I'm a leader, not a follower. Unless it's a dark place, then screw it, you're going first.

When I was 13 my dad told me I needed to watch "The Shining".

I hear by name him as the responsible party for ALL of the therapy I will have to endure to try and quell the overactive imagination I now own that revisits these haunting little tidbits of my life.

Here's a link for further proof

It was a rainy Saturday, my loyal confidant and partner in crime, Jennifer, was staying the night/week/some combination of an epic sleepover that never ends at my house, when we decided to finally watch The Shining. Mom decided to watch it with us too... not because I begged her... but just...yeah. We had just moved in, so we didn't have the blinds installed, and we were able to see the acres of trees and forest that was our backyard. Every clap of thunder and lightning illuminated a part of the backyard that was caped in pitch black. Outlines of trees looked like people and the actual presence of coyotes was beyond helpful to solidify this in my mind. This was the kind of spacious house that required you to run with your arms out and hit every light switch along your path just to get a glass of water from the kitchen. Because monsters. As the rain continued to pelt the windows, we sat in the dark glow of the living room tv and watched The Shining.

This was the same year that my Dad moved and re-posed the "Christmas Santa's from Around the World" so that I was certain they were alive and plotting against me.

All was going "well" until the scene where Johnny is in the bathroom and asks the butler innocently, "How long have you been here?" to which the butler replies with, "I've always been here." And that just happened to be the exact moment:

1. The power went out
2. Lightning struck a tree outside the window next to us
3. Flaming tree of death was swaying in the wind
4. I dug my nails into Jennifer's leg and drew blood
5. Our bloody murder screams mimicked the fire alarm pitch for pitch

You know that heart warming saying:

A best friend rides in the car with you no matter how many times you nearly killed them.

No? Well, Jennifer passed that test of friendship, hands down, but we've never watched another scary movie together ever since. Partly because I now avoid scary movies at all costs, and the other part being she now has a scar to prove I'll go DEFCON 1 when pushed to the brink of fear.

This goes for Haunted Houses too. You would have to drag me, kicking and screaming to go in one of those. Again. I warned all of the guys that wanted to spend Halloween weekend at a place called "Phobia" that I have given friends black eyes out of sheer fright and have caused severe pain to a friend after he visited a blood drive when he agreed to let me hold his hand for the duration of the haunted house. My initial reaction is to fight anyone resembling a decapitated zombie clown killer that's chasing me down a strobe light filled hallway.

I don't want to sign up to have a panic attack, I can do that to myself just fine when I see a spider in the house. "Oh, hey rather large spider in the middle of my bathroom. You aren't preventing me from doing anything. Go ahead, brush your teeth, I'll wait..."

Scary movies need to be watched in the daylight followed by something of the Disney variety to cancel out the myriad of horror movie plots I've imagined. Maybe I need to watch scary movies with "stunna shades" on, that way I can stop interlocking my fingers, trying to watch the movie through a 1x1 hole in my hands.

If you're saying to yourself, "Geeeez, Amanda, calm down, it's not real.", I agree with you, but you don't fully grasp the fact that I've grown up with a Dad that liked to position dolls outside of my bedroom door, haunt me with anything said by a Speak and Spell or Furby, and inspired my "Run for Your Life: Treadmill Playlist". This list includes all carnival songs, and the ice cream truck theme song. I'll be damned if the ice cream truck doesn't drive down my street every time I'm in the shower, and for that I hate you even more.

Also,  I would like to add Furby to the list of creatures to be closely watched under suspicion of being an Animorph. I'm fairly certain they can only be destroyed by the flames of Mordor.

Just heed my warning and don't try to scare me. Don't jump out from behind a car in a parking garage or turn off the lights in the hall way and start singing nursery rhymes because I will cry. Then I'll tell my mom and she'll tell your mom and we'll all be in trouble.


I enjoy Halloween when I get to take the good candy from my nine-year old step brother's basket and silently judge the costumes that cracked out parent's choose for their toddlers. Or when I get to dress up as the Statue of Liberty and instigate several choruses of "God Bless America" to ring out in the streets over the chaos of a 4 story beer bong race commencing between a Teletubbie and a (slutty) panda bear in downtown Austin.

Wire clothes hangers should be illegal for any purpose other than roasting marshmallows.

I think I'll make it the theme this month to share some of the scariest occurrences of my life. This one is a two-fer and takes place in Arkansas. Enough said.

One night, I was hanging out in (We'll just call him GUY) Guy's dorm room, watching something like Die Hard or Gladiator with his roomie, who affectionately became my pseudo roomie too. We'll use initials and call him Bam. We're watching TV until we're interrupted by a phone alarm sounding off: it's curfew and I have to sign out of the all-guy dorm and go back across campus to my all-girl dorm.

HAH. Likely story. Guy would sign me out in the lobby and walk me outside. Once we were out of eye sight we'd round the corner of the building and climb the outside emergency exit stairs where Bam would be waiting with the door propped open and I'd sneak back into the guys dorm. Stealth. All of his buddies were in on it.

This one night, a buddy of theirs had some friends in town from back home and wanted a fun night of mischief, naturally. Our school campus was laid out so that the main lecture halls, buildings, cafeteria, student union, my all-girl dorm along with all the co-ed apartments were in one central area. Then, there was a nice 5 mile walk to the abandoned dorms called... The Twin Towers. From there, about a fourth of a  mile from The Twin Towers, was our current location, the all-boys dorm. How convenient! A bunch of boys have to walk past a vacant, eerie building and resist going inside for a peek. OHKAY.

Tonight, the guys wanted to explore The Twin Towers. I wanted nothing to do with it.

"Hey, I'm just going to stay in and watch movies while you guys go. I won't be any fun and I'll be the only girl, so go and have fun and don't get eaten by a hobo, ok?"

"Alright, but lock the door, I don't want you to get caught here after curfew."

Basically.

The guys left, I locked the door, turned off the lights, and proceeded to watch a chick flick with the volume down low. About fifteen minutes into my movie I hear a THUD on the front door and then a series of pounding fists. I freeze.

There's a couple of explanations for this: A. this is an all guys dorm and wrestling in the middle of the halls is fairly standard. Stupid looking, but standard. B. Their door is across from the elevators which means there is always noise and chaos C. Guy was on the rugby team and had a lot of friends from the team that lived on his floor. These guys were BIG, rowdy, Russian, Fiji, Dutch, barbarians that probably didn't know their own strength when knocking on a door.

After waiting for another thud that didn't come, I assumed it was a mistake and ignored it. Then a deep, unrecognizable voice came echoing through the door, "Hey little mama, you had better open this door right now. I know you're in there alone."

HOLY. HELL.

I'm frozen. There are no weapons in this damn dorm room, just two refrigerators filled with gatorade.

I'm still frozen, not speaking.

Then I hear a very recognizable voice, "Amanda, it's me, I'm just kidding. Open the door, I forgot my flashlight."

I opened the door and slapped him.

After this incident, I was easily convinced to join the goons and explore The Twin Towers.

The guys that we were with were real adventure-seeking types, we'd later have adventures cave diving, scaling a cliff, and sneaking into the school's football field after hours to smoke cigars. But right now, I didn't know anything about them except that they were the reason I was being forced to tour a condemned building at 2 am on a Friday. I had the death grip on Guy and Bam and everyone was properly pre-warned that I was a complete wuss and would scream at the sight of a shadow.

We arrived at the two identical buildings, each with ten stories of glass windows, half of which were broken and jagged on the bottom few floors. We decide to not risk getting Hepatitis and instead go through the boiler room back entrance. This just screams BAD IDEA. The guys fumble for flashlights and finally Indiana Jones themselves into the boiler room. I decided to take a running start, closed my eyes and jumped. I survived.

This place was like a mausoleum, a concrete box with massive iron machines lined up wall to wall with narrow pathways between them. Half of the group wanted to stay in the boiler room and explore with their video camera on night vision settings and then find the basement... are you KIDDING ME?! I started to bargain with the guys, to no avail: promises of making cookies and letting them watch every season of Family Guy. Somehow I'm convinced to stay, find a door and make our way through the death tower to the roof. Shit.

The door leads us to the stairwell, and each floor was a deserted hallway with wooden furniture broken to pieces and littered on the floor like a bad bar fight. No one warned me that this place would look like an abandoned mental institution after an takeover or end of the world diseased outbreak. Half of the doors to the dorm rooms were closed, and some were entirely broken off their hinges with nothing left behind but splinted shards of wood attached to bolts. A few were tied open with a string around the handle and then tied to something else in the room. We walked into one room and found a mattress crudely cut to pieces on the floor with wire coat hangers that had been uncoiled and reassembled to look like a Medieval jousting weapon. We quickly left that room.

As we continued our exploration through hobo headquarters, I was protected by a box of men around me, covering all sides, like a civil war shooting formation. Honestly, they put up with me being ridiculous more than I expected, but they were pretty freaked out too. We kept making our way up the floors, each one as terrifying as the last.

Then, on the 5th floor, I decided to open my eyes, just a peek. In doing so, I was met with a pair of hollow eyes looking directly back at us. I let out .02 seconds of the start of a blood curdling scream when someone threw their hand over my mouth. We stared with horror as someone flashed their light on the door and the life-sized poster of a bikini clad woman, whose eyes had been cut out. Classy.

We finally made it to the top floor at the emergency exit stairwell, our rendezvous point. We waited for the rest of the group to meet us since they don't believe in the rules of horror movies and decided to SPLIT UP AND EXPLORE. A few minutes pass and we're all accounted for, so we walk further until we're staring at a metal ladder placed in front of us. We climb up the ladder and open the latch door and we're now on top of the roof of the Twin Towers. This is the first time I've relaxed in the last hour and willingly let go of whoever I had been using as a human shield. 

It's actually kind of pretty from this high up, you can see every building for miles, the stars are sprinkled all over the sky. Don't be fooled, that's just me trying to convince myself that there isn't a murderer following us through the building and preparing to kill us all while we let our guards down.

Boys will be boys, so I was not surprised that they brought soda cans to throw off the roof into the empty parking lot below. I thought your backpacks were filled with survival tools and knives?! The guys attempted to throw a curve ball soda can into the other twin tower across the street when we heard a crashing noise coming from the floor below us. The shenanigans are over. A loud, clash of metal and all the fun stops.

All the guys exchanged glances, except for me. I've instinctively closed my eyes and covered them and thought of every horrible outcome. Let's set the murder plot aside and think of all the consequences other than death. What if we're stuck up here?! What if it's a police officer and we're all under arrest?! Two guys elect themselves to check out the noise. A few minutes go by, and then they emerge, unscathed. The noise was a chain linked fence that sealed this ladder and roof door from the stairwell and it had swung closed. How a gust of wind blew it closed INDOORS was a question I didn't want to pose out loud. Everyone agreed we should leave and decided to take the quickest exit, down stairwell exits all the way to the ground floor.

A few of us met up for lunch the next day; the guys were all too excited to tell me about how some of the windows that were previously broken and shattered had been boarded up over night. Awesome news, guys! That's so exciting to hear that someone was watching and following us when we illegally trespassed into that building! PLEASE, tell me more.

I then proceeded to tell them that I spent what was left of my night/early morning researching the Twin Towers and didn't fall asleep until the sun came out at 6:12 am. I told them that even though we survived the ghost hobos and police confrontations, the real reason the Twin Towers were abandoned was due to a silent killer that had been living in the walls and ceilings of the building for decades:





Asbestos.



So, that's what I did with a semester in Arkansas.

Dave, Rob, Brian, Seth, Parker, Kyle, TJ, Kevin?... I know I'm forgetting people, sorry. That night was kind of fun, thanks guys.



Some Days by The Maine

When trying to convince someone to do something never use the phrase "You can wear a cape!" as a selling point. Unless you actually have a cape.

I recently learned that this is true for both men and small children.

When the new Batman movie came out, Bert (of the Bert and Ernie roomie duo) was so very excited like a little school girl about it that he almost convinced me to go to a midnight showing on a workday. Wearing capes.

I decided that if I was going to be a sleepless grouch the next day at work, I was going to bring down as many of my corporate-world working friends as possible. And wear a cape. I'm really into this cape idea, clearly. Except, in presenting my idea to the gang, not having a cape made my argument a lot less appealing than I had for seen. The whole idea went out the window. Settle for some Dip N Dots and a Sunday matinee? Yes.

So, we saw the movie, loved it and had an all too elaborate discussion about superheros and their every day lives. What if a superhero worked as a mail man as his day job or in a deli? I give you: Salami Avenger and Night Chicken. We haven't thought this idea through.

Speaking of chickens.

I've gotten into the wonderful habit of coming home from work, coating myself in bug repellent and going for a nice heat stroke. I mean jog. This was a quick jog because, it's hot as hell in Texas, and I was chased by a chicken.

Yes, I'm sure it was a chicken. A real chicken. It made a terrifying... chicken noise and decided to CROSS THE ROAD to chase me. This jog ended with me running back to the house and slamming the door and not stopping until I had a pint of ice cream in my hand.

I wish this story ended differently.

Oh, I moved out of my Dallas apartment and to the country. Ok, so Wylie isn't complete country, but... yes. It is. Compare it to Dallas and it's a reverse Beverly Hillbilly move. Please refer to the above declaration of a chicken in my neighborhood and then disagree with me.

However, I'm only here for another week. This is just a little pit stop on my adventure, but more on that another time. I'm staying here to finish out my last days at the old corporate machine and then handing in my maracas. Literally. I have maracas and I get to shake them. It's one of the few things that I'll miss about my job.

Currently my stuff is in multiple locations and I'm living with my cousin, K and her husband and their 3 kids. And by "kids" I mean little fire breathing monsters. Pre-teen and younger, sassy, fire breathing monsters that don't get tired no matter how many times you try to turn "spinning until dizzy" into a group game.

By the way, when did a ream of copy paper and an old popcorn tin with broken crayons rattling around inside stop being considered fun? I used to be all about that. I still am.

I recently had a Birthday, so that means I've gained some wisdom in the last year, right? Well, even if that's not true, my brief move to suburbia means I'm already chocked full of more knowledge than I ever thought possible:

• DON'T HAVE KIDS.
• EVER.
• Middle names are for the sole purpose of letting you know when you're really in trouble.
• The only honest people in the world are small children and drunk people.
• Finding a Tide To Go pen in your purse is the equivalent of winning the lottery.
• Cleaning with kids in the house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.
• Getting older means choosing an alcoholic beverage based on calorie count rather than intoxication efficiency.
• The people who need firecracker safety tips aren't the people who read firecracker safety tips.

The last 2 weeks of a 2 weeks notice are the least productive days you'll ever have at work. I get to the office and I'm already dog tired and by 10 am I can't look at the computer for another second without my eyes melting out of my face.

You know you need to change your sleeping habits when you wake up holding the back to your alarm clock, and the battery has been ripped out...



Mars Hotel by The Mayfield Four I'll always love this song and always wish that I didn't.

That gas station is used for only two things: picking up moonshine and getting murdered. Only two outcomes.

Here's the thing, I am hopelessly directionally challenged. I know this. I wish on every Birthday candle that I could change this. Someone, someday will have to put up with this. I'd much rather be a passenger, the one that gets to point out places to visit that aren't part of the destination, sleep, control the music, watch for police, and feed the driver Fruit by The Foot (This task is only mandatory when I'm driving).

I get incredibly stressed out when I'm driving at night in an unfamiliar location. I can not even pretend to keep my cool. Add in construction and a few "off-the-beaten-path" detours, like anywhere currently on the way to North Richland Hills, and I'm a mess. My GPS (Judy Garmin) will tell me to veer left and then a detour pops up into my real life view, not marked on my current route via GPS. My internal monologue/turmoil/rant & rave (isn't that what this entire blog is? Yes.): Take the detour down the gravel road or keep gong in this swirly loopy-loop direction that looks nothing like the road ahead of me? Or Detour? Uhhh....I ummmm.... no time to decide... Aaaaaand mistake. I'm now at the airport. Alright, back on track... another detour, this time going up and around and over to a two lane road. Oh, ok I'm officially not on a concrete road. It's OK, the highway will meet up with this road. I'm not lost... where the hell am I? Streetlights are swaying in the wind, every 3rd light is burned out... no other cars to be seen... I am officially in the setting for the movie Deliverance. Nothing good can happen here.

At this point, I've turned the radio off, and I'm basically driving with the steering wheel in my chest, somehow hoping that maybe I'll propel the car along faster. THIS IS NOT THE WAY HOME. Great, now I'm shouting to myself. I can't even control my anger and frustration enough to target the responsible party for this terrifying ordeal: Judy Garmin. And now I'm starting to think that this "detour" was part of a horror movie plot. My mind just goes there. Every time. I made it home, but I'm fairly certain that The Hills Have Eyes was filmed somewhere like Southbound Highway 114.

In the midst of all the chaos, I get the most random texts from my Dad. Like what, you ask? A picture of seals on a disco dance floor with the caption "Stop clubbing baby seals".

He might need a hobby or an intervention. In the last year, my father has discovered sending pictures in text messages. No one clap, this is not a time to celebrate. My parents have been hip and cool with the cellphone takeover since forever, so texting is not anything new. Don't get me wrong, I love that my parents text, and text like functioning members of society without all of the "c u l8tr" and "ttfn" shit, but my father has taken it to a new level. He finds memes, and sends them out in a mass attack style.

Wow, I'm at work and my phone just vibrated off my desk and into my trash can. What kind of natural disaster struck? What did Colton stick in his nose this time? Did you win the lottery? None of the above. My dad has decided that a photo-shopped picture of a child going down a slide where the end is a cheese grater or a storm trooper in the middle of a graffiti tag with the caption "Keep our Death Star Beautiful"is worth sending to me.

And my mother? She sends me email links for cooking and baking ideas and makes hair mustaches with me when the movie previews are boring. Then there was that one time we had a girls night/a few too many margaritas and ended up falling asleep watching Fraggle Rock after making an epic grocery list that consisted of Twix, Skittles, and ice cream.

Welcome to my world. It is both insane and delicious.

Mainly insane.


It's Time by Imagine Dragons I'm definitely still obsessed with this band.

"Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants." -KL

You know what cures hangovers? A roomie that delivers Bloody Marys to you in your closet because you swear you've turned into a vampire and the sun is going to destroy you.

You know what causes you to drunkenly hallucinate that the fire sprinkler on the ceiling is a gecko? Not having any damn A/C in said closet.

This state is a rarity for me. A very rare, count it on one hand, unicorn-spotting occurrence. I had to discover for myself that Cachaça tastes like whiskey and tequila had a baby and you want to eat that baby. Now I know that whiskey is stronger than me. This is called learning. It's also called “Frowned Upon Friday”.

In whatever drunken state of wisdom I was in when I ventured to my closet, I thought it was a good idea to pull all of the covers off of my bed and cocoon myself in them on my closet floor. Now, this is not just any ordinary closet, but it's not quite the gateway to Narnia either; this is a massive hangover curing cave of wonder. You could fit another bed in here along with our washer and dryer. However, the layout of our bedrooms wasn't designed for hangover rehabilitation purposes, as I'm now realizing. The windows are directly across from the door to the bathroom that's directly across from the door to the closet. Based on the trajectory of the sun's rays... blah blah science blah blah we both get the blinding hallelujah glory of the sun at 7 am every morning.

I'm up way too early for someone who wasn't planning on "seizing the day". I planned on seizing my sunglasses and somehow navigating through my apartment to hunt down the number for pizza with as little interference from cabinet corners towards my hip bone as possible. Unsuccessful.

To some degree not short of brilliant, I must have been thinking ahead (or thinking with my stomach) and left myself the pizza flyer on the bar. Oh, the joy, they know my usual order by my phone number. I'm not ashamed of this, I'm relieved that I have very little talking to do and a pizza will arrive. If I crack each of the previous doors open just enough, I can remain in a dark state of hibernation with just enough light that I won't forget where the wall ends and the door begins. I've given myself enough accidental bruises by assuming that all doors are open in the dark.

Thirty minutes later and I have my pizza beside me, while I hum along to the sounds of the Internet modem, tactfully mounted on the wall so that when I sit up, I can smack my head on it. This is my own Hell. I'm too miserably hot to stay here but if I get back in my bed I will end up suffocating myself with pillows to escape the sunlight.



Either by extreme exhaustion or a mild heat stroke, I've managed to fall back asleep.


It is now 7pm and I'm ready to embrace the post hangover world we can aptly sum up as "sweatpants".



My most recent google searches: "Where to get dippin dots in Dallas" and "What are gelled nails?"


I'm okay, everyone.



Counting Sleep by Trent Dabbs You have to have a great soundtrack for spending a weekend in doors packing.

The more things we put in our purse, the stronger we become.

One day, the fire alarm went off at work and the first thought I had was, "OHMYGODWHEREISMYPURSE?!"

I stood up, purse in hand, and saw that everyone else was looking around over the cubes to see if anyone was going to evacuate/on fire. No such luck. Our office secretary did, however, hold up her cup of water and yell, "I've got it! I'll save us!". I genuinely thought I might go into an epileptic shock from the amount of strobe warning lights beaming me in the eyes. The "alarm", which started to resemble someone cranking a cat's tail as it wailed, ceased and we were all left standing in our department with various objects in our arms.

Let's see what everyone would take with them if a fire was actually engulfing the office.

The second I heard the alarm I grabbed my purse... and nothing else. I had sense to leave my headphones plugged into my computer, because, I've already embarrassed myself once before by accidentally unplugging them with my foot and letting everyone know I was listening to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song (SHUT UP! YOU LOVE IT TOO!) and I still haven't lived that one down. Every woman had her purse in tow, but there were also random items grabbed out of sheer uncertainty and panic: a manila folder, desk plant, napkins, ruler, box of Oreos... good call.

The guys had very little in hand: car keys, a cup of coffee, one man had sense to grab his briefcase, but other than grabbing *Winchester (the office gnome) it was nothing compared to us.

*Winchester is a Texas cowboy gnome who came to us via last year's White Elephant Christmas Party. He has a habit of ending up in random places he ought not be in, but we kindly direct him back to his shelf in our shipping coordinator's office and go about our day.

The scary realization (other than the above statement of how we regard an inanimate object as a real person) was that we women put a lot in our purses. And this gives us a small glimmer of control. I have my purse, I'll survive this. Any given purse will most likely contain: Gum, make up, wallet, cellphone, car keys ... one time I mentioned needing a bike pump and the roomie chimed in, "I've got one right here!", pulls the pump out of her bag of wonder and saves the day. Mine doesn't (usually) go that far, but it's standard to find 78 cents in loose change, of which one coin is foreign and another is a Chucky Cheese game token (Delaney will then use these coins on a gumball machine and break it), band aids, band aids, band aids, a fork, Tylenol, Advil, two types of allergy medicine (I'm a one stop shop pharmacy to rival Walgreens), random jewelry, a sticky note pad (Yes, I make more lists than I care to... list), NO pens, and 3 Burt's Bees. THREE. Because I will loose one before I can get to the end. I honestly have no idea what's waiting for me at the end of a tube of chap stick. There should be an award for chap stick upkeep if it doesn't end up there at some point in it's lifespan.

Of all the purse chaos, flying turns me into the Mary Poppins of purse coordination. If I didn't come prepared, with snacks and magazines, I'd probably be that disgruntled passenger flipping out over the amount of boarding groups that come before B. Surprise! Platinum Members! Business Class! Priority Family! Small Children Travelling Alone That Like To Visit The Bathroom Seven Times On A 45 Minute Flight! Group A!

And while I'm on my airport soapbox: Don't get me all excited about arriving early if we don't have a gate, Plane Announcement Guy, it's not like I'm jonesing for more tarmac time. And to the man that decided to take the middle seat between me and another innocent passenger when there are plenty of other empty ROWS, stop trying to talk to me and peek at my ipod. Maybe I'm not really listening to music, maybe I don't want to hear about why you're flying to Nashville to see your aunt. Please put your shoes back on.

(Steps off box)

I'm as sweet as pie, I promise.

So, why does my purse consist of more sticky notes than Office Space and an assortment of granola bars and water bottles that could double as a bomb shelter survival meal for six? Just because.

Seriously though, sticky notes are taking over my life. The joke at work is that if someone took all of the sticky notes and legal pads off my desk, I'd probably write on my arms. Or crawl under my desk and hide.



Someday by Cary Brothers The majority of the songs I love from them are bittersweet, but this one is a bit more upbeat. A bit.

Thou shalt always keep a bottle of bubs on hand for special occasions. Or Wednesdays.

I'm relatively organized. I buy Birthday cards months in advance (I'll admit that I might be single-handedly keeping the Post Office alive and I'm ok with this.), I know exactly where my missing sock is hiding in the floordrobe (wardrobe + floor) that is my bedroom, and I keep all of my important paperwork in one place, clearly labeled. So, I grab the folder marked "CAR STUFF" and set it out so I can take it with me in the morning to complete my errand. On a whim, I open the folder to check that everything is there and low and behold, I find a sticky note that reads:

You lost the title.
Don't forget to get a new copy.

Things I learned while waiting my life away at the DMV:

• I really need to get my bangs trimmed, I almost fell asleep because they were serving as blackout shades.
• The speed in which a woman says "nothing" when asked "what's wrong?" is inversely proportional to the severity of the coming storm. Shout out to the couple across the room that decided to turn everyone's morning into an episode of Maury.
• Beware of the toddler running around like an escaped convict and handing people soggy cheerios. By the way, where is your mother?! 
• This child will throw up all over the waiting room floor.

This is just the classiest DMV that you ever did see. Honestly, I underestimated the amount of vomit a little person can projectile. I won't get too graphic, but I will never be able to eat applesauce again. I finally make it to work a whopping 3 hours later and I don't think I've ever been more relieved that my office smells like absolutely nothing. Other than the occasional waft of cigarette smoke/aroma of a forest fire from the emergency exit that people sneak out of, my office is usually smell-less.

This is surprising because the fire department/paramedics make appearances here at least once a month. You'd think that something exciting was going on, but that's never the case. That doesn't mean all the women will suddenly stop congregating at the window, fogging it up like children on Christmas morning to watch the first snow, it's more like a stake out post, hoping to see a shirtless fireman. Not just because they're shirtless firemen, but also because it's the middle of the week and we're all run down and desperately hoping for a pick me up of sorts.

When we reluctantly fail to witness anything close to a cast member on Dancing With The Stars, we start a message about our favorite childhood tv shows, sending youtube clips back and forth. From this conversation I had an alarming realization that Mr. Roger's Neighborhood might have greatly influenced my fashion tastes... I love a good grandpa sweater. Not a grandpa IN a sweater, I just realized that I own a shameful amount of cardigans. Now, I'm the youngest in my office, so things get interesting when I start naming the shows of my childhood. Mainly because I start singing the entire Duck Tales theme song and no one can relate. And then I get patted on the head like "awww shucks" when they've run out of "participation" ribbons.

Another childhood classic: Wishbone, one of my favorites. Of course when you give your opinion there is always someone that has to be negative and make remarks like, "I don't get it" and "That looks like a dumb show"... really? He's a dog and he's well versed in classic literature, and I'm sure he is smarter than you. Please keep talking.

What changes the tune of this conversation is the fact that Wishbone was actually filmed close by in Allen, also near where Barney was filmed (Now a printing company that I've been to several times for work - some useless DFW trivia for you). My coworker went on to tell us how sad it was for the community when Wishbone died. All three of us that actually know the show and it's awesomeness are reminiscing when my coworker casually starts in on how Wishbone died around the same time as Lamb Chop.

Nobody told me that Lamb Chop died!

That was the first time that I cried at work.

I didn't CRY cry, I just teared up a bit. It was a shock. I'm not proud of this.


No. Second. I lied.


The first was when an old boss decided to basically Salem Witch Trial me at every opportunity. The one time she gave me a compliment, "Nice skirt.", I immediately spun around to make sure she hadn't set it on fire as she walked by. I refuse to turn this into a tell-all for how evil this woman was, but she really made it difficult to love her like Jesus would. People with that much hate probably need more love than they're willing to let people give. She's gone now, we turned the sprinklers on and she melted.

No, seriously.

The boss that replaced her is heaven sent, an actual human being, and hilarious on business trips to Chicago. Yes, the one where we got lost in the city, hours before our flight home. Her remedy for calming nerves is to tell me the plot for "Adventures In Babysitting" while I audibly start praying for salvation and a road that doesn't lead us farther into the Southside of Chi-town.

By the way, trying to get to Soldier Field from the main highway is impossible. It's like a revolving door: exit too early and you smack into a wall of false hope and glass. Mainly the false hope bit. But you get to drive right past the road that DOES lead to the stadium. Exit just a little too late and you're cursing at yourself as your destination flashes before your eyes. And it's not an easy fix, either way you're left with no other exits to turn around as you're forced to endure the spin cycle around the city until you can try again. And fail again. Add one more try for good measure. Nope, missed the exit again. Spin cycle complete.

Want the drug lords of the windy city to think that you're a cop running patrol over their area? Miss that exit three times in 15 minutes and then see what kind of looks you get in a Prius. Damn you, Judy Garmin.

What up, segue.



Paper Thin Hymn by Anberlin old and new, this band can do no wrong by me.