier. snow was to me what disney had made it out to be: tunnels, snow balls, forts, cushioning for ridiculous falls, and snowmen.

So, at the age of 6 or 7 i remember sitting in the cabin at night. i had probably been out in the snow all morning playing around and making tunnels and forts and throwing snowballs and falling ridiculously and not getting hurt but i dont remember any of that. the one thing i do remember is looking out the window and seeing huge cotton ball sized snow flakes falling gently through the sky, like a heavy blizzard that is too fat and soft to get dangerous. the snow appeared orangish from the porch light. I must have been young because i dont think i had ever seen it actually snow before. so i got all excited and turned to my mom. i'm sure i asked her if i could go out and play in the snow. now, i dont know if i remember this correctly, or maybe my mom didn't want me to go out in the snow anymore and she couldn't think of a reason why (i can think of a handful right now: too late, its too cold, i dont want to get you all dressed up in snow clothes again, there are crazy bears out at night, etc. so this probably isnt the case) but i remember distinctly the following reply to my childish pleas to play in the first snowing of my life.

"no. thats chinese snow. it is really sticky and it might not come off". enough said. i didnt want sticky chinese snow on me. well played mom. well played.