Comeback Kid

Two things have happened to me this week that I now have the best comeback for.  Unfortunately, these moments are now gone and I have the perfect comeback for situations that I hope will never happen to me again.

Sometimes I wish I was the 12 year old girl that could get by on the classic comeback "Yo Mama".  Or my best comeback, "Oh yeah," (tosses hair, puts hand on hip, does neckroll), "So?".

Today I was dropping off more stuff I don't need at Goodwill.  The drop off for our Goodwill is behind the store, on broken pavement, and between dumpsters.  The great part about dropping off things at Goodwill is 1) the tax write off and 2) they are always playing Classic Rock, which really makes you want to jam out while your unloading your crap.  The bad part is that the drop off location looks more like a crack rock pick up location.  So, I unloaded my crap to some great Lynard Skynard song, got my little tax write off slip, and walked back to my car.  This elderly lady (yes, I'm being polite....I really want to call a spade a spade here), got out of her car and said to me "Well, that's a dumb place to park".  In the 3 seconds it took me to respond, I had about 55 combinations of curse words go through my mind.  What I ended up saying was "I'm sorry (doh! Why was I apologizing?), I'm moving my car now if you'd like to take my spot".  I got in my car, slammed the door, and coaxed my middle finger to remain wrapped around the steering wheel.  What a jerk!  I mean bitch.....I mean *Holey-Moley Who Put A Corn Cob Up Your Butt*.  I almost turned the car around to tell that rude woman how....well, rude she is.  But no comeback came to me.  Two hours later, I'm still angry at this stupid woman for making an unnecessary comment and ruining my Target shopping experience.  Of course, that's when what I should have said to her came to me - "Hi, I'm Amber and I'm so sorry that I forgot that my entire existence is to accommodate you.  I will sincerely try to work on this in the future.  In the meantime, your options are to move your beautiful car into a more accommodating area of this crappy parking lot, or wait until I move so that you can have the princess parking you so deserve".  And, of course, if she didn't get the sarcasm in my tone (how could you miss it?), I could break it down for her - "Good Gosh, Bitch!  Get over yourself."

And so, this leads me to keep to my new school comebacks that I want to use so badly, but remember them so far after the fact:

1. Get over yourself

2.  Oh, I forgot everything was about you.

3.  Crap, I hate when I forget that you are the center of the universe.

4.  Because it's your job (I have used this a lot at work)

5.  (The best one!) Bite me!

So, eat my shorts, kiss my grits, and go take a long walk off a short pier - you jerkface woman at Goodwill.  I hope they just throw all your crap in the dumpster!

Honk, Honk, Rattle, Rattle

So, driving to work this week I saw a group of young girls standing on the corner.  Geez, man, get your mind out of the gutter.  These girls were probably my age (mid-late 20's) and were jumping around with Hillary signs.  One of the signs was particularly amusing to me....."Honk for Hillary".  Why was this amusing?  For one, no one was honking.  This wasn't entirely strange, since I assume many people are like me and flip-flop between these two democratic candidates.  I don't feel there is a lack of support for Hillary in Central PA - which brings me to the second reason this moment amused me.  My peer group of Hillary supporters decided that the best possible place in my town to hold up a Honk sign is on the corner of, possibly, the busiest intersection in my itty-bitty town.  At this one stop light at 7:45am, there are 14 driving lanes of traffic (counting turn lanes) that are waiting for the light to change so they can zoom off (at the racing speed of 35 mph) to get to their 8am jobs.  

So, can you picture it?  What would happen if we had 14 lanes of traffic at 7:45am on a freezing cold Central PA day all honking at each other?  Seriously!

Middle fingers would be flying freely.

Honk for safe driving.  And, at 7:45am, here's a Honk for really good coffee!

Oh My God! They Killed.......

No, not Kenny. The Easter Bunny. Yep, that's right. I just had the strangest Easter Sunday ever! It was strange for so many reasons.....and now, I will attempt to articulate the strangeness.

First, Easter weekend started with a beautiful blanket of snow in our yard. That's right - 5 inches of stupid snow on Easter. After the hubby shoveled the sidewalk and the deck (so our tee-tiny dogs could go out and potty), we started in on our Easter festivities. I baked Amish Friendship bread and poured Limoncello on fruit while practicing how to speak Italian on my ipod in the kitchen. The pups waited for me to drop food and hubby was up in the attic rewiring the house. Our Easter lunch was scheduled to start at 1:00pm at our friend's house down the street. So at 1:15 (fashionably late) we loaded up the goods and headed down the street of our little village. (Note: Yet again I walked the streets with an open bottle of alcohol to go to our friend's house - it wouldn't be normal if I didn't).

We arrive at a wonderful dinner with good food and good conversation. Yeah....life is great.
The anticipation in the room started to grow as it got closer to the popular egg hunt. The older adults went outside to hide the eggs while the younger adults sat inside, ate fun dip, and drank beer.

Let me clarify the people involved in this Easter celebration. At 27 years old, I am one of the youngest at the party. The oldest is 81. Those over the age of 40 are hiding the eggs and those of us 25-40 are participating in the hunt.

So, the hunt begins and we all ran screaming to find the eggs. My hubby has a history of injuring himself on the egg hunt. A few years ago he scratched his eye diving into a bush to get an egg. This year, his thumb suffered an injury.

One of the eggs had a yellow post-it note that said "Winner!". This lucky individual received a chocolate peanut butter egg from a local chocolate shop. The lucky individual this year was me! Woohoo! Everyone was bummed that they didn't win, except for hubby who asked if he could take half of my winnings. I guess that's how a happy marriage works right - if I win a big hunkin' chocolate peanut butter egg, we split 50/50.

The next activity involved a beautiful hollow chocolate bunny named The Professor. At some point during the day, The Professor had been lynched and was hanging from a noose on the side of an old barn. Whatever are we to do? One suggestion was to throw darts at him.....someone else suggested golf balls.....and then someone brilliantly shouted "We should peg 'em with snowball". I mean, seriously, when could you ever peg a chocolate easter bunny with real snow balls?

We all start throwing snowballs at this poor lynched chocolate bunny. What must the neighbors think?

I don't know how it happened, but someone knocked the head off! The chocolate bunny was hanging on by one little sugary thread! We all move in closer and we continue to throw snowballs. And Score! I nailed the hollow bunny body and he fell to the ground. Oh-no! What have we done? We have to do something to the body so the dog doesn't eat the chocolate. One of the "dads" in the group steps out of the crowd and says "I have a firecracker in my pocket. Let's see if it'll blow up!". So, as the crowd backs away, two brave souls light the firecracker and place the hollow bunny head on top of the firecracker. The first time the head didn't stay in place so there was no explosion. The second try produced satisfying results. They lit the firecracker, placed the hollow chocolate bunny head on it, and we all held our breath in anticipation. About 10 seconds later the chocolate bunny head exploded in a million pieces! "I feel like we're on myth busters!" Someone shouted. "That was the wickedness Christmas EVER!" Someone else shouted. And then everyone stopped to ponder why she said Christmas and not Easter.

I should mention at this point that we are not drunk while doing this. I can see how it would be easy to say - Man, those people must be lit! But, this is not the case. In fact, only about 3 of us (out of 20 or so) had even had anything to drink at all. Which is why this story is freaking hilarious!

Back to the exploded bunny. We walked around trying to pick up our mess - again, so the dog doesn't find and eat the chocolate. Someone says, "We need to bury it".

So, we begin the chocolate bunny funeral service. "Ashes to Ashes, Confection to Confection". Someone starts in on a funeral hymn, which is cut off by someone singing a soulful version of "Here comes Peter Cottontail". My The Professor Chocolate Bunny and all his pieces Rest In Peace.

How could we possibly top this? Here's where we bring a little bit of Martha in. We managed to get into a discussion about eggs, dying easter eggs, and blowing eggs. Blowing eggs? What does this mean? "It's all legit...I saw it on Martha Stewart". We must try this! Thus begins the hour long activity of sticking a needle into both ends of an egg and attempting to "blow it's guts out". It is one of the nastiest, funniest things I have ever seen. It is so strange to sit around a table of adults cheering on "egg blowers" and celebrating when the egg has been blown out or blows up (on a person's face -yak!).

And after all that excitement, I went home and did laundry. I also cleaned my living room, organized my paperwork for a board meeting, and organized my sock drawer. What an uneventful way to end one of the zaniest days ever!

And, I know what you're thinking now - "And then I woke up!". But, No! This was not a dream....my dream this weekend was much stranger. I dreamed that we were traveling to England on the Queen Mary 2 with two of our dogs and we got lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Seriously, sometimes real life is better than fiction!

Here's to many more egg hunts, chocolate bunny snowball targets, and egg blowing contests. Cheers!

For the love of Peep!

In honor of Easter candy (and to celebrate the wonders of the microwave), I found myself in a discussion about putting random things - like peeps - into the microwave. While I would never-ever-ever do this in my own microwave, I find it highly amusing to watch other people do it. The peeps exploding are hilarious, but check out the other random things hanging out in the microwave. I mean, seriously, people - who thinks of these things? (Thank you random person for thinking of these things - you've been my source of amusement for the past hour).

http://microwavecam.com/microwavecam/index.htm

If the videos don't show up, you can do a search in youtube. The peeps are definitely worth a look. I laughed like a hyena on Lion King when the things exploded. It's kindof like the joy I get from popping bubble wrap or squishing packing peanuts.....you know what I mean.

Maybe this stems from some childhood trauma (don't they all, Oediupus?). I have a memory of my uncle making popcorn at Christmas and it caught fire. I remember the way the microwave looked and the way my mom had decorated the kitchen....everything is very vivid. I remember being terrified that the microwave would randomly catch fire and burn down my house. (Ya see, I have the fear of my house catching fire and I can't get everyone and everything out. Similarly, my sister has a dream about tornadoes where she tries to get all of us into a safe place in the house. I wonder what Freud would say?). Anywho, I've always been fascinated by a machine that magically heats, pops, melts, and randomly catches fire.

P.S. No peeps were harmed in the writing of this post.

Hail to the Peeps!

Mother Earth is One Tough Mama

In our egocentric human mind, it's hard to think of how the earth could possibly go on without us. Surprise - she does.....and on top of that, she thrives!! With the exception of small domestic animals (my precious little toy dogs!), everything else seems to just go on without us.
This is a lengthy video, but worth the time......check it out:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread335227/pg1

The critique that many point out is "what will we do with all the human bodies"? I don't think this was intended to show what would happen if we all just died (if that interests you, see: Stephen King's "The Stand").
Another critique is that this is just fueling the whole Left Behind idea of the Christian Rapture......ummm, not really. The Rapture doesn't just take everyone off the earth, many are Left Behind (hence the title of the series, brush up your Revelations!).

Of course, the idea of the world in a post-apocalyptic setting has been the subject of many great works of literature, art, and film. My most recent find was Cormac McCarthy's The Road (being made into a movie starring Viggo Mortensen). This novel is wonderfully written and generated such powerful images for me.....one of the best books I've read in quite a while.

Another point this film brings up is the Chernobyl disaster. It has been labeled the worst nuclear disaster in history. On April 26, 1986, a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl exploded. The town is now a ghost town and mother nature is reclaiming the land. While many people, animals, and wildlife were lost or damaged in the accident, the land is healing itself. It has only been almost 22 years since the disaster, but in that time vegetation is taking over the man-made structures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Point being: Don't mess with Mother Nature.....she's one tough mama!!! And in the end (or semi-end, or ultimate-end, or half-way end), she'll win!

And the questions to ponder - Are humans really on a path of self-destruction? If we just took a few years to let the earth "take a bath" and cleanse herself, would we all be happier for it? Or have we already gone to far in "advancing our civilization"?

In the brilliant words of the Beatles - "Let It Be".
And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.

Peace, Love, and Puppies!

Pretty Fly for a White Girl

This is great.....the musings of what white people are from the point of view of a white person. So true....and so completely sarcastic!
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

I'm particularly fond of the musings about grad school. Me, a white chick, recently completed grad school. Why? But, of course, to prove that I'm smarter than other white chicks! And I can prove my smartness because I have a piece of paper (paid for by working full time) to say that I'm smart. Hmmm....so now I guess I have to find life situations where I can argue educational theory as it applies to policy and pedagogy. I'm sure there is some coffee shop somewhere that I can find someone to argue this higher level thinking.
But, on the other hand, who really gives two rips.
Here's the grad student posting from this blog.....it's great:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/81-graduate-school/

Bottom line for me:
I'm a good teacher and my little piece of expensive paper doesn't really prove that.
And reading people online is just as valuable as reading John Dewey (and far more entertaining).
I've talked more about Bradgelina and Brit-Brit in the past year than any theory of classroom democracy......it makes me "cultured", right?
I'm likable just the way I am.....reading about Polygamy and watching The Girls Next Door makes me interesting. So does an M.Ed. Deal with it!

Yes, yes....I am a fish

Since my birthday is this week, I decided to find out more about what I should be.....at least according to astrology, the sun, and mythology.
I'm right smack dab in the middle of Pisces...symbolized by two fish - one swimming upstream and one swimming downstream. Of course, the description listed below could be one that anyone says "Oh yeah, that's me". But, seriously, some of this stuff is me. Or at least me the way I view myself.
Another description I found of Pisces says the ideal careers are "working with animals, acting, writing, poets, engineers, and psychics". So, I guess I should be writing - in rhyme - about a machine that understands the minds of dogs. And then I give live demonstrations. I've found it - my astrological job calling!!!!
They also have trouble distinguishing real life from their daydreams and night dreams. I will 100% agree that I sometimes confuse what I dream at night with reality. Oh the times that I wake up really thinking that I bought an awful blue polka sports bra and wore it with no pants to work!

Here's the pretty accurate description of what I, the little fish that could, am all about..........

Pisces
February 19 - March 20 Pisces is the twelfth Sign of the Zodiac, and it is also the final Sign in the Zodiacal cycle. Hence, this Sign brings together many of the characteristics of the eleven Signs that have come before it. Pisceans, however, are happiest keeping many of these qualities under wraps. These folks are selfless, spiritual and very focused on their inner journey. They also place great weight on what they are feeling. Yes, feelings define Pisceans, and it's not uncommon for them to feel their own burdens (and joys) as well as those of others. The intuition of the Pisces-born is highly-evolved. Many people associate Pisceans with dreams and secrets, and it's a fair association, since those born under this Sign feel comfortable in an illusory world.

It's a pair of Fish that represents Pisceans, a symbol which prompts others to suggest that these people 'go with the flow' and 'don't make waves.' Both of these labels are true, since Pisceans are fluid and easy-going, in keeping with the Mutable Quality assigned to this Sign. The fact that two fish (as opposed to one) represent the members of this Sign also speaks to the duality of Pisceans, their yin and yang sensibility. Pisceans alternate between reality and non-reality in keeping with their introspective natures; their voyage between consciousness and an unconscious dream state says much about their intuitive, almost psychic natures. For this reason, Pisceans can be hard to pin down, prompting some to call them the chameleons of the Zodiac. The Fish are happy to be considered hazy, since there's a certain sense of safety in that self-proclaimed netherworld. That said, they won't stay away for long, since one of their primary goals is to help others. Pisceans are compassionate, charitable and will quickly put the needs of others ahead of their own. It's this kind of self-sacrifice which keeps these folks going. The flip side to their giving natures is that oft-timid Fish are likely to be taken advantage of by less well-meaning souls.

http://www.astrology.com/allaboutyou/sunsigns/pisces.html

Results from my theological worldview quiz.....thought this was pretty accurate. http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=7095N What's your theological worldview?

You scored as a Emergent/Postmodern

You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern 82% Classical Liberal 68% Modern Liberal 64% Neo orthodox 57% Roman Catholic 54% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 46% Reformed Evangelical 32% Charismatic/Pentecostal 25% Fundamentalist 14%

The Day Grand Central Stood Still

So, one day a group of people participated in a planned improv (which kinda seems like an oxymoron) in which they just stopped moving and froze in place at the same time.
Check it out:
http://improveverywhere.com/2008/01/31/frozen-grand-central/

The most interesting part of this, for me, is that lots of people started taking pictures of these "frozen people". But, isn't a picture just a frozen image anyway? When they got their pictures back didn't they just look like frozen people giving other frozen people a funny look? Hmmm.....seems kinda funny to me to try to capture the moment of a group of frozen people by using equipment that freezes everyone. Anywho....just found it humorous.

And check out the links to Ben Folds.....that mission was great, and not just because Ben Folds is my homeboy.