The Adventures of Molly and Tessa

Tessa Hates Me, But It’s Okay Because She Looks Adorable

2011-10-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

I am SO chewing up something important.

I finally caved and got Tessa a Halloween shirt thing. I was going to get her an actual costume, but really the only fitting thing for her to dress up as would be a doggie devil, and I couldn’t find that in the 2 minutes I spent looking. I always forget how cute dog clothes are. She doesn’t actually mind wearing it, I swear. She just posed angrily for this picture. I've been keeping my apartment slightly cooler to encourage her to put up with it. She also got Halloween toys, which made up for having to wear a stupid shirt.


Fine, can I at least have some candy?

It doesn't fit her perfectly because she's skinny but has really muscular shoulders, so she kind of looks like a football player. The other problem is that people seem to assume that if a dog has clothes on it's super friendly. Not so. Tessa is still learning how to be social, and still tends to either panic and run away from people or bark and growl at them as they approach. We're working on it, and she's gotten a lot better at behaving around other dogs, but people are still a problem for her. Someone's kid came running over and wanted to hug her, which was fine because she does do okay with children, but a few adults have tried to do the same thing and it freaked her out. Bottom line, don't hug a dog you don't know. Happy October!

Horrific Rhymes and Squirmy Pillows

2011-10-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

I work on training with Tessa a lot. It’s important for her to know boundaries and expectations. Today we’re working on “pillows should not move” training. Basically, I nap using Tessa as a pillow, and if she squirms too much, I shriek “PILLOWS SHOULD NOT MOVE!” and go back to sleep while she’s still frozen in terror. Simple enough, right? But being Tessa, she managed to flip the situation in her favor. I’m a pillow now. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but it did. Droolbaby is curled up half in my lap, snoring not so gently and occasionally trying to run and bark in her sleep. I was going to get up to do stuff, but that would totally undermine today’s lesson. So for the sake of training my dog, I will not be productive until she wakes up. I’m sure my professors will understand.

“Molly, why don’t you have your assignment?”

“I had to be a pillow.”

“What?”

“It’s for training.”

“…”

“She needs to learn that squirming is unacceptable.”

“Um-”

“PILLOWS SHOULD NOT MOVE!”

“… just have it by Friday.”

Crisis averted. Oh, this is one of those posts that I’m going to blame on my caffeine intake. Not actual coffee, but Starbucks ice cream. I hate their coffee, but ohmygosh their ice cream is amazing. My point is, I’ve done nothing but consume sugar and caffeine all morning and now I’m blogging. I feel like at some point I should lose my blogging privileges, kind of like if you’re drunk enough you theoretically aren’t allowed to drive. But with blogging. This all makes sense in my head. Ish. My point is, if you’re a pillow, please sit still-oh. Wow that was terrible. I apologize for subjecting you to that. Now stop squirming.

As Usual, Everything Terrifies My Dog

2011-09-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

New school year, new apartment, same neurotic mutt. This means a whole array of new things that scare Tessa. To start with, this apartment has central heat and ac. To me, it’s really nice being able to maintain a constant temperature, and I’ve pretty much been dancing a good riddance to my old window unit’s tendency to fill my apartment with smoke when turned on during a cold day. To Tessa, oh no save me the air vents are BLOWING STUFF AT ME! I must whimper and hide and express my terror each time the air conditioning comes on. This is especially fun at 4 am.

The other main thing that scares her is the doors, which aren’t hung correctly and tend to close by themselves. To be fair, it’s freaky when you’re in the utility closet and the door starts to creak and close on you. Nothing says home sweet home like wait, didn’t this happen in every horror movie ever? Tessa, though, just thinks the doors are attacking her. When she goes into my bedroom to steal my pillow she bolts through the doorway, looking back over her shoulder as she goes through to make sure it’s not going to sneak up on her from behind. Unfortunately I put a table a few feet away from the door, which she’s made a habit of running into. Then she thinks the table attacked her, and runs back to the living room because apparently she thinks I can protect her from the scary inanimate objects. Maybe she just hasn’t realized how often they intentionally place themselves such that I’ll walk into them.

I started getting the newspaper, admittedly mostly to read the comics, and that’s scary to Tessa, too. Forget the image of the dog fetching the paper and slippers in the morning- she’s happy to chew on my slippers, but the minute I open the door to take her outside in the morning, she tugs the leash out of my hand and races back to the far side of the living room until I pick up the paper from outside my door and hide it. Not just set it down elsewhere, hide it. She won’t come to the door unless the paper is completely hidden from sight, because obviously if she can’t see it, it can’t see her. That’s why my tendency to cover my eyes when crossing busy roads is so successful- the cars can’t see me so they can’t aim at me. Logic!

I Feel Like a Disney Princess

2011-06-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

More than usual, that is. During the summer, our backyard fills up with animals. We have a lot of fruit trees and a big garden, so all the cutesy woodland creatures flock to our yard. It’s not uncommon to see deer strolling around the yard while the dogs watch from the shade, too lazy to chase them away, or to see squirrels not just in the trees but on our back deck stealing Zookie’s food, or the stray cat that seems to have chosen our yard as its home walking around with a dead mouse in its mouth. Apparently it has kittens in the neighbors’ shed. We have a flower pot hanging right outside the back door that a pair of birds decided to build a nest in, and we see them flying back and forth all day bringing insects to their newly hatched babies.

So, being me, I like to go out onto the porch and do my very best singing Disney princess impersonation and pretend that the animals are all there because I’m singing. Sure, the neighbors might think I’m crazy, and the deer might give me looks that clearly beg me to stop, and yes, there was that one time a squirrel covered its ears with its tiny paws and burst into tears, but I’m pretty sure the rest of them love it.

Logically the third paragraph of this should follow the first two, but I’m ADD and just remembered a super cool bug I saw yesterday and it’s my blog and I’ll post random non-sequiturs if I want to. Where was I? Bug. I was on the porch swing yesterday with Zookie, and a giant black bug crawled along the porch under the swing. Zookie pounced at it, and it jumped about a foot in the air, flipped over, and played dead. At first I thought it was actually dead and had had some sort of insect heart attack but then my auto-correct kicked in and was like Molly you’re being silly bugs probably don’t have heart attacks and while I was pondering all of this the thing flipped itself back over and continued on its way. Sorry, I think in run-on sentences. Anyway, I googled it and apparently it’s an Eyed Elater Click Beetle. They look like this. His name is Herman, after Edward Herman who played Richard from Gilmore Girls because at the time it was a logical name.
In other vaguely related news, this video makes me ridiculously happy, even if Belle from Beauty in the Beast is the coolest Disney princess followed closely by Giselle from Enchanted. Tangent. Video:

Non-Passive Passive Aggression

2011-06-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten how hectic mornings at home get. For one thing, Tessa is twice as determined to get me out of bed here, because she's still not quite comfortable living here. So instead of her usual whimpering and nudging, she’s taken to jumping up onto my bed to whine directly into my face, carrying her drool-covered toys over and gently arranging them on my pillow, and squatting as though she’s about to pee on my carpet (probably the most effective method of getting me to give her attention, if by attention you mean picking her 40 pound wiggling self up and running outside with her, where she promptly jumps on me and wags her tail).

Once Tessa is fed, walked and snuggled with and I’ve retrieved the blankets she stole from me overnight, it’s coffee time. We all have our own coffee makers because when I was still living at home, we all got up at the same time and since we all like our coffee made different ways, we ended up getting 3 coffee makers so as not to have to wait. Apparently my caffeine dependence is genetic.

Anyway, there’s not really enough counter space where we keep them, so we get into little counter territory disputes. Finally it was decided that mine sits at the back since I get up late now anyway, and I just have to move theirs out of my way when I get up. No big deal, but pre-coffee me, while cheerful, is smilingly passive-aggressive and will do things like braid all of the coffee machine cords together for the next person to deal with. I guess that isn’t particularly passive, but whatever.

You Know, Logically…

2011-05-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

I was at a store today that sold plants and also happened to sell guns. That seems like useless information, but give me a minute. Okay, so I was out shopping for more seedlings to plant in the vegetable garden here, when a bird inside the gardening section started screeching and making horrible choking noises. It was a wild bird that had somehow gotten inside, which seems to be a common occurrence at places with gardening supplies areas.

It didn’t stop after a couple of squawks, though. It carried on for a good 20 minutes, while the other customers and I covered our ears and one man with a remarkable resemblance to Santa Claus screamed obscenities at it. No success. Tweety wouldn’t give up. I noticed employees glaring angrily at it too, and as I ventured further into the store to get away from it, the sound followed, echoing into the rest of the building. I got more and more annoyed, and as I walked past the gun department, where the clerk was grumpily holding his hands over his ears, the obvious solution clicked.

I love animals, but honestly, if you own a store that has a problem with a wild animal and oh, I don’t know, also happens to SELL GUNS… the wild animal shouldn’t be a problem. “Live game in the gardening department, first employee to get it gets a raise and a cookie!” seems like a pretty good solution to me.

I Survived My First Year of College!

2011-05-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

I’m back home for the summer, and attempting to unpack what appears to be twice as much stuff as I had when I left. I’ve been rearranging furniture, which scared Tessa so badly she hid under my desk most of the afternoon, quivering. Problem was, I needed to move the desk. An hour of coaxing and bribery didn’t work, so finally I just moved the desk. The little smartie stayed under it the entire time, keeping pace as I arduously dragged it across the floor.

Naturally during exam week all the exciting stuff happened, which I’ll post over the next few days because my life right now consists of cleaning and unpacking. And cooking. I’m ridiculously excited to have a good kitchen to use again. When I got home I hugged the stove. And the fridge. Although with the fridge it was more because it contained food other than orange juice, soymilk and veggie burgers, which was all I had left my last two days of exams. Also it’s not like randomly hugging inanimate objects is that unusual an action for me.

My furniture is still all at my apartment because the timing didn’t work out to bring it home yet, and my lease doesn’t end until the end of the month. The problem is, that means I have nowhere to put a lot of my stuff. I have it all piled up around my room, and it randomly tips over, inevitably onto Tessa. She’s been sitting perfectly still in the middle of my room, which she has deemed her safety zone and through which I’m not allowed to walk or place things. She did, however, allow me to crawl over to cuddle for a while. She's so generous and thoughtful.

All Hail the Mystery Patty

2011-05-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

Aw, look at it being all cute and mysterious...

When I first moved here, I discovered an odd looking thing sitting in one of the parking spaces in front of my apartment. It was a sand-colored blob of possibly dirt, possibly food from the campus dining hall, or possibly some sort of space goo. I named it the Mystery Patty and welcomed its presence into my life. I assumed at some point it would wash away, but here I am 9 and a half months later and it’s still there, a little flatter from being run over so many times but still it’s adorable if disgusting Mystery Patty self.

Wait, did it just get closer?

When I leave my apartment I say, “Goodbye, Mystery Patty!” and when I get back I greet it cheerfully because I have a feeling it has a personality and a brain and could probably take over the world as an evil super villain. Also it speaks fluent French. Don’t ask. Either way I want it to like me. “Her dog was never found but the Mystery Patty grew twice as large,” sounds just scary enough to be plausible and Tessa is much too cute to become Mystery Patty chow.

RUN!!! AAHHH!!!!!!

For the first month I was paranoid that it was somehow moving around the parking space, but now I’ve come to accept that it has mind powers of its own and can go where it pleases. I’m not scared of it anymore because it’s like a familiar squished friend, but I do have a slight fear that one day I’ll come inside and find it on my kitchen floor, just sitting there. That would be one of those scarring life events you just don’t recover from. Like a really bad haircut, but in ambiguous blob form. Actually that describes pretty much every bad haircut I’ve ever had.

Introducing Zookie, Bear, and Skittles

2011-04-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

Since I’ll be going home in a couple of weeks, I thought I’d make a post to introduce my parents’ dogs, since I’m sure I’ll be babbling about them all summer. They currently have three: Rowdy Bear, Zookerina (Zookie for short, I know, it’s weird), and Skittles (hey, guess who named him?). Here they are:

Bear is a black lab. He’s huge, easily 100 pounds, and likes to tackle-hugpeople. He’s scary looking andbarks loudly, but he’s a total sweetheart. He’s about as sharp as a marble but we love him anyway. His tail knocks things over when hewags. There is no way for me totalk about Bear without gushing and reverting to baby talk. I got him when he was a puppy, afterweeks of begging. He randomlyjumps straight up, and I’ve seen him get 4 or 5 feet of air before.

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Zookie is a total mutt. She’s really old, around 12 or 13. She’s clever, and reminds me of a catmore than a dog. She chasesmice. She also eats roadkill, butwe won’t go there. We got her from some people who didn’t want her anymorebecause she was too high-strung to be an indoor dog. We live out in the country so she gets the run of the woods tohunt and play in. She won’t playwith toys, she prefers small dead animals. Also when my first guinea pig died she dug it up and atepart of it and left it in the yard. I still love her though.

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Skittles is a border collie. He’s scatterbrained like me so we get along well. He spends most of his timespinning in circles and barking at squirrels. He hardly takes notice of people but squirrels infuriatehim. Despite his ADD tendencies,he’s really smart and learns new tricks quickly. Then he sees a squirrel and forgetsthem. He doesn’t jump like Bear, but he leaps forward at people and kind of scoops his paws around theirankles which usually makes them fall.

Survival Tactics and Cannibal Chickens

2011-04-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

It’s that time of the semester again. The final couple of weeks, during which I have to avoid buying more groceries because ideally I would run out the day I go back home for the summer. It’s a precarious balance of not starving to death and not having to get any more food, or at least not any more perishables. The problem with this is that I run out of key things early on and have to improvise my way through the last week.

I remember the week before winter vacation I survived on apples, plain cocoa mix (actually pretty yummy), and La Choy rice noodles (totally gross plain). I’m trying to avoid getting into that desperate a situation this time around, but at this point it looks like I’ll be eating apples, oatmeal, soymilk and veggie burgers for the next two weeks.

I promise I’m not vegan, it just sounds like it from that list. I don’t eat red meat (mainly because I love cows and pork is gross anyway), but I drink a ton of milk and am only too happy to eat chicken and turkey because chickens and turkeys are mean. Seriously. I’ve been attacked by a turkey. And chickens. Also even chickens will eat their own eggs if they break (don’t think too hard about that concept) and that’s really all I need to know to justify eating eggs.

Also vegans don’t eat marshmallows, and there’s no way I’m giving them up. So unhealthy, and so yummy. Also if you have toothpicks you can build cool stuff with them. I recall a summer camp where we did nothing but construct things with marshmallows and toothpicks. It was incredibly fun. And yummy. And non-nutritious. Also if you don’t eat marshmallows or anything containing milk you can’t have s’mores. And you can’t have summer without those. Seriously.

Dear Neighbor's Cat, We Hate You Too

2011-04-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

One of my neighbors got a cat. Either that or it’s a stray, but it’s been hanging out here a lot. I’ve never had a cat, but I’ve played with a few of my friends’ and they seem cool. Except the mean ones. One of my favorites was an adorable giant gray cat that probably weighed 20 pounds. I remember when she sat down it took a minute for all of her to finish puddling out around her. I loved that cat. Anyway, the new cat here is black and white and evil.

It’s always lurking outside when I bring Tessa out, and needless to say Tessa lunges for it the minute she sees it. Part of me worries that Tessa will hurt it, and part of me feels like if the cat didn’t want to die it would do something other than hiss at her and step closer whenever she growls at it. A couple of days ago Tessa snapped at it, and since then it’s been keeping its distance a little better.

That doesn’t mean it stays away, though. It sits about 20 feet away from the “dog corner” of the lawn and meows loudly at Tessa, baiting her. At first she would growl and lunge at it, but now she just ignores it. That makes the cat sad, because really all it wants is attention, so it comes closer until Tessa chases after it. Then it goes to the guy who always sits outside and gives him endearing looks while he pets it and glares angrily at Tessa.

When we turn around to go back inside, the cat gets up and tries to follow us. Tessa’s not that big, but when she’s fiercely determined to go the opposite direction of me, she’s usually strong enough to win. No exception here. I spend my afternoons getting dragged down the sidewalk leaving skid marks from my shoes while the cat laughs at me. Yes, laughs. Evilly. I kind of hope the Great Dane a few doors down happens to be out when the cat is. Because they never walk it on a leash. Heh.

My Dog is a Ballerina

2011-04-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

Oh, Tessa. A few weeks ago she suddenly discovered she had a tail. Somehow in her two years of existence she hadn’t seen it there. Granted it’s behind her, but still. She was wagging while she turned around to pick up a toy and saw it and jumped about a foot in the air before trying to hide behind me to get away from it.

It followed her, so she started barking at it before eventually getting the hang of the whole chasing-her-own-tail thing. As stereotypical a dog behavior as this is, I don’t think I ever saw any of the five dogs I had growing up do so, but for once Tessa was behaving like a “normal” dog so I was proud.

Until yesterday. As of yesterday I’m a little concerned. Not about her chasing her tail, although the one time she managed to catch it she did yelp in pain. I’m concerned because yesterday she moved on from chasing her tail to chasing her back feet. Not only that, but the weird way she likes to lie down puts her back paws right at her face, and that doesn’t faze her. It’s only when she’s standing that she decides her feet are the enemy.

Something about the concept that her back feet are supporting her weight and allowing her to propel herself across the room makes her want to chase them. I tried explaining to her that if she caught her foot she would fall, but to no avail. She did finally catch one and totter over, where she displayed a remarkable amount of flexibility in her ability to chew on her own back foot.

The vet had mentioned that she was weirdly flexible, I just hadn’t noticed it until now, other than the fact that she goes en pointe when she stretches. Literally. Actually beyond that, because she rolls her foot completely over until she’s standing on the top of it. I should get her a doggie tutu.

Quick Update

2011-04-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to say a quick hello, and no I haven't forgotten about my blog. The last couple of days have been really rough, but I'll be posting daily again starting tomorrow. Basically walking the line between being a kid and being an adult is scary and confusing, and sometimes I need a weekend to cry and eat junk food and write in my diary like I'm 13 again. I'm going to go escape in music now, toodles.
Thanks for reading, your comments here and on Twitter and DailyBooth never fail to make me smile. It's crazy to me that I've made online friends through this thing. You guys are the best!

<3 Molly

Embarrassing Moments in the Laundry Center

2011-04-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

I got into a fight with the dryer today. It was really awkward. Basically, after doing three loads of laundry because I’m a girl and as far as I’m concerned that justifies me wearing as many different outfits as I want in a week, I needed to use the dryer. We have issues, and had worked out a kind of unspoken truce: I won’t make it dry my clothes or anything I care about, and it won’t shrink the towels and sheets I do dare to give it.

But today things got ugly. It started out with the lint trap thing. My charming neighbors almost never bother cleaning it out after their clothes finish, despite the fact that not doing so means the next person has to clean out the lint from whatever disgusting articles of clothing they put in the dryer. Most of my neighbors are male, and their method of doing laundry involves shoving everything into one washing machine regardless of color, then throwing it all into the dryer and turning it on to whatever setting it was left on, usually to the detriment of their clothes. So basically every time I have to clean out their lint, I have to touch lint from their towels and boxers and other things I don’t want to think about. It’s gross. I don’t care that it just went through the washing machine, half the time they don’t remember to use any kind of detergent.

But I finally dealt with it and threw my stuff in and checked the settings and found enough quarters to make the dryer happy and went back to my apartment to kill the hour it takes the dryer to finish half of my stuff. Yes, half. It somehow manages to only dry every other piece of laundry. Not in the everything-is-still-kind-of-damp way, in the this-towel-is-still-soaking-wet-yet-the-sheet-next-to-it-is-completely-dry way. I would love to conduct a case study on how this is possible, but I can’t because I spend all my free time using my hair dryer on my laundry, which is far less effective than you’d think it would be.

Anyway, I had gotten out and folded all my stuff when I realized my kitchen hand towel was stuck in the back of the dryer. I have a feeling it mistook it for a sock and tried to eat it. Thinking it was probably just wedged in somehow, I tried to pull it out. No luck. Fast forward to five minutes later: I’m sitting on the ground, feet braced against the dryer as I attempt to drag out the hand towel. It kind of looks like I’m giving birth to it and I’m saying all sorts of words I’m not supposed to say which only adds to the appearance-of-childbirth thing, and in walks one of my neighbors. He stops, stares for a second, bursts out laughing and comes over to help. It took him all of two seconds to free my kitchen towel, but he’ll have that mental image of me forever.

Side Note, Half of My Calorie Intake Today Was Fla-Vor-Ice

2011-04-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

There’s something beautifully tranquil about mornings I don’t have to hurry through. Today was one of those days, and I don’t know, it just makes me happy all day if I can have a calm morning. Something about having time to enjoy my coffee, and play music, and cook real food instead of cereal just makes my day better. Sunday Morning describes it well. Today it was extra nice because I got to go shopping for the rest of the morning.

Lately whenever I go shopping for me I end up not finding anything but getting something for Tessa instead. Part of it is that all the cute springtime-themed dog toys match my décor so I’m trying to stock up (don’t judge, dogs are colorblind and goshdarnit I want my apartment to look pretty despite her tendency to scatter toys around it), and part of it is that the sad look she gives me when I leave makes me feel guilty the entire time I’m away.

Either way, it was a happy, calm day of writing and cuddling with Tessa and slightly less coffee than usual. Granted my slightly less is the average person’s caffeine overdose, but still. My coffee maker didn’t start making that awful creaking noise it usually does by mid afternoon, so I also managed to torture an inanimate object slightly less. Win-win. The Committee For Fair Treatment of Inorganic Matter would be proud.

In other news, it’s finally consistently warm every day. I can’t begin to explain how happy warm sunny weather makes me. And summer thunderstorms. And heat lightning. And lightning bugs. And everything I’ve missed all winter. I got Fla-Vor-Ice today, which is a sure sign that summer is here. Anyway, it’s sunny and I’m happy. According to my psych professor, UV rays cause humans to release endorphins (they make you happy), but I think there’s something magical in sunshine itself.

She's Like Piglet But Cuter And Louder

2011-04-20T13:28:00.001-07:00

Tessa is a very polite dog. She always gently nudges things a few times before deciding to barrel into them, she almost always lets me go in the door first (unless it’s raining, in which case she’ll knock me over to get back inside), and she refuses to go potty unless she can hide behind something. There’s one thing that keeps her from being polite though: Special K cereal. The blueberry kind.

It combines two of her favorite foods: fruit and cereal. I can’t argue with that, it is really yummy. The problem is, I try to avoid feeding Tessa much “people food” other than banana slices and baby carrots. Since I eat a ton of cereal, sometimes at multiple meals in a day, I get to deal with Tessa’s pouting, incessant nudging, and oinking several times a day.

Yes, oinking. Like a little baby pig. It’s a weird snorting noise that she uses when she’s happy, when she’s really excited about something, and when she desperately wants whatever I’m eating. This particular habit of hers has earned her the nickname “Piglet” from me. At first it was just an amusing thing to call her while I held the cereal out of her reach. The problem is, because she consistently makes that noise when cereal is involved, and because I consistently called her “Piglet” whenever she did so, she has come to associate the word Piglet with cereal.

That means that whenever I call her Piglet because she makes the noise for another reason, she bolts to the kitchen and does her happy cereal dance. It’s gotten to be a problem, since sometimes she wakes me up snore-oinking in her sleep (probably dreaming about Special K).

I learned within a few days of getting her that quietly waiting for a short-snouted dog to roll over and stop snoring is something akin to waiting for it to snow on a 98 degree summer day. You wait a long time.

So usually I politely go “Piglet, roll over it’s 2am snoreface hllkrjelrkyoo.” Because really, at 2am I can’t be expected to string together a complete sentence with real words. Anyway, now she bolts upright, expecting cereal time. And being the persistent alarm clock that she is, she thinks it is her duty to pester me until I wake up and get breakfast so that she can beg. At 2am. Eventually she gives up and goes back to sleep. Then she starts snoring, and it all begins again.

That's Right, Both Santa AND the Easter Bunny Are After Me

2011-04-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

Someone knocked on my door at 11:00 last night. I didn’t answer because something about opening the door at night to someone I couldn’t see because it was dark out seemed stupid. Part of me felt bad, though, and spent the rest of the night thinking up people it could have been.

1. A neighbor wanting to borrow a cup of sugar. Haha, like that ever happens.

2. A legit scary person. Not super likely, but likely enough to keep me from opening the door.

3. A lost child. Sorry Timmy, you’ll have to navigate your own way home through Creeperville. Stop crying, it’ll build character.

4. Santa. I kidnapped Rudolph last year and every now and then Santa comes back trying to bargain him away from me. It’s not happening. His nose makes an excellent nightlight.

5. That sock I thought the dryer ate but is probably hanging out somewhere in the laundry room feeling abandoned and sad. It finally worked up some courage and hopped its way over here, only to be ignored. I feel like there's an analogy in this one.

6. The raccoon that lives in the dumpster eating the food I throw away was cheeky enough to come over to try to demand some non-stale bread.

7. The Easter Bunny, trying to reclaim his stolen ears. NEVER.

8. The potential I’m told I’m throwing away by majoring in English.

9. Given that they knocked 11 times at 11:00, so maybe it was some sort of secret underground unicorn society.

10. My flowers, politely reminding me that I haven’t watered them all week.

MollyWorld: It Only Exists In My Head But It's Real Like Unicorns

2011-04-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

Sequin Angst and Bunny Ears

2011-04-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

I got bunny rabbit ears!!! They’re blue and sequined with pink feathers and I love them and I’m never leaving the house without them on ever again even though I have to kind of hold them in place because they’re intended for small children so they don’t really stay on and they’re totally uncomfortable but I’m wearing them every day for the rest of ever and I’m going to end this sentence now so that I can take a breath. This is what happens when I get really excited about something. Like my super awesome BUNNY RABBIT EARS!!!

No but seriously, I’m wearing them everywhere. Class, shopping, walking with Tessa, you name it. I even took a picture of me wearing them and Picniked on a tacky flower frame and me shrieking “eeee!” because that’s what I’ve been doing since I got them.

Tessa is a little afraid of them. When I put them on she scampers up the stairs and hides in her bed. After half an hour or so she starts to whimper and chirp pathetically until I remove them and come up to show her that I’m back to being fully human, with no bunny rabbit superpowers. I think it’s a combination of her hatred for rabbits, fear of me when I’m hyper, and general sequin angst. Yes, my dog has sequin angst. I know. It’s a thing.

I also got a ton of candy, which explains part of my hyperness (hyperness: word number 495 that I’ve had to add to Spellcheck), and I got an Easter egg dying kit, because apparently I’m 4. Whatever, it’ll be fun. It even has a glitter glue pen. You can’t beat that. I haven’t dyed eggs in years, but I’m looking forward to doing so now that I’m old enough to actually do a good job, and now that I’m mature enough to know that the included stickers should go on my clothes, not on the eggs.

Frogs: Plushie and Otherwise

2011-04-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

I went to PetSmart today. It’s dangerous, because it’s the one place besides shoe stores that I have trouble keeping myself from spending way too much. Spoiling Tessa is a priority over shoes these days, though. I got her a plushie frog for now, and a giant plushie dog for her to get during exam week (well, it’s a week, but I only have 3 days of exams. Whatever, she deserves it.) because I won’t have as much time to play with her, plus a couple of random other toys and a rawhide bone since I’d like to give her something else to gnaw on besides my furniture. Not that I mind, I just tell guests that it’s hand-carved.

This is the first time I’ve gotten Tessa new toys, other than when I first adopted her. She never really gets bored of her old ones, so I didn’t see any reason to. Since she’s been destroying them lately, though, I decided it was time to get some new ones. She’s been pouncing on her frog toy since I gave it to her, usually skidding a few feet across the carpet on it. It looks like it could probably become some sort of dog Olympic sport: Frog Carpet Surfing.

The reason I decided she needed a frog toy (because honestly I usually try to color-coordinate her toys with my apartment, since dogs are colorblind anyway) is because there’s a frog living right in front of my apartment. It’s really cute, and I named it Melvin. Tessa wants to eat it. That’s her goal every time we go outside: eat Melvin. Melvin isn’t very good at hiding from her, either. He prefers to hop up and down in front of her, baiting her. The only reason she hasn’t gotten him already is because I pull her away. Part of me feels like it would be mean to let her eat Melvin, and part of me just doesn’t want to have to see that because it would be icky. Actually that’s my main reason at this point. Melvin is asking for it.

It's Like Choose Your Own Adventure, but Boring-er!

2011-04-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

Oops, I skipped a day! I made a list of excuses, it’s up to you to either figure out which one it was or go with the one you would most like to believe. More than one may have actually happened. It’s like a game, except there are no teams and no one gets picked last. Fellow uncoordinated people, rejoice. Whoa, tangent. Anyway, my possible reasons for skipping yesterday:

1. I spent the entire day dancing around my apartment singing Britney Spears songs and eventually passed out in an obnoxious pop music coma.

2. I was far too busy procrastinating my homework to get around to procrastinating blogging. And we all know procrastination is the first step to accomplishment. The journey of a thousand words begins with a single avoidance.

3. I was hanging out with my friend Jazzy McGee, a homeless drug-addicted clown. He’s great at miming.

4. I spent the day building a time machine so I could have a pet dinosaur.

5. Bears.

6. I saw a baby bunny over in the woods and spent the day trying to befriend it and slowly coaxing it towards me with a carrot bribe. It worked, and by the end of the day Clover, Tessa and I had a tea party. Tessa didn’t quite understand the concept and it ended up including a violently educational lesson on food chains.

7. I saw something shiny.

8. Mrs. Frizzle was the substitute teacher for my afternoon class and I didn’t get home until after midnight, by which point I had gotten more first-hand experience on digestive systems than Clover, the bunny from #6.

9. I didn’t feel like it, so I spent the day microwaving random objects instead. Did you know some things aren’t really as microwave-safe as they claim to be? They should really mention that 30-minute time limit under the part that says “microwave safe.”

10. I fell on the stairs and hurt my little finger and spent the rest of the day going door to door showing all of my neighbors my injury and asking for their condolences. Not for the injury, but because I was out of Hello Kitty bandaids and had to use a Finding Nemo one and it totally clashed with what I was wearing.

Stairs, Spiders and Sliding

2011-04-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

It’s official: I hate my stairs. They’re wooden and creaky and excellent at collecting dust in the corners. That used to not matter. I let the spiders have the corners, and I just used the middle. We had a plan. Then I got Tessa. She wasn’t used to stairs, and still isn’t comfortable with them, so she goes down the side, pressed up against the wall. That pushes the spider-filled dust bunnies out of the shadows and into the middle of the stairs, where I can actually see them and have to deal with them.

My stairs don’t have carpet. I’m glad I don’t have to attempt to vacuum my stairs. It seems like me plus a vacuum cleaner plus stairs would end up in a tangled mess. At the same time, at least if I fell down them they would be padded. Right now not only is it extremely painful to fall up them (yes, up them. I’m that talented), but the wood is slippery and so I don’t just fall, I slide/crash/skid to the bottom, gaining speed as I go. If they were carpeted, it would be much harder to careen down them at 75 mph on my face.

The other annoying thing about not having carpeted stairs is that my neighbors don’t either. My neighbors like to wear shoes inside. I’m more of a socks or slippers person. My point is, I have to listen to them clomping up and down their stairs a million times a day, and it gets old, especially when they stumble inside at 4 a.m. and it takes a few tries to get up the stairs. Actually that usually makes me giggle, so I’m okay with it.

I will say, the nice thing about my stairs is that they’re over my water heater. That means that even on chilly mornings, the stairs are warm and my feet don’t freeze when I tiptoe downstairs for breakfast. Also, intentionally sliding down the stairs on a blanket is incredibly fun, until I get to the bottom and hit the door.

In Which I Rant and Analyze My Microwave

2011-04-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

I registered for classes today. I’m a psychology minor, and all of the requirements for that will be finished after this summer. My basic studies classes should be done after this coming fall, which is nice, but means I’ll be taking 18-21 hours of English classes every semester for the rest of college. That scares me! Yes, I’m an English major, but the whole concept of analyzing literature seems like total nonsense to me. You could analyze pretty much anything, that doesn’t mean I should be able to major in it. Let’s look at a few examples of gross overanalyzation.

My microwave is white. White is associated with peace. Clearly, my microwave is a physical representation of a concept, and since it’s a machine, perhaps it’s a way of saying that peace can only be gained through machines. That could be interpreted a couple of ways. Does it mean that humans must behave and follow a rigid, machine-like system in order to have peace? Or maybe it means that humans can’t have peace, the only way for true peace is if machines populated the world, and there were no humans.

My microwave has a total of 24 buttons, in rows of 3. There are 24 hours in a day. Is this making a point about our 24/7 reliance on machinery to function? 24 is 12 x 2. Twelve is supposed to represent governmental perfection. Would a perfect government be made solely of machines? 24 buttons, in rows of 3. 24 x 3 is 72. Biblical allusion! In the Tower of Babel story, the language splits into 72 new languages, rendering communication impossible. Can we not communicate without machines? Is my microwave making a statement about our reliance on technology? All I did to come up with this was do a little math and Google search each number, and suddenly I can make a case for it.

My microwave has the word “memory” under the button for 0. Is this perhaps symbolizing our tendency as humans to have zero memory of things we don’t want to think about? Does it signify our tendencies to repress memories of things that make us uncomfortable? Let’s go crazy and draw a line from this to the famous George Santayana quote, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Are we doomed to repeat our history? Will it be our downfall? Will we then be taken over by machines? Will it be our own fault for not intentionally forgetting the ugly truths of our world?

I could go on for pages. In fact, I could probably write an entire book analyzing my microwave. That doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile, or that my microwave actually represents anything other than a way to heat food. I’m not entirely sure why I’m an English major, other than that I’m good at it and I like to read. The analyzation part is something I can do without thinking anymore.

Oh, he wore a red shirt? Significant!! Communist tones! It signifies blood! Or maybe the entire story contains hidden messages about fire! Or anger! Or apples! Hey, apples are a red fruit, and fruit represents sensuality! And red represents lust! Clearly his shirt is actually a biblical allusion to Eve in the Garden of Eden! Which means it’s actually about women! Or the ultimate folly of all mankind! I don’t really know, but I can write a paper about it! There was a dog on page 752? It's obvious that the story is making a point about the animalistic tendencies of human beings! Someone is mean to a woman on one page of a 900-page book and it doesn't really pertain to the plot? Hello, the hidden theme must be sexism!

Okay, I’m ranting, I’ll stop. But do you get my point? Let’s chill with the analyzation. I’m guessing most authors don’t sit around trying to jam as much symbolism as possible into their books. Except maybe Nathaniel Hawthorne, but whatever. Also microwave analysis should be a new major.

10 Ways to Safely Wear a Skirt on a Windy Day

2011-04-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

I love wearing dresses. It’s warm today, and after being stuck in jeans all winter, it’s a nice change. The thing is, wearing a dress give me a whole new set of things to worry about. Why? Because the wind hates me. I have a few options for getting to campus without accidentally putting on a show.

1. Sprint to campus. Awkward to do in a dress, but fairly effective. You know, because I have superpowers and can outrun the wind. I can also turn cardboard into glitter, but that’s not relevant here.

2. Awkwardly hop to campus holding skirt so that it can’t fly up. This is what I see most people doing, and I have to say, it looks silly. Not that that’s ever stopped me from doing anything before.

3. Wear shorts or leggings under dress. Uncomfortable, especially if it’s hot out. Creates weird lines. Inevitably the only clean leggings are in a ridiculous color that will clash with whatever dress I’m wearing.

4. Have cute woodland creatures follow me around holding my skirt down. The most Disney princess-esque way to travel. Pros: animals are cute. Cons: animals slow me down, make messes on sidewalk, and are scared of Tessa.

5. Tape skirt down. This is a terrible idea.

6. Ride a unicorn to campus instead of walking. Sidesaddle, of course. Anything else would be unladylike. It's important to follow unicorn riding protocol in order to maintain standards.

7. Attach weights to hem of dress. Also good if I want my dress to be longer. Stretches dress out permanently and looks strange, but highly effective.

8. Tie string from hem to sandals. Looks ridiculous, makes walking a bit weird, puppet effect. Need I say more?

9. Bring a mirror. Use it to reflect sunlight into they eyes of anyone nearby, temporarily blinding them. Problem solved.

10. Tunnel underground to campus. Takes longer, but might be worth it. Can probably enlist help of aforementioned cute woodland creatures to help with digging.

I Want a Golden Ticket!

2011-04-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

One of my all-time favorite movies is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. As in the old version with Gene Wilder. The Johnny Depp version scares me. There’s just something charming about the original- I don’t know if it’s the now-outdated special effects, or Gene Wilder himself, or how much better the songs were… but something about it makes me ridiculously happy.

The bratty kids in the old version were less obnoxious, too. Sure, they were annoying, but not in an I-can’t-stand-to-watch-this-brat way like in the remake. Especially Charlie. I know he’s supposed to be likeable, but in the new version… I didn’t. Also the oompa loompas were cuter. In the new version they’re scary! Granted, more things scare me than the average person, but still. Totally creepy.

I think part of the reason that I’m so picky about it is because the Roald Dahl book it was based on was one of my favorites as a kid, before I had ever seen the movie. That tends to make me more demanding about the movie version. It’s like if you’ve read the Harry Potter books, you’re probably picky about how well the movies follow the books. Either way, the Roald Dahl book is a classic. Actually so are all of his books. Would it be weird for me to go to the library and check out a bunch of children’s books? I hope not, because I’m totally going to now.

Puddle Jumping and Tessa's Inner Monologue

2011-04-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

It’s a beautiful cloudy Saturday. Admittedly, I’d much rather it was sunny, but at least I’ll be able to go puddle jumping if the clouds ever get their act together and rain. Clouds, that’s not a suggestion, it’s a demand. On Saturday mornings a magical quiet descends over my apartment complex. Most of my neighbors are either sleeping in or hungover and therefore avoiding making loud noises, so it’s nice and calm. Except for Tessa.

She knows my schedule, and knows that when the weekend rolls around I won’t have to abandon her to go to class. She woke me up at the crack of dawn today, running from one side of my bed to the other and pouncing on me before turning around and scampering to the other side, chirping the entire time. When I finally dragged myself out of bed, she pranced around proudly like, “Hey, you’re up, go me! Can I have some food now? Can we go walk? Whoa, I have a tail? When did that get there? I’m going to chase my tail and run into things until you feed me. Walk faster, please. Hey, maybe if I trip you you’ll go down the stairs faster! Aw, you fell. Let me help you by sitting on you and licking your face.”

I gave her a bowl of food, which she finished in less than 30 seconds, and took her outside. She danced and barked and generally made everyone around aware that she was super excited about potty time. After apologizing profusely for her noise to the one hungover neighbor who had ventured outside clutching his head to throw away all of the previous night’s empty beer bottles, I took Tessa back inside to finish destroying my furniture and tear apart a few more toys. Our only plan for the rest of the day is doing a rain dance in the parking lot if it hasn’t rained by 2:00. I love Saturdays.

Unicorns: They're Real

2011-04-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

Hello My Name is Molly and I'm Addicted to the Internet

2011-04-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

I went for 14 hours straight without using a computer. That’s a record for me. Granted for 5 hours of that I was asleep, but still. That’s 9 waking hours not online. Yes, I realize I have a problem, and no I don’t want to fix it. I feel uncomfortable if I have to go more than a couple of hours without checking my email. There are days when I have to bribe myself with checking Facebook in between sets just to get through my workout. And okay, I’m addicted to DailyBooth. And checking blog stats. In fact that tab stays open all day. But yesterday I made it 14 hours without my computer.

To clarify, I mean without my computer on. There may have been some hugging and apologizing. And some involuntary air-typing. I went through internet withdrawal, and was forced to consume even more caffeine than usual to compensate. By the end of yesterday my hands were shaking, the combined effect of not having typed in hours and a major coffee overdose.

The reason for all of this was an anthropology test. I’m trying to pull my grades up since it’s the end of the semester, and I had been making grades well below my usual average. So I actually had to study. Ugh. At 10:30 last night, I made myself shut down my computer and read the textbook and make endless flashcards detailing the postcranial differences between Australopithecus afarensis and Homo habilis. Yawn. After 5 hours of sleep and dreams about Twitter and YouTube, I was woken up by Tessa, who had decided to play leapfrog with my hamper and somehow gotten herself stuck. Again.

While normally I use breakfast time to catch up on YouTube videos, today I had to study. This led to the realization that my cereal, while healthy, is gross, and I hadn’t realized it because I was always distracted. Anyway, I learned the material and somehow knew enough by test time that for once I could actually think about each question, rather than just guessing or seeing how many words I could spell out with my multiple choice answers. By the time I got home it was 12:30, and I had made it for 14 hours straight. I’m going to spend the rest of the week attempting to stay within five feet of my computer at all times. The "real world" is cool and all, but the Neopets world has fairies and unicorns, and you can't drag me away from that.

If “Exercise-y” Isn’t a Word, It Should Be

2011-04-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

I had a life-changing realization today. One of those moments that changes a person forever. The kind of thing that shakes up your perception of reality, and makes you question everything you thought you knew. That’s right, today I finally realized that no matter what I wear, how I look, or whether or not I bother wearing make up… it’s impossible not to look like a total dork while wearing my giant backpack.

There are a lot of girls on campus who somehow get by carrying a tiny purse that only contains lip gloss and their phone. I’m not one of those. I’m the girl with the backpack containing a Norton Anthology and two hardcover textbooks, plus notebooks and enough pens to write out the entire Harry Potters series eight times. I’m the one who probably has gum or a Band-Aid if you ask. Why? Because my backpack is big enough that I could probably fit my entire shoe collection in it, so I’m always prepared.

Let’s look at this mathematically. The circumference of my waist is about 26 inches. The circumference of my backpack today is 43 inches, and I’m carrying two books less than usual. Basically, when I’m walking around campus, I have a 26:43 me:backpack ratio. It looks stupid, and my shadow looks like a weird upright turtle. And not in a cool Donatello kind of way.

The other problem is the weight of my backpack. It’s full of textbooks, and that makes things difficult. I have to lean forward when going up stairs so as not to fall over backwards, and on windy days I get blown completely off the sidewalk. Not just so that I veer off to the side, we’re talking blown into the hedges and mocked by passersby with lighter loads. While I suppose carrying so much weight makes my walks to and from campus more exercise-y, being what I like to call “textbook sore” at the end of every class day isn’t fun.

Even Tessa thinks I look dorky. The minute I grab my backpack she hides in her crate. Sure, it might be because of that time I was petting her while wearing it and sort of tipped over involuntarily, but I’m pretty sure it’s also because she has good fashion sense. What else could explain the fact her doggie jackets are always tasteful, or that if she’s wearing a bandana around her neck it’s an appropriate color for the season? That’s right, my dog is stylish and shuns my lameness. Now if she’d just sit still long enough for me to paint her nails…

Let’s See If I Can Write This Without Getting Teary-Eyed: Tessa’s 3-Month Adoptaversary

2011-04-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

Tessa's Shelter ID Picture

I’d been planning to get a dog since last summer. I checked all the local shelter websites, read personality descriptions and saw pictures of literally hundreds of cute and perfectly adoptable dogs. And then about a week before I was planning to go choose a dog, I saw Tessa’s picture. That was it- I knew she was the perfect dog for me. I went to the shelter and played with a few other dogs, before getting a chance to meet Tessa. She was dirty and scared and healing from an embedded collar, but seemed like with enough care she could recover and be a “normal” dog. Three months ago today, I got to bring Tessa home from the shelter. It seems weird to me that it was that recent- it’s like she’s been here forever. I can’t imagine not having her around now, or not being forced to roll out of bed by her morning antics. I was sitting in class this morning drawing unicorns and ignoring the professor, and I began to think of all the things Tessa has accomplished since January 5^th.

The very first thing she learned was how to go up and down stairs. It took a couple of weeks of me carrying her 40-pound self up and down the stairs 5 times a day to go outside, but eventually she would go halfway, then all the way, and now she just has trouble with navigating the transition from the bottom step to the ground. Usually she just flings herself into space and lands more or less upright. Sometimes she hits the door, but I do that sometimes too, so it’s okay. Just to be careful though, I moved all the furniture with sharp corners farther from where she lands.

Tessa also had to learn how to play with toys. At first she didn’t understand, and just thought that when piled up they made a nice nest to nap in, but within the first few weeks she started sniffing and pawing at them, before one day it finally clicked that she could play with them. Yesterday she so thoroughly destroyed her octopus that an entire section of its head is just gone. Yes, I’ll have to get her a new plushie to play with, but I couldn’t help but smile proudly when I saw her carefully holding its head between her paws and pulling out all of the stuffing, which she later scattered across the carpet.

Things that used to scare Tessa #243: my guitar

Tessa had to be housetrained. Not just about going potty outside, but she also had to learn what she could and could not get into, not to climb up on the futon, that the ac unit couldn’t hurt her (we’re still working on that), and had to be generally acquainted with normal household items that were foreign and threatening to her. Words cannot describe my excitement the day she stopped flinching every time she had to walk past a lamp.

I think her biggest accomplishment (answer to the title of today’s post: nope) was learning to trust people. The day I picked her up, she had to be dragged from the kennel area out to the pick-up room. She was trembling with fear, and shied away from me when I tried to pet her. The first few weeks I had to avoid sudden movements and approach her slowly, even if I was holding food. Her tail seemed to be permanently tucked between her legs, and she held her head down with dejection and fear.

Best Friends

Three months later, I’m happy to say she’s like an entirely different dog. About a month after I’d adopted her, she came over to me of her own free will for the first time. I was surprised, since she’d never voluntarily sought out attention, but as she nudged my leg and gently wagged her tail, I could see that she was going to finally be okay. She’s only moved forward since then, and now I come home to a dancing dog, tail wildly wagging and head held high. Sure, she’s still shy around new people, and she will probably never be super outgoing, but she’s gained confidence, trust, and, cheesy as the shelter saying is, she finally has her “forever home.”

The 5 Types of Guy Who Honk at Me

2011-04-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

1. The old, white-haired creepy guy. Usually in a nice car, usually not looking at the road, frequently not able to drive in a straight line even if he was looking at the road. Hazard to everyone around him, whether distracted or not. Honks at every girl and longhaired guy that passes by because his vision just isn’t what it used to be.

2. Young creepy guys. Take extreme delight in watching me startle and jump out of my skin when they honk. Travel in packs. Never just do a couple of light taps on the horn, always feel the need to alert everyone in a five-mile radius that there’s a girl outside, by blowing the horn as loud as possible. Convinced that honking at every girl they see makes them look manly. It doesn’t.

3. People I know trying to say hi. The problem is, the majority of the time I get honked at it’s someone trying to be a creeper, so I’ve stopped looking to see who it is when someone honks at me. If I’m on the sidewalk I’m going to assume I’m not in your way, and that you’re trying to get my attention for one reason or another. If I’m crossing a road and get honked at, I run. Or walk faster, because really, nothing says, “you’re going to stop now” like me walking in front of your car. Sure I’ve almost been run over a couple of times, but playing chicken with several-ton vehicles gives me a rush.

4. The jeep full of drunk guys at 2 in the afternoon. Most commonly found on Fridays. Probably talk a lot about going to the gym. Probably incapable of talking about anything else. Probably failing all of their classes. Be careful, because while they’re still cognizant enough to notice girls and honk, they’re not careful about where they fling their empty beer bottles. Be ready to duck if you see them coming.

5. The guy on the moped. Just smile and keep walking, but try not to laugh because if he sees you mock him it’ll make him mad, and you’ll be laughing so hard as he angrily tries to run you down on his moped that you won’t be able to get out of the way in time. Granted, it’s a moped and the worst that’s going to happen is a slight bump and maybe a chipped nail, but still. Be nice to moped guy. His brother, the guy with the Segway, is legit crazy and you don’t want him mad at you.

I Should Not Be Allowed Out in Public

2011-04-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

I got to go grocery shopping yesterday! Yeah! It was really exciting because I hadn’t been in a couple of weeks and was basically out of food. My laziness forces a weird kind of yoyo diet, which is both useful and annoying. I mean gosh, if I wanted to intentionally starve myself every other week, I’d do it. I totally have willpower. Those skittles ate themselves, gosh darn it.

So there I was, joyriding the cart up and down the cereal aisle grabbing boxes indiscriminately, and smiling at anyone who gave me a weird look. I careened around the corner to the coffee aisle, narrowly avoiding an old woman in one of those motorized shopping cart things and grabbed my usual truckload of coffee before striking a ballerina pose and coasting over to produce.

After surviving the winter with just apples and pears (ew, winter fruit), I was ecstatic to see nectarines and peaches and strawberries available. I gracefully dismounted from my cart, before losing my balance and falling into the nearest employee, who was kind enough to help me catch my balance and then agreed to open those obnoxiously stuck-together produce bags for me. I skipped around from bin to bin, harvesting my produce like a bee and gave an enthusiastic puppet show with some of the vegetables I had selected to a crying toddler who promptly quieted down, probably in awe of my bell pepper puppet skills.

As I left produce I realized I had forgotten to pick up some paper towels. I headed back towards the cleaning section, doing a couple of unintentional shopping cart wheelies along the way. I decided to use the paper towels to build a pyramid in my cart, and then proceeded to arrange everything else around it such that I had a whole city built. That got me some weird looks, until I explained what I was doing. It’s weird, no matter how random I act, if I smile and calmly explain it to people they usually just accept it. Like, oh, she’s building a grocery town in her cart, but if she can smile and talk about it like a normal person that must be okay. People are weird; it’s not just me. Anyway, that was my grocery-shopping excursion, and I should never be allowed out in the real world again without close supervision and possibly a straitjacket.

Mornings Rock, and Apparently My Dog is a Snack-Size Octopus Murderer

2011-04-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

I’m a morning person- you know, one of those weird people who roll out of bed smiling. Granted, I can’t form complete sentences or walk very effectively until I’ve had coffee, but I still wake up super-happy. Weekend mornings are my favorites, because I have time to relax and seek medical attention for any injuries that resulted in me going down the stairs before Happy Coffee Time. On days when I have class, I have to hobble my way to campus, broken limbs and all.

After breakfast I walk Tessa, carefully avoiding the places where people’s stomachs reacted violently to the amount of alcohol consumed the night before. There are a lot of other dogs at my apartment complex, and we usually run into (sometimes literally) a few of them on weekends. Tessa is scared of a lot of them… except for an enormous Great Dane that is convinced she’d make a tasty snack. If he’s out, I have to drag her away, while she growls viciously. The Great Dane never gets mad at her; he just gives her a big doggie grin and drools. Hungrily.

Saturday mornings then progress to playing happy music and dancing with Tessa in the living room for a while, before checking email and posting a blog. That’s right, I’m blogging about blogging. That probably somehow messes with the space-time continuum, but the universe is going to have to get over itself and deal. Just because you’re bigger than everyone else doesn’t mean you get to be a bully. Great Dane, please take note.

Saturday is also the day I catch up on repairing Tessa’s toys. This week she managed to rip her octopus’ head open, then spread stuffing all over the floor. I re-stuffed it and sewed it back together (I’m officially an octopus brain surgeon! Yeah!!!), but later found its squeaker hidden under a table. Its head has a rattle in it, so I didn’t bother redoing it to include the squeaker. This is in part because I’m lazy, and in part because Tessa has a ridiculously long attention span when it comes to squeaky toys, and will chew on the squeaky part for up to an hour at a time.

Close-up of cranial repairs

The victim recovers post-op

Mugshot of suspected attacker- note look of guilt

My Dog Ate My Laundry

2011-04-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

Friday is laundry day. This means a couple of things. One, it means I’m running out of normal-looking clothing options to the point that not even “creative” is a strong enough word to describe my outfit. Two, it means dealing with Tessa, who has a whole host of issues with me doing laundry.

It starts out when I leave my apartment carrying a 20-pound hamper. She hates it when I leave her alone, and tries to follow me out the door. There is no graceful way to get out the door with the giant hamper and keep her from slipping out. Basically I have to hop out on one foot so that I can use my other leg to block her. Unfortunately there is a 5-inch drop between my doorframe and the sidewalk. I try to think of it as a fun extra challenge, but in reality it’s the bane of my existence.

When I come back with the hamper empty, Tessa gets freaked out. When it’s full of clothes and dangerously heavy it doesn’t faze her, but apparently empty baskets are scary. I have to walk back in really slowly and inform her that it’s just a basket and can’t hurt her in a gentle voice. Otherwise she spazzes and runs up the stairs to hide. Hiding upstairs is fine, except she still hasn’t quite mastered the stairs yet and tends to fall if she runs up them. Luckily if this happens I have a hamper to catch her in (giggle/smirk).

I don’t use the dryers here for anything other than sheets and towels, because they only have two settings, which are “shrink everything” and “make everything doll-sized.” Since I would prefer that my clothes continue to fit, I have to carry them back to my apartment and hang them up on my laundry rack. And sometimes on the stair railing, if I’m out of space. College has taught me a lot about improvisation. Anyway, Tessa is convinced that hanging clothes are there for her to play with and tug at. She steals socks, bites holes in the bottoms of my jeans, and once played keep-away with my favorite t-shirt for half an hour. My neighbors had their afternoons interrupted to the sound of me screaming, “Give me back my shirt, you jerk!” which probably sounded strange out of context, but okay.

For Once It’s Not My Fault She’s Traumatized!

2011-03-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

I came home to find that the apartment next to mine was being vacuumed professionally. Not with a cute lil’ vacuum cleaner, but with giant hoses attached to an enormous truck that was parked directly in front of my door. It was incredibly loud, and as we’ve already established, Tessa is terrified of even my little (albeit disconcertingly loud) vacuum. This thing was pretty much a moving van-sized industrial cleaner. It meant business.

It was so loud that it made everything in my apartment rattle, which was actually okay because it drowned out my neighbor’s music. I was kind of worried about the sea of glass containers on my kitchen shelves, because if they fell I’d have to clean it up. Or just not use that part of the kitchen anymore. Actually that sounds like the best option. It’s kind of like going shopping instead of doing laundry, except instead of losing closet space you lose floor space.

Tessa finally decided to shelter herself under my kitchen table. That would have been fine, except she chose to sit on my feet to keep me from moving and abandoning her to certain death by the vacuum truck. Never mind the fact that it was in the parking lot, and I had the windows and doors locked, and blinds closed to help keep her safe/ unable to see what it was and freak out even more. Pick-up trucks alarm her, so I don’t think this would have gone over well. I tried moving over ever so slightly to get something to eat, but she began high pitched yelping that could probably be heard in the neighboring building, even over the roar of the vacuum truck.

Eventually the truck left, and Tessa crept out after making sure the coast was clear. She’s been following me around like a shadow ever since, and despite a cuddle session and my constant stream of reassurance and praise, has been shaking like a leaf since it left. Also she has really big eyes (my dad nicknamed her “Buggy”), and they look like they’re about to pop out of her head. Part of me feels bad for her and part of me wants to take pictures. The only thing stopping me is her fear of flash cameras.

Incoherent Babbling on the Subject of Sticky Notes

2011-03-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

I need a new reminder system. Right now I leave myself sticky notes on the floor so that when I come in I’ll see them. Most days I end up with a pretty rainbow-colored sticky note path from the front door all the way through the kitchen. Not only is this a waste of paper, but there are several problems with relying on the sticky note method.

First off, my dog eats sticky notes. She thinks they’re delicious, especially the pink ones, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of. Not only that but if I scold her for eating a piece of paper covered in probably toxic Sharpie ink, she gets sad and hides and throws up sticky note confetti.

Another reason is that it’s really awkward when maintenance needs to come fix something and there’s a trail of notes on the floor ranging from “buy milk” to “brush dog’s teeth” to “kill loud birds outside window.” It raises eyebrows and questions. (Side note: I hate those birds so much. Five in the morning is not an appropriate time to test your maximum volume. Final warning.)

Also, it should go without saying, but sticky notes are sticky. By that I mean last week I was sitting in class and someone pointed out that I had one stuck to me. I had a talk with the others when I got home about the dangers of hitchhiking but I’m sure it’ll happen again.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that I'm convinced that as long as I’ve written it down, it’s taken care of. Examples of why this is bad: feed fish, acknowledge dog’s existence, study, breathe, figure out where smoke is coming from, and call 911. If I’ve written it down, it’s taken care of and therefore I don’t have to do it.

Fun Times in the Parking Lot

2011-03-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

I love the parking lot. It’s the best place to sneak attack my unsuspecting neighbors with my weirdness. Take last night, for example. I needed to take out the trash, but felt the need to skip my way over to the dumpster, garbage in hand. Apparently most of my neighbors prefer to walk, which prompted weird looks and questions from some random guy I soared past on my way over. I think he was just annoyed that I beat him to the dumpster which meant that my trash got a better spot.

I’ve gotten to know a few of my neighbors, and they tend to accept my antics as a normal, if eccentric, part of who I am. A lot of them know to just smile, say hello, and keep walking. This goes for days when I decide to blow bubbles, go puddle jumping in the parking lot, form a conga line with Tessa, and that day when I spent the afternoon making a beautiful sidewalk chalk mural of a unicorn in one of the parking spaces. Its head was disproportionately big, but people were kind enough not to park there until it had washed away.

Another fun parking lot activity is teaching my neighbors to be more careful drivers by playing tag with them. I wait until I hear someone coming, and then I go stand in the path of their car waving and yelling “Surprise, reaction time test!” before tagging their car, declaring them it, and running away to avoid a tag-back. The laundry center is a base, but it only counts if you’re sitting on one of the washing machines, because otherwise you’d be getting in peoples way. If you’re in the parking lot you can only run on the paint stripes that mark the spaces. It’s kind of like line tag, except if a car tags you then you die.

My Dog is a Fruit Bat

2011-03-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

It’s one of those rainy, half-awake days. It’s also allergy season. And I’m exhausted from staying up late for no reason. My point is, for a variety of reasons, I’m completely out of it. My morning started off with me stumbling down the stairs into my front door. I have a doorknob-shaped bruise forming on my stomach, but I’m sure I can make up a nice kid-friendly domestic violence cover story.

She even looks like a fruit bat when her ears do this.

I hadn’t had coffee yet, and Tessa kept bugging me for food because she’s under the impression that her kibble is more important than my caffeine addiction. Anyway, I was distracted and managed to pour orange juice onto my cereal instead of milk. Vitamin C is cool and all, but it doesn’t play nicely with Special K. Apparently it hasn’t had any sensitivity training.

Tessa likes to stay close by, so while I was eating she brought over a few toys so she could sit on the floor next to me and gnaw on what little remains of plushie Santa. That, and she wanted to be there to beg for pieces of banana because she’s weird and almost never begs for anything other than fruit. Turkey? Meh. Bread? She’ll beg a little bit, if she's bored. Kiwi? Brace yourself for whimpering, puppy-face making, and insistent nudging.

I somehow managed to get dressed and feed and walk Tessa, all without being awake enough to realize it was about 40 degrees out and raining, before wandering my way to class. I came home to a spazzy hyperactive rainy-day dog. Something about knowing she’s going to be stuck inside all day makes Tessa go crazy, even before she’s had time to amass any significant level of pent-up energy. I let her out of her crate only to be tackle-hugged by all 40 pounds of her, at about 80 mph. I’m pretty sure there’s a dent in the floor now. I should train Tessa to sit in it, it would make her less easy to trip over.

Chirping, Humming, and Ululation: Noises My Dog Makes

2011-03-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

I realized today that my dog makes every noise but dog noises. I’ve heard her bark maybe twice since I adopted her. This doesn’t mean she’s quiet. She’s a boxer/hound mix, and both of those breeds are notorious for making odd noises. Tessa is no exception.

Many mornings she comes and sits by my bed to wake me up. This morning I was already half-awake, and was able to observe the process. First she sits and stares at me without blinking for 20 minutes. Then she lets out a tiny, delicate sigh. She repeats this a few times at regular intervals for about five minutes, before advancing to huffing noises. Eventually she progresses to quiet whimpers, which turn into little chirps. Yes, like a bird. In fact, for the first week that I had her, I was convinced that my neighbors had gotten a parakeet or something, because I kept hearing it every morning. She lowers her chirp into a deep growl. Not a mean growl, her “I want attention and love now, kthx” growl. She extends the growl and begins to ululate (big word!), until it progresses into something akin to yodeling. This is usually what wakes me up, and the minute I sit up to pet her, she goes back to chirping cutely.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I adopted Tessa almost three months ago. She was found as a stray with an embedded collar, and had been abused prior to being found. She used to flinch whenever she was petted, and had to be taught how to do normal things, like play with toys, go up stairs, what a belly rub was, basic house manners, etc. Anyway, she had a fear of squeaky toys that she only recently got over.

The exception to this is her little rubber sheep, which squeaks much more easily than the other toys. It freaks her out. It’s small and falls to the bottom of her toy bin, and every few nights she’ll pull everything else out, poke it with her nose so that it lets out a loud squeak and bolt away from it, yelping and making her weird little humming noise. Somewhere in here I start laughing so hard I can't breathe, and she hums her way over to make sure I’m okay, before going over to poke the sheep toy again. After doing this a few times, she starts making a high-pitched yipping noise and comes over to me for comfort, usually by attempting to burrow into my lap.

Then there’s her potty dance song. The minute she sees me grab the leash to take her outside, she starts trotting up and down in place, and alternately squeaking and grunting. As near as I can tell, it’s her way of expressing her utter joy and being taken outside to relieve herself. She doesn’t stop with the song and dance until she’s jigged her way over to the woods and squatted. My neighbors find this quite amusing.

Communicating with Sea Creatures and Making Small Children Cry: An Average Day

2011-03-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

It’s Saturday, I’ve had way too much coffee, and I’m hyper. Let’s blog. Today I’d like to talk about a few of my favorite things to do at the beach.

1. Laugh at tourists. They’re pretty easy to spot, because they carry all of their possessions with them, not unlike turtles (Turtles are materialistic jerks, right?). If you see a family toting around 16 beach towels, magazines, books they will inevitably not bother reading, enough sunscreen for 40 people, and Target’s entire selection of beach toys, you know they’re tourists. Also recognizable when driving by the fact that their windows are blocked by the immense amount of stuff jammed into their minivans. If you look carefully you can see children wedged in, too. They exclaim, “It looks so beachy!” at every store, tree, and mailbox they see. No, I’m not sure how a mailbox could be described as “beachy” either.

2. Befriend narwhals. Not unlike Dory, I can communicate with beautiful sea creatures. All we have at the beaches near me are the invisible kind of narwhal, but that doesn’t stop me from sitting by the water and chattering at them in narwhal-speak, and miming when I can’t remember how to say the word I need. Sometimes I have to explain what I’m doing to passing tourists. They tend to edge away and pull their kids out of earshot, probably because they’re jealous that I can communicate with the sea unicorns and they can’t.

3. Locate someone who has fallen asleep in the sun and is beginning to get badly sunburned, and bury them in sand to protect them from UV rays while they sleep. It’s important to do so gently, or they’ll be mad you woke them up. If I’m feeling creative, I’ll place the sand in such a way that the sun burns a pattern into their skin. I can’t tell you how many people have thanked me for giving them zebra stripes. Polka dots are also a big hit.

4. Sweep. Sand is messy, and I like to be a good citizen and help clean it up. I always bring a broom with me to the beach so that I can neaten it. Some day I’ll clear the whole beach, and everyone will be SO grateful! I don’t understand why we keep replenishing the sand on the beaches… it would be so much tidier if we used Astroturf or something. Think how much better those romantic beach walks would be if you were walking on synthetic turf with rubber infill and antimicrobial protection instead!

5. Find a kid building a sandcastle and build a better one next to it. Then give the kid a lecture about how they will never be as good at building sandcastles as me. Then explain that “sandcastles” is actually an analogy for life, and inform them that they will spend their life unloved and likely homeless. Give the parents a big smile, and walk away, kicking over the kid’s sandcastle as I go. Just kidding, most 3 year olds can build better sandcastles than me.

Fairy Houses and Summer Camp

2011-03-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

After a wonderful morning of pancakes and Gilmore Girls (Best combination ever? Maybe.), I got caught up in a whirlwind of productivity (and by that I mean the production of dreams) and completely lost track of time. Since I was doing big important things this morning (catching up on sleep in an unintentional pollen-induced stupor), I’ll have to post now.

Summer is coming, which makes me super happy because it’s my favorite season and it means that I can both venture outside without needing a parka and get eaten alive by mosquitoes every day for three whole months. I know, pretty exciting, right? Anyway, I saw a flyer for some summer camp thing nearby, and it got me thinking about how much fun I used to have at camp.

One of the first summer camps I attended was on a farm. I gained lots of fond memories there, from getting attacked by guinea hens (they’re like chickens but evil and fearless), to falling off a horse, to having the same horse stomp on my foot and break three of my toes, to swimming mandatorily in a pond with snapping turtles. Ah, childhood memories. I’m not entirely sure why I ended up being so horse-obsessed, given the amount of injuries I received from them, but okay.

At lunch, we weren’t allowed to throw out the food we didn’t eat- we were supposed to throw it in the pen with the chickens and goats and mean, biting pigs. I distinctly remember that since a lot of us (understandably) didn’t want to eat the way over processed chicken in our Lunchables, we threw it into the barnyard pen. The pigs and goats wouldn’t touch it, but guess who loved it? That’s right, the chickens. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “you are what you eat.”

I also went to a camp run by college students. One of our counselor’s favorite games was to ride his bike across campus really fast, and force us to run after him or get in trouble. It was about 95 degrees out, and I remember some old guy coming over and yelling at him about child abuse just as the kid next to me passed out from heat exhaustion. He allowed us to sit in the shade and play with rocks, which we thought was pretty neat compared to the educational activities we’d been forced to participate in that morning, so we forgave him.

My favorite counselor ever was a (probably insane) hippie named Lulu. She let us do arts and crafts all morning, and took us hiking in the afternoons. There was a drought that summer and a nearby river had mostly dried up, so she let us go play in the riverbed and showed us how to build fairy houses. Hikers going by came over a hill to the sight of 24 six to eight year olds sitting in the riverbed and building a super-deluxe fairy mansion/estate, complete with fairy tennis courts, a pool filled from a water bottle, and an elaborately woven pine needle swing set. I think basically we designed the fairies everything Barbie had, but made it out of sticks and rocks and dirt. I miss being a kid.

Monopoly is So Last Year- My New Favorite Game is Traumatize the Dog

2011-03-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

My dog gets very upset about getting her paws wet and will either refuse to walk at all or will take twice as long because she has to find the least wet area of the sidewalk to place each paw. Because of this, on days when it’s too rainy to walk Tessa I have to improvise. That way she can get some exercise and not keep me up all night bouncing off the walls like a hyperactive six year old whose parents forgot to provide the daily dose of Ritalin.

Where was I? Oh, improvising doggy exercise. The easiest way to do this is to startle her. First she leaps about a foot in the air, and then she bolts up the stairs for safety. Then I go to the kitchen to get out some food. This makes her run back down the stairs to come beg. I repeat this for an afternoon and end up with an exhausted (if jumpy) dog. The other way to do this is to run up and down the stairs with her, but she has a funny habit of suddenly dodging in front of me, and I’ve heard that broken limbs hurt.

I try to sneak in exercise for her in other ways on days like this, too. I’ll pull a Hansel and Gretel and leave her a trail of kibble to follow (up the stairs, of course), rather than letting her stand in one spot to eat, or I’ll call her over and then throw treats to the far side of my apartment for her to go get. Eventually she gets annoyed at having to come back over only to be sent across the apartment again and refuses to do anything but pout.

Vacuuming is a great way to exercise her. She’s terrified of it, and sprints all around the apartment as I go, trying to escape from it. She goes over to the windows and scrabbles at them, barking at anyone who goes by for help. This is despite the fact that before I vacuum I move her crate as far away from the carpet as possible, and put in her favorite toy (the skinned bear mentioned in a previous post) so that she has her little “safe place” to go to. She starts out there, and seems pretty calm, but after a few minutes she starts to spazz more and more before it becomes a full-blown freak-out.

The point of the above rambling is that I think I’ll have to buy her some doggy rain boots. They look ridiculous but would allow me to preserve her (and my) sanity and go for walks on rainy days. Also I bet I can find some matching human ones, and how obnoxiously cute would that be?

Important Factors When Choosing a College: Is the Mascot Cute?

2011-03-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you, but for me it was quite difficult to choose a college. They all tell you the same things, they all offer basically the same courses and majors, and unless you know what specific field you want to go into, the academics are the least important aspect of your decision making, simply because as long as you go to a decent quality school, you’ll be fine.

Seriously, go on a few college tours- they’re all the same. Brick building, big important statue, look we have a student union and a new gym, we’re going to tell you we can’t show you the dorms for privacy reasons but really they’re unlivable and we’d prefer that you not see that, the food here is so hardy that we used it to construct the library, etc. Normal tour stuff. Anyway, I thought I’d list three important factors in choosing a college or university that often get overlooked.

1. School colors. Look up the colors for each university you’re considering attending. You want it to be a color you look good in. Don’t go to a school whose color is green if you don’t look good in it. Before you ask, no, there aren’t any colleges whose color is pink. I researched it for hours, no luck. Once you’ve been accepted, talk to school administrators about changing the school colors seasonally, taking into consideration current fashionable colors. Your Ivy League friends will totally be jealous of your school’s trendiness.

2. Location. It’s tempting to go far from home, but if you stay within a few hours away, you’re more likely to have your parents drop by for the weekend sometimes. This seems like a bad thing, but they’ll buy you groceries and a meal. Once you’re in college you will understand why this is a huge deal. Survive on ramen for a month straight and you’ll be begging them to visit. On the other hand, if you go far away from home the care packages will be infinitely better because your parents will feel slightly guilty at their inability to be there for you. These are the last few years your parents still feel any commitment to you, so abuse that all you can. After you graduate they’ll dump you out on a street corner to fend for yourself. Other location factors to consider include average temperature, proximity to the beach and number of shoe stores within a 15-mile radius.

3. Average class size. Some people like to talk about how awesome small classes and individualized attention are. That’s ridiculous. The point is to take giant lecture classes so that you can text or waste time online instead of listening to the professor. Make friends with the person next to you and take webcam pictures to post to Facebook with the captions “Haha so bored in class! Professor is old and boring!!!” Then add your professor as a friend. Your grades will increase dramatically.

Good luck!

Laundry: Because I’m a Woman

2011-03-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

My apartment complex was kind enough to put in a communal laundry center for us to use. It’s a cute little building on the outside, and a moth-infested germ factory on the inside. The door to the laundry room is kept open and because the light is left on all the time, at night moths fly in and hang out. The result is a laundry room filled with dead and sleeping moths during the day. Sometimes when I walk under the fan they fall on me. My resultant flailing has alarmed many of my neighbors. That and the fact that I usually fling whatever landed on me at them.

I get hit on a lot when I go do laundry. This is a great idea, because creeping on me in a 12x4 space with only one exit totally isn’t going to make me uncomfortable. Standing right next to me folding your Family Guy boxers while you sweet-talk me is definitely the best way to win me over. So is watching me struggle to carry my laundry out around the door you half closed when I came in without offering to help or hold the door.

The hoses at the backs of the washers are loose and send half the water into the washer while the other half cascades gracefully to the floor. This makes the floor get really slippery, and if you’ve never fallen while carrying a giant basket of clothes and detergent, well, it’s a fun experience you don’t want to miss out on. Sometimes we get bubble floods too, but that’s because a few of my neighbors fail at the detergent to clothing ratio. Either that or they decided to have a laundry room foam party- I’m not sure which.

PSA: Yes, Deer Are Deadly and Venomous

2011-03-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

So, I've been having a rather fun conversation on DailyBooth with Matt the Pilot, and decided it merited posting a few clarifications. He wasn't aware of how vicious deer are, and I'd like to post a brief PSA to make sure we're all up-to-date on the dangers of these deadly quadrupeds.

1. Let us not forget that Bambi is a movie, and Bambi was a paid actor. Disney changed the ending in post-production, because in the original ending Bambi murdered an entire village.

2. Rudolph is actually a robot sent by the CIA to infiltrate the other reindeer and protect Santa. That's the real reason the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. They were just grumpy that he stopped them from hurting Santa.

3. If you see a deer, do not, repeat, do not play dead. That will only enrage them, and they will ensure that you playing dead transforms from make believe to reality in the most painful way possible. Do climb the nearest tree. They can swim, run, and breathe fire, but they cannot climb.

4. If you are bitten by a deer, seek medical help immediately to ensure that the venom does not have time to spread. Just kidding, the venom kills you instantly. Better luck next time.

5. If you manage to shoot a deer and mount its head on your wall... it's not actually dead. It will murder you in your sleep with its eyeball lasers. The only way to kill a deer is with a silver bullet, and by that I mean a car going at least 100 mph*. The silver paint job is optional.

Remember, deer attacks are a serious, deadly, and frequently overlooked occurrence. If you see a deer, please inform your local authorities. The safety of your community depends upon it.

*UPDATE: Yes, if the deer jumps over your car and you completely miss it you're screwed, unless you can go into reverse really fast and get it. That's why it's good to tailgate people: if the person in front of you misses it, you can still hit it... you're really just doing them a favor. When you tailgate someone, you should honk loudly and yell things at the person in front of you so that they know you're there, keeping them safe. It will reassure them. Thank you to Gecko for the excellent question.

My Dog Saved Me From a Raging Velociraptor

2011-03-21T07:47:00.001-07:00

I’m really good at procrastinating. So good, in fact, that I procrastinate procrastinating. That’s right. Did I just blow your mind? Anyway, this amazing talent of mine results in me staying up really late even though if I took half an hour to rush through my homework I could go to bed early and wake up well-rested and cheerful instead of rolling out of bed as a coffee zombie every morning.

Last night after I’d finished procrastinating and finally done my Latin assignment, I took Tessa out for her bedtime walk. This is necessary because otherwise at 3am she frantically rings her potty bell and I have to wake up to ignore her pleas to pee. Anyway, it was around 2 am, and I took her over to the woods to go potty like usual, because if she goes in the woods I don’t feel like I have to clean it up. Basically I’m lazy, but lazy in such a way that no one will step in it. You’re welcome.

We walked over to the woods in the dark, because management has yet to bother fixing the light over at that edge of the apartment complex. The moon was out, it was a little windy, and I’m always jumpy when I have to go outside at night. So when we got over to the woods and there was a big crashing sound of something big running through the woods, I freaked out. Tessa, however, charged towards the woods growling viciously, and chased whatever it was away.

My dog is pretty small, and the thing in the woods sounded big. I’m going to assume it was either a deer, an axe murderer, or a velociraptor, and all of these things are equally bloodthirsty and deadly. So basically Tessa is super brave and she saved my life. It totally made up for the fact that she then spent 20 minutes sniffing around before she’d go potty so we could go back inside and get those precious 5 hours of sleep. You can’t beat being safe from velociraptor attacks.

My Dog Likes Seafood of the Fishbowl

2011-03-20T08:06:00.001-07:00

I decided to get one of those giant palm-looking plant things (yes, that’s a technical term) for my apartment. They look cool, they clean the air, and it gives my dog something other than the carpet to pee on. Actually, she wouldn’t trade the carpet for the world, so it only serves a decorative purpose. She does like to pounce at it, though.

The thing is, the plant is about five feet tall and takes up an area about 4 feet in diameter. My apartment is tiny, and that’s a pretty big amount of free space. It’s too big to ignore, or to not have a personality so I’ve named it Wilfred for the time being. Wilfred because it sounds a bit like “wilt” which is what it does because I never remember to water it. Also because it’s a fun name to say.

So now it’s me, Tessa, Mittens (my fish), and Wilfred. Wilfred’s not much of a talker. Tessa likes to try to dig Wilfred out. Freedom, Wilfred, freedom! I see her point; being stuck in a pot of dirt all day would be boring, especially since we don’t have a TV. I tried leaving some books and magazines out, but Wilfred showed no interest.

Tessa also tries to free my fish. Using her paws. And teeth. I’ve had to move his bowl back so she can’t reach it, because she almost ate him a few times in her attempts to rescue him. It scares poor little Mittens half to death, but I’m sure Tessa’s heart is in the right place. She’s such a sweetheart.

Instant Forts and Magic 8 Balls

2011-03-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

I headed back to my apartment today, because I have class on Monday, and because as of last night my dog had worn a path into my carpet at home from nervous pacing, and I thought it would be best to avoid a complete breakdown. That meant that I had to cram everything I had brought home with me back into the car, while leaving room for Tessa. This feat is easier said than done.

Filling the trunk is pretty easy. You can just throw things in and push the door thing down partway, then jump on it to make it close. Sure, I may have snapped a few things in the trunk, but it was securely closed and that’s all that matters. I like to think of it as take-up-less-space training for everything I own. Boot camp in the boot, if you will.

Somehow every time I come home for a break, I go back with far more stuff than I came down with. This is the combined effect of shopping and finding old stuff in my closet that I decide I need to have with me at my apartment. Magic 8 ball? Necessary. Entire Harry Potter series in hardback? I can’t imagine how I survived until now without it. Spare end table? I’ll take it, never mind that I have no use or room for it.

The hardest part is leaving room for Tessa to have enough space to be comfy and for me to be able to snap her into her doggie seat belt (safety first!). While it’s not too difficult to leave part of the backseat clear for her, it is hard to balance everything next to her such that it won’t tip over and fall on her once we get going. I don’t think I could quite sell her on the whole “No, Tessa, it didn’t fall on you, it created an instant fort! Yay!” thing. She sees right through things like that. Smartie.

Sorry Barnes and Noble, I'm Just Not a Proust Kind of Girl

2011-03-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

Borders is my favorite bookstore. Barnes and Noble is nice and all, but at Borders I know the employees’ names, and I can ask RC where the zombie books are without getting a weird look (RC if you ever read this, hi). At Barnes and Noble I feel awkward asking about zombie books. It’s more for the Jane Eyre and Proust crowd. Also at Barnes and Noble the employees aren’t typically willing to discuss the upcoming zombie apocalypse with random girls that wander in. Just saying.

Anyways, I recently got an email informing me that the only Borders store in my area is closing (insert sad face here). I guess I kind of saw it coming, what with the increasingly desperate ads and 40% off coupons they emailed out weekly for the last year or two, but it’s still weird knowing I can’t go get terrible Borders coffee (really Seattle? That’s your “best”?) and browse what little of their cd section they didn’t cut out as they ran out of money anymore. I’m going to miss questioning their decision to keep their entire selection of soundtracks and cut their formerly decent classic rock section. Kudos for the local music section, that was a nice try.

Borders had an entire section of horror books, which I thought was cool. Barnes and Noble probably has one too, but at Borders I was introduced to it by the manager himself after he saw me buying yet another Stephen King novel (because there’s nothing like reading about murdering clowns and small town vampires at bedtime to keep the sweet dreams coming). The Barnes and Noble manager probably only reads classic literature. Jerk. Just kidding, I haven’t met him. He’s probably nice, and since I have no choice but to start going there, I’ll probably find out he and all of his employees are cool too. Just not as cool as the Borders ones.

My Dog + Wood Floors ≈ All the Grace of a Falling Giraffe

2011-03-17T11:07:00.001-07:00

My dog isn’t used to hardwood floors. At my apartment, it’s mostly carpet and she can walk with no trouble, as long as she avoids the kitchen linoleum. But I’m home this week, and my parents have wood floors. Unfortunately, Tessa hasn’t quite figured out how to walk on them yet.

It’s been 5 days, and she still skitters around every time she tries to take a step, legs going in every direction but forward as she courageously attempts to get to her food bowl or me. Her determination is admirable, and her repeat failures are adorably pathetic. By mid-afternoon she usually gives up and sticks to the area rugs, sometimes hopscotching from one to the next so as not to fall. Other times she carefully tiptoes around, taking baby steps and jumping ever so slightly at the noise her nails make on the wood.

It’s added a whole new level of challenges to playtime for her- she tries to leap from her bed to a toy I’ve tossed her way, but falls and skids towards it with a surprised look on her face. She sits down carefully, gets her bearings, and tries to jump towards it again, with the same results. I usually take pity on her and go pet her for a while, in part to reassure her and in part because the bat-dog look she gets when she rolls over and her ears flip up makes me giggle.

It’s actually kind of reassuring to me to see her being clumsy, because I trip or fall at least twice a day. She has four legs to stabilize her and still can’t walk. It totally makes up for all the times she’s given me her “I’m judging you” face for falling up the stairs.

Dear Alarm Clock, I Hate You

2011-03-16T13:48:00.001-07:00

When I set you to go off at 7:00 I meant it as more of a suggestion. Yes, alarm clock, you could go off on the dot and get me up in time to eat breakfast and change into something other than my pajamas for class, or you could wait an hour and give me just enough time to grab coffee as I sprint to class. No preference, just suggesting that maybe if you would chill and stop being so accurate you’d be less stressed and better rested, as would I. Plus if I’m more rested the chances of me throwing you at a wall to make you stop beeping obnoxiously are drastically reduced.

Some people have tried to explain to me that you’re an inanimate object and can’t hear my rants, or change your preset behaviors. That’s ridiculous. I think we both know that on days when it’s really important for you to wake me up early, you bail on me. I totally remembered to set you, you just sneezed or hiccupped or something in the middle of the night and flipped your switch. I’m on to your sneaky ways, alarm clock.

Then there are those mornings when I wake up on my own, or my dog wakes me up early, and the minute I’m busy you decide to go off. What’s up with that? I understand that you’re a needy emotional basket case (which probably means that you’re a female alarm clock) and can’t stand to have me gone, but why must you start beeping while I’m showering? I’m already up. ALREADY. UP. DO YOU HEAR ME??? And I can’t hear you with the water running. Get over yourself. I’m sick of coming out of the shower to the sound of my neighbor screaming at you through the wall to shut up. Also, why does he think we have the same name? Because I know it’s not my shower singing that’s upsetting him. My shower singing is lovely and melodic and totally not off-key. So get your act together, and stop ruining my mornings.

Love,

Molly

My Dog Doesn’t Play With Toys, She Tortures Them

2011-03-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

My dog takes a sadistic pleasure in destroying toys that resemble humans and animals. Her rainbow plushie of nondescript shape? Meh. Her Santa toy? Destroyed in five seconds flat, beard first. It’s nice to see she doesn’t approve of pedo-staches, but it was a bit frightening how violently she tore Santa to bits. Incidentally, after she tore his beard off she left it on my pillow. How sweet.

Her other favorite toy is her stuffed octopus. She pins one of its legs down and grabs a couple more in her teeth to tug at, thereby creating some sort of octopus torture device resembling The Rack. It always looks like its little eyes are about to pop out of what would be its skull, if it were alive and if mollusks had skulls.

She also has two little teddy bear-shaped toys, one of which I leave with her in her crate while I’m gone as a comfort toy. I thought she was mostly just leaving it alone until I examined it closely one day and saw that she had been slowly peeling away layers of the fleece it’s made of. While it was nice to finally know why she was coughing up fuzz, it’s vaguely unsettling to know she spent hours peeling off her teddy bear’s skin, layer by layer. Did you cringe upon reading that? Me too.

The other teddy bear keeps losing limbs. I’ve started keeping my sewing kit next to her toy bin so that I can fix it, and it’s becoming a near-daily routine. At some point the poor thing will be made entirely of thread and what little stuffing remains. On the bright side, I’m becoming a skilled stuffed animal surgeon. There are job opportunities in that field, right?

I Party Hard With Dust Bunnies

2011-03-14T12:37:00.001-07:00

Since it’s spring break, I decided to do what all the cool kids do and skip Cancun to hang out at my parents’ house. Unfortunately, being here means I have to face the incredible amount of stuff I left behind when I moved to my college apartment. There are piles of clothes I haven’t worn since middle school, several hundred stuffed animals, and a large assortment of random things I don’t remember buying, using, or seeing until now.

There’s a room next to mine that we don’t use for anything specific where I’d been dumping old stuff I no longer cared about since middle school, and my spring break party consists of cleaning it up and sorting through all of it. Along the way, I’m making friends with bugs and naming the dust bunnies. There’s one corner of the room where the dust bunnies have formed an angry mob led by a giant spider, and I’m avoiding that one.

It’s fun to go through all of my old stuff and see how dorky I used to be (granted, I’m still dorky, but in a different way). So as I go through old shirts, I can see my neon colors phase (ugh), my brief goth phase (bigger ugh), and my everything-I-own-needs-to-have-a-Disney-character-on-it phase. That last phase was in high school, believe it or not. I’ve been sorting and cringing all morning, with encouragement from my dog. My parents prefer that I keep my dog in my room while she’s here, so I put up a baby gate between the other room and mine so that she could watch while I clean. She likes to sit at the gate and chirp at me. It’s not a whiny chirp, and I think she’s trying to encourage me to either clean or come pay attention to her.

Whenever I leave her alone in my room here she whimpers and howls and yodels her misery at being abandoned alone in a room filled with toys, her favorite blankets, her bed, and everything else I toted home. It doesn’t matter to her that I brought home more of her stuff than my stuff. She doesn’t care that I left behind my favorite hoodie to make room for her doggie jacket in case she gets cold. And she certainly doesn’t care that I brought home an entire bag of her special vet-recommended food, which meant I could only bring home half as many shoes as I normally would. And yet, just when I start to think maybe she’s spoiled, I see how much random junk I have that I don’t need, and realize I am too. Goodwill, here I come!

Frozen Rolls and Roadkill: It's What's For Dinner

2011-03-13T10:34:00.001-07:00

This week is spring break for me. Last weekend I decided that because I only had one more week of classes, I could skip grocery shopping and survive on what I had around. I was out of snack food, and spent Monday and Tuesday desperately eating cereal plain because I was almost out of milk.

By Wednesday I had run out of cereal, and was subsisting on cocoa mix (plain), frozen fruit, and rolls. While rolls might sound like an edible, if not yummy thing to be stuck eating for a week… mine were frozen. Yes, I could have put them in the oven to thaw, but my oven was made sometime between the first and second world wars and takes approximately six months to get above room temperature.

I could have microwaved them, except every time I use my microwave my router dies and I lose internet. Then I have to reset it, and it takes five minutes before I have working internet again. To most people five minutes without internet is not a huge deal. To me, the thought of having to come out from the glow of my computer screen for longer than a few seconds is horrifying. So I ate a frozen roll. It wasn’t too bad until I got to the middle of it, which was a chunk of ice.

At that point I began to consider walking to the grocery store. The only thing that stopped me was my fear of crossing the main road to get there. I don’t think I would make very cute roadkill. Sometimes squirrels can pull it off, but they’re furry and have tails so it’s easy for them.

I managed to make it through Thursday on frozen rolls and smoothies, debating going door to door and “borrowing” enough ingredients from each neighbor to make something. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that an unusual number of my neighbors drive windowless white vans, and I wanted real food, not candy. I somehow made it through the week, and am currently working on eating all of the food in my parents’ house. And did I learn my lesson about going grocery shopping? Of course not.

Standardized Testing: The Only Thing It Tests is Your Patience

2011-03-11T04:42:00.000-08:00

I was going through some old files on my computer, and found a piece I wrote back in 11^th or 12^th grade, after taking the SAT. It amused me, so I’m posting it. Enjoy!

To most people, the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning is a wonderful, magical time—to sleep, that is. However, last Saturday was one of those unavoidable days of standardized testing. Clearly, the people who decide what time to begin testing have never been teenagers themselves. To an adult, 7:45 may be a perfectly reasonable time to be alert, dressed, fed, showered, and at a distant location ready to focus and think clearly. Unfortunately for the average teenager, this is an impossibility. Given that the SAT and ACT are, supposedly, key factors in determining college acceptance, you would think that the people in charge of deciding arrival time for testing would pick a time more conducive to brain function in teenagers. Unfortunately, to the geniuses who organize this fun-filled event, that means getting up at 5am in order to arrive at the inconveniently located high school at which testing is to begin by 7:45.

Upon arrival, all 1000 or so students must crowd around 5 sheets of paper stapled to the wall and attempt to find their name and test room number before being trampled by other students and their panicking parents. Speaking of parents, why are they there? If your child is going to college in a year or two and they are still so socially challenged or less-than-bright that they can’t elbow their way through the crowd to find their own name when listed alphabetically, your kid has bigger issues than the SAT. And to the parents of the timid children cowering in the back of the crowd, dear god, why didn’t you teach your little genius progeny how to shove people out of the way when you were teaching them other basic life skills? How do you expect them to survive Black Friday shopping if they can’t even navigate 999 students and their needy parents?

After standing with total strangers for the hour it takes the testing administrators to decide enough people have bothered to show up, students are herded into classrooms after showing ID and an admission ticket. The masterminds proctoring these exams had the brilliant idea of organizing the identification and seating part of SAT day in such a way that first everyone in the classroom must show ID and take a seat, then all leave the room, line up, and be admitted one at a time with ID again, to take an assigned seat. Clearly, pre-assigned seats and only checking ID once would streamline the process, but that would be counter-productive to the whole purpose of standardized testing, the point of which, though they don’t want you to know this, is to test patience, not math and reading skills.

While sitting in their seats waiting for the proctor to finish admitting all the students and triple-checking everyone’s ID, students pass time by praying that their proctor isn’t one of the talkers. Unfortunately, the typical SAT proctor has cats and collects newspapers and the occasional student. They greet the class with an unnaturally cheery “GOOD MORNING!!!!!” and then take up 10 to 15 minutes of time detailing the gritty details of their life story to their captive prisoners. “And that’s how I got Fluffy. Jingles, my next cat has a very unique story. One day while I was weeding my tulips…” My latest proctor informed us that he was “26 and unmarried” then seated the three pretty Asian girls in a row by themselves. Quite a character, that guy.

Because Nothing Says "I Laugh At Danger" Like Fuzzy Toe Socks

2011-03-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

Socks are awesome. I have about a million pairs in varying heights (Or is it lengths? They go up, not down. Does that even make sense?), and in pretty much every color, pattern, and style available. I have two designated sock drawers, and a complicated organization system by style and color that enables me to grab the perfect pair each morning.

Today is a fuzzy sock kind of day. It’s rainy, a little bit cold, and I’m exhausted from midterms. Enter fuzzy socks. They somehow make everything better. I’m not sure how, it’s just some magical property woven into them along with the rainbow stripes. They are to my feet what hot cocoa is to my soul. Sometimes days like today warrant toe socks, but it wasn’t quite cold enough to make me think “Yeah, my toes all need individual sleeves or my day is not going to go well.”

Usually I just grab a pair of boring ankle socks in a solid color, but on days when I wear jeans or boots I can go crazy. Those are the days when my outfit looks simple and put-together, but my socks are hot pink with glitter thread woven in. You just can’t tell. It’s my secret all day, and it keeps me smiling. Sometimes I go extra wild and wear holiday-themed socks during the wrong month. That’s right. I like to live my life on the edge.

My dog likes socks too. She has a couple of old ones that she likes to play with, and she has a habit of attempting to play with whatever ones I’m wearing. She watches me put on socks with fascination, trying to figure out where my feet went. Then she pounces and scrabbles at them before jumping back in shock when she realizes that even though my feet disappeared I can still walk. She also likes sock puppets. They make her do her little happy dance (It looks remarkably like her I-need-to-pee dance, but with an added tail wag). I love how easily amused she is.

I Get Guilt-Tripped By Inanimate Objects

2011-03-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

Every day at lunch, I make myself cook a healthy meal and sit down to eat. It’s the one meal of the day when I’m not either studying or online while eating, and I kind of look forward to taking time to pause in the middle of the day and relax. The cooking part, however, is anything but relaxing.

Sometimes I just give up and play with knives.

First, I have to cut up vegetables. This means a knife debate. I have two knives that are identical in every way except color. One is light green and one is dark blue. I try to use them both equally so that neither one will feel left out, but some days I can’t remember which one I’ve used most recently, and so I have to decide which color fits my day better. Dark blue is for tired, sad, or study-filled days, and light green is for happy days and weekends. The problem is, I almost never have dark blue days. So every day I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m neglecting the poor little blue knife. Some days I feel bad enough for it that I go ahead and use it, but the whole time I’m cutting up vegetables I wonder if it can tell that I’m only using it to be nice.

Then I have to use my stove. Two of the burners are right next to the wall and make me worry that I will somehow clumsily manage to set the wall on fire, so I avoid using those. Also one of them is really slanted and using it requires holding the pot in place so it doesn’t slide off onto the floor and spill boiling water everywhere. My point is, I mostly use the ones that are away from the wall. Except being me, I worry that the other two feel left out. I don’t worry enough to get over my fear of flaming walls, just enough that using my stove makes me feel guilty and wonder if they talk about how mean I am behind my back. I don’t want them to hate me- what if they decide to set the wall on fire out of spite?

Eventually I get food made and realize most of my worries were a result of not having eaten since the night before because I was in too much of a hurry to grab breakfast. Then I pledge to never skip breakfast again, because really it has all of the yummiest foods and why anyone would voluntarily skip it is beyond me. And then the next day I get up minutes before class and skip it again, and the lunchtime debates start all over once more.

Trolling My Dog: It's All About Stealth

2011-03-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

When I get bored, I like to play games with my dog. By that I mean I like to mess with my dog’s head and laugh at her reactions. One of the easiest ways to do this is to roll a toy towards her when she’s not looking. She stalks it, hackles up and growling, fiercely determined to pounce on it, because anything that moves is fair game (Unfortunately this includes my feet, especially if I’m wearing socks. She likes socks. A lot.) Then she leaps for it, grabs it in her teeth and shakes it furiously, probably while yelling “Inanimate objects should not move! Bad toy! Bad!” in doggie speak, punctuated with snarls. And then, brave canine that she is, she drops the now drool-covered and defeated toy in my lap with a proud look, convinced that she has killed yet another evil menace.

I also like to play hide and seek with her. She, of course, doesn’t understand how the game works, she just knows that disembodied laughter from behind the futon means she should come stand in front of it and turn her head to the side to try to figure it out. Turning her head sideways is her solution to everything. As she gets more and more confused she rotates it further and further, before she has to stop and tilt to the other side (we’re working on 360s). Eventually she works in a doggie eyebrow raise, at which point I can no longer contain my giggling and come out from behind the futon so that she can pounce on me and lick my face, thinking she somehow won the game.

Like most dogs, Tessa hates being startled. I take advantage of this by giving her surprise hugs while she’s napping. It totally freaks her out, and she has a moment of complete panic before she realizes it’s just me being weird again. She usually just ignores me and goes back to sleep. It’s also fun to gently tap her while she’s sleeping and act like I didn’t. This confuses her to no end, and she has to wander around sniffing everything to try to figure out what happened. It’s not being mean, it’s helping her hone her tracking skills.

Games go both ways: my dog also likes to mess with me. While most dogs understand and enjoy a game of fetch, Tessa looks at the toy I threw, looks at me, and sits down. She then gives me an indignant “Go get your own stupid toy. You threw it, weirdo.” look and refuses to move until I go fetch it. While at first I thought perhaps she just wasn’t the kind of dog that liked to play fetch, her eagerness to go after toys she didn’t see me throw makes me inclined to believe she just likes to turn the tables on me. Good thing she’s adorable, or that would get old fast. Excuse me now- I need to go retrieve a tennis ball for her.

Cutter Red is the New Black

2011-03-07T07:35:00.001-08:00

One of the things I learned soon upon arriving at college is that weather actually affects me now. It used to be that I spent all day moving from classroom to classroom in one building, but now I actually have to go outside to get to campus, and to go between buildings. While it’s nice to no longer be quite so pale that I glow in the dark, I have to say, being reflective was an excellent way to keep from being hit by cars while hitchhiking alone on the highway at night. Not that I’ve ever done that, but still. Totally useful.

Anyway, I think I was trying to make a point. Something about weather. Oh, right, I have to read the weather report now. I thought this would be a boring task, but the local weatherman has a very depressed outlook on life, and is responsible for writing up conversational little summaries of the weather for the week. I’m a bad person, and they make me laugh. A typical post reads something along the lines of “Depressingly gray with no sign of sunshine or hope. Clouds will be cutter red at sunrise, and suicide gray this evening. The rain tonight will mirror my tears. Perhaps a stray bolt of lightning will put me out of my misery.” (Am I exaggerating? Maybe. They are really mopey though.) They have got to either stop letting this guy write the weather summaries or give him a pay raise so he can afford Prozac.

His weather predictions are nearly always wrong, too. I’m not saying that any weather forecasting service is correct 100% of the time, but I’m getting tired of wearing my rain boots every day to shield myself from the “torrential misery in rain form” only to find it is sunny and a balmy 75 degrees outside. I mean, my rain boots are cute and all, but they’re really uncomfortable and they totally don’t go with most of my wardrobe. Also they freak out my dog. Not sure why, but so do squeaky toys. Maybe she just has a rubber phobia. Is that possible?

I'm So Hardcore I Play Jenga With Glass

2011-03-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

It takes me a really long time to do dishes. Not because there are a lot of them, but because I get distracted easily. By that I mean every time the soap bottle randomly decides to release a few floating bubbles, I have to go chase them around my kitchen and pounce at them like a cat, water dripping from whatever breakable plate I’m holding as it comes dangerously close to being shattered. Good times.

Another problem is that doing dishes is boring, and I attempt to fix this by writing messages in the soap on things as I clean them. This started out as just one or two words per dish, but quickly progressed into haikus, short stories, and sometimes drawings of unicorns that have become more and more detailed as my bubble art skills have grown. I should probably find a new hobby.

My dog, Tessa, likes to come sit by my feet while I do dishes. My sink is tiny, and so I accidentally spill water on her a lot. By the third time it’s happened she stalks over to a different corner of the kitchen and settles down with a long-suffering sigh and a reproving look. I’ve had her for two months and you would think she’d be used to this by now and know to just sit somewhere else, but no. I think she just likes giving me her adorably fierce doggy-glare.

My dish drying rack is tiny, and not usually big enough to hold all of my dishes. I suppose I could dry them by hand, but why exert effort when evaporation will handle it for me? Instead, I arrange a breakable Jenga tower of dishes. I like to give myself challenges, and since I know that I won’t bother putting them away in the morning, I put my breakfast dishes at the very bottom. This means that at 7 am in order to get my caffeine fix I’ll be forced to find a way to get my coffee mug out with ninja-like accuracy so as not to make the entire pile of dishes crash to the floor. I have to say, while at midnight this seems like a hilarious thing to do to morning-me, in the morning I get very upset about the obstacle between coffee and me, and mutter angry words that make Tessa come over to nudge me and make sure I’m okay. That or she wants me to hurry up and feed her. Whatever.

My Dog is Annoying and I Fail at Pancaking

2011-03-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

Every Saturday my dog wakes me up at 7:00. She doesn’t seem to understand that just because I get up at 7:00 and feed her during the week doesn’t mean I have to on weekends. I’ve tried explaining this concept to her several times, using various forms of miming and interpretive dance, but all that did was make her whimper and hide in her crate. So as usual, bright and early at 7:00, as I was just burrowing deeper under my blankets, I was woken by a wet black nose snuffling at my face. I pulled the blankets over my head and attempted to ignore her, but she’s very persistent. Within five minutes, she had progressed to pawing at my quilt and attempting to pull it off of me, while whimpering pathetically. It worked. I stumbled downstairs, got coffee, and began my weekend breakfast debate.

One of my favorite things about weekends is that I could, if I so chose, make a really good breakfast instead of just grabbing whatever cereal is closest. Key word “could.” What actually happens is that I spend 15 minutes thinking about how annoying making pancakes would be, and how much I don’t want to have to clean up the extra dishes that would create. Then I spend an hour procrastinating to avoid having to make pancakes. And then at some point I’m so hungry I just get cereal. I’m somewhat lacking in the logic department. For some reason I have no problem with cooking lunch or dinner, but not the most important meal of the day. Go figure.

What to Expect

2011-03-05T08:45:00.000-08:00

Hello there. You found my blog. Way to go. Your ability to use the internet is amazing. Back to my blog: I should probably explain what it’s going to be all about. I’m Molly, my dog is Tessa. We’re best friends, mainly because we don’t have any other friends. This blog will consist of random stories, rants and ponderings, and I’ll try to make it funny or at least mildly interesting. Thanks for reading!