So I have a theory that most English people are quite pale with really red cheeks. Which leads me to believe that my English ancestors must have succeeded in not only ensuring that I had an easily spelled/pronounced maiden name, but that their genes influenced my appearance as well. I'm totally pale (unless I spend months in the tanning bed - mmmm skin cancer), and my cheeks get red when I even hear the words "it's hot outside" or when I allow myself to think for but a second that, "that was a little embarrassing."

I'm really proud of my English relatives and their apparently dominant genes, considering what a mutt I am. In order to appear predominantly English, my genes had to fight with Cherokee Indian, French, Irish and who knows what other DNA. And you know the French totally look different than the English. The Irish, too. They like potatoes and cabbage and getting into fights. And being kissed on St. Patrick's day. That all affects the way they look. But as for my English heritage, my teeth aren't horrendous. So all in all, being a mutt worked out okay.

Brandon got to yell at some neighborhood kids the other day. They were playing "stone one another to death" near our apartment, which wouldn't be a problem because that game is totally in the Bible, except that they kept missing and hitting our apartment. Since having a plastic bag covering up a rock-sized hole in your window isn't hip this season, Brandon decided to put an end to their game. He went outside and yelled "Hey kids! Quit throwing rocks!" To which a smaller kid responded by pointing at his good friends and saying (in that patented tattle-tale voice), "He's throwing rocks at me!" Brandon simply said, "Well then don't hang out with him," and walked back inside.

What's funny is that Brandon totally threw rocks at kids when he was little. In fact, he once hit a friend (or victim) from like, a football field away simply because he made him mad. And he was totally proud of his good aim, until the father of the boy came knocking on his door to speak to his father.

Thankfully, Brandon stopped casting stones way before I met him.

I'm totally a winter/fall person. I hate the summer - the heat, the lack of rain, the shriveling of the flowers as the sun sucks out their beauty, much like an old witch sucks out the plentiful youth of children (only in movies of course). But some people love it. They say insane things like "I'm happy when it's over 90 degrees." Like they relish heat strokes. Well, the high tomorrow is 99 degrees. Enjoy your stroke!

But the thing is, as I'm sure you've noticed, you can always warm up when it's cold. Wear an eskimo jacket, build a fire, eat spicy food. But you can't cool down when it's unbelievably hot. Yeah I know, turn on the air conditioning. But you see, we have these commercials here in California preaching "conserve energy, use fans, drink lots of water."

Here's how I know that heat is worse than cold: if cold were worse, hell would totally be one enormous blizzard. The devil would probably wear white instead of red in order to match the surroundings. And the devil can't wear white, white is the color of purity and heaven. So obviously, cold wins.

My mom loves TBN. She'd still watch it daily if she had good enough reception on her TV, but alas, though TBN's pink-haired lady can be watched in Africa and Asia, TBN is totally snowy on a TV with rabbit ears in southern Alabama.

Throughout the years of her TBN patronage, we received many "love gifts." "Love gifts" are cheap gifts that somehow make you feel like your money was put to good use. Like ensuring every ounce of TBN is gold-plated (I've been there, I know. If it's not real gold, then it's gold spray-paint. But don't worry, you're making a difference). It was kind of fun finding out what kind of tacky atrocity would be sent each month. "Love gifts" ranged from refridgerator magnets with the TBN emblem, to picture frames with the lion and the lamb getting along splendidly, and my personal favorite, a Mr. T-type gold chain with the TBN emblem on it. It was totally funny when we put it on my obese cat. He looked like a feline gangsta. The other cats in the 'hood best not be trippin'.

One Christmas, they sent out a tape of TBN's building being all lit up for Christmas. Every square inch of it was covered in white lights - which, if you drive by, you'll see the lights are still there. Why take them down when Christmas is, at the most, 365 days away? The pink-haired lady said as she flipped the switch, "And Gawd said, 'Let there be light!'" I still hear the pink-haired lady's voice when I hear that quote.

I love watching kids when they're bored. Especially when I'm bored. They haven't learned that being obviously bored is rude. They squirm, they whine, and then they whine as if their parent can't hear them correctly, because obviously the parent is deaf or else they'd be leaving already. I totally remember being that kind of kid. At the grocery store, at the department store. I was the kid tugging on my mom's shirt, throwing a fit, making the word "mom" into a three-syllable word. Basically doing whatever I had to in order to get out of there. I wanted to go home. Home is where the cartoons, kittens, and toys were. Not the store. Sure, there were neat things to beg for at the grocery store. But my mom was pretty good at resisting my pleas, and only laughed at me when my efforts became especially drastic. And nothing is more infuriating than your mom laughing at you when your actions indicate she should be saying, "Oh! You poor thing. You'll die if we don't leave. Let's get you a whole bunch of sugar and get out of this joint."

But of course I know that waaaaay, waaaaay, way down the road when I have a kid, I'll totally act like my mom. My kid will force itself to stop breathing, and I'll just continue standing in front of the rack of clothes, muttering, "Now do I like the blue shirt, or the black?"

Along the lines of Jeff's post, I thought I'd ask if anyone has an interesting memory of something we did together. I'm so forgetful. I like to think that I had to use up the space I had stored so many memories at so that I might remember how to survive in California (don't say "Mr/Mrs. First Name" or you'll sound stupid, don't EVER say y'all, and most importantly, wear flipflops at every opportunity). But it's sort of nice, too, because that way, memories that old friends recall are like new stories. And I'm in them! What could be better?

For instance, on our last visit to Alabama, Mitch recalled one night (I believe it was New Year's Eve) when he and a few friends were at my house lighting fireworks. We really hated the dog next door, what with all the barking, the terrorizing of my dog, and the pooping in my yard. So anyway, a firework goes the wrong way, and lands in my neighbor's yard. Burning the stupid dog a little. He was okay, and it really was an accident. But it was still funny. And what was great, is that when he was telling the story, I was thinking, "I hope that dog got burnt." I should totally join PETA.

When I was little, we had a rottweiller named Trip. He was really friendly - he rode on the back of the four-wheeler with us, tore up my dad's hunting hats and slobbered like nobody's business. My dad traded him for a BBQ grill when he finally ate one too many neon orange hats.

But before my dad's bartering caused Trip to go away, Trip managed to eat one of my kittens. Well, not injest, but he came close. We always had kittens around (what with our collection of unneutered outside cats) and I loved each kitten dearly. My sister loved dogs, I loved cats. That's how we kept from killing one another over pet ownership. So I took it kind of hard when I looked outside to see Trip tossing a limp kitten in the air, as if it were a rawhide bone. After I ran outside and secured the kitten from his powerful jaws, he seemed to regret his actions. I placed the dead kitten on the ground, and he nudged it and looked up at me as if to say, "fix it." But the time spent being tossed in the air and mashed in the jaws of our reluctant beast had ensured that my wonderful, white little kitten would never be Trip's plaything again. At least, not his living plaything.

We love Netflix. We do. For a while, we had a great relationship. We'd watch our movies and tv shows, send them back the next day, and within three days get new movies/tv shows to indulge in. But then things stopped being so perfect. A dvd didn't quite make it. No big deal, we reported it lost and quickly got a replacement. Then a dvd came that was completely cracked into. Not necessarily Netflix's fault. Could be an angry postman, bitter that even though he intercepted that Smallville dvd, we still got it anyway. But then it got worse.

We put all three dvd's in the mail last week. After two days, they counted one dvd as received, and sent us a new one. One. We sent them at the same time. Then, like, a week later, we finally get the other two dvd's. One is scratched so badly that one might suspect some one played "twist the cd on the asphalt" with it. So who is to blame? Do we have a very angry postman (I mean, we didn't give him anything for Christmas - pumpkin bread doesn't fit into our box that well) or is my paranoid notion correct that Netflix is purposefully dragging its feet so that we might not get as many dvd's a month in order to get our money's worth?

The chicken came first, because the egg couldn't hatch unless the chicken was around to keep it warm. There now. I can go on to figure out how to accomplish world peace.

Around the time we left for Arizona last weekend, I noticed that I had the sniffles. By the time we got to Sedona, I had a full-blown cold. Getting a summer cold is wretched, by the way. But since we were on a mini-vacation, I didn't want to ruin the trip by demanding that I be allowed to lay on the hotel bed while tending to my ever-flowing nose, coughs, etc. So I took some allergy medicine (Benadryl) and went where ever Brandon wanted to go.

It turned out that my cold was for the best. The medicine rather sedated me, so instead of saying "Walk around in this kind of heat just to see some well? Are you insane, there's not any shade! I'll be in the car. Leave the A/C on," I responded, "Wha? A well? Okay, whatever," and dragged my zombie self along with Brandon's whims.

I do have to say, Arizona is unbelievably hot. Opening your car door is like opening the oven when it's been preheating at 400 degrees. The dry heat thing is just a way to get people to actually come. But I've witnessed humid heat (FL, AL) and I've witnessed dry heat, and the main thing they have in common is the word heat. It's unbelievably hot in both places. But with the "dry heat" thing comes the drying of the skin and chapping of the lips. We actually stopped at a gas station for lip balm. It was that bad.

And people expect you to hike and be all nature-loving where we went. I love civilization. And I hate multiple giftshops with all the same stuff within a mile radius. However, I did have fun. The Grand Canyon really is huge, and being afraid of heights, I mostly cowered near the railing. Or a few feet away from the railing. Plus I got a lot of sleep, because when I'm in a car over an hour, I pretty much pass out (unless I'm driving). So it was a good trip. But next time, I want to go to the beach. Where it's acceptable to be lazy.

Patriotic Trucks

Patriotic Trucks
Originally uploaded by mosaiclife.

Happy Independence Day! We spent the weekend in Arizona, and you can see our pictures on flickr.

However, I did want to note that I've seen more trailer parks surrounded broken down cars than I ever saw in Alabama. Yeah, who's redneck now?