Proud like a Momma.

I'm really proud of my best good friend Ashley.  Check out her blog for more lovely pictures. She chopped ten inches off of her hair to donate to Locks of Love.  That took a lot of guts and I love her guts.

There it goes!

Erica and I went along to her appointment as haircut supporters/photographers.  Once the ponytail received a little snippity, snippity action, we decided it would be appropriate to have a little fun with it. Transformations were happening in that little hair studio. Erica decided to transform herself into a lady with long, luscious locks.  I could stare at this picture for days on end.  How great is it?  And how crazy is it that the ponytail matches Erica's hair pretty perfectly. Maybe Ashley should just donate the ponytail to Erica.
Since Erica decided to add the ponytail to change her look, it was only appropriate that I bestow upon her a new name.  Give her an alter ego, if you will. Meet my new friend, Ina.  She's my naturistic Scandinavian friend.  Ina B. Hoopenstacken.  Doesn't it just make you wanna yell "Yodel ay hee hoo"?

I've always been curious as to what I'd look like as a brownie.  I love being a blond, but I'm kinda digging the brown.  What do you all think?  Color change time?

Brownie?

or Blondie?

This is Ashley's end result.  Isn't it just the cutest?

I loved my rain day.

Today was such a great day.  We were off school for a snow day, err, rain day.  Yeah.  We were supposed to get snow so we were off more as a pro-cautionary thing and then it ended up just being rain.  I was fine with being off work though. Everyone loves a day off. Here is the one little patch of snow I found in my backyard.

Can you see it?  Under the tree?  Our local news station accepts photos of weather-ish things to show on the news.  I thought about submitting this.  It's pretty impressive, don't ya think? Hilarious. I love the South.

I slept in a bit and then got out for some shopping.  Based on the denim shirts and Feds (fake Keds) that I saw, it looks like fashion is throwing it back to my childhood.  Check out these little babies that I saw at Forever 21:

They came in a variety of colors and patterns.  Fancy.  Doesn't it just bring you back to being an 8 year old?
While I was out, I got a couple of tops and a new pair of kicks. No, I didn't get the lovely shoes pictured above.  You're disappointed in me, I know.  I've been wanting a pair of black Chucks only since forever.  I had a pair of blue ones in middle and high school that I wore until they could be worn no more.  I've missed them and wanted them to be in my life once again.

I had some snuggle time with my Daisy Mae.  She was a little scared and buried her head because some moron was shooting off fireworks in our neighborhood...on January 7th.  Keepin' it classy in my hood.

I finished off the night by going out with my girlfriends.  I was planning on staying in, but being the good friend she is, Ashley convinced me to come out. I was glad I did. I heard a story that changed my life and my views on shrimp forever. 

All in all, a really great day and night.  I am one happy girl.

Creeping.

Do you ever go out somewhere and see someone and realize you've seen them before?  You don't really know them, but you've seen them.  And suddenly it hits you.  You saw them on facebook.  But you're not facebook friends.  You've seen this person in an entire 'BeSt SuMmEr EvEr' album through mindless facebook creeping.  When you've gone through said album, you quickly see why it was the 'best summer ever' based on the shenanigans going on in their pictures.  Thirty minutes later, you realize you just spent all that time looking at pictures of a stranger.  It seems like a bizarre thing to do, but we all do it.  It's going to get to the point where no one will be a stranger anymore because we've all seen each other on facebook in a secretive/creepy kinda way.

Then there's the creeping that you know should be off limits.  The kind that if you were discovered by a friend at the moment of your creeping, she'd slap your hands off the keyboard because you should know better.  It's the creeping that hurts your heart when you know you should be guarding it.  Searching for someone in our past.  Someone that's in our past for a reason and should be kept there.  Specifically, an ex.
Luckily for me I don't typically remain friends with people that have fallen out of my life.  That sentence makes me sound like the worst person on the planet.  Let me explain.  I'm not friends with ex-boyfriends.  It's how I cope.  It's how I deal.  I'm not saying it's right or wrong.  It's just what's always worked for me.  I think it's awesome that some people can remain friends after a relationship went sour.  I wish I had it in me. I've just kinda always been that way in life.  Once we're done...we're done.  Bitter and harsh, but...it's the truth.  I'm not facebook friends with any of my ex-boyfriends, except for one.

Maybe you can handle being friends and the creeping on an ex is casual.  But then maybe you venture over to your replacements page.  You know, the girl that took your place and came after you.   You feel like you've hit the jackpot if you discover her profile is set to 'public'. 26 whole photo albums for your viewing pleasure?  Don't mind if I do, silly new girlfriend.

Sometimes full-out creeping sessions make us feel a little better about ourselves with thoughts of "That girl don't have nothin' on me". However, maybe it does just the opposite and doesn't make us feel so good.  Maybe you looked at the pictures and saw complete happiness between two people.  Maybe it made you want to yell, "Barf Bags!" It reopens wounds even if you think they're fully healed.
The worst was when I stumbled upon a 'replacements' page.  I don't even know how I got there.  You all know how it is. Next thing I knew I was up in her photo album business, because, yes...it was all public.  I saw wedding pictures and honeymoon pictures. A honeymoon locale that was the same as the one that the boy had planned to take me on. You look at these pictures and you see her in the place where you used to be in the picture...by him.  It sucks for a moment.  Then you come to your senses and think about how great things are now and you realize...she can have the dude.  Better you than me, sucka.

Then you just pray she doesn't add one of those "See who's viewing your profile" applications and it shows your name on the list.  Because then you'd be totally busted.  And a Creepy McCreeperson.


*This was a good year ago, but luckily 'replacement girl' privatized her page soon after I discovered it was wide open.  Maybe she did add the "See who's viewing your profile" app.  Hmm.
Whatever the reason, I'm just glad she did it.  I didn't need that creeping temptation in my life.

Sad news report.

One of my wild feline friends died.  I've blogged about my wild wilderness animal friends in at least two other past posts.  They've been hanging around my house since November 2009.  While I often dream of capturing and taming the many wild animals (cats, rabbits, foxes, turkeys) that frequent my backyard, I have never so much as touched one of these cats.  They're scared of me.  I'm borderline scared of them.  I've named one Scrappy.  That cat is a junkyard dog.  Speaking of dogs, they're not scared of my dog.  Scrappy charged at Daisy once. By the way I talk and think about these cats, you'd think they were mine.  I stare at them through my window.  Daisy barks at them through the window.

I discovered the fate of the poor cat as I was driving to work this morning.  I was at the stop sign at the end of my street doing the whole look left, look right thing.  It's important to do that sometimes to be safe. There it was.  On the right side of the road.  I gasped and yelled what seemed like a never-ending, "NO"! I knew it was one of "my" stray cats. From where he was, it looked as though he had crossed the road from the wilderness of the cave valley where he was probably hunting yummy rodents.  Yes, I live beside a popular tourist attraction cave.  This is what brings all the animals to the yard. The cave. Not my milkshake.
My poor little cat was probably crossing the road to head over towards my backyard.  That's what I told myself anyway.  Poor cat braved the elements and survived on its own during its little life.  It's sad that he made it through all he did and a stinkin' car got him in the end. Stupid people with their stupid animal killing cars.
I cried on the way to school.  I'm a girl that rarely cries about anything going on in my life, but I'll cry over an animal in a second.  I get way too attached to animals.  I love them so.  I'm sad that my yard will have one less cat roaming free.

I will leave you with a random thought, dear friends. That 'Education Connection' commercial has got to be the worst commercial of all times. I've seen it about 20 times tonight in between all the Jersey Shore episodes.  Do you all know the one I'm talking about? The girl dances and sings and she's really bad. Lawsee.

Paper clip retainers.

For some reason I just thought back to my 3rd grade days.  Particularly about a fad or trend or whatever the heck it was that involved paper clips.  We used to take paper clips and unbend them, you know, straighten them out.  Then we would make "retainers" for ourselves by shaping them into semi-circles.  We would carefully place it in our mouth resting it over the top of our upper teeth.  It was cool because you'd get to make sucking noises like you're producing ultra amounts of saliva like real retainer-wearing kids. The sharp edges might even cut the inside of your cheeks up just a little bit too, if you're lucky.  The pain was so worth it because it meant you were experiencing being cool. Bizarre.
First off, where were we getting all these paper clips?  I know they weren't on the required school supply list for the year.  I don't think any of us would have been brave enough to take them from that teacher's desk.  Heck no.  Maybe someone brought a bulk supply in from their dad's desk drawer at home or something.  Second, how did we get away with this for so long? And, lastly, WHY was this a cool thing to do?
One instance that I remember very vividly was when our class went over to another 3rd grade classroom.  Our two classes got together a lot because our teachers were buddies.  We would get together to do activities or read-alouds.  This day we were reading Stuart Little.  A big group of us from my class made our retainers and wore them over to the other class.  A lot of the kids in the other class had in their retainers in too.  We spent the majority of the read-aloud time adjusting our retainer so that it would stay in and making sucking noises due to the excess saliva accumulating in our mouths.  We also smiled a lot at each other to check out each others retainers.  The best retainers were made from the paper clips that were colored or had stripes.  Those were extra fancy.
Did you all ever do that?  Did you have a paper clip retainer fad?  Or was that just at my elementary school?
Talk about an extra slobbery fad. You'd pull your paper clip out and a string of spit would come with it.  Did that just make you throw up a little bit?  Me too.  I hate spit so much.  It's gross and it smells.
I guess deep down we all wanted to have braces and post-braces retainers.  Kids always want what they can't have or what they aren't quite ready for yet, so I guess it made sense. I'm so glad kids in school don't do this anymore.  At least not for now.  Trends always come full circle.  My future kid will probably be the one to restart it.  I can only hope.

I'm going to start dropping knives. That's all I'm sayin'.

I went to my Granny D's for a little bit on New Years.  I worked a little bit of her puzzle.  I'm a nerd that's always enjoyed puzzles.  She also gave me THIS:

Yesssssssss.  I blogged about this little baby here, just in case you're new or if you've forgotten about this Aunt Jemima.  There's really no rhyme or reason to this thing.  She sits on an old milk can.  She holds a basket of fake bagels.  She's got big cotton boobs.  I don't get it but I love her. She looks really good in the corner of my kitchen.  Nobody puts baby in the corner.  Well, I do.  

I have a little collection of Aunt Jemimas going on in my kitchen.  I love them.

While at Granny's, I asked her if she knew of any other New Year superstitions other than the ones I shared in the previous post.  I said, "Granny, are there any others like not washing your clothes on New Years?"  She replied with an, "Oh no (Read: Ahh naww)!  I forgot all about it.  I worshed a load this mornin'."  Great.  My Granny just washed all her luck away for the coming year.
She told me that back in her day there was a superstition and wives tale for just about anything you did.  One that she told me about was:
"If you dropped a fork, a woman was coming to see you.  If you dropped a knife, a man was coming to see you.  If you dropped a spoon a baby was a comin'."
What I took away from that story was that I obviously need to start dropping a lot of knives in my house.  If only it were that easy.  Sigh.

Here it comes, another year...

It's 2011!  When we hit a new year I get Will Smith's song "Will 2K" in my head.  Even though we're far from 1999, it's still a catchy little diddy that I think about when reaching a new year. "And we gonna party like it's 19-- hold up, it is!" Whoo! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha!  Oh, Will Smith.

Every year our family has the traditional New Years day meal.  We eat black eyed peas (usually in Hoppin' John soup), country ham, and greens.  Black eyed peas are supposed to bring you luck.  Pork and cabbage bring wealth.  You better believe I'm going to eat until I pop because I need all the luck and wealth I can get.

Maybe these are just Southern things, but below are some New Year's Superstitions:

• Don't eat chicken or turkey on the 1st.  You'll be like those animals--scratching in dirt for your food all year.  In other words, you'll bring poverty upon yourself.
• Make sure you have food in your pantry.  (I took care of that when I hit up the grocery last night.)
• Nothing goes out of your house on the first day.  Not even trash. (I'm totally cool with this.)
• Make sure to do something and be successful at something related to your work on the first day of the new year, even if you don't go to your place of employment.  Just do a token amount though.  Engaging in a serious project is unlucky.
• Don't do laundry on the first.  You'll wash your luck away and/or someone out of your life. 
• Wear something new to increase the likelihood of receiving new clothes during the year.
• Don't pay back loans or lend out money on New Year's Day.
• Avoid breaking something.
• Avoid crying on the first day of the year.

In summary, don't over-exert yourself on New Year's.  Stay happy and eat.  Cheers.

What are some New Years superstitions/traditions that your family follow?