Sunday, July 24, 2011

roommate date: the tale of a beautiful disaster

today Truly Tricia and i had a lovely and much needed roommate date. what had promised to be a lovely evening of cheating on our diets, manicuring our nails, and having pillow fights in our underwear turned quickly into a serious ultimate low.

first, we decided to indulge in some wendys' french fries and chicken nuggets.


{lay off me i'm starving}

for the 11.7 minutes it took for us to consume our medium french fries and chicken nuggets, i had an out-of-body experience of pure, unadulterated bliss. however, i immediately regretted the decision to over-indulge. i began to have that feeling you get in your stomach: you know, when the contents of your stomach are jiggling like pudding in a bowl while gurgling like some of the instruments in the original willy wonka and the chocolate factory when they go into the inventing room...


{mm, roast beef and mashed potato! with sour cream? -- and yes, i do feel about the same as violet beauregarde. i need juicing}

so we decide to go to the new target that's just opened down the street from us. {we are truly sick.} so this new target has the absolutely coolest escalator in the history of the world. you can put your cart on the escalator next to you and it goes up...right next to you!! 


{this may be old news for some, but for me this new-fangled contraption is absolutely mind-blowing}

...

{it's also kind of pointless bc they still have carts upstairs...}

after spending about a half-hour in the $1 bins (in which i managed to almost buy plastic bowls, a foam ax, a cat-in-the-hat tote bag, war-head frozen pops, a complete phineas and ferb set of flatware...) we then spent another half-hour in the make-up section (came there for waterproof mascara. left with eyeshadow and new mascara...which is not waterproof). we then traipsed off to the home improvement section to find some more wall-hangings for when roomie moves away {currently, the owner of our entire home-decor is tricia...}. it was at this point that tricia had to actually sprint across the gigantic super-target to the bathroom in the front of the store to hurl up her dinner...


{somebody had to christen the new tar-jay!!}

later, tricia returned to find me perusing the underpants department {in the meantime, i somehow found the self-discipline to pass up a new iron, a portable island, a complete set of frog accessories for the bathroom, a new pink lamp, cast iron pans, a silk robe, new jars to keep my cereal in, the entire sharpie and post-it aisle....}. she had to leave again to be sick once more before i checked out. she then proceeded to tell me about the lovely person in the stall next to her. this woman came into the bathroom humming a sweet little tune. the musical mistress entered the stall {still humming}, only to make some apparently musical toots. the explosive diarrhea coming from this woman was continually accompanied by a combination of humming and grunting. as tricia washed her hands, the woman emerged from the stall {seriously? you wouldn't hide out in the stall until there was complete silence? isn't that like public pooping etiquette?). she was wearing spandex shorts and nun shoes, and was about 5 feet tall.


{i'm singing. i'm in a store, and i'm singing.}

needless to say we returned home rather quickly. i then had what my mother would call an "ass explosion" {ass explosion: noun. meaning: the completely liquid bathroom experience one has after eating a largely greasy and disgusting meal, the kind you need to make a mad dash to the bathroom for...the kind that sneakily seems like a fart but ends up to be sooo much more.... often happens in public. often precluded by a nasty gurgling in your tummy. pardon my crass-ness}. the smell of our bathroom was a combination between toilet stink, some kind of asian spicy food wafting down from the upstairs, and these wet rags that may or may not have been left in our closet for like 3 weeks. it literally permeated the entire apartment.


{a potentially better title: the cropduster}

all this to say... it may not have been the most perfect roommate date. but it's evenings like these that make great stories later. suffering together (in putrid odors and in fresh fragrances) is something that strengthens a friendship. it's that gut-wrenching (in this case literally) laughter that makes everything you experience in life worthwhile and joyful. it's like my mother has always said:

a friend you can truly laugh with is a friend worth keeping. you need that laughter when life gets hard.

who are the people you can laugh with no matter what?






Friday, July 15, 2011

cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life...

last night, i threw my inhibitions to the wind and experienced the last harry potter movie 3d style and at midnight.

{i may or may not have dressed as hermione granger}


{i felt a wide range of emotions at the so-called "epic conclusion"}

excited...


nostalgic...


nervous (just in case they missed some significant parts..


freaking exhausted...


potentially mutating into a chipmunk...


and gangsta {grifs for life, yo)


it was bittersweet, which is much like the book. i laughed, i cried, it was beautiful!!!

b)ut it has me thinking about the bittersweet symphony of my life right now (thank you very much, The Verve). i'm currently finishing up the last 2 weeks working with youth at one church and my other job pushing papers at continuing ed, and i'll be starting a new job in august. always, when i've taken a new job, i've been leaving something bad or unhealthy or ugly for something new, and a new job usually brings a sense of relief. this time, i'm leaving good for better. i don't feel relieved...i feel bittersweet.

"i'm a million different people from one day to the next"

{seriously, how good is that song?? }

what are the bittersweet symphonies of your life?
and how bad freaking ass was harry potter 7.2??


Monday, July 4, 2011

an apple pie, baked w/ bitterness...

this morning, i woke up and i just felt off my game. i don't know if you've ever had a day like this: when you feel like you're just not you. you look in the mirror and you see all your faults instead of your beauty. you feel heavier than usual. your self talk says "you just made an idiot out of yourself" than "you can do it." even your favorite foods just don't taste the same. in other words, you're a real eeyore:


{ironically, when my best friend moved away in elementary school, i claimed that eeyore was my new best friend...}

that's how i felt this morning. and i faced a family reunion (a completely DRY family reunion, if ya know what i mean...). i knew i needed to get myself together. i also knew i needed to bake an apple pie. my mum is not a good cook; mostly she just hates to cook, even though she's pretty good at it. so every year for my aunt's fourth of july party, she asks me what she's making, buys the ingredients, and has me make it. so this year, i baked an apple pie (very patriotic of me, i know).

baking apple pie always reminds me of my college mentor, morgan whiteleather. the first time i ever came to her for mentoring, she had me over at her apartment in new wilmington. this apartment was like...one of my favorite places in the world. she had candles melted on wine bottles, and her bathroom had inspirational quotes on the walls (really handy if you just needed that extra push!!). it always smelled like nutmeg or some kind of baking spice. we baked an apple pie together using morgan's grandmother's recipe (the key is to use lard in the pie crust...haven't made it that way since, i just used this recipe).

as we baked the pie, morgan said to me:

the great thing about baking is you start with ordinary things. you mix them together and they look disgusting; they become a total mess. then you hand it over to the oven, and it turns it into something really incredible. that's what we're going to do. we're going to talk about the ordinary things in your life. we're going to talk about the messiest of the messy. and we're going to give it over to God, and over time, God will turn that mess in to something spectacular.

on the surface, this might sound kind of cheesy, but truly, these were probably some of the most profound words ever spoken to me, and it has become the mantra of my life: God really does some spectacular things in our messiest situations. so this morning as i baked my pie. i made a complete mess out of the kitchen (i would literally sell a kidney for a dish-washer), and i thought through my own mess. and pulling that perfect pie out of the oven really was what i needed to remind me that God is at work, even in my ugliest, most cynical and dark moments.


{this is legitimately my pie. check out the stars i cut into it. you better watch your ass, martha stewart!!!}

most people say that the secret to a scrumptious baked good is that it's baked with love. well, i bake with bitterness, and it turns out pretty sweet to me!! {oh Lord, i really do sound like i'm channeling martha stewart's spirit...}

what are the things that you do that put your pieces back together when you're having an off day?