BOXES ARE SO FUN!!!!!!!

You know when you look back at your childhood and ask yourself "how sure am I that I wasn't retarded?  I'm pretty sure, right?  Holy shit, was I retarded?"   That happened to me today and I'm pretty sure that the answer is "yes."

I found one of my journals from elementary school.  Have you ever seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind," where Russel Crowe is supposed to be some sort of genius and he writes all sorts of crazy conspiracy plans all over his walls but actually he's just schizophrenic?  That's pretty much exactly what my journal looks like, except the signs don't point toward schizophrenia.

Excusing the fact that I obviously wasn't even trying to write on the lines, there are all of these confusing arrows and randomly capitalized words and places where I went back years later to edit in something monumentally important like "I don't need new pants anymore because I bought some cargo pants." Like I was going to be reading along and be suddenly stricken with confusion - "Did I ever buy pants?  I don't remember! Oh God!  How will I ever - oh good, it looks like I bought some cargo pants.  What a relief."

One of my very first journal entries reads "I wonder what my day is going to be like? I hope I have a good day.  I'll write more later."

Then later I just wrote "My hand got shut in the car door.  It hurt."

Another entry reads "I had so much fun at recess today!  We made a slide on a hill out of a cardboard box!   And then we played on it!"

The rest of the page is filled with giant, scrawly writing that says "BOXES ARE SO FUN!!!!!!!"

A week or so later I write "I went to the orthodontist today to get my braces tightened.  Mom had to run errands and she was late picking me up, so I took a nap behind a plant."

Oh good.  A nap behind a plant in a busy dental-complex waiting room.  How perfectly normal.  I'm sure my mom was overjoyed to explain that to everyone.  I can just imagine her shaking me awake and running out of the building, dragging me behind her, yelling "don't judge me!"

Apparently my favorite day ever (I know this because there is a little box above it that says "this is my favorite day") went like this:

"We had a sledding party up at Pine hill and I bashed up my knee.  Then we got pizza!  Me, Alison, Sophie and Shane sat at the same table and we made really long straws by sticking normal straws inside of each other! Then we saw Patch Adams!"

This is followed by three entire pages of Blink 182 lyrics.

Then this:

It starts out with really tiny handwriting that just says "I saw some really awesome green spots today."  (Then the handwriting gets HUGE) "I HAD THE MOST BORING WEEKEND EVER!!  MONET STAYED OVER AND JUST SAT THERE LOOKING STUPID.  SHE WAS AT OUR HOUSE ALL WEEKEND EATING OUR FOOD AND WATCHING OUR MOVIES.  SHE BROUGHT HER STUPID DOG, TRAVIS, AND WHEN I WAS LYING ON THE COUCH, HE JUMPED UP THERE AND STARTED HUMPING MY LEGS AND I COULDN'T MAKE HIM STOP BECAUSE I WAS TRAPPED UNDER A BLANKET!!!!  Sunday was okay though.  I went to Joey's house and we jumped off of furniture onto pillows."  

There's a Lesson in Here Somewhere... I Think it's "Don't Kill Your Girlfriend's Pet Unicorn"

Last night, I dreamt that I had a pet unicorn.  And then Boyfriend killed it.  When I woke up, I was still kind of mad.  Boyfriend was like "what's wrong?"

Me: "I had a bad dream."

Boyfriend:  "I'm sorry.  What was it about?"

Me: "I had a pet unicorn... "

Boyfriend:  "That doesn't sound bad at all.  That actually sounds pretty awesome."

Me:  "No, but you killed it."

Boyfriend:  "I killed your unicorn?"

Me:  "Yeah."

Boyfriend:  "Why would I do that?"

Me:  "I don't know.  You tell me."

Boyfriend:  "Allie, I can't tell you because I didn't actually do anything."

Me:  "I'm confused."

Boyfriend:  "Why?"

Me:  "Because what you are saying is logical, but I'm still totally pissed at you for killing my unicorn."

Boyfriend:  "But I didn't kill your unicorn.  Unicorns don't even exist."

Me: "I know that...  It's just - it wasn't even doing anything and you walked up to it and bashed its head in with a rock."

Boyfriend:  "That is actually kind of disturbing..."

Me:  "I know!  That's why I'm mad at you."

Boyfriend:  "Wait... you're actually upset about this?"

Me:  "Of course I'm upset!  You murdered my pet unicorn!"  

Boyfriend:  "But remember how I didn't actually do that and it was just a dream?"

Me:  "Yeah, but I loved Phineus."

Boyfriend:  "Now it has a name?"

Me:  "It always had a name!  Did you think I was going to just not name my unicorn?  How would I get its attention?"

Boyfriend:  "I don't know... clapping?"

Me:  "That would never work.  What if we went to a concert or something... he would be so confused!"

Boyfriend:  "Okay, what about - you know what?  I'm not going to discuss this with you.  This is ridiculous."

Me:  "Whistling might work... it might learn to recognize my whistle..."

Boyfriend:  "I'm going to go make lunch."

Me:  "But what am I supposed to do?  I'm still mad and I have no outlet."

Boyfriend:  "I don't know - draw a picture to express your feelings.  That usually seems to help."

Me:  "Okay."

I showed the picture to Boyfriend and he wasn't very supportive.  He just said "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Me:  "I feel a lot better now, thanks for asking."

Boyfriend:  "Is that a sword?"

Me:  "Yeah."

Boyfriend: "I stabbed it with a sword and beat it with a rock?"

Me:  "It's an over-dramatization."

Boyfriend:  "Did it need over-dramatizing?"

And the answer is yes.  Yes it did.  Because that's how it feels when someone kills your pet unicorn for no reason.  

Why I Don't Use a Radio Alarm Clock

Because waking up to "Mambo Number Five" by Lou Bega feels like being stabbed in the face with music.

UPDATE: Just because I feel that listening to "Mambo Number Five" by Lou Bega is like being bludgeoned repeatedly with the worst part of every song ever and it's even worse because it gets stuck in your head for six months and pretty soon you are on your knees clawing at your face, yelling "GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT!" until you seriously start to consider fishing it out of your brain with a meat hook, doesn't mean that everyone feels that way.

Alert reader, Kiley, said she likes Lou Bega and I was like "WHAT???" but then I realized that he probably didn't reach the top of the charts because he made everyone bleed from the face.  The reality is that some people like Lou Bega.

Curious about this phenomenon, I asked Kiley what she likes about him and she replied that his music makes her feel like dancing.

This made me realize that that is exactly why I don't like "Mambo Number Five" by Lou Bega.   It's like Lou Bega is standing right there, prodding you and yelling "HEY!  GET UP AND DANCE!! DANCE BECAUSE WE'RE HAVING FUN! FUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUN!!!! PARTY TIME!!!"

And then I'm like "No Lou Bega, not party time..."

And Lou Bega is like "YES PARTY TIME!!! PARTYPARTYPARTYPARTYPARTY!!!!!"

And I'm like "SHUT UP LOU BEGA!  IT'S 5:00 AM!!"

And Lou Bega's all "FUNPARTYFUNPARTYPARTFUNFUNFUNPARTYPARTYFUN!!!!"

It's like being raped with fun.

And that's why I don't like "Mambo Number Five" by Lou Bega.

Disappointment (UPDATED)

UPDATE: As of this morning...

This happens several times a day.  I'll be like "maybe I'm famous now..." and I get all excited and go check, but no.  Still not famous.

UPDATE #2:  For clarification, when I say "famous" I mean "famous enough to drink dragon tears out of a goblet made from petrified angel feathers while watching an HD video of myself accepting the Nobel prize in a category that was invented specifically to accommodate my excellence - like the Nobel Fantastic Awesome Rad prize."  I'm not nearly that famous yet, but I will be, dammit.

UPDATE #3:  Veronica just sent me this startlingly accurate picture of me accepting any one of the various awards I'll be receiving in the future:

Doesn't that just look so natural?  I'm pretty sure that is the facial expression I was born to make.

Trust Me, You'll Want Your Dead Goat Back...

Remember when I told you guys that I was feeling hyperactive and it was kind of like being tied to a chair and injected with speed and made to watch a documentary about sea snails?  That was yesterday.

Anyway, Boyfriend likes to think that he's being helpful by sending me riddles by email during the day.  His logic is that riddles are far more mentally stimulating than a documentary about sea snails.

Today, he sent me this riddle:

"When the day after tomorrow becomes yesterday, the day which would then be today will be as far from Sunday as the day which is yesterday when it's two days after that day's tomorrow... What day of the week was this spoken?"

WHAT PART OF "I CAN'T SUSTAIN A SINGLE TRAIN OF THOUGHT FOR LONGER THAN - IS THAT A MOTORCYCLE???  OMG!!  I LOVE MOTORCYCLES!!" DOES HE NOT UNDERSTAND???

Anyway, I sent him a threatening email, warning him that he should probably be alert when he first arrives home because I may or may not be lurking in a corner preparing to demonstrate what that riddle made my brain feel like.

I thought I had made myself clear, but apparently I had not, because first he sent me this email:

And then he sent me this email a few minutes later:

In response, I sent him one last warning:

This email was also kind of a sneaky way to test whether or not Boyfriend is a closet pervert.  If he sent me another math riddle, I'd know that he had some dildo-skull-raping fetish, and then we might have problems.

I was just starting to feel all relieved that he wasn't a pervert because he hadn't replied back to me with another math riddle, but then he walked through the door.  He was like "did you get my last riddle?"  He sounded really excited about it.   I told him that I had already responded.  He said "So did you get the answer?"  I told him to check his email.  I watched his facial expression change from exuberance, to confusion and finally to worry.   He said "You didn't like it?"

Me: "No.  Math is bad."

Boyfriend:  "But I thought you said that you needed more mental stimulation..."

Me:  "I meant like exploding trucks and Dance Dance Revolution."

Boyfriend:  "Oh.  Well, I -- Hey!  Did you eat the rest of the Cadbury Mini Eggs??!"

Me:  "Yeah.  You left them in the middle of the floor."

Boyfriend:  "I was saving them..."

Me:  "That's like leaving a dead goat in the middle of a tyrannosaurus's house and expecting it to still be there when you get back."

Boyfriend:  "Why would I want my dead goat back?"

Me:  "It's a matter of principle."

I don't know why Boyfriend thinks he can be all high and mighty sending me math riddles when he can't even grasp basic logic, like why the Cadbury Mini Eggs were rightfully mine and why you'd want your dead goat back after inadvertently abandoning it near a tyrannosaurus.

Hi. I'm Energetic Today!!!!

I haven't written in a few days.  I was trying to be sneaky about it, but you may have noticed.

I recently made the "decision" to stop taking my ADHD medication.  I put "decision" in quotes because it wasn't so much a choice as a default consequence of not being mentally capable of going through the necessary steps to renew my prescription.

Anyway, when I first stopped taking my medication, my inattentiveness returned quickly.  I had trouble focusing, I forgot simple things like not putting metal in the microwave.  Going to the grocery store turned into a monumental effort for me.  But all of that is okay because I don't have a job and my microwave was probably about to break anyway.

The last few days, though, have been interesting.  When you stop taking an amphetamine-based medication, you feel a little tired.   This lasts for a month or so.  But once the tiredness goes away, you realize that you are indeed hyperactive.  You may have thought you were hyperactive before.  You may have even made an analogy involving a flame-thrower in an attempt to describe your alleged hyperactivity.  But you were wrong.  You had no idea what real hyperactivity is like until now.

I am normally a pretty energetic person.  If it were not for my tendency to avoid responsibility, I would be able to accomplish my daily tasks effortlessly with enough time left over to start an AIDS charity.  However, I have recently discovered that being energetic is not the same as being hyperactive.   No.  Being energetic is pleasant.  "Energetic" is a quality that you would list on a resume.   Hyperactivity is like being forcibly injected with way too much crack-cocaine and then being tied down to a table and made to watch a documentary about sea snails.

And that's when I'm actually doing stuff.  When I'm bored, it's more like being forcibly injected with way too much crack-cocaine, being tied down to a table and made to watch a documentary about sea snails, then someone reduces the rate of narrative in your stupid snail documentary and you're like "Hey!  I was watching that!" and you get kind of desperate because even though you do not have any interest in snails whatsoever, you never realized how good you had it when the documentary was playing at normal speed and now you want it back.  And then someone karate chops you in the face for no reason and you get all agitated but you can't chase after them and inflict justice because you are tied to a fucking chair.

But I could be given a tranquilizer, chained to a high speed treadmill and made to watch 2 Fast 2 Furious on fast forward, and I would still feel slightly under-stimulated.

Combine this with a complete inability to accomplish anything and you find yourself sitting on your couch, drinking coffee mixed with vodka because you forgot to buy milk, staring at the wall with intensity, thinking about how you are going to start volunteering in an emergency room because that sounds exciting and it probably involves way less responsibility than a real job except that you are wrong and have grossly underestimated the responsibility inherent in assisting with a crisis and therefore you probably shouldn't be volunteering in an emergency room, but it doesn't really matter because there would almost definitely be paperwork involved and you wouldn't be able get past that step anyway.

Sweet baby Jesus, I need to get rich and famous really soon so I can afford to go to monster truck rallies.  Either that or develop some sort of substance abuse problem that's not life-threatening, but still bad enough to be entertaining, deserving of pity and challenging to overcome.  Then I can go on an inspirational-speaking tour and write a best-selling self-help book and become rich and famous that way.  I don't see how there could be anything wrong with that plan.  I'm pretty much guaranteed to achieve my goals and I'm actually kind of mad that I didn't think of it sooner.

I don't really know where I was going with all of this.  It is probably best to stop now.

How to Stick to Your New Year's Resolutions and Also Accomplish Lots of Other Things

This year, I'm going to trick myself into accomplishing my New Year's resolutions.  I've come up with a bunch of easily achievable "decoy resolutions" among which I will hide my real resolutions.  I'm hoping that if I'm flying along, accomplishing things like crazy, and I come to one of my real New Year's resolutions, I'll just assume it's easy like all the other ones and get through it without a problem.   Kind of like how zebras confuse their predators by being all stripe-y and running around chaotically.   Then the predator is all "Oh no!  There's so many of them!  I'm so confused and I don't know which one to pick, so I'm just going to stand here and let them run away..."

Actually, I don't think that's what I want.  That's the opposite of what I want.  Oh well, I've come this far and I'm not about to waste a good blog post on account of a technicality.

New Year's Resolutions:

1.  Blink my eyes sometimes.  DONE
2.  Sit in a chair.  DONE
3.  Make a sudden, loud noise like "bababababa!!!" DONE
4.  Have skin on my arms and legs.  DONE
5.  Get a real-person job.
6.  Think about dolphins.  DONE
7.  Think about bears.
8.  Enjoy eating cheese.  DONE
9.  Take more showers
10.  Incorporate the word "magnanimous" into a blog post.  DONE
11.  Learn the definition of "magnanimous."  DONE.  Googled it.  It means "to be generous and forgiving of insult or injury, to be free from petty resentfulness."
12.  Be more magnanimous.  DONE.  Kyle, we can be friends if you want.  Crap Blog Detective, I take back what I said about you being a "douche bad."
13.  Somehow become less scared of my basement.
14.  Look outside and see that it is raining.  DONE
15.  Become famous.
16.  Make a million dollars.
17.  Point at a lamp.  DONE
18.  Point at the ground.  DONE
19.  Hop on one foot.  DONE
20.  Eat some snow.  DONE
21.  Don't get any gastrointestinal diseases from eating snow
22.  Grow an indestructible exoskeleton
23.  Post a picture of a dinosaur on my blog

DONE.  I'm such an overachiever.  That's eight dinosaurs.   And Jesus.

24.  Look outside again and see that it is still raining.  DONE
25.  Look outside and plan to check if it is raining again, but forget about the rain because there are wild turkeys on your parents' lawn and that is distracting.  DONE.
26.  Get really, absurdly excited about the wild turkeys.  DONE
27.  Chase wild turkeys off of parents' lawn.  DONE.  Those turkeys didn't stand a chance.
28.  Feel way more powerful than turkeys.  DONE
29.  Think about monsters.   DONE.
30.  Write at least one blog post.  DONE