Mini vacay.

Hi Friends.

Sorry for the lack of posts.  I've been vacationing in the great state of Iowa. 

Ok, so it wasn't so much a vacation as it was a work trip.

And also, my intertubes at home aren't working well which makes it very difficult to finish all of the awesome blog entries I have started.

So anywho, I'll be back soon!

Four forty-five.

That's what time my alarm goes off every day (except for Monday).  4:45 AM. 

It's such an icky time of day.  I should really still be sleeping.

I mean the moon is still out, every one of my neighbors are still sleeping, my dog doesn't even like having the lights on that early.  But I do it.  (Most of the time.)  Some days it's really, really  hard to get out of bed.  Like when it's freezing cold out, or when it's raining.  But I make myself do it. 

I get up that early to go to the gym.  Most of the morning classes that I go to are either boxing or kickboxing and I get to wear my pretty pink gloves when I go.


They, however, are really only pretty when they are new or before class.  After class is a different story.  The stench that comes out of these puppies is something else.  Like whoa.  BAD.  A few of my friends have attended a couple of classes with me and while they love it and sometimes feel like barfing afterwards, their hands reek for hours, sometimes days. 


I mean even if you typically sweat zero when you work out (which is totally me, I don't sweat at all...), your hands are still going to smell like rotten butt.  No joke. 


There have been occasions where I'll leave my gloves and wraps in my car after class and on a really hot day the smell engulfs my entire vehicle. 


Regardless of the stench, most of the classes are some of the hardest workouts I've done in a looooooong time, and I've been going to this gym for over a year.  Most of them take me back to high school sports and doing those workouts that leave you gasping for air like sprinting, wall sits, running suicides, planks, pushups until your arms want to fall off, and crunches.  Not to mention the crazy stuff that we sometimes have to do in the weightroom. 

The boxing and kickboxing classes really make me feel like I could beat the crap out of someone if I had to.  Apparently I get this look on my face when I'm hitting the bag like I'm envisioning taking someone's head off.  I'm not.  I swear.  But I could.  Watch yourself.



This is not me, but we could pretend that it is.  She's wearing pink gloves, has long dark hair, she looks focused and she looks buff.  It could totally be me....



call before you dig. they aren't kidding.

One afternoon a couple of years ago, my mom and I decided to go tree shopping for my back yard. I took pictures of the areas that I wanted to put some trees or bushes in, had a few ideas of what I was looking for and then we set off for the tree place.  I was so prepared!!


Mom and I picked out 4 larger bush things or are they trees? What constitutes a tree, really?  Anyway, we picked them out, loaded them into the SUV and went on our merry way.  When we got back to my house, we placed each tree in it's spot and stepped back to make sure it looked as good from far away as it did close up.  Once we confirmed the spots we decided to start digging away. 


My mom asked me if I had called the U-Digg people and I think I probably mumbled something back to her that may have sounded like maybe...or something....  Anywho, we start digging and digging and my mom starts complaining about Johnson county dirt and how it's so hard compared to her dirt at home.  Apparently the dirt at home is like water....dirt around my house is apparently like cement though. 


So we're digging and digging and digging and my mom hits something.  It's hard and black.  Sh!t, it's a snake!  I start squealing because that's what I do best and running around like a crazy person.  But she keeps poking at it.  Sh!t again!!  It's really not a snake, it's some kind of wire thingy.  (also, do snakes live below the ground like that?  Ew, it just grosses me out even more...)


Being the smart people that we are, we keep poking at it to try to figure out what it is.  No worries that it could electrocute or really really hurt one of us...  So I run inside to see what things might be off and what the line that we just sliced in half might be and realize that my TV is off.  That's weird, I think to myself....how would that just turn off on it's own?  I know Laila wouldn't turn it off, her favorite soap was on. 

I turn it back on and the picture is all fuzzy and black and white.  Weird....

CRAP!  We cut the cable line in half.

I go back outside to give my mom the news while I'm on hold with the cable company; and while we're relieved that it wasn't anything bigger, we're still both a little freaked out. 

Finally, the cable company comes back on the line and I think the conversation went something like this:

ME: "Hi, my TV picture is fuzzy and black and white"

Cable: OK, I'm not showing any activity at your address.  We don't show any other outages, did something else happen?

ME: Um, well, we were planting some trees and may have hit a wire.

Cable: You may have hit a wire or you hit a wire?

ME: Oh, um, welllll, we might have hit it just a little.

Cable: Ok, did you see the wire when you started digging up the dirt?

ME: Yup. 

Cable: Is there a chance that you would have cut it in half?

ME: Could be....

Cable: Ok, we can send a technician out tomorrow, they'll call you before they come.

ME: Perfect.

Phew. Not as big of a deal as I thought, but I was dreading how much it was possibly going to cost to have them come out on a Sunday.

Not having a TV in the house makes things sooo quiet!  I mean, I don't watch a ton of TV myself, but I generally have it on for background noise at the very least. 

Sunday morning rolls around and it just happens to be Mother's Day weekend (which is why my mom was in town).  So, my mom and I go to church, meet my dad, sister, and brother in law for lunch and then the cable company calls.  Perfect timing guys!

Luckily we were about finished with lunch and we were eating close to my house so we could get back to my place quickly. 

We get to my house and find a big white conversion van parked in front and two guys just moseying around waiting for us to arrive.  I reluctantly show them where we dug up the cable line and they start chit chatting with my dad.  Long story short, they fixed it super quickly, didn't make me pay for anything, and said that it happens all the time!  Apparently in newer subdivisions they only bury the cable line like 4 inches below the sod=DUMB. 

After all of the weekend festivities concluded, I called U-Digg and made an appointment for them to come out and mark all of my buried lines.  We managed to pic one hot spot in the yard.  There were a few things buried where we decided to dig.  Good work, eh? 

Here's that little spot that we dug up.  See all of that orange?  Oh yeah, those are all wires of some kind....

We did get some landscaping done without digging up any wires.  Looks good, right?

my dog chews up the strangest things.

I love my dog a lot.  I really do.  But sometimes I wonder about her.  One might go so far as to say that she's spoiled--she has more chewie things to play with and chew on than any other dog I know and once upon a time she had nice comfy bedding.  She also has some cute winter sweaters and a pink snuggie to go outside in the snow in (which she loves, btw). 

We even went to puppy school and she was the brightest dog in her class.  Seriously.  The trainer pretty much said so.  (And no, she wasn't the only dog in the class, thank you very much!)

Doesn't she look sooo smart?!

So, one would think that with all of those good things going on that she would be like the most well behaved animal on the planet.  Ugh, so wrong.  She's not a bad dog by any means, but she just does some things that make me wonder!  She is only one and probably still considered a puppy, but geesh!


She has a little baby chewing problem.  Her chewing habit is actually what inspired me to start blogging.  And what will probably cost me hundreds of dollars in home repair...

I think she was really pissed this day, she chewed up a few of the spindles on my staircase.  Not cool.  How exactly am I supposed to fix this???  And also, ouch!  Splinters coming back out could be painful...

My perfectly good undies, all chewed up.

I came home from the gym one morning to my nice HUGE area rug all over my living room.  Awesome.  This doesn't look as bad as all of the rug shards all over the room....

Also, this doesn't look as bad as this picture represents, but I came home one afternoon to carpet all over her kennel.  Sweet.  Thanks, girlfriend! You sure now how to make your mom proud.

So usually when I take a shower in the mornings, Laila sleeps in my bed.  I got out of the shower one morning and couldn't find her anywhere in my room.  This sweet little angel decided to go through my recycling and go to town on some empty containers.  So sweet.

This is kind of like where's Waldo on my bed.  Laila hid in my pillows after she went through the recycling because she thought she was in big trouble.

This would be that nice bedding I spoke of above.  Usually Laila sleeps with old t-shirts (specifically because she has a history of chewing up her bedding); I don't know why I thought this day would be a different day and she wouldn't chew up her bed...I think she was pissed because we usually spend Sunday's outside, but that didn't happen on this particular Sunday, so I guess she thought ripping apart her bedding would be a good use of her time...



Guess we're back to old crappy t-shirts...

Weiners.

I HATE hot dogs.  I refuse to eat them. 

There was this time recently where I was attending a baseball game where there was unlimited amounts of beer (I like beer).  But the only food however, was hotdogs, popcorn, and peanuts.  I tried to make the popcorn and peanuts work, but the more beer I drank, the hungrier I got.

I decided that I would only try one if it was REALLY burnt.

And then I made it look really pretty.

I'm still skeptical...but the beer will surely help though...

Success?

OK, it wasn't horrible, but I only had one bite.  Minor details when you've been drinking all day.

Not eating is why I probably thought this was a good idea.  Oh yeah, that's beer in that water bottle.  Very crafty!  (don't worry we had a designated driver)

and this. 

not eating + beer  + shots = new friends?

I have no idea who had my camera on this night, but it told a really great story: Drinking lots of beer and not eating don't go well together. This picture is proof. Or the terrible, terrible hangover I had on the airplane.





Skids.

The people I work with are crazy.  Good crazy.  We all laugh about similar things, for example bathroom humor, each other, and other bodily functions.  Luckily none of them mind that a tiny (or large) dinosaur leaps out of my throat on occasion.  (I (sometimes) try really hard to hold in my burps but even when I try to keep it quiet someone still hears me.  I went to the doctor but they said that I was completely healthy!) 

Occasionally at work, people leave little presents in the stalls.  One afternoon I walked in and found a piece of spaghetti lying on the floor; another afternoon a piece of Cap'n Crunch; more often though are presents that are left in the toilet themselves. 

Question:  How does spaghetti and Cap'n Crunch end up in a bathroom stall?  Like, do you go in there knowing it's going to be awhile and take a snack?  Or did that spaghetti fall down your cleavage at lunch only to reappear in the bathroom?  I guess we'll never know...

Anyway, in the toilet themselves, we get the normal skid marks, occasional floaters, and only if we're lucky a complete assplosion (you know where splashes encircle the rim of the seat and only if we're lucky a little creeps out onto the seat itself--thank God for our cleaning crew).  Every couple of months or so, someone does this thing where they leave a small child in the toilet and it smells like raw sewage.  This is in the women's stalls, y'all.  Seriously. 

There was one day that Jenny returned from the bathroom to share her excitement about the mammoth poo that was in the toilet and of course a few of us had to go and check it out.  Eventually someone tried to flush it and it took a few tries for it to move along.  It was that big.  I know, I know...it's disgusting that we check this stuff out, but c'mon, who doesn't know how to flush!!!  Get it together, ladies, that's something we all learned how to do as kiddos.

The other thing that seriously sucks about our work bathrooms is that it is painfully quiet.  Sometimes I think that I should start singing so that it lessens the tension in the air.  The quietness makes for an awkward bathroom experience.  Typically if someone has to, ya know, go #2, they camp out in the stall--sometimes for hours waiting for the bathrooms to be completely empty.  Other times, people hide in the luxury suite, aka the handicap stall.

This stall is tricky, most of the time when it's occupied you can't tell!  It seems like you have the bathroom to yourself and then you'll hear a little shuffling or the toilet paper will move or something.  You can't even see feet in the stall to see if someone is in there or not.  I think it should be a rule when you walk into the bathroom and you're hiding in the stalls that you have to make your presence known.  Or else it could be reaaaaal embarrassing.

Things, however are about to change with our bathroom situation; the heat is getting ready to come back on.  Why is this important, you ask? 

Well, when the heat kicks on in our building it makes a magnificent rattling noise and people have the freedom to be as loud as they want in the bathroom.  It is like the worst day ever when the fans switch off, but luckily, we're quickly approaching that time of year when everyone breathes a sigh of relief that the temperatures outside are dipping low enough for the fans to kick on on a daily basis. 

Last spring after the fans decided that they'd had enough, a rush of panic went through the 3rd floor halls in my building.  For awhile we debated putting a sweet boom box in the bathroom to create a little noise but then decided that if a customer was in and heard R. Kelly bumping on the system that they might be a little freaked out.  Then we thought that a nice relaxing CD of ocean waves would be a good idea but once again, that idea got shot down as well.  So, for the last seven or so months, our entire floor has been braving the toilets with no background sound.  Only the sweet, sweet sounds coming from the stall next door. 

My mom recently sent my sister and I this email about farts.  It's entertaining and educational to say the least.  Check it out:

I realize this is difficult to read, so go here: Facts about your farts :)

Best. Book. Ever.

Also, one of my bestest friends got me this book a few years ago.  I keep it on the back of my toilet.  It usually starts a few conversations to say the least.  I have no shame.  I'll talk about poop.  Just don't get too graphic, mmmk? I have a bad gag reflex. 

Dear Matt,

You probably already know this, but we have many things in common:  you like Jess, I like Jess; you like KSU, I like KSU; you like food, I like food; you're a fire fighter, I like fire fighters; you're scared of snakes and scream like a little girl when you see them, I'm scared of snakes and scream like a little girl when I see them.  See, we're practically the same person!  Except you have crazy weird dreams. (Well, and you're a boy)


My fear of snakes officially started when I was mowing the yard at my parents house when I was like 9 years old.  A mammoth python (I think, or it may have been a black snake, but is there really a difference? I think not) fell from one of the big trees in my parent's yard right in front of me on the riding lawn mower.  I may have peed in my pants a little I was so scared. 

Luckily the python shimmied on across the road and disappeared into a field but I was scarred for life.  Every time that I had to drive the lawn mower under that tree again, I put the mower into full speed, a whopping 5 MPH, to hopefully not have to experience that nightmare again.  Why are you so scared of snakes, Matt?  Did a snake almost fall on your head when you were a kid?  I feel like I have a valid reason for screaming like a pansy when I see them, I bet you do too, right?

See, there was this one time in college when you were supposed to come and pick all of us girls up from the bars.  Andrea went in to wake you up and instead of waking up like a normal person, you FREAKED out and started screaming something about snakes.  They were apparently all over you and all over the floor because you were hopping around on the bed to get away from them and screaming about them being everywhere.  Andrea couldn't figure out what the HELL was going on so she flipped on the lights (just to make sure that there weren't actually snakes) and you kept jumping around squealing "Snakes! Get them off! They're everywhere!" 

Luckily you came to after Andrea met you in the hallway and she was crying from laughing so hard.  Man were we confused when we heard this story!  First of all picturing you jumping on Jess' bed and second of all hearing that you were screaming about snakes.  You are a grown man, afterall. 

Oh, Matt...I hope that you'll keep reading my stories I know I have more interesting tales I can share about you if I have to reel you back in...chewy chocolate chip, anyone?  Miss you!

Love,
Kmac

Matt and the snakes.

DL.

I know that DL usually means "down low" like you know a secret and you're asked to keep it on the DL...however in this instance DL stands for Driver's License.  In all honesty, I should probably keep these pictures I'm about to show you on the DL, but I decided to share...I'm embarrassed that I'm doing this to be quite honest, but every time I bust out this ancient driver's license picture from 10 years ago, people laugh.  So here you go, enjoy:

Vomit.

Gaw, mom!!  Why did you allow me out of the house?!  I'm not exactly sure what was going on with my bangs, my eyebrows, the color of my hair, the hair cut, the sunburn, or really just my overall look.  I'd like to think that I've outgrown that awkward stage.

Ew.

Round 2: a slight improvement over the last one, but still not much better. I kind of look drunk or maybe the camera flash just scared me?

A few months ago at the DMV to renew my license I'm waiting patiently for the nice gentleman to take my picture.  Actually, he wasn't that nice, or at least not to the people in front of me.  He was actually kind of rude.  It's finally my turn to get my picture taken and I step in front of the blue curtain and smile as he takes my head shot and ask if my eyes are open, because more often than not, they're closed (see above, they're like half open...).  He responds with (as he's handing me my receipt that also doubles as my driver's license for the next 2 weeks) "Your picture looks great; now on this black and white copy you might think you look a little pixelated, but on your color driver's license your natural beauty and radience will shine through."  OH, um....thank you? 

The pictures are only getting better with age, people.

Also, while we're on this subject...those little receipts they hand out while you wait for your real license to show up are crap.  I can't tell you how many bars/restaurants I went to that wouldn't accept it.  Luckily I keep those little expired treasures above in my wallet for situations like this. 

best invention idea, probably ever.

I have the WORST road rage ever. I'll admit it. I think I'm a pretty good driver too; I try to be respectful of other cars on the road and really try my hardest to not piss people off. However driving to and from work every day really tests my patience. You know the people I'm talking about....


--the one that sits out in the passing lane going about 20 under the speed limit and somehow manages to be going the same speed as all other lanes of traffic so there is absolutely no way of getting around the jerk.

--the one that rides your ass only to, once you get over and out of their way, slow back down once you let them in front of you.

--a personal favorite is the one that weaves in and out of all lanes of traffic managing to piss off every person that is on the interstate which then causes everyone to speed up to not let the asshole in and slow down to not let him in and sometimes (not me, for real) someone will swerve at the jerkface to try and prove a point that he's not getting in our lane. It's like we have a pact to not let the guy over.


Anyway, to solve this problem, I have come up with a fantastic idea. This is just a little sketch that I did (it's good, right?) but basically, there will be a small arm that will come out of the front of your vehicle with a hand on it. When someone is doing something crazy on the road, you'll push a button on the inside of your car and give the jerk cutting you off a little bitch slap. This won't hurt anyone, any cars or cause any wrecks, it's more of a light tap to say "watch out buster" or "move out of my way grams". Genius, huh?

Pure Brilliance.