A Snore-ibble Night

As my hillbilly relatives have pretty much no houses among them, my grandmother invited my mom, sister and I to stay in her one-bedroom, two-room apartment for the night. My sister and I slept head-to-head on blow-up mattresses that were crammed into the kitchen.



My grandmother, thinking she was sparing us, slept on the couch. It was all good until like eleven o' clock.



Suddenly, this horrible noise began emitting from my grandmother's mouth. This is a woman who has pretty much been fortified on chicken-fried vegetables and bad meat her whole life, so her farts are colossal and sound like they're forming words, so it shouldn't have come as surprise that she snored like the dickens. It sounded like she was simultaneously dying, choking, and snorting Campbell's Chunky soup through her nose.



It went on like this for a couple hours, till about 1:00. My sister and I tossed and turned uncomfortably, trying to get comfortable on mattresses which incidentally also
made farting noises every time you rolled over. My grandmother snored on, oblivious and happily asleep, with her nostrils and lips flapping and emitting train-whistles and ship foghorns.



We lay like this for what seemed like forever. Time was sucked into an unfathomable loop of oblivion. It was as if we were Odysseus in the time of the sirens and we had to find some way to avoid the horrible keening animal-death noises. I tried stuffing my own hair in my ear, and, when that predictably failed, curling up my head in the blanket like a burrito. My mom, blissfully asleep, was using a noisemaker, but to me the noisemaker sounded like someone peeing off a cliff.

And then, around 2 or 3, Father Time decided to screw with us more. The couple upstairs was apparently young (although really? young people in a quaint country suburb named Whispering Woods?), because all of a sudden sexytime was happening. It sounded like an Irish jig coming from the ceiling. Also bad rap music.



My sister, who doesn't like my music, turned to me and pleaded for my iPod to spare her from the horribleness.



I suddenly felt this grim knowledge burst within me. Like I had discovered my meaning of life. I had been granted this iPod full of druggie songs, and, by God, I was going to use it like the weapon of awesomeness it was. I alone could save my sister and I, and in turn, save China. And Atlantis.



I went through the entire discography of Sufjan Stevens, Fleet Foxes, Mando Diao, Sigur Ros, and Blind Pilot, trying to find the trippiest, most calming music I could to lull my sister and I to sleep. We certainly felt high. But Gram's snores punctuated the music. She even snored to the beat, as if mocking us.

At fourish or so in the morning, I curled into a fetal ball and meekly accepted defeat.

THE INTERNET IS MY LIFE and when there's no new things i get sad and antsy

kaitlyn's certificate of bro-ness

the most winning fail

Driving and Why it Sucks

Counting today, four people have given me half a peace sign out their window,one's followed me and swore at me, one has followed me home to tell me not to be so suckish at life, I've had enough honks to sprinkle a birthday cake with, and several pictures taken of my bad parking jobs.

This does NOT make me a bad driver. I'd like to point out I STILL am alive. Also my passengers mainly survive, although that doesn't keep them from being sassy.





So, I'd like to take some time to celebrate all the lovely friends I've made on the road.



Driving and Why it Sucks:

Honking


You're turning right and there's a red light for two seconds and this happens:





Hearing a short light honk:





Hearing long multiple honks:





Police Cars

Once you get pulled over, you are scarred for life.

Driving in Dark:




Driving in Dark and the light behind you changes:





Today I ran into this guy:






I couldn't tell if he was a po po or if he just had serious douchetastical car bling. Seriously? Flashing tail and headlights in different colours? Who you tryin to fool, foo?

Those police cars that creep slowly behind you for miles:







Luckily I have devised a tried-and-true method for avoiding these flicker-offers and angry fat men who are delayed getting to their destination on time by two seconds and police cars that hunker down on roadsides threateningly, like a momma caribou.

Just avoid eye contact. And DON'T ROLL DOWN THE WINDOW.

Gingers

All I've ever wanted is to be a ginger and sing cutesy ukulele songs and become an internet sensation. Is that too much to ask? And adult Heelys. Also Matt Smith.

It is my personal belief that gingers are the luckiest species in the world. Seriously. Nothing ever goes wrong for those bitches. Here are some examples:

1. Ron Weasley
Gets the girl, has a famous best friend who saves the world AND is his brother in law, has a family of OTHER gingers...c'mon.





2. Katie
'Nuff said.



3. Amy Pond
Has Doctor Who as her best friend, AND Rory as her lover-man? Who created this universe of unfairness??





4. (formerly ginger) Charlie McDonnell (of Charlieissocoollike fame)
He MET Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill. Plus about a million girls would marry him on the spot.





Oh and don't even get me started on internet gingers! They seem to have a knack for getting celebrities to notice their awesome.






Meanwhile...

Attractive Restaurant Boy/Jim from Office

I'm replacing the place where I saw this person, just in case, god forbid, this person ever finds this. /awks/


This is a story I wrote at Ragdale (I'm typing it up from mah notebook). We were given 30 minutes, and our prompt was, 'free write about someone you recently talked to'. I felt a little creepy writing this honestly, but it made my Ragdale peers laugh buckets.

He turned towards the register and I was struck in the face immediately with the force of his glowy, tan skin and the sexy way he spoke, "Would you like your bagel toasted?"

Picture this like a Disney Channel movie. Only with class. All the brightness and fakeness of Disney, combined with the directing style of 500 Days of Summer, only with a scintillating plot. Also in a 30's-femme-fatale way.

I bust open the Frosty Mart door and walk in, spewing confidence like that bug-repellent stuff they spray over cornfields. Every eye in the place is on me, because seriously I am smoking. No. Literally. I have one of those fancy cigarette holder things twirling in my elegantly-done, vixen-red nails.

I tapdance over to the register, blonde hair in perfect ringlets, and as the swanky jazz music starts up, I lean casually against a wall.

Then. Attractive Frosty Mart Boy prances out of the darkness, in a spotlight, with a fedora. And in a low throaty voice he says,

"Ma'am. We are out of the pretzel bagels."

And then we foxtrot into the crimson sunset.

As you can imagine, this isn't how it happened. I waddled in awkwardly after my glamourous older friends, scruffy converse and poofy hair in all their glory, and waited casually in line, hoping Magical Jim Man wouldn't notice my face melting slowly into a colour rather like lobster bisque. He wasn't my type anyway. Boys who are attractive rarely are. I probably wasn't his type either---he probably had some lovely gorgeous ladyfriend back home, washing cars for cheerleading practice. Or maybe it was the complete opposite. Maybe he was supporting a family of seven on his Frosty Mart wage, huddling in corners and eating stale bagels to survive. I don't know, he COULD have had a bunch of kids, I couldn't tell how old he was---he had the kind of ageless look of David Bowie or Jesus. Sadly I will never know the answers to these questions because, as a lady, it is considered not classy to use bad pickup lines in a Frosty Mart. So I waddled back to Austin's car, sitting in back like a twelve year old and having my bagel handed to me like a six year old, pressing my hands wistfully against the glass window as the mystery of Magical Jim Man disappeared into the oblivion of time.

Classy-Ass Grilled Cheese Sandwich (also a hillbilly one)

Hello boys and girls. Today I bring you a cooking challenge so excellent and delicious it will make all of your stuffy english grandparents swoon. I like this recipe a lot because it makes me feel like I have grown-up taste buds. If you are as galactorically bored as I am, you can make this! Woo! Cooking is fun!

Seriously, this is how classy it is:









Here's what you need:


whole wheat bread (or just bread. whatever.)
butter
aged white cheddar cheese (it is fancy and irish)
Dijon mustard
Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced
onion chutney (see below!)
if you're feeling damn fancy, watercress and mayo

Butter one side of each bread slice. On the unbuttered side of half of the slices, spread Dijon mustard. If you're feeling fancy, chop up the watercress (I think there's something else you do with it, but I dunno. Use the google.) and mix with mayo, then spread on the other bread slice. Slice some cheese really thin or else it won't melt and just be awkward. Put that and some thinly sliced apples on top of the Dijon and mayo. While you're cooking, you can eat the remaining green apple and feel like Barbossa. That is basically how I eat all of my greens.




Now it's time for the chutney. If you're having junior-year flashbacks to english finals, don't. It's gewd. It's like, dessert salsa, but with CARMELIZED ONIONS.

Onion Chutney

2 tbsp butter
2 yellow onions, diced
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red chile flakes
1 tsp ground coriander (you can omit this if you're not high-class enough)
1 tsp brown sugar
4 tbsp apple cider vinegar (do not smell this directly from the bottle. it is potent. it's like cooking chloroform)
1/4 tsp cracked pepper

Heat butter in a pan over medium heat and add onions. Saute until translucent. Add salt, chile flakes and coriander and continue to cook for 15 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and cook until the onions are very soft and creamy.

Damn that's fancy! Too fancy you say? Well I better balance it out with a hillbilly recipe that is essentially also a grilled cheese.

Hillbilly Garlic Cheese Bread

I recommend eating nothing but raw vegetables for days after this. Also, you might destroy your family's gastrointestinal systems. But it's worth it.

3 1/2 cups grated Cheddar cheese
3/4 cups Monterey Jack cheese, grated
1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cups mayonnaise
4 green onions, minced (I used fresh chives, they goooood)
1 loaf crusty French bread
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
some butter

Preheat oven to 425.

Mix cheeses with the mayonnaise and the green onions/chives and garlic until it's nice and mashy. Mmmm, mashy.

Cut loaf of bread in slices. Butter each one with only a bit of butter! Spread mashy-cheese mixture until there's a good wallop on each slice. Seriously, there should be like a baby-sized amount on this bread.

Bake in a 425F oven until cheese is hot and bubbly, about 10 minutes.

Let's Talk Datinggggg

Hey gaiz. So I know you all are thinking, 'hmm. I mean I guess you're funny or whatever but srsly what can you ever have anything to say about dating?' Well, I'll have you know that, even though it's a Saturday night and I am in fact blogging and drawing pictures on paint AND watching iCarly, I had an incredibly serious relationship once.

In preschool.

It was the best time ever. We would catch those helicopter-leaves that fell from tall trees, and play on the monkey bars, and we planned to run away together after school. We talked about it every day.








For Christmas, he gave me like a 64-pack of awesome crayons. I gave him a candy cane wrapped in a printer-paper wrapping paper I made by myself. He then broke up with me because I was too cheap.

From then on, I never experienced the kind of love that preschool guy and I had. People always tried to explain it to me as I was growing up.

People are Strange (When You're a Stranger)

THIS IS A SUSPENSFUL TALE OF ADVENTURE, FRIENDSHIP, AND PIRATES. SOON IT MAY BE THE NEXT DISNEY MOVIE CHAIN I THINK


My mama taught me to never, ever, ever let people into the house. This may be because, as a family, we are all rather lonely people and we know when the doorbell rings there is probably an issue.







Reminiscent of a 40s bomb shelter, usually my sister and I, pros at never opening the door, just hide in the basement until the internet guys/telemarketers/probably harmless boy scouts get frustrated and go away.

But today we were defeated. The first time we won though.

The first time we were just getting inside, and a weedy-looking man in an orange vest waddled out of the neighbour's yard and told us he was the ComEd guy. We doubted him, so we just waited for him to leave. He left.




BUT THEN.

Three or so hours later, we heard a doorbell. The usual hiding and nervously peeking around all the windows ensued.

AND THE WORST POSSIBLE THING HAPPENED (besides death or asparagus):






So I ran into the basement.

Upstairs, I heard the screen door slide open, and some random man voices.
THERE WERE FOUR, how were we supposed to defeat them???

Apparently they were fixing our sprinkler.

One of them came down to talk to me, so I settled for CIUTATP (casual internet usage to avoid talking to people). You know what I be saying.

Michigan Clan 2011: Memorial Day Edition

MOSTLY WORDS BECAUSE SERIOUSLY GAIZ, I SHOULD BE STUDYING.
THIS POST RATED 'H' FOR HILLBILLY.


On Friday, I walked into my house to find it totally changed.








Yes. That is when I knew...the Clan had arrived.

Only parts of the Clan came...two of my uncles, my aunts, and four chilluns ranging from 6 months to 4 years. Also my grandma. My mom, in preparation, had gone to Costco with me on an ENTIRELY separate trip and bought over 400$ worth of meat for them.

No seriously. There were dino chicken nuggets, steak, turkey, fish, fish sticks, normal chicken...and on last night we ordered take-out Olive Garden (where they know my mom as the Party Lady):

24 breadsticks
a vat of alfredo sauce
a jumbo salad with 'extra toppings' (to which we added three tomatoes, an onion, a jar of olives, and a bag of croutons)
a small mountain of parmasean cheese
three bottles of dressing

and 3 large deep dish Supreme Lou Malnati's pizzas.

In the wake of the Clan (they left the 'Food Corner' p. much behind), there are two large ice cream cakes, two large boxes of juice pops, one batch of 'homemade' (they came from a magical Michigan thing called a 'cookie kube') cookies, two boxes of gram crackers and three hershey's bars and two bags of marshmallows, 23 boxes of Girl Scouts cookies (from Samoas to Peanut Butter), a mysterious chocolate egg-thing, a bag of chocolate chips the size of my torso, five two-liter bottles of soda, and various boxes of Froot Loops.

Seriously, there is so much food here. My kitchen, used to spare amounts of vegetables and 'foodless fridays', doesn't know what to do. I try to describe it, but honestly there is SO MUCH FOOD I can't even tell you. We are cramming it into corners at the moment. The Girl Scout cookies, lacking a place, are stacked on a counter in a formation that could prevent a nuclear bomb.

But enough about the food. You will understand the sheer amount that we have when I roll to school tomorrow.

As hillbillies, there is always something that happens that is passed down through generations. Generally, I hear about these stories late at night, after the copious beers. But this time, during the car rides to Chicago (we classy!), I heard about it (and experienced it) through much guffawing, snorting, and reeinactments of farts.

We had dropped my uncles off on Saturday at 'the game' while we went 'shopping' (We really didn't buy anything') and they came tottering out of a bar when it was time to go home. Whenever they talked, their breath was, as Sister put it, 'a rancid odour of doom' that richocheted around the car. Nothing like the smell of old cigarettes (I used to think it was the smell of food when I was little in Michigan) and many different types of liquour radiating off rain-soaked sweaty man-bodies. But it got worse.

We were on the highway, when uncle Doug decided he suddenly had to pee. Too bad we were on a highway, my mom said. But nooo! There's always a solution!




At first my mom wasn't going to do it. No relative of hers was going to pee in a forest, she said.
But they did.

We pulled over, and both of my fine esteemed uncles ran into the trees, past the sign that said clearly in red bold 'NO DUMPING' (my grandma had a guffaw over that), and didn't come back for like ten minutes.

In that ten-minute period, my aunt told us a similar tale in which my uncle had, in this act, tripped over his pants and snapped a tree in half.
It is a good life, the Michigan clan.