This weekend was our planned (surprise) trip to Virginia Beach to celebrate Kevin’s Pop-Pop’s 80th birthday. As you know, snowed-in, no school, flight canceled, Dune, all that jazz…we didn’t get to go. Eightieth birthdays don’t happen that often and I know I was sad to miss it, I just know it disappointed my husband so much more. Lucky for us, we still get to go out for spring break to visit a few of Kevin’s family members in March.

Kevin, me, and Pop-Pop at our wedding.

Here’s to you, Pop-Pop, on your 80th birthday! We’ll see you after the spring thaw.

Bet you thought I lost power yesterday when I stopped updating that blog post.

Wrong. I died of BOREDOM.

Snow is beautiful (it’s what we’re getting today) and it’s so much better than ice. But I am ready to throw in the towel on this winter business. I love cold weather. I love rain and thunderstorms. We’ve never reached a point where we had so much rain in Oklahoma that I have tired of it. I think I’d enjoy Seattle or London a lot.

This winter weather though? I’m tired of it. The whole thing might be different if I lived in a state that was equipped to take care of this kind of thing without any major hiccups. But the snow and ice are so rare that it doesn’t get handled very well. I know that the various groups in charge of taking care of things are working their hardest, but man oh man. I’m done. No chains to put on my tires. No back up source of heat if the power goes out. No place to get water if there’s a problem with a line (like there was this morning). First world problems, I know.

Unfortunately, this afternoon I made a deal with my husband that if he would watch William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, I would watch Dune. I should have realized whenever he laughed maniacally and said, “Yeah, I’ll definitely watch Romeo + Juliet if you’re going to watch Dune.”

We’re only 20 minutes in and the faint of heart need to be warned. (If any of my uber-squeamish cousins are reading this, stop NOW.) There is an alien in this movie whose mouth was clearly modeled after a cow’s girlie bits.

I’m going to collect quotable lines from this movie for your entertainment (and in italics, things that they should have said):

• “The itching becomes burning.”
• “There is a place terrifying to us…to women.”
• “Stains become a warning.”
• What up. I’m Sting. Look at me rockin’ this red hair and leather.
  
• “You are so beautiful, my baron. Your skin, love to me. Your diseases lovingly cared for, for all eternity.”
• Allow me to unplug your heart, bleed yourself all over me, and sexually assault you.
• Baby blue, was the color of her eyes…
  
  Baby Blue – George Strait
  
• “Spice. Pure, unrefined spice.”
• “I want to spit once on your head. Just some spittle in your face.”
• Let me now use a type of sign language that looks like a poor attempt at vogue-ing.
• “It’s yours to squeeze, as I promised! Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeeeeze!”
• They’ve just told a man he must milk a cat every day for the rest of his life if he wants to live. I’m so confused.
• Let us fight them with our pelvic thrusts!

And that, friends, is pretty much how today has been.

People are calling it “Snowpocalypse” but we need to fix this. FREEZING RAIN, folks. That’s ice. Ice is so much worse than snow. So much more apocalyptic. Here I am, blogging the biggest ice storm to hit Oklahoma in 2010, so what if we’re only 28 days in. They’re comparing it to 2007 and I’m going to have to check my archives to see how I fared in that one. I think I stayed under the covers for days.

So far this morning I have:

• Taken what may be my last shower for days.
• Had what may be my last cup of coffee.
• Shaved my legs (muy importante)
• Finished up a good deal of laundry.

And I’m about to finish all these dishes and fill the tub, just in case. In a situation like this the last thing you want to be without is water to flush the toilet with. Memories of gathering buckets full of snow in 2001 to empty in the bathtub, melt, and pour in the back of the tank just for a flush are NOT something I ever want to relive.

What I’ve learned in my few years on this earth is very simple: if you would like rain, ask me to paint over a weekend; snow – allow my husband and I to plan a trip back to the east coast to visit his family. You’ll get that in no small amount. Yes, go ahead and thank us. This ice storm thing is new, but not surprising. It probably has something to do with the fact that we had a trip planned this weekend and my having my annual with Dr. G (for gyno).

You see, I’ve never had an appointment with Dr. G when there wasn’t a glassy sheet of ice covering the entire parking lot. I’m a’tellin’ ya. Not to mention the fact I’m always waiting a while in the exam room because there’s something about a good ice storm that makes babies’ heads turn south and prepare for landing. A little bit like cows.

I’ll be updating as I can. When I feel like it. Until everything goes click and I suddenly have so much time to read.

Stay safe!

5:45AM - Thank the Lord, Norman has canceled school. No, I don’t want to make this up later, but I can’t imagine what kind of day it would have been if we’d had school.
6:39AM – Rain in Norman.
6:56AM - Placing lighters and candles where I will remember, in case this thing gets started before the sun is good and up. Who am I kidding. We won’t see the sun for days…
7:30AM – Mom and Dad called to invite us down to stay while our window for travel is still open. I declined, even though they do have a generator. You get in the country and you’re way more likely to go without water. I told Dad what I’d been doing to prepare. He said it sounds like we’ve got things under control. That’s a big deal.
7:34AM – Nosebleed. Weird. I never have nosebleeds. This would be a bad time for a brain aneurysm.
8:44AM – I joke about aneurysms too much.
9:25AM – I have a sick fascination with non-stop coverage of bad weather. Think I was born with it.
9:26AM - Also, husband still in bed.
9:50AM – Whew. Gary England has made it to the studio. We’ll all be okay
12:02PM - Chili on the stove. Still have power. The freezing rain is coming down really hard now.
2:32PM – It actually is treacherous here in Norman. Tree branches are trying so hard not to touch the ground. I’m watching the Jason Bourne movies and reading The Redneck Diva’s post (thanks for the shoutout, lady!) about the Icepocalypse. Told you it was a better name.
3:20PM – Mom called. Exciting stuff down there. A branch fell on a line and caught on fire so my dad shot it out of the tree. The day was saved.
3:24PM - Also, they are now without power. This has nothing to do with the last update.

I have a few neuroses. I can admit that. When I was in 2nd grade my teacher handed out an award to each of us that was made personal by acknowledging us for one particular thing that we contributed to our class. My award was “Most Imaginative Student.” I don’t remember it, because I was too beaming and proud as I marched across the stage to take my piece of paper, but I’m certain my mom and granny were somewhere in the back stifling their laughter. Because “most imaginative” was really just the tip of the iceberg.

People, I’m the one who had an imaginary husband at age 2.

Second grade was a somewhat disturbing year for me. While I never stopped making the good grades that would follow me all of my days through public school, that year I spent a lot of time drawing pictures of “Charlie Bronw” (as I spelled it back then), writing stories, and sharing my latest nightmare with my classmates during recess. That last thing? Yeah, doesn’t go over well with teachers and definitely not with the other parents.

I was always into shocking people though. In 1st grade I got in a lot of trouble for going around to all the kids I knew that believed in Santa and telling them that he wasn’t real. It’s a wonder I never acted out as a teen.

Along with the shocking, I loved to be shocked. Stories of the macabre gave me a thrill. Probably because it was forbidden. My parents didn’t let me watch or read anything (that they knew of) that dealt with subject matter that was the least bit questionable. The school library, however tame, served to whet my appetite.

Now, thankfully, my interests in the bizarre are pretty much limited to time travel. Because…yeesh. Life was hard enough anyway. No need to ostracize myself as a freak.

All this to say, you’d think that with my love of all things freaky and weird and shocking to my mom, there wouldn’t be much that would make me shudder. Nothing that I’d find so disturbing that I’d have to turn from the TV and shout, “Change it! Change the channel!” But you’d be thinking wrong.

The first time I can remember reacting to something in this way was when I was watching a show that I wasn’t allowed to view anyway — My Little Pony (I know, but there was magic…are you starting to understand now?). I don’t remember how we landed on the show. Maybe it came on after Duck Tales. Either way, we were watching it and on this particular episode some of the ponies had fallen into quicksand and were in it up to their stomachs. My 6-year-old eyes interpreted something very different though.

I saw ponies with no legs.

There were ponies and they were missing their legs. Not cut off or injured, but cleanly removed. Nowhere to be found. It was a deformity. Something I’d never seen. And I reacted like a lunatic.

“CHANGE IT!”

Luckily my parents raised me better and I knew never to respond in such a way to a person with a birth defect or abnormality, or to someone who lost some part of their body to injury. (My dad lost part of his finger in an accident when I was in high school.) Still, my response to such things on television as a child, and to some extent even now, has been to wince in pain. Turn my head. Ache for that person or animal and just pray that it goes away. I don’t think anyone outside of my family (if they even noticed) ever witnessed this. And the one time that it happened in a group of people…well, let me tell you. It is, after all, the title of this post.

Last weekend, while I was pukey, Kevin looked over at me from behind his laptop and said, “Hey, Netflix has Johnny Tremain now. Mind if I move it to the top of the queue?”

I stared back. “Johnny Tremain?”

“Yeah. The Disney version.”

“Umm…”

–

I don’t remember what year it was. Maybe 6th or 7th grade. We were studying the American Revolution and a number of different patriots. Our reader had featured a short story on Johnny Tremain and so our teacher thought that it would be a good time to incorporate the Disney film. Not knowing what to expect, I settled in to watch what I thought would be a gentle, possibly goofy, tale of the patriot’s life. You know, like Davy Crockett. A good movie to pass notes in the middle of.

They need to put a warning on these things.

I watched, in horror, as Mr. Tremain’s hand was enveloped in molten silver. And then the bell rang. The video was stopped and we were going to finish it the next day. I sat there.

Wait. Dude. DUDE. (That was my word back then.) The guy just had his hand covered in molten hot metal! What does that do to a person? I wanted to know the facts. What was I going to come back to the next day? Severe burns? It’s not like you can pick metal off the skin like a bad sunburn. Yuck. Missing fingers? Was he going to lose his entire hand? What happens when you dip your hand in something that hot? Does it just fall off?

I had so many questions. And I was thoroughly freaked out. I had always wondered what would happen if you stuck a limb in lava. Do you pull back a stump?

I never found out the answers to my questions. Something came up and we didn’t get to finish the film. And so, for the past 13 years, I have lived in fear of the Disney film, Johnny Tremain. It never occurred to me that I might have to watch it in its entirety. Tonight I will. Not because I want to. Marriage is full of sacrifices.

But you’d better believe I’ll never watch Freaks.

It was a long weekend. And not the good kind either. Today was a long, crazy day and I’m hoping the rest of the week shapes up pretty quickly because I’m in no mood to deal with stragglers. Plus, I have a trip to Virginia Beach to look forward to, Lord willing. It is looking like we may get some nasty ice around here. Nothing like me and Kevin deciding to visit family back east to put mother nature in the mood for a good freeze. Thanks a lot, lady.

On with the show…

• Allow me to complain for a moment without giving you all the satisfaction of a related link. Ahem. Why can’t I escape The Besters? And The Worsters? And the “How Did You Pay For That?!”…-ers? It seems that whatever place I am in life there is always someone around me like this. Have something wonderful happen? Don’t worry, something better happened to them. Once. It doesn’t matter when or if it’s relevent, it happened. Tragedy strike? Don’t look to them for sympathy. They lost their mom and their best dog on the same day. And heaven forbid you show them vacation photos. Sheesh. “Well, I don’t ever have the time to go somewhere that far away.” or “Who did you get to help pay for that?” or maybe they’ll tell you about that one vacation 10 years ago that was easily triple the price of whatever you did.*tap*

  *taptaptap*

  Anyone listening? You ready?

  Get some self-esteem. It is a sad, sad situation if you have to belittle others at every turn to make yourself feel better. I’m sorry for whatever happened in your past to make you behave in such a way now. But you need to grow up and stop.

  Good grief.

• Oh, hi
• Coffee makes you dance around like a goat! (educational AND fun!)
• The Spohrs have their beautiful Annie. Blessings on you all.
• smitten kitchen has this divine sounding Mixed Citrus Salad w/ Feta & Mint. Yum.
• As you may know, about 6 months ago I stumbled upon the blog of my cousin, Misti. Through her I’ve learned of my cousin, her brother, Curtis, his wife Stephanie, and their little girl, Zoe. Not long ago Curtis announced that they were expecting on his blog. Last week, the baby was delivered at 26 weeks. This little girl and her family have all been in my prayers and I hope they’ll be in yours, too. Welcome to the world, Miss Ashleigh.
• Food Network Humor is my new favorite blog. Oh my. And this — Amazon Product Recommendations: Ina Garten Edition

Have a great week, y’all!

I had grand plans for the past week on my blog. None of those came to fruition though. Having the first day of the week off work through me for a loop for one thing and then things never really slowed down throughout the week. Thursday, two of my office aides were sent home with fevers.

Uh-oh.

I grabbed the Clorox wipes and scrubbed down every surface in my office area, including the clock-in thingy, the doorknobs, printer, copier…everything. But by noon my tummy was pulling an Astro and saying, “Rut-ro.”

I made it through the afternoon with only a small amount of discomfort and really thought I was going to be okay. Dinner that evening wasn’t very appetizing for me, but I thought it was because of a small change I’d made in the recipe. Nothing too serious.

Later that night as we were lying in bed, watching Conan’s second-to-last show, all I kept saying was, “I could really go throw up right now.” Seriously. Ask Kevin. So I talk about and talk about it and finally go to sleep, only to wake up at 2:30 with what I like to call “The Works,” mostly because I don’t want to type out the “d” word on my blog. And because, as my husband and brothers believe, girls don’t have bowel movements.

Too much? Sorry.

After a couple of hours of some Exorcist-style projectile vomiting, I put in a disc of Northern Exposure and settled in under a plush blanket on the couch. No need to be breathing any additional germies on Kevin. That was around 4:30.

The rest of the day was the longest and most miserable of my life. I couldn’t keep so much as a teaspoon of liquid down. Constant nausea, headache, body aches, and an aching back from the vomiting made the only comfortable position on the flat of my back on the bed. Eventually I ventured to the other side of the room to locate the heating pad and laid on that until my fever made it uncomfortable.

By evening I was finally able to drink something without tossing it and I really thought I was on the mend. My whole body still ached, but shoot, going a couple of hours without puking will really raise a gals spirits. I took a bath, put on fresh pjs, and headed to the couch to rest.

Two hours later, after tossing and turning, developing a much worse headache, and falling in and out of sleep, I decided taking an Advil and checking my temp again would be a good idea.

100.5

Five minutes later, 101.7

Ten minutes after that it was at 102.1 and I was hollering for Kevin to come to the bedroom and rub me down with alcohol. After about an hour of that and cool washcloths on my head and neck, I finally started to cool down. Fell asleep and stayed until almost 9:30 this morning. It was glorious.

Today I’ve dealt with the body aches and headache and developed a new pain in my upper right abdomen, directly below my ribcage. It scares me a little because it sounds like it may be my gallbladder. Gah. Do not want.

I am feeling better. Still bad, but I’ll take today’s bad over yesterday’s awful. Thank you all for your tweets of concern

Hard to believe it’s been two years.

As requested, pictures of my new haircut. I had most of it chopped right off this weekend. It’s amazing just how much lighter I feel. What I need to do is go weigh in and see how much I lobbed off my total.

Umm, I didn’t bother to brush it or anything for you. Fresh out of the ponytail. That’s how I roll.

So there’s not going to be any image, however cute, inviting my readers to “show us [their] privates.” Public flashing is no joke people. NO. JOKE.

But yeah…Happy Delurker Day!

I know you’re out there. I can see you. But I don’t know your name. Or what brings you here. Why you stay. What it is that draws you back in every, single day. (Eastern Europe, I’m talkin’ to you)

Tell me your name. How you found me. What you like and what you could do without. Go ahead, caller. I’m listening.

I told you yesterday there’d be a part 2 today and look at that. Meeting a deadline. How very 2005 College Version of Elizabeth of me. I graduated and left that type of behavior behind.

If you thought yesterday was funny weird then today we’re going to take a little trip to the Twilight Zone (did anyone catch the marathon around the beginning of the year on SyFy? I loooove that show. It gives me a chance to sit back and realize how inconsistent my parents were in sheltering me from depictions of demons and darkness. I mean, I wasn’t allowed to watch the Carebears as a kid because there was a wizard or something on it, but The Twilight Zone down at Granny’s house was totally fine).

When people find out you’re in charge of something they often begin proffering their services. This happens to me from time to time now, but the particular service this lady was trying to sell was unlike any other I had heard of.

She found me through Livejournal (where GodlyGals) started out. Immediately after joining the group she posted something really elaborate explaining who she was and what she had to offer our ministry. It was free of charge and she just wanted to share with us.

She claimed that she was the bride of the angel Gabriel. They were in an…intimate relationship and she believed herself to be carrying his child. Surely, she believed, this child would be a blessing and prophet to all the world. Not only was she the wife of the angel Gabriel, she also channeled his spirit and he was currently abiding in her mind and commanding her to seek us out and tell us that she would act as our prophet.

There were more details, but I’ve got to say that by the time this one rolled around I’d gotten pretty used to the ones that were “out there” and I was quick to hit DELETE.

That’s probably more sad than weird. I mean, there are some really confused, disturbed people out there. This woman was either trying to play some hideous joke on the first naive person that would listen, or she was being used by something. I didn’t really want to stick around long enough to find out.