Monthly Archives: December 2010

Exhaustion

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So, this promise I made about posting every day until Christmas is about to be the end of me.  I literally spent all day finishing up my grading today (yay!), and I just got back to my apartment just a little awhile ago with little left of my mental ability.  Grading 60 essays in one day is too, too much.

I worked straight through dinner, so I was quite hungry on my way home.  I don’t have much food left in my house, as I’m trying to eat up what I have before I go home for the holidays.  I was too tired to go to the grocery store and had no desire to go out of my way to a fast food place, so I made a quick stop at the gas station right next to my apartment.  Now, I don’t know if you frequent the gas station for your dinner time options, but if not, let me tell you, the options are sparse. As a result, my dinner tonight consisted of a hot pocket and an ice cold bud light.  If that doesn’t say healthy high-class, then I just don’t know what does.

Sitting here trying to digest my food, I’m reminded of why I don’t make a habit out of eating hot pockets.  They’re really gross.  The things you’ll do when you’re too exhausted to go to the grocery store.

Hot pockets do, however, remind me of that one Jim Gaffigan sketch.  Haha, I just looked it up and re-watched it, and it absolutely cracked me up, because it’s exactly how I feel right now:

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that I truly cannot keep focused long enough to write a legitimate post, so this will have to do for today.

Hope you all are enjoying your Tuesday evening!

My Mom & The Rogue Hair

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I subscribe to many blogs, and today one of them posted this link to Wisdom Teeth, a short film by Don Hertzfeldt:

Personally, I find this video rather entertaining.  Disturbing and totally random, yes–but enjoyable nonetheless. I am a big fan of off-beat humor and creativity, so I was amused by it.  Make sure you wait for the end to see the odd and somewhat unexpected ending.  (P.S. the Scandinavian accents are completely fake, and the stick figures are actually talking in gibberish–or at least that’s what I read online…).

While this video is entertaining in its own right, I couldn’t help but recall one of my favorite stories of my mother while watching it.

For those of you who are lucky enough to know my mother, you know that she is incredible.  You know that she’s one of the most giving and loving people that you’ll ever meet.  And, most endearingly, you know that she’s adorably crazy.

You could say the apple didn’t fall far from the tree when it comes to my mom and me, as we both tend to get ourselves into the most embarrassingly awkward situations.

For example.

I grew up in a small town in New York.  Everyone knew everyone, and it was a common occurrence to run into someone you knew while running errands.

One day, my mom was shopping at the p.x. (the post exchange, or military catch-all store, for you non-military folks out there) when she ran into our church priest.  He was an older gentleman, and my mom knew him fairly well, as she was quite involved in the church.

As they were visiting, my mom noticed that he had a loose thread hanging on his shirt.  Always the helpful one, she nonchalantly reached up and pulled on the thread during the course of their conversation.  Assuming that the thread would immediately come loose, she was a little surprised when it remained attached to the shirt.  Determined, she kept pulling, while our priest kept talking.  Soon, the priest started smirking, and my mom, feeling embarrassed (yet still pulling), said, “gosh, this thread just won’t come off.”  His response?

“That’s because it’s connected to my chest.”

Realizing that she had just spent the better part of five minutes pulling on a priest’s chest hair in the middle of a store, my mom was understandably mortified.  Luckily, the priest had a sense of humor and all was fine.

I just love that story.

And yes, I realize that it’s a bit of a jump to go from the wisdom teeth video to my mom’s chest-hair pulling incident, but that’s just the way my mind works.

6 Days

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On this sixth day until Christmas, I currently have:

6 boxes of contacts that need to be picked up from the eye doctor.

5 (times 12) final exams left to grade.

4 people left for whom I need to buy presents.

3 friends IMing me on facebook.

2 socks soaking up all the water in my cat’s water bowl (thanks to her odd sock habit).

1 toilet that won’t stop running no matter what I try.

And that, my friends, is the lamest attempt at a last minute blog post ever made. But hey, at least I got it done, right?!

Better stories coming tomorrow.  For now, though, I’m off to bed.

Clyde & Curly

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For as long as I can remember, my grandpa has had a collection of unusual pets.  We’ve had sheep and deer, elk and turkeys, quail and buffalo, miniature donkeys and llamas, dogs and cats, horses and camels.  While I’m pretty sure that I could write many posts about each of these animals, tonight’s post will focus on our camels.

I honestly don’t remember how long we’ve had Clyde–I believe my grandpa bought him at an exotic animal auction about 12-15 years ago.  He’s a two-hump camel, and he’s positively crazy.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a camel run, but if not, then you must put it on your bucket list.  It’s hilarious.  We got Curly, our one-hump, a year or so after Curly.  They got along well, and they hung out half the year at my grandpa’s farm and half the year with their “trainer.”

Another thing I’m not quite sure of is how we discovered that they like to drink beer.  I’m pretty sure it was a combination of my cousins and my grandpa who figured that one out, but boy, they do love the beer.  No worries, we never gave them more than a can or two at a time.  Interestingly, beer is the only canned beverage they like; once when we pulled up, Clyde came running over to the car, stuck his head in the driver’s side window, reached to the console and grabbed a can of Pepsi sitting there.  Upon drinking a sip, he immediately spit it out.  The jury’s still out as to his taste of Dr. Pepper.

The other day I randomly decided to google our camel, and lo and behold the following video popped up.  I have no idea who took this video, and the fact that they let Clyde chew on the can concerns me, but this is a recent clip of our baby Clyde (at the trainer’s house):

Surprisingly, my youtube search delivered quite a few other beer drinking camels around the world.  In fact, there’s even a song out there about beer drinking camels (see http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/davidmkidd3).  How random!

Sadly, my grandpa sold his piece of land (and almost all the animals that were living there) a few years ago, but we kept our camels.  Technically, Clyde now lives full time with his trainer (who has the acreage and the desire to take care of him).  The trainer is also their social planner, so Clyde and Curly have been involved in a bunch of different events and parades.  As a result, there have been multiple times when I was caught off guard by their appearance in random situations.

For example, last year around this time my mom and I were wrapping presents and randomly had the television tuned to E!.  At some point in the night, the show Wildest Weddings came on, but, busy with wrapping and catching up, we weren’t really paying attention.  This instantly changed when the show cut to commercial and said something along the lines of “and when we come back, you’ll see a wedding featuring the famous beer drinking camels of Oklahoma.”  What?!  Of course we paid full attention, and, sure enough, there were Clyde and Curly, the stars at the reception of someone who got married in our hometown.

Another time I was back home visiting my parents and went out with one of my high school friends.  We were out at a bar, and I met a bunch of his friends.  At some point, a girl came up to us and said “you HAVE to see these pictures I have on my phone.  You won’t believe it!”  I had no idea what to expect, but I cracked up when the pictures were of Clyde and Curly.  I don’t know what she expected me to say, but I can tell you that she did not expect me to tell her that they’re members of my family.

I’m very sad about Curly, but I’m grateful that he was with our family for so long and provided us with lots of joy.  I plan on going to visit Clyde while I’m home over the holidays, so hopefully I can get some updated pictures.  Mostly, I’m just grateful that I have the kind of family in which pet camels are just part of the norm.

On a somewhat related note, my grandpa also used to have a Zedonk (half zebra/half donkey) named Zed.  When I was about 23, I was watching Jimmy Kimmel, and he had a segment about the “World’s First Half Donkey/Half Zebra.”  I can remember sitting there getting my panties in a wad that Jimmy was leading the world to think that these people in California had the first Zedonk, when we had been the proud owner of Zed for years.  So, I did what any sane rational person would do–I immediately e-mailed the show and told them all about Zed.

I never heard back.

I’m sure there are plenty of other Zedonks out there, but here’s a picture of me with our Zed (again, old pictures!):

You can also see some of our Jacks and Jills.  Oh, I miss those animals and that land…

When I was looking through old pictures, I also found this random picture of some of the elk that used to wander around on our land–so pretty!

My dryer is beeping, so I suppose it’s time for me to go and finish doing laundry.

Until next time!

And yes, I realize that technically this is a Sunday not a Saturday post.  I’m hoping if I post something short and sweet after I finish this load of laundry, most of you won’t notice that I actually missed a day of posting…

Patience is a Virtue

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In an effort to keep my promise about posting every day until Christmas, here I am.

Unfortunately, I’m not here with my post about Clyde & Curly.  I had big plans to get my camel post finished today, but, as it always does, life got busy.

I have a great friend from grad school in town visiting me for the weekend, and soon after she arrived, I got a phone call from two friends from my New York days who happen to be in Dallas this weekend as well.  I haven’t seen my NY friends in years, so we’re all meeting up  tonight for a girls’ night out that will include nothing short of lots of fun, fancy bars, great friends, a burlesque show, and many cute boys (or at least I’m hoping, haha).  It should make for a super night!

I’ll get the second half of my camel post up sometime tomorrow for sure. For now, though, I’m off to reconnect with old friends and take Dallas by storm.

Hope you’re all having a safe and happy Friday night!

Got Camels?

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The other day I was having a conversation with a friend about pick up lines/conversation starters.  In a dating world where most guys can’t do better than something along the lines of the cheesy “Is heaven missing an angel?,” it’s refreshing when you hear something original and unexpected.

This conversation got me thinking—do I have a go-to conversation starter? My first inclination was to say no, but then tonight I signed onto match (yes, I’m still on that thing–stories to come) and, after reading an e-mail from a nice man, realized that I do indeed have a go-to line of sorts: my beer drinking camels.

You see, I come from quite the eccentric family, and among our various claims to fame is the fact that we own beer drinking camels.  Yes, our pet camel lives right smack in the middle of southwestern Oklahoma.  While it’s not common for me to blurt this fact out upon meeting someone, I have found that it proves to be a great conversation starter whenever a great conversation starter is needed (whether it’s during a date, meeting new friends, or telling stories with old friends).

When I was filling out my match profile back in July, I absolutely could not bring myself to create the prototypical profile with things like, “Hi, I’m Erin.  I’m a super genius.  I have a body that’s comparable to a Victoria’s Secret’s model.  I make oodles of money at my incredibly impressive job.  When it comes to homemaking, I’m a perfect mix between Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker.  In my free time, I like to build houses for the homeless while nursing orphaned baby birds back to health.” Because, you know, even though those statements are all completely accurate (haha), I don’t like to be a braggart.

Instead, I opted for a “10 Random Things About Erin” kind of profile in which I tell them 10 things that, while telling them nothing of great significance about me, allow them to get a glimpse into my personality.  Of the 10 things, #3′s “I’ve got two beer drinking camels” gets the most responses by far.  I knew that this would be a good thing to include, of course, because in my “real” life, anytime I bring up my camels, it always brings about a fairly good conversation.  What I didn’t realize was just how much this statement would spark other match-ers curiosity.  (Incidentally, my number #8 random fact involving the way I prefer my toilet paper roll to hang brings in the second highest number of comments, followed closely by my # 6 love of math.)

Just to provide a sampling of the kinds of comments my camels inspire, I’ve copied the camel part of the five most recent e-mails that I’ve received:

I must say I found your list of ten things rather intriguing. I couldn’t help but chuckle about your #8 (this is my toilet paper comment). That’s always been a pet peeve of mine, too! Your #3, of course, obviously begs for follow-up questions, so I guess my first ones are – how in the world did you come about having two camels, and how did you find out they like drinking beer??

Your profile was a very fun read. The 10 random facts was a refreshing read and provides more insight than the usual hollow information from most everybody. At the risk of sounding somewhat gullible, do you really have two camels? I figure the camels are a euphemism for large dogs or some such thing.

Say what? Camels? That’s a hell of a thing to only make #3 on your list. Definitely did a double take on that one. Can you ride them? I guess they have to be sober for that.

Can camels get beer bellies? Do they live with you?

Interesting 10 random things about me list, especially the 2 beer drinking camels.

This last line is the one that came from tonight’s e-mail.  After reading these e-mails, and responding to many of them, I thought it might be time to introduce my camels to the blogosphere.  It breaks my heart to tell you that Curly, our one-hump camel, recently died due to a broken leg and infection (turns out there’s not a lot of vets who specialize in camel infections).  We now only have Clyde, our two-hump camel (he’s been with us the longest), but they’re both so dear to my heart.  Even though Curly’s gone, I want to share pictures and introduce them both.

Without further ado, here’s Curly:

And here’s Clyde (you’ll have to excuse these pictures–they were taken more than 10 years ago!):

That’s my arm holding onto Clyde, by the way.  I would have left the picture uncropped, but I was afraid I’d break the computer.

Anyway, those are my camels!  They’re somewhat famous around these parts.  In fact, they’ve been featured on E!’s show Wildest Weddings.

I’d tell you that story now, but a big pile of gen psych exams is calling my name, so I’m going to get to grading and save that story (as well as the details of my camels) for tomorrow’s post.

Happy 9th Day Before Christmas, Everyone!

Erin


On the Tenth Day before Christmas….

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When I was little, I had a friend who had a big sister who would often promise to do things with us.  ”Sure, I’d love to take you to the movies next week!”  ”The zoo? Why of course!  We’ll have the best time when we get to visit all the animals.”  Then, without fail, every time we’d get our hopes up, the day would come , and she’d suddenly become busy and wouldn’t deliver on her promises.  It always annoyed me, and I swore I would never be like that.  I generally like to think that I’m good for my word, but then I woke up this morning and realized that when it comes to blogging, I’ve turned into the sister full of empty promises.

This revelation causes me great cognitive dissonance, so I’m going to try to rectify the situation by not promising to post a certain number of postings each week anymore and by also delivering on any future promise that I do make.  With that being said (and oh, I will redeem myself), I’m committed to posting every day until Christmas.  Consider me your own personal advent calendar.  Maybe advent is already half over and maybe I don’t provide tiny morsels of chocolate when you punch in my doors, but I’m counting down to Christmas nonetheless.

On this tenth day before Christmas, I’m currently in the throes of finals week.  2 down, 1 left to give. I have piles and piles of grading sitting on my desk, but knowing that in three days I’ll be free from whiny students for a month makes the task of grading seem a little more tolerable. My poor students seem positively exhausted, but they’ve all been in good spirits during their final and have been great sports with my requests for class pictures.  Yes, I’ve made each of my classes gather together for a end-of-the-semester-picture. I think it’s a fun tradition to start, and I know that I’ll truly enjoy looking back at my past classes in years to come.  Overall, I’ve received good feedback from my students, and, as nerdy as this may be, I’m starting to feel the beginning pangs of post-semester depression.  I always get a little sad when the semester’s over, my classes end, and my students leave.  As crazy as they drive me, I really enjoy my students and the relationships we build over the course of a semester. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember this feeling when I get into the middle of next semester, and I’m ready to strangle my students again.

On a completely different note, I had a doctor’s appointment earlier this week, and while there, I realized that there are times when I really should come equipped with a muzzle.  I don’t know what it is about doctors’ offices, but something about the visits makes me nervous, and nervous Erin = blabber mouth Erin (see my previous post about my recent ob/gyn visit for another example).  It’s like I feel like I have to say something, but then whatever comes out sounds strange, so, in an attempt to explain my strange comment, I just keep talking until I’ve made an odd comment seem downright crazy. If I could just learn to stop talking, I might be able to maintain the appearance that I’m practically normal.

Anyway, I’ve been having trouble with my hips, so I went to the doctor hoping to figure out what was wrong.  While there, my doctor ordered a pelvic x-ray for me down the hall.  The nurse brought me a gown and instructed me to take off my pants and put the gown on.  In my Monday morning rush, I hadn’t exactly planned on traipsing around the waiting rooms in nothing but a micro-mini hospital gown and socks, so my already pale legs were looking dry, slightly unshaven, and dressed in knee high purple argyle socks.  I realize that no one probably paid me much attention as people walking around in hospital gowns is a common sight in hospitals, but it still made me feel uneasy.  Whenever I feel uncomfortable in this manner, I have the irresistible urge to tell everyone within hearing distance why I’m dressed/acting/whatever the way I am (e.g. after I fell on my face in Rome and came back to the states with a huge healing wound on my nose, I told literally every single person that I came into contact with that it wasn’t a monster zit or a some weird disease, but that I’m a klutz and had fallen on my face.  The looks on their faces told me this was not something that the local grocers or postal workers needed nor wanted to know, yet I continued to tell everyone until my nose completely healed).

But back to Monday. As I sat waiting for my turn, I informed all those sitting next to me that I was waiting to get an x-ray (because, you know, the fact that I was sitting outside of the x-ray room in a gown didn’t clue them in).  I continued to tell them why I was there and the duration of my hip issues.  I’m certain they enjoyed the play-by-play of my recurring pain.

My name was finally called, and a young (as in too young for me) male x-ray technician got me situated on the table.  As he was setting up the machine, he asked me if there was any chance that I was pregnant.  That seemingly innocent question spurred the following conversation:

Erin: Oh no, definitely not pregnant.

Technician (sort of smirking at my emphasis): Definitely not, huh?

E: Nope, definitely not!  (This is the point where I should have stopped talking.  But no, I kept right on going…)

E: Unfortunately. Well, not unfortunately that I’m not pregnant, because though I one day want kids, I don’t want them right now. More unfortunately  because it’s sort of a sad state of affairs that I know for certain that there’s absolutely no chance I’m pregnant because, you know, I’m alone and not dating anyone.  But not that I can’t get a date, I can, it’s just that I’m picky and busy, and well, yeah.

Cue a blank incredulous stare from the technician.

Though embarrassing, I’m grateful he gave me a look that told me I was acting insane or else I might have kept going.

I like to believe that moments like this will be embarrassing enough to stop me from doing similar things in the future, but given that I’ve had many, many of these moments in the past, I’m starting to think I might be a lost cause.

Unfortunately, my humiliation didn’t end there.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a rule following people pleaser, so when someone tells me to do something, I do it and do it well.  The technician needed a total of four x-rays, and before the first one he instructed me to lay with my toes facing inward towards each other.  I did as I was told, and he took the first picture.  He took out the x-ray and went back to the little side room and started doing his thing for the next 4-5 minutes.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to lay on your back and hold your feet inwards so your big toes touch, but after about a minute, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep that pose.  He hadn’t told me to release my pose, so when he came back for picture number two, there I lay: a 30-year-old woman in a super short hospital gown and knee-high socks, toes locked together, and thigh muscles slightly shaking due to the fatigue of holding the pose for so long.  He literally laughed at me and said, “um, you can relax when I’m not taking a picture.”  Thankfully, the rest of the time flew by, and I was able to leave with what remained of my dignity.

The good news is that the x-rays didn’t reveal anything unusual.  The bad news is that I’m probably going to have to find a new doctor again because I don’t think I can handle facing X-ray Technician ever again.

I sometimes have to wonder how a girl who can be so successful in some parts of her life can be so spastic in others.  It’s just one of life’s mysteries, I suppose.

Hope your tenth day before Christmas is providing you with fun times and good stories!  Thanks to those of you who regularly check my blog even though I’ve been erratic in my posting–it means a lot!

Until tomorrow,

Erin

Diego Knows Best*

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How is it already December?  I have no idea what happened to the last three weeks; November absolutely flew by.  The end of the semester is always so busy, and I’ve been running around like a crazy woman trying to get everything wrapped up before Christmas break.  That being said, I’ve pushed my blog down to the bottom of my priority list.  I’ll work on that…

I’m working on my lecture for tomorrow’s class, so I don’t have much time for a “real” post, but I wanted to post something so that those of you who are still checking my little blog know that I’m still alive and still posting.  I’ll work on getting a longer post up later this week.

In the mean time, I’ll leave with you a mini story from yesterday:

I am in the bad habit of taking my clean clothes out of the dryer and laying them neatly on my couch until I have time to fold them.  When things are calm, I can be quite on top of things, folding and putting away the laundry almost immediately.  When life gets busy, however, my pile of clean clothes can stack up quite a bit.  Given that I live alone, it’s not that big of a deal, though I definitely prefer when I get it done right away.  That being said, it drives my friend Diego crazy. For the last couple of years, he’s been on my case about putting my laundry up as soon as I take it out of the dryer.  He’s an impressive immediate folder-and-put-awayer himself, so he just doesn’t understand how I can leave my clean laundry piled (neatly) up.  He gets on my case about it a lot, but I tend to just blow him off and happily go about my life.

Well, (and it pains me to write this), it turns out I should have listened to Diego.

As I said at the beginning of this post, the last few weeks have been busy. I can hardly see myself coming or going, and I’ve let many things, including my laundry, sort of slide to the wayside.  As a result, I have huge pile of clean laundry (some folded, some neatly stacked) sitting on a chair in my living room–the same chair that I often unload my bags onto when I get home from work.  This system of taking what I need from the chair when I need them has been working for me, and I’ve been in no hurry to put the clothes away.

That is, I was in no hurry to put the clothes away until yesterday.

You see, yesterday, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I popped out of bed in the morning and really felt like I had it together.  I got up a little earlier than usual, I made breakfast, picked up my living room, graded some papers, and ran an errand all before work. In addition, I was having a “cute” day, and I was feeling pretty smart.

I grabbed my bags, left my apartment, waved hello to the lawn care people, smiled at a teenage kid walking by, and said hi to a neighbor.  I ran my errand, drove to work, and parked my car.  As I was sauntering up to my office, I was feeling pretty with it.  This was going to be a good day, I thought to myself.  It was at the exact moment that this thought was running through my head that I caught sight of something unusual on my bag.  I looked down only to discover that I had been walking around all morning with a pair of clean underwear stuck to the outside of my bag.

Oh, Erin.

Thankfully, I found it before I actually made it into my office or walked in view of any students.  Unfortunately, I had been out and about waving and smiling at random strangers all morning.  I suppose that might explain the look the teenage kid gave me or the big goofy smile I received from one of the lawn care guys.

Feeling humiliated, I told Diego about the situation, and instead of the sweet compassion I was looking for, he just said that maybe if I would put away my laundry immediately, I wouldn’t have to worry about these kinds of situations happening.  I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that I flaunted my panties to the world or the fact that I gave Diego the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”

Stupid static cling.

I’ve since put the clothes away and promised myself that all future departures from my apartment will include a thorough check for any and all stray panties.

Anyway, hope you all are having a good week!  Check back soon for another new post.

*I’d like to note that Diego may know best about the folding laundry timeline, but I refuse to make a public proclamation that he knows best about anything else. :)