Blog Post #101 : It's a big deal, ok?!

Aww MAN! I totally didn't even notice that my last post was my 100th blog post! Woohoo! Since I didn't post anything spectacular for my 100th post, because I didn't know about it, I felt like I needed to post something spectacular for this one, my 101st blog post. But I have no idea of what this spectacular thing will be. So I need to Google it or something.


******Post Google search*****

Ok. So it looks like everyone posts about what they have learned or how they have grown . I can do that....

What I've Learned in 101 Blog Posts

By Me

In the last 42 months I have learned a lot, not just about myself but also about my readers. I know I have about 35 or so loyal readers. I can't tell who is reading it but I have a good idea from the likes I get on Facebook when I post. So thank you, dear reader. Because of you, I keep writing this crap, whether people enjoy it or not. And as long as you continue to click on my links, I will continue to write it. We are a team and teamwork makes the dream work!

 I also know which posts have the highest number of hits, excluding my super clicked Pinterest angel wing post. And I would like to share these post with you now.

Church Camp -  About the time I went to church camp and things turned quickly inappropriate.

Transformation Tuesday - That time when I was really overly emotional & felt like people were judging unfairly so I wrote a post about the time it felt like my life was falling apart, I didn't care about anything, gained a bunch of weight and then lost it. Because, you know, it made sense at the time to give people more shit to judge me on.

What I learned at my 10 year high school reunion - When I felt all shitty about it, but then I felt better about it and then I found out pretty much everyone feels the same way! Magic!

Insignificant yet life altering traumas: Life Lessons - Inappropriate talk about body holes. 

Post Electolyptic Post -Politics and that time I was kidnapped by the government

New Year's Eve-hab - When I got drunk and had to go home before midnight and tried blaming it on a fake friend I called Coco.

Kitten Tales - The time I caught a feral kitten that turned out to be Satan incarnate

Yay! My Birthday Week! -  Pretty sure this is the link all those weird Russian IP addresses are hitting. Featuring me in old lady swimwear.

And the post that started it all, House Bunny: Not as Awesome as it Sounds

So there it is, whatever it is. It's been a good time. I've enjoyed it, hope you've enjoyed it. If I die, someone please be sure to read all of my posts out loud, with the cuss words intact and sound effects, at the funeral. I want to be remembered for who I really, truly was. Pure trash.

Ridiculous Christmas Gifts

Every year you see those commercials with the new cars & the big bows on top. I've always thought to myself, "Who the fuck does that? How do you just go out and buy a vehicle for someone?" Not only is it over the top but it seems really irresponsible too, which is why I did it. And here's how!

Now our old Impala, Vlad the Impaler, is an excellent work car. Besides the fact that only one the the window shield wipers worked and it smelled a little like gas, on the inside and the air conditioner had to be fixed a couple times, Vlad was alright.

Now for some backstory: When we went to go get a new vehicle for me, which was going to be a car, I decided it the ones we looked at were a little claustrophobic for me and I wanted more room for my independent critter control bidness activities, so I went with another SUV instead. What I didn't know was Husband had a plan in the back of his mind: I'd get a new car and then we would look at some used trucks for him. He never mentioned this, so of course I was all, "YEAH! NEW SUV! WITH ALL THE STUFF! AMBIENT LIGHTING! I'M A BALLLLLLAAAA. WHOOOPP!"

So what had happened was, we got me the fully loaded SUV with a payment that could easily cover the cost of both a new car and a used truck. Once again, this plan was not expressed to me until a few months later otherwise I would have taken the car and truck combo. Because I'm an asshole but not that big of an asshole.

And as you can tell, he puts my wants before his needs. So even though he had been actually looking for a used truck for a few months, I knew he would have put it off until Vlad started on fire or completely fell apart. He thinks things through, I force things until he gives in get shit done. It's our thing.

Then one Sunday, I'm driving home from the store and I go through a local car lot. Now finding a smallish truck is hard to do around here, they always seem to sell quickly, so I was super pumped when I saw they had a Chevy Colorado sitting out with a pretty low price tag. Being a rational person, I say nothing to Rob, set my alarm, get up early on Monday, walk into the dealership like a boss and say. "I wanna buy that truck for my husband! For Christmas! How do people do that?" The sales guy was like, "Uhh.. I don't know. Let me get my manager." And I'm like "ALRIGHT!" So he goes to get the manager and I start realizing I may have made a horrible mistake.

When the manager came out, we recognized each other as old classmates, we were all "Hey!" Not really essential to this story but it was neat. I felt super fucking grown up and cool.
So I look at the two guys and I say, "So I just thought this through, is this a mistake? Am I being ridiculous?" And they are like, "Yeah. Kind of. You should probably test drive it first..." Then I said, "Ok. Better idea, what if I test drive it to his work and just tell him I already bought it and if he is like, "WHAT THE HELL. WHY?!" I'll be all JK JK!" We all agreed that was the best plan.

The salesman was like, "Yo boss, do I let this crazy bitch just drive off with one of our vehicles with no adult supervision?" and old classmate was like, "Duhyeah! Give her one of those big bows too! CHRISTMAS!" So I drove the truck to his work, put the big bow on it and told him to come out.

"Surprise! I bought you this truck! Merry Christmas!"
"What?! What the hell....you bought it?"
"Well..errr..not all the way but if you want it you can have it! Do you want it?!"  Husband was obviously surprised and a little overwhelmed being forced to make a decision like that on a Monday morning. After a short test drive with an awful lot of muttered, "You're crazy"s and some deliberating he decided to give in to my heart felt plan and take the truck. After a few signatures, BOOM, done, Christmas truck.

So basically for Christmas, I gave my husband a truck payment. The gift that keeps on giving.

Let's be reasonable about this...

Once upon a time I was talking to my sister on the phone about nothing in particular, when I could hear my 7 year old niece scream something in the background to which my sister replied, "No one is sneaking in and cutting your underwear..." My niece had been putting on her pajamas and found a pair of her underwear that the elastic had worn out of and naturally assumed someone had broken into their house and cut her underwear.

She sounded crazy until I really thought about it. It probably didn't happen but it's completely possible. I mean weirder things have happened, right? What I didn't know was apparently when children have major freak outs about little things like this, you should not reply with, "That isn't what happened in this instance but I mean, it could happen. Chances are it's never going to happen to you but it's not outside the realm of possibility that someone could break into your house and cut your underwear." And definitely don't bring up examples like, "I swear one time I read about this guy getting sick and they later discovered someone had been sneaking into his house at night and putting arsenic, it's a type of poison, in his orange juice. It was slowly killing him. I don't think he died though. It might not have even really happened...but it could have."

This is exactly how I managed to piss a lawyer off so bad during jury selection that I was cut in the first round. "If you were shown evidence during a trial of a shoe print, of the exact brand and size of shoe as the suspect, in the victims yard...blah blah blah...would you find the defendant guilty?" "........No?" "Why not?"  "Because anyone could wear that exact shoe and exact size..." "What if the suspect had mud on the bottom of their shoe?" "...no" "What if there was a witness?" "....still no.." "So if all the evidence in the world pointed to the suspect and there was a witness and it was caught on camera and you were also there yourself, you still wouldn't find them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?!"  To which I slammed my hand down, stood up and yelled, "NO! FOR I AM NOT A REASONABLE PERSON! THIS ENTIRE JUSTICE SYSTEM IS A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY TO DISTRACT US FROM THE TRUTH.  REPTILIAN HUMANOIDS ARE RUNNING THE WORLD AND VACCINATING US WITH MIND CONTROL SUBSTANCES."

At which point I was removed from the courtroom and taken to an undisclosed location for reprogramming by the evil lizard overlords. Which totally worked, I swear, I don't remember a thing. I'm especially not suspicious due to my always freezing cold extremities, constant urge to bask under heat lamps and inability to love.

So next time instead of lying to your child and telling them someone's not going to sneak into your house and cut their underwear, tell them the truth and also encourage them, "It doesn't look to me like someone snuck into our house and cut your underwear but that could happen, so always be alert. And with enough training from our reptilian overlords and you work really, really hard, you could be the person who sneaks in and cuts peoples underwear! Or even better, be the head of the reptilian humanoid breeding program! The possibilities are endless little one, I believe in you!"

man...I'm going to be the best fucking parent.

Crapting: Crafts for Regular People

I need more crafts tutorials up on here, which I have always kind of planned on doing, I just never get around to it. Or more truthfully, though my stuff looks good from a distance, when you look up close it's not exactly...well made, I guess? Some things turn out really cool, other things are more of a beauty in the eye of the beholder thing. 

So for my first installment of "Crapting: Crafts for Regular People," we will take a look at some of my paintings!

Acrylic on canvas

I do really like these ones and they were super simple to make. Just take a picture of your critter, print it out to whatever size you'd like the silhouette to be, trace around it, paint the background whatever you want and the silhouette whatever you want. I used acrylic paint because I don't understand how to use watercolor but really any paint would work. You can add patterns to where ever, decoupage flowers or some shit. Go crazy. It's your life. I also attempted to have each dog's paw print on there too. As you can see, the prints are a little sketchy thanks to all their paw fur and also because I was basically fingerprinting dogs. I did not take a picture of the white paint paw prints that were tracked through the house but I assure you, that shit was everywhere.

Acrylic on canvas

Ahh yes. My masterpiece. I painted this for my mom for Christmas one year. We went on a local "Yule Walk", basically you go to places around town that are all decorated for Christmas. My inspiration came from two things that evening. #1. The last stop we went to was the art museum and there was a picture of a figure in this shape in one of the paintings and we were like, "Whhhhhaaa." #2. It was super cold and my mom bundled herself up so much she looked strikingly like the guy from the painting while we walked around outside. So bada-bing bada-boom, added a wreath, threw in some familiar details from that night and made it amazing. Ta-da! Perfect gift!

Turns out I can't really think of any other paintings I've done besides random things at work. Pumpkins, windows, cardboard stand-ups. I'm alright but I'm definitely not great. I don't know how to do all the cool shading and texturing and shadowing. I'm sure if I actually tried to learn more or improve my technique I would be alright but like everything else in life, I completely lack the motivation to do that.

I guess if I had to pass along some advice it would be buy yourself some nice paintbrushes or ask someone to buy you nice brushes as a present. Nothing sucks more than trying to paint and having bristles come off onto your painting. And take care of them, don't let them get all shitty. Also if you shop at Hobby Lobby they tend to have some nice sales on canvas and nothing screams artist like painting with nice brushes on a canvas. So canvas, quality paintbrushes and a nice Van Dyke Brown, before you know it, you'll be arting all over the place.