Burning your house down; It's not really that fun.

Howdy.

I know, I know, I haven't bloooogged in a long time. But I have a valid excuse.

I've been stuuuuuupid busy.

Which translates to I had a baby, learned to adjust to two screaming children, and maybe sort of accidentally burned my house down and lost everything our family owned.

Ok, I exaggerate. We did make it out with a handful of clothes, two of Ronin's blankets, 2 coats, a teddy bear, and two pairs of shoes. And one of our two family pet cats.

When your house burns down it's like going through a speed round of The College of Hard Knocks educational courses.

Our friends, family, coworkers, and utter strangers opened their hearts and homes and pockets and kept my family from drowning in despair and homelessness.

I've learned that the only things that i'm truly attatched to are my family and our memories. The only things I'm upset about losing in the fire (and we did lose EVERYTHING) were the kids' baby footprints we had framed on the wall, and the baby blanket I made for Teva while I was pregnant with her. Everything else was just stuff.

Expensive, waterlogged, smoky, charred up barbequed stuff.

I'll always miss our little kitty Lady. The poor baby ran and hid when the smoke and flames filled the house and the fire department wasn't able to find her until it was too late. Our cat Mischief ran to the front door and stayed there and they got him out before he suffered more than a singed ear and some smoke inhalation.

I won't go into any more of the sad depressing details of that fateful day in May. Instead, I will make a list:

Krista's Tips For What To Expect When Your House Burns To Ashes and You Lose All Your Junk:

1. Everyone will want to help you. Don't resist; LET THEM. It's not weakness, it's a strength to let others help. Write down everyone's name and contact info if you can, so you can send thank yous later; you will want to.

2. Cry and scream and let all the tension out. It's better to just let it go so you can begin to heal and get back to a normal life.

3. Be glad for the little things. The clothing restoration company that went through the rubble of our house was able to clean and save Teva's teddy bear and Ronin's blanket; I cried when I was able to give them back to my kids. They snuggled them up immediately and suddenly things didn't look so bleak; I still had a few pieces of "home" for them to hold on to.

4. Don't let your insurance company dick around. It took our insurance company (progressive) 7 months to get our settlement to us. 7 very expensive months. They are no longer our insurance company, truth be told.

5. Look on the bright side; now you don't have to go through allllll that effort to have that garage sale; all the things you've been hoarding is gone and you can start hoarding again from scratch!! How fun.

6. Thrift stores will be your best friends; we got a lot of clothes and books and kitchen things there.

7. Jokes about "burning this mothafuckah to the ground" get a little less funny to your friends, and a little more ..... "well, shit, dude, she might actually do it." Just a tad less funny.



Ok. So that's all i'll say about that. I don't want to beat a horse that's dead AND charbroiled.

Ha! Fire joke.


So. Bottom line:

Burning your house down isn't all fun and games and tra-la-la like the Hollywood Machine would have you think. (I say Hollywood because, hey, you gotta blame somebody.... and Brad Pitt and the rest of Ocean's 11 is a pretty good place to start.... and not just because i'm still bitter that Matt Damon didn't wanna marry me.)

Probably not a good idea, kids.

Probably....

Unicorns make the best movies.

in 21 days i'll be leaving this state forever.

i've been trapped here for the last 5 years of my life and i am tooooo excited to leave!

we found a great 4 bedroom townhome in Maryland with a fenced  in yard and a decent kitchen, among other wonderful features. i'm chomping at the bit to get packed up and moved.

the only thing i'm kind of sad about is the fact that i'll have to start kind of all over again making new friends. i'll have a few kind of built-in girl friends in the form of the significant others of Mike's friends so that helps.

it's going to be.... interesting having two cats and a 15 month old in a car for 9 hours making the drive up to our new home.  i have 21 days to live in fear of the cat piss that i'm sure will be spilt in the fabric of my car's seats from a terrified Lady kitty.

oh joy.


next subject.

i watched two of the most horrible movies ever made yesterday.

Mazes and Monsters with Tom Hanks and The Rig with The Worst Actors Imaginable.

i ended up slurping down a bottle of Riesling in order to survive the double horror.

and now Mike, who FORCED me to watch those two movies, won't watch The Last Unicorn with me.

which is just a crying shame because it's the BEST movie EVER made.



next subject.

i'm excited to be pregnant again. clarification; i'm looking forward to it. last time it mellowed me out and made me so incredibly un-neurotic. that sure would be nice.



so yesterday i was on the stationary bike at the gym pumping hard and it popped into my head that i used to be 17 pounds skinnier than i currently am. It seemed so impossible and such an unattainable goal that it threw me head first into a Miniature Depression Pit. i hopped off the bike, sighed, and went home.


aaaaaaand i'm cutting this short because my boy will be waking up from First Nap any second now.

Top Five Fun Things I've Been Up To Lately:

1) listening to Maroon 5's newest album. it's AWESOME.

2) getting a tan on my whitey white white skin. i no longer glow in the dark. thank you. *takes bow*.

3) attempting to turn my "Don't Pick Me Up" kitty into a "Please Hold Me All The Time And Cuddle Me" kitty. things are going well. she lets me hold her for about ten seconds now before she wants down.

4)  i'm almost out of coffee. wait, that's a bad thing...

5) dancing while i'm running on the treadmill at the gym. i figure, the more fun i'm having the more i'll work out. so i ignore the looks and chuckles of the on-lookers and i go ahead and get down with my bad self.

here's something that makes me laugh; not for the sensitive of constitution.

getting my Julie Andrews on

i'm inspired today to list some of my favorite things about life.  now, this is by no means all of them, and they are not in order. and away we go:

1.  Unicorns.  there's something soothing about a majestic, gentle creature that has a large deadly spike sprouting from it's cranium.  like it could hand you a bag of jellybeans and if you didn't say "thank you" then it would impale your ungrateful ass.  it's beauty and justice all in one glittering package. 

2. Things that are orange, except for oranges.  I'm talking Oompa Loompas, Goldfish crackers, traffic cones, Dreamsicles, it's all good.  True story; once after a concert i heisted an orange traffic cone from the parking lot. my plan was to put it in my room, maybe put some flowers in the top like it was some kind of Department Of Transportation vase. You know, dress up my room; make it real classy.  However, my parents- who were clearly disappointed that I'd failed to learn that "stealing is wrong" lectured me into a guilty stupor, and the next day after church i drove the hour and a half to the parking lot and put it back. when i got there all of it's little friends were gone, though, so i just kind of did a drive-by-cone-plop and hightailed it out of there. Moral of the Story: love your traffic cones, but love them from a distance.

3.  Squeezing pimples. ok. sure, maybe it's disgusting but there is something wholly satisfying about watching a stream of icky white/yellow/orange/black goo come out and knowing that that pore is now free to breathe. i'm sorry, i probably made some of you throw up a little bit in your mouths just then. i'll wait for you to rinse your mouth and get control over your heaves..... doo do do dodo doooo.... ok.

4. Spinach.  i used to put heaping mounds of boiled spinach on my fork and then pretend that i was a brontosaurus eating sea plants while i munched it, letting the leaves hand out of my mouth. i was happy, but i'm sure my parents were giving themselves Facepalms and turning shades of red from embarassment. i had no qualms with Dinosaur Eating in public places; i did it often.

5. People Watching.  My favorite place for this activity is probably Wal-Mart. you get all kinds of crazy people at Wal-Mart.  Dreadlocked white boys that look like they're having a bad acid trip, spandex clad would be Biggest Loser contestants,  oodles of crying children, obviously drunken underage high school kids trying desperately to "rein it in", ritsy rich ladies looking frantic and hurrying to get their Nyquil or what-have-you and get out of there, and of course at least 10 people that look like they could probably die at any moment scooting along in those powered wheelchair/vespa hybrids that they hand out at the front door.  It's a veritable Mecca for oddness. and definite proof that America is in fact a melting pot of people and culture.  so in a way, Wal-Mart is the most patriotic store i know. it goes America all over everyone's asses. with low prices.  and a smorgasbord of smells from rotting milk to fresh bread to ripe, ripe college students that really really need to bathe themselves.

6. Really fat cats.  i'm not talking italian mobster "cats", but actual fat cats. like, prop themselves against the wall in sitting position so they can breathe cats.  what can i say, a Garfieldesque kitteh is ok by me. they're all lazy and cuddly and too mellowed out to worry about climbing onto the top of the fridge to knock your glass vases onto the floor to get revenge on you for not feeding them "on time". they just tucker out on the floor or your lap and lapse into a comatose state. it's all of the Cuddle and Fluff and none of the Cat Scratch Fever or Make My Day Biting.  perhaps i should change my kitties diets from their healthy cat food to a steady diet of brownies and lasagna. hmm. maybe i should change my diet to brownies and lasanga. then all i'd need is to find someone that can turn me into a cat. maybe a plastic surgeon. the one that did this:

7. Ninja Cupcakes. well, cupcakes in general. all cupcakes. my favorite are extra-moist-orange-vanilla-cupcakes-with-a-surprise-maraschino-cherry-center-and-lemon-frosting. however, Ninja cupcakes are both deadly, and delicious.

Krista's Thoughts Before Bedtime:

1. The baby books say i should try and get Ronin to fall asleep on his own in his crib but that just sounds exhausting.  Maybe i'm too lazy.  it's so much easier to just let him fall asleep in my arms and then move him to his crib. this "parent" stuff is rough. awesome, but rough.

2. i'm in the 130s!! today i weigh 138.8 and i'm excited. my hope is to be at 135 by Christmas next weekend. y'all wish me luck!

3. a fish is not a duck. no matter what they say on the Travel Channel.

4. to quote a wonderful wonderful ladyfriend and reader of mine, "Qristyl" does not equal "Crystal" and if you think that it does, you are an idiot and should rethink becoming a parent.


5. the sound of my feet rubbing across my bedsheets is akin to the sound that velcro makes when it's pulled apart.  i should probably get on that and fix it. fix it until it's fixed.
 
6. Taylor Swift is great and everything, but she is death to my creative processes. i can hardly think with her chipper twang in my ears. gotta switch back to Deathcab.
 
7. i think that i might be able to master the tuba. it doesn't seem that difficult. i think i might need to be a bit more "surly" though. or "portly".
 
8. i think that maybe i'll try and be a vegetarian for a week, see what my body thinks about it.
 
9. i can make a better subway-style sandwich at home than at the actual Subway. and for pennies on the dollar, or however that expression goes. now if i could just keep my cat Mischief from stealing the sliced turkey from out of it when i'm not looking. that cat is appropriately named.
 
10. it's hard to have thoughts sometimes. just in general. more-so, ones that actually have clout or meaning. geez that's a funny word. clout.
 
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