2013: The Year in Review

It's that time again, Folks! You know. Where I brag about stuff I did all year. (Remember 2010, 2011, and 2012?)

January 1, 2013

Well this year started off pretty weird. I mean, Summer and I woke up in Agra, India on January 1st after visiting the Taj Majal for crying out loud, but then that very same day I ended up sending a little kid to jail.

The next day we went to Veranasi and took a lovely boat ride along the Ganges and saw the funeral pyres you've heard so much about...

...and then we walked to Nepal...

...then Summer flew to Paris and I flew to Japan where I saw some real live Geishas...

...and went snowboarding at Nagano...

...and then I came home again and spent some quality time with my parents...

...went to Puerto Rico where I faced a great big giant fear and got certified in SCUBA...

...and for the first time in over three years, I wasn't homeless anymore.

I moved into an apartment directly across from one of my best buds Laurissa. And then Minneapolis had a freak snow storm on April 19th, and she and I jumped on the city-wide bandwagon and made barefooted snow angels. Hers only had one arm, because martini.

...I learned how to curl...

...which in turn gave me the sweetest profile picture ever, I must say...

...after that a Pizza Man totaled my car and ruined my back for life.

...on the upside I became the proud if only temporary owner of this lovely old 1987 Dodge Dakota pickup truck which I lovingly called Ol' Blue:

...and then Ol' Blue bit the dust and I bit the bullet...

Fancy Lady

Some other events of 2013:

...my dad and I went Lady's Slipper hunting again...
...Summer and I roadtripped down to Kansas City...
...Hanna inadvertently made me a tampon holder...
...I faced a great big giant fear and crossed a great big giant thing off my to-do list and now I'm hiding it here in this list so as not to draw too much attention...
...the girls and I went on our Annual Girls' Weekend...
...went to my first Habesha wedding (oops I forgot to wear white):




So, what was your favorite post of 2013?

Mine? I can't pick just one! Here are my three favorite posts of 2013:

1. Chanel Ad? Or...
2. The most hilarious thing that pretty much ever happened to me.
3. Kim Jong Hal

Hal-isms, Vol. 48

"Vegans can't shoot animals? I thought they just couldn't eat 'em."

"You don't know the nice poles I got out in the garage."

"I'm working on my colorectal cancer. The doctor said eat carrots and so I had one today and I'll have another one next week."

"To hell with all of yous. Except Kady."

"Why do my ribs hurt so bad? Am I overweight?"

Inside Family Jokes You Probably Won't Find Very Funny

We're sitting around playing games from about 4pm. 3 hands in it was 6:30pm...

Hal, to no one to my mom: "...are we going to have a light lunch?"

Why it's funny:

• My dad is always wondering "where is dinner?"
• Nobody was starving.
• Apparently my mom was just supposed to get up and start making dinner in the middle of our game.
• "Light Lunch." At 6:30pm?
• Hal had just been snacking on Kit Kats and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
• Where is my DINNER, WOMAN???

Pete and I about died.

Hal-isms, Vol. 47

"I'm not saying you're right. I'm just saying everything you said is true."

"What's this information? We've been reading this for years on kady.blog."

"You ask me to tell you I love you, so I do. But it's not true."
*[yes it is.]

"Play your ace or burn in hell."

"Kady. I love you. I love you more every day."

Shash-age Links

This poor lady science reporter gets troll-mail all the time. Watch her read it. Sad.

This amazing dad made his kid a prosthetic hand for like ten bucks.

This is really cute. Remember ladies, people are also watching you scream at your kids in Target. So pretend a little harder maybe?

I am joining a choir right now. You never know when you'll be needed. for a surprise Nelson Mandela flash mob tribute. This made me cry.

Ever wonder where your old clothes go? Sometimes they go to Africa. Some people used the internet to find a T-shirt's former owner. Twenty years later.

I wonder if anybody will ever love me like this.

I am 100% certain that nobody will ever love me like this.

Have you gotten your Kady-isms fix today?

Well, I mean, I've never had athletes foot, so...I can corroborate these findings.





 This will always crack me up until the day that I die:

Peach-faced Parrot

A little seriousness for ya. The following is an excerpt from a letter that John Steinbeck wrote to his friend the politician Adlai Stevenson. It's a commentary about the state of the United States, only he wrote it in 1959. Me thinks he'd be rolling in his grave if he were alive today.

Adlai, do you remember two kinds of Christmases? There is one kind in a house where there is little and a present represents not only love but sacrifice. The one single package is opened with a kind of slow wonder, almost reverence. Once I gave my youngest boy, who loves all living things, a dwarf, peach-faced parrot for Christmas. He removed the paper and then retreated a little shyly and looked at the little bird for a long time. And finally he said in a whisper, "Now who would have ever thought that I would have a peach-faced parrot?" 

Then there is the other kind of Christmas with presents piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents thrown down and at the end the child says—"Is that all?" Well, it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick. And then I think of our "Daily" in Somerset, who served your lunch. She made a teddy bear with her own hands for our grandchild. Made it out of an old bath towel dyed brown and it is beautiful. She said, "Sometimes when I have a bit of rabbit fur, they come out lovelier." Now there is a present. 

If I have kids, and I'm sure I totally will since I'm 36-years-old with no glimmer of hope for a boyfriend any time soon! they are going to be like tiny little slaves, cleaning and scrubbing and polishing and clipping my toenails and so when I give them a morsel of bread they'll say, "thank you Mommy dearest! thank you!"

You think I'm kidding.

Well. This Cracked Me Right UP

Genius Craigslist ad for a used car.






Nissan bought it from him. Haha!

What's the Opposite of a Pet Peeve?

What's the opposite of a Pet Peeve? You know, when you see something you really like? What's that called?

I don't know what it's called. But here's something that I like. I like it when I see women in hijab with their cell phones shoved in there so they can talk "hands free":

http://phillipswhittier365.blogspot.com/

I like it a lot.

Overheard at Work

"When you bowl as good as I do, you don't need bumpers."





 

Shash-age Links

HAHA Glamour Shots. (Thanks, Chris.)

Daredevil-death-defying Goats!!??!?  Unbelievable.

I love the Onion. Oh man I love the Onion so much. Here are two articles that cracked me up enough this week to actually share them on my Facebook wall.

• Infertile Aunt Doing it up Big at Kid's Table
• Why Are All the Good Guys Taken, Gay, Dead, or Available?

Hilarious. (And I concur.)

I wonder if anybody will ever love me like this.

Haha this guy totally fake-interpreted Nelson Mandela's funeral. I am very sorry for any deaf people who tried to watch the service and couldn't understand, but it's SO funny how when you watch him, he's totally using the same five signs the entire time. Even I can see that. It's so hilarious to me. And his straight face! And now he's saying he's schizophrenic and had an episode on stage? And not it's being reported that he was involved in a mob killing of a man who stole a television? It's too much.

I love reading articles from people who have done long term travel. Ditto to this guy's list of things he learned while traveling.

I'm really proud of  my CRAZY nephew Miles. He's going to jump in a frozen lake on January 25th to support his brother Murphy and the Special Olympics! Click here to donate.

HOW TO FIGHT A BABY:

THE STORY OF THE FANTASTIC RACCOON

Hanna found this story in her room when she was cleaning the other day. She wrote it when she was little. I've done my best to type out her exact story, including all the [sic] moments.

The title of the story is "THE STORY OF THE FANTASTIC RACCOON"

Enjoy!

Once upon a time there wass a chair named Ralph. He loved it when people sat on him and farted. The person who farted on him the most was his owner Franchesco! Franchesco was rich with gold. He loved to play violin but he stunk at it. He had a beard that riched the floor. His favorite food to eat was boiled saurkraut and ketchup. He had a pet parrot name ALphredo. Alphredo would sit on the back of Ralph the Chair and poop. Ralph liked farta, not poop, so he decided to kill Alphredo. All he needed was a fabulous plan. T O days later he still didn't kn0w his plan. 1 day latter he found his plan. 

His owner Franchesco took a walk every Friday afternoon. While he was gone Ralph would give Alphredo some crackers filled with sleeping pills. After he fell asleep Ralph would put him in the doll bath with a bottle of shampoo on his head. It would look like the bottle hit him in the head and knocjed him out, causing him to slip under the water and drown. It was a genius plan! It was Thursday today! He only had that night to prepare. He waited till everyone else was asleep. Then he snuck into the kitchen and stole Alphredo;s crackers. He got the sleeping pills out of the medicine closet. He carefully crushed the pill and covered the crackers with them. He put everything back where it was before. He went back to his room and fell asleep.

The next day Ralph was so nervous he coulen;t talk right. When Franchesco sat on him to fart Ralph was sh king so hard the fart sounded like brer-er-er-er-er. Franchesco was so embarressed by the sound of his fart that he didn't sit on Ralph again to fart the whole rest of the day. 

Once Franchesco left for his walk he beagan his plan. Alphredo flew over and landed on Ralph's head. He poop a horribly large green bird turd right between poor Ralph's eyes. Ralph was so mad. Polly want a cracker" he cackled. He walked to the kitchen with Alphredo on his back, singing a horrible song the whole way. Ralph hatee it when Alphredo sang. He was a terrible singer. He took the crackers down from the shelf. He took the sleeping pill cracker out of the box and gave it to Alphrdo Alphrdotook it and ate it with one bite. "Ha ha ha", said Ralph. Soon enh enough the parot fell asleep. Now for the rest of the plan, Ralph said. He took the parot to the bathroom and set him on the counter while he filled the bath. When it was full he took the parot and put him in the bath. "Now for the bottle", he said. He went to the cabinet and pulled out a bottle. He didn;t have any fingers so he dropped it right away. "oops", he said. He went to pick it up again but it slipped out of his legs and fell on the floor. When it hit the floor the cap broke and fell off. Shampoo oozed all o ver the outside of the bottle. Ralph decided to cleab it off later. He tried to pick up the bottle again but it was so slippery that it slipped out of his legs again and flew through the air, leaving a trail of soap wherever it flew. The bottle crashed into the mirror, smashing it and sending little shards of glass all over the bathroom. Now Ralph was mad. He chased after the bottle screaming and swearing, smashing up the whole house. He speant so much time chasing the bottle and was being so loud thzt Alphredo woke up. "Hmmmmm", he thought, I must have fallen asleep, but I don't remember trying to take a bath." He went off to find Ralph. He was shocked the whole house was shashed up. And there was Ralph, laying on the broken couch staring at a shampoo bottle. He was crying! When Ralph saw Alphredo he screamed and picked up a knife off the table. Alphredo backed up against the door just then the door opened and Franchesco walked in, just as Ralph threw the knife with all jis might at Alphredo. Alphredo saw the knife and ducked, but Franchesco didn't see it. The knife flew through the air, and then it stopped. It stopped lodged in the heart of Franchesco. He died instantly, falling to the ground beforeRalph evennknew he had even come home. There was an instant of silence, then there was a blood curdling scream from Ralph. He ran across the room and flung himself at Franchesco, skreming "Oh i'v killd himm" Alphredo stared at him. Alphredo was a very good parot He thought that everybody was a good person. He was moved by Ralph's crying. "Oh you poor thing", he sobbed "what happened?" Ralph was shocked out of his crying fit. "I , uh, well, there was, ya see, um. Sudde




And that's where it ends.

Hanna, performing child slave labor by cleaning the tub because her old Auntie's back hurts.

Book Review

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
by Jonathan Safran Foer

2am

That pretty much sums it up.

More Elevators

What? You haven't had enough of the tales of me acting a fool in the elevator?

Well:

A few weeks ago, I was riding back up to my office after lunch when a man got in after me. He was holding a stack of seven pizzas. There was already another man in the elevator with HIS lunch, a styrofoam container in a plastic bag, and a bunch of other people without any food, like me. I said to the group:

"Oh Man if this elevator gets stuck it's gonna get crazy in here." And then I dug in my purse to find my keys and put them in my hand, you know like how they tell you to do when you're walking alone at night so you can fend off rapists and muggers:

Re-enactment

And then I lowered myself into this offensive "every-man-for-himself-elevator's-stuck-I'll-kill-you-for-that-pizza" stance right here:

It's not always a Victoria's Secret fashion show at my place, you know.

Entertainer of the Year

Elevator PUNCH!

As some of you know, I have a hard time being "normal" when I ride in elevators.

Today, a co-worker and I were playing the "mock-race-to-the-elevator-so-you-can-quick-shut-the-door-on-the-other-person-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha" game but he made it first and so when I got to the doors and they opened he was right there and I was right behind him and I bumped into him and we fell into the elevator.

Well. There were already two people in there. (Attractive business-y type men, of course).

I hadn't put my coat on yet. I started to put it on and when I put my arm through the sleeve I pretended to surprise "arm-through-coat-sleeve-PUNCH!" in the face the attractive business-y man standing nearest to me.

He mustered up a slight smile and then I yelled "HILARIOUS!"

A real Barrel O'Laughs, Me

Sorry, For Real

The five of you may have noticed that I'm not posting as often as I used to.

There's a very good reason for that. I ran out of money and got a job. A real one. And all my brain seems to be capable of handling in the evening hours is back-to-back episodes of television. So, you know, sorry about that. It's really hard to come up with something interesting to say day after day when the only interesting thing that happened that day was that I forgot my lunch and had to go down to the cafeteria and spend $8.00 on a very boring salad and then I ate it at my desk.

Just remember, I have posted 1,656 times on this very website and you can click around and read old archived posts. There's a menu of topics on the right hand side of the page:

Might I suggest:

Some of my very favorite stories are housed under life up North.

Hal - Read about my ridiculously funny dad, including the hysterical run-in with prostate cancer a few years back. Or read all the crazy stuff he says at Hal-isms.

Hilarious - Just my opinion...

Embarrassed - (This happens a lot).

Kady Stupid - Well, I mean. I am.

And of course there is fart, poop, pee, and tampons but -- you know. Proceed at your own risk.

OR: You could go all the way back to the very beginning and read every single one!

Life will get interesting again soon, I hope.

Pet Peeves

I have so many pet peeves!

One of them is not posting on my blog. ha.

When I'm feeling like there's nothing to write I might cheat and just post one of my many million pet peeves. So here goes:

I hate it when:

You know when you're in the car on the on-ramp to get onto the freeway and you're being metered and everybody has to get into two lanes? Well, I'm really good at figuring out quickly which lane is the best one. I have lots of tricks, like if there's a semi truck in one of the lanes I get in that lane, because the meters are every-other and a semi takes up the space of like four cars and so DUH, you'll get to go first if you get behind the semis. (Don't worry the pet peeve is coming.) Another trick if I'm desperate is to just really quickly visualize the every-other pattern that's happening and get in the lane that lets you go first.

SO:

I will never understand why people get in the wrong lane! I laugh to myself when they go right and left was the way to go. I love that when we get up to the lights I get to go before them because THEY picked WRONG.

The pet peeve?

When they go in front of me anyway. Speed off like a whiney baby, peeling their tires to show me.

Photo wicfy.com

Am I the only one? Do you also hate this?

Summer-isms, Vol. 62

"That's not gonna smell good. I just had a bunch of onions."

"I've never been able to duplicate the feeling I had when I looked at Mark Paul Gosslear's face."

"From what I've learned about humans..."

"That's adorable that you have a crush on me. So does every comic book reader."

"I still don't know what Drake is."

Hal-isms, Vol. 46

"Boy. It's an earth-shattering experience when you find out you're nobody. Earth-shattering."

"I'm gonna have a cup of coffee while we sit here and bond."

"You're not makin' bean dip?! I hate Spanish things."

"Well? Have you ever noticed their food is either beans or -- I don't know -- cactus tips. It never seems to change."

"I think I'm gonna crap any minute. Do I dare walk out the door?"

The Most Important Thing I Ever Learned in My Life

I've learned a lot of stuff in my lifetime. Lots. (Mostly the hard way by screwing up real bad.)

Today, I'm gonna share the single most important thing I ever learnt in my whole entire lifetime. It's from my good friend Anna Gustafson and it's these five words:



"No ice ruins the party."

Seriously.

The Station Wagon, Vol. 2

Our family's ugly Station Wagon had a window that rolled down on the hatch back. On afternoon when I was three years old, my mom was driving us down the road when she happened to look in the rearview mirror to see me, outside the car, hanging on. All she could see was my white hair and my little knuckles.

She slammed on the breaks.

I was three. I guess I decided to climb out the back and ride on the bumper.

It's a miracle I'm alive today.

The Station Wagon

When we were kids my parents had a pea green station wagon. It was very, very ugly and embarrassing and we tried very hard to never get dropped off at school in it. 

We were eight people and we all rode around in that thing. Two parents and a kid up in the front, three kids in the back and Kasey and I sat with all the luggage in what we called the "back-y-back", or the cargo-hold. I also remember sometimes sitting in the space where people's feet go in the back seat after losing the "who gets the hump" fight if and when there were too many suitcases and boxes of pigeons in the back-y-back. Boxes of pigeons? What the? That's another story. 

Anyway, the car was ugly. Other people got the new invention they called the "mini van" or the "Astro van" but we Hexums drove around in a station wagon. Gosh it was ugly. The color of green puke. One day, my mom got into an accident and totaled it. Nobody was hurt thank goodness but the car was a goner. We kids hip, hip hoorayed! because: no more ugly car.

Yah, right.

Hal and Dianne promptly went and bought our old car's ugly step-cousin, the even uglier poop brown station wagon.

Something drew me to this painting (currently hanging in my bedroom) by local artist Neal Perbix. I'm not sure what.

Shash-age Links

An inspiration. And what a way to go- This 86-year-old runs a marathon, and then dies the next day.

I think I really need to have a few Japanese babies so I can make them these adorable lunches every day.

This interview of two girls who found the scissors is pretty stinking hilarious. 

These old time photos don't seem so old-time-y anymore now that they've given them a modern facelift. I wonder, will today seem like "old times" in the future, since our photos are so true-to-life nowadays?

I want one of these un-helmets invented by two Swedish women. Too bad they're more expensive than my bike...

There are many reasons to love Minneapolis, and it's bikability is high up on that list. 

Summer saw this guy first, but if she doesn't marry him I'm a-going to:

Adopt an Adult Kid

Sometimes I write posts that I don't publish, if you can believe that. Usually it's for a very good reason. This, for example:

I've been down many internet wormholes in my day, but none so horrible as the "adopt an adult kid who is 18 and still hasn't lost hope in waiting for his forever home or how about this 12-year-old boy who functions at age 6 but is looking for love from a mom and a dad and wants to be adopted because he 'would like to stay there and not move again' or here we have an outgoing 10-year-old girl who just wants somebody to 'forget her past and be there for her when things get tough'" and there are photos no doubt donated by professional photographers and it's like shopping for shoes but it's real people and what happened to the parents? and so I'm crying and have decided I can probably fit like eleven or twelve teenagers in my one bedroom apartment and we can be a family but truth be told I don't really want the responsibility and I'm only home from about 9pm to 9am and during that time if I'm not sleeping I am drinking wine and watching back-to-back episodes of some TV show in my underwear so I probably can't really help with homework until weekends. 

My Favorite Things

I started this post a while ago because I wanted to share all of my favorite things with the world. I could only think of one thing at the time and saved it as a draft to add more things later. And then I never did. 

So, here you go. An incomplete list of all of my favorite things:

I Don't Deserve Anything Nice

Since I bought my new car, I have:

• Left the windows down in a rainstorm.
• Unwittingly let sauce-heavy Chinese food slowly drip, drip, drip onto the passenger seat and into the crack of the passenger seat
• Put a metal chair in the backseat that had wet rust inside it somewhere which then dripped onto the leather.
• Parked next to somebody who likes to RAM! their door open into other people's brand new cars when they get out of the car.
• Been sideswiped in the middle of the night by a random mean sideswiper who totally scraped up the whole side of my car and broke my rearview mirror OFF (to the tune of $2000) and then did NOT leave a note.

Which just proves I don't deserve anything nice. If I still had Ol' Blue I'd purposely pour Chinese food all over it to make it smell BETTER.



This was my car new:

Here's a couple pics of it today:

Shash-age Links

I never want to believe that anyone would ever lie to me ever ever ever (why would somebody lie to me?), so this makes me feel lots of bad feelings.

I was in Sarajevo and I stood in these places and this photo collection is incredible.

I don't think I'm a very good person because I would probably not do this.

Ha! Axe Body Spray is totally toxic and sends people to the hospital. This is awesome and crazy.

I wonder if anybody will ever love me like this.

As much as I hate the font he used to make this post about deep dark secrets, it's pretty hilarious. I'm guilty of 2, 4, 5, 14, 15, 26, 28, 30 (but only to determine clean vs. dirty) 36 and 40.



Here's a tiny little three-minute glimpse of what it's like to be in my family:

Ol' Blue Bit the Dust and I Bit the Bullet.

RIP

After already having broken down and towed to the mechanic twice in one week, Ol' Blue didn't start one day at work. I was late for a meeting with my boss and all my old tricks weren't working. I adjusted the idle. I waited. I pressed the gas to the floor and kept it there as I turned the key. I flooded it. So I waited. I tried again. I started crying because I was so sad and frustrated. I loved that truck! I just had it fixed. Twice! I wanted it to work so's I could drive it for five years and then decide what to do about buying a different car. Is that too much to ask?

I texted my 27-year-old coworker Mike. "Truck won't start. Come out to parking lot right now and be my big brother and tell me what to do." Mike came out to the parking lot. As he approached I crank-rolled my truck window down and wiped the tears from my eyes.

Mike looked at my pathetic self and said, "go buy a car you dummy."

He helped me start the truck and I had 14 seconds to decide which direction I should go. Ol' Blue took me to Acura. (I did have to make one stop on the way at the toxic waste dump to unload a humidifier and some paint cans I had picked up from my rental property.)

I walked in like a fancy lady and asked for a manager. I said the following, numbering each bullet point with my hand:

• "I have one hour"
• "I want to drive away in the gunmetal gray ILX with tech package"
• "I want all-weather mats"
• "You're going to give me $1000 for the piece of crap truck in the parking lot"

One hour and five minutes later I drove away in my new car.

Once the fancy business lady stuff was over I could take off my serious poker negotiating game face and do this:

And this:

And this:

(I guess the extra five minutes was kind of my fault.)

p.s. they only gave me $500 for Ol' Blue. I mean it also didn't start when they tried. But I made them throw in the all-weather mats for free which meant technically I got $650. I call that a win. 

Sunday Favorites: You Know You're Lonely...

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on January 30, 2013.

You know you're lonely when you're shopping for clothes and the salesman who is obviously gay touches your leg in two places to try to explain why the knee of the jean isn't hitting your knee in the right spot (because your legs are way too short), and his hand lingers on your calf muscle and the electricity shoots up from his hand on your leg straight to your empty womb. And then you buy four pairs of pants.

Why I'm even shopping I don't know. This outfit has served me well every day for the past five weeks.

Just Exactly HOW Do Normal People Ride Elevators?

Last night after work I got into the elevator to find three young handsome men including a bearded redhead -- and you know I'm a total sucker for beards and for redheads. They were in the middle of a conversation but that didn't stop me from stepping right in the middle of all three of them, while maintaining eye contact with the redhead and declaring,

"OOOH! I LIKE MY CHANCES!"

And then acknowledging the awkwardness of making that joke right upon entering the elevator, not considering the time required to make a 10-floor descent, I turned back to the door and declared again,

"I SHOULD HAVE MADE THAT JOKE A LITTLE LATER IN THE ELEVATOR RIDE. HEH HEH HAHEHAHDHADHEHDHHAHHAHAHA. AWKWARD. HAHAHAHAah!!!!!"

They looked at me, confused and the redhead continued speaking, presumably where they had left off before I broke their conversation. '...and then I talked to Rosalind about it...'

And then I interrupted again, mock-angrily-crazy-eyesed, (you know, like a jealous hag over the '10-second relationship' I had just pretend garnered with the bearded red-headed cute one), cocking my head and positioning my arms across my chest:

"OH. ROSALIND. YOUR GIRLFRIEND."

"No. She's my manager." By now they realized I wasn't going to let them have their conversation and that clearly I wanted all of the attention on me. They gave me a slight pity laugh (because come on, that jealous bit was FUNNY) and then mercifully the elevator doors opened and THEN I said,

"I'M GONNA GET OUT OF HERE REALLY FAST BECAUSE I'M EMBARRASSED."

I went left when I should have went right, and then I figured it out and had to turn around and walk past them again and then I walked really really fast out of the building, with the three handsome men following me all of the way out.

WHY can't I be more like her?

Just When you Thought China Had it Together

I'm so confused, because thusfar China has been so forward-thinking it its treatment of women! This is just WAY out in left-field.



 

 

"Women drivers when driving alone are not able to find the way to their destination, even if they’ve been there many times.”

 

Hal-isms, Vol. 45

"As I fall through the air I become a rubber ball. I just bounce."

"Be happy for people like that because they make you tough."

"You know me, resilient."

"People need meaning in life. I can't help ya, I don't know what to say."

Rowdy, being Rowdy

Dad

Sometimes my dad calls me and counsels criticizes me, or whatever. It's not on purpose. Mostly he just disagrees with every decision I've ever made. (Can you blame him?) He just likes to continue to mold me, even now that I'm all growed up. I don't mind it at all, I tell you what, I'm just happy he calls. 

Anyway, the other day I told him, "It's OK dad. I already know you love me because you called. You don't have to say anything nice."

Oh how we laughed.

"You have to come now, or be one of them dummies. One of them city people. Look at your cement blocks. Look at your empty cans of beer. The money. And go clubbing. And don't worry about the Lady's Slippers. Why worry about it? Right?"

Shash-age Links

Photos! Marathons! My favorite things. 30 Amazing Ways People Crossed the Finish Line at the Twin Cities Marathon.

My whole life my dad was worried about getting laid off from Boise paper mill. Well three years after his retirement, they finally did a major and devastating job cut. Photos of my hometown and the devastating job loss here.

My friend Matt Rasmussen from high school is a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for poetry for his book Black Aperture. Crazy!

The Minneapolis dating scene. What a junk article. My best friend Summer's brilliant counterpoint article here. Haha, huh?

Guh. I love it when gigantic movies choose a lead role from the general populace. Of immigrants. In MINNEAPOLIS.

Speaking of Minneapolis...a list of reasons why it's awesome here. (For me it's #1 on every list, of course.)

Hal-isms, Vol. 44

"A designer. One who designs. I'm a dictionary."

"What's goin' on on Facebook?"

"Damn college kids. I hate yous all."

"Kady I raised you to be tough; you're not going to let a little thing like this get you down."

"Your mom and I - we wake up and have a couple onions and then I mow the lawn and take a nap and she watches TV."