Hocking Shit You Already Own

Tonight I'm feeling a little grateful. It just seemed that after a day where I must have said the sentence, "I'm going to punch you in the throat, child, I swear to Gawd," under my breath more times than I can count, it felt good to come home and have things just go right. Please allow me to be a little Oraph-esque while I while go into the lengthiest explanation of why you should own what you probably already own and if you don't why you should go out and buy it.


Windex
I shall begin with a side-note because this is my blog and I feel like it, dammit.

I took twenty three kids ages four to eight and a half bowling today with two of my coworkers. Thats a 1:8 ratio and in case you were curious, in a smoke filled, crowded, ugly-shoeed facility that ratio is OUT OF CONTROL. But fine, we made the best of it. We bowled!

(I didn't, good lord, my high is a 32 and I haven't bowled since then. I'm actually still trying to block out that drunken mess of an evening and how one swollen finger got stuck in one of the finger holes of a ball far too heavy for me and a friend of mine spent the next twenty minutes lubricating it with a beer WHICH IS NOT REALLY MEANT FOR LUBRICATION PURPOSES and asking me why I thought putting my thumb the smallest hole was a good idea in the first place...uuuggghhh. Side-note side-note over)

So the kids bowled. And one darling little girl is made of all sticks and twigs...you know, no body mass and kind of resembles Gumby and so I knew when she was kind of swaying drunkenly under the weight of her ball I should intervene but she kept SCREAMING at me over the blare of one thousand other children screaming that she "Can do it by MYSELF" and I watch the entire scenario go down as she shuffles onto the wooden bowling floor and slides in those horrific shoes they give you that are supposed to make this experience easier but I only ever witness twice as many people fall than not with them on and she literally WINDS UP by swinging it back and forth and every nerve in my body is cringing in anticipation as she swings back...forward...back...forward....back and just lets it go RIPPING IN MY DIRECTION until it makes direct contact with my leg and I feel like a victim in that film Saving Private Ryan as I lie on the floor sure everything from my knee down has been blown off by force and lord knows if we don't put that sucker on ice quickly they'll never be able to sew it back on, I know this because I watch ER and Friends reruns. You always put that amputated shit on ice.

Luckily I did not lose a leg, it is only severely bruised and sore and I'm pretty sure I have some minor cartilage damage. Nothing a little booze can't fix tomorrow night.

So, bowling ends and I come home and wash my face and take my hair down and put my glasses on and come face to face with the debacle I've been having for weeks. The fact that I did not buy scratch resistant lenses because, I don't know, I have waves of retarded frugal-ness when it comes to important things like my eyes but do not possess that same frugal-ness when it comes to my hair. $90.00 shampoo is totally worth it. Expensive glasses are for chumps. JUST SQUINT UNTIL IT BECOMES CLEAR.

Anyway, I'm fed up because someone in my family has also been very careless in that they have flecked toothpaste or soap or whatever on these same scratched up lenses that were lying on the bathroom counter and have become that much more blinding than before. It takes every last ounce of will in my body to drag myself downstairs to go clean them. I hate going to clean things when the cleaning supplies are ALL THE WAY downstairs. COULD THE DOWNSTAIRS BE ANY FARTHER AWAY? But I do it. I go downstairs. I coat both front and back of these suckers in Windex and rub them down and lo' and behold......THE SCRATCHES ARE GONE. It just turns out those scratches were the very evidence of my 'downstairs loathing' laziness. And so, it reminds me of that old guy in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who was always "put some Windex on it" when family members had zits and scratches or whatever and I was actually tickles by this concept. Put some windex on it. Put some windex on it. I squirted the kitchen sink that didn't even need cleaning. I squirted the counter. Stove top. My left arm. I squirted the cat.

And just for good measure, I then Windexed my horrific bowling leg accident. I'll let you know how it heals.

Hibernation

Please observe my sister:

Yes, that's her in the pile of innumerable (that's a word, right?) comforters and blankets along with the cat. This picture was taken at exactly 12:20 p.m. after I came back from the grocery store.

I don't mean to brag but I've been up since 6:30. I've made and drank eight cups of coffee. I've taken a shower. Done some homework. Cleaned my room. Surfed the entire website of Etsy.com. (Bought a really cute laptop bag). Bought all the ingredients for worms and dirt to make with my campers tomorrow morning. I've even let the dogs out once to pee and have a drink of water from the toilet NO SMALL FEAT I MIGHT ADD YOU'RE WELCOME MOM.

And she has slept through ALL OF IT. Not even like "hey, I'm up to have a pancake and back to snooze." Seriously, sleeping. I sang along to Leeann Rimes in the shower this morning at my peak vocal capabilities (high soprano, DUH) and still, nothing.

And all I'm saying is that this is no different from yesterday and I would bet my entire book collection...the ESSENCE OF MY SOUL...that this will occur again tomorrow. So help me God, if she goes back to school this fall and begins her "What I Did This Summer" essay with anything but the sentence "Slept as much as possible without being in a drug-induced coma" I will march straight here from Kalamazoo and rip that Hello Kitty pencil from her clutches. Then, I will snap one of those nose covering masks over her face representing the major role she could play in Pinocchio and scream out at the top of my lungs "COOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAA" leaving an entire classroom full of eleventh graders awestruck.
Because, that too, will be in high soprano.

EPIC POST for epic love

I don't really know how to start a post involving my girls. I know in my head I should just keep it simple. "Hey, Kelley was here this weekend and we had fun drinking and eating and more drinking and giggling like little girls. I hope you all had a glorious weekend as well."

Except, it can never be that simple. Spending time with those girls is like spotting Barack Obama in a coffee shop and sitting down with him for a minute to shoot the shit and the entire time you're in your own head going, "OMGOMGOMGBARACKOBAMA" but trying to appear all cool and the second he leaves you literally stand up and scream out so that everyone in Starbucks is staring at you because it was just that thrilling and you'll never forget that moment ever in your entire life ever, ever.

That is what spending time with my girls is like.
So like all posts, lets start at the beginning.
Kelley got in super late on Thursday evening and while the hole in the wall bar she had us meet at was awesome to a point the real fun did not begin until Friday when Beth and I drove up to Clarkston to spend the night with her. We made margi's. Ordered pizza. Drank the margi's. Nom'ed the pizza. PLAYED TWILIGHT THE GAME AGAIN. In case you were wondering, no matter who you play that game with, it will always be fucking ridiculous. As Beth soon discovered:

Long, terrible, excruciatingly terrible story later Kelley cheated her way to victory:

and we called it a night.
The next morning after a fantabulous breakfast made by her daddy, we went home to rest up for round two. Hey, here's a fun fact! I got a haircut!

Please enjoy the sleeky, smoothness that is this coif because it will never look this way again. I have no freaking clue how to use a roundbrush and all you ladies out there who understand my problems with the blowdryer/brush in both hands while styling a masterpiece at the same time, holla at your girl because trust me I FEEL YOUR PAIN and have since looked like a little Asian boy with shaggy hair since this picture was taken. It's a learning process, let's hope when I get students in a few weeks they will find it in themselves to call me Ms. Earp even though I clearly resemble more of a Mr. Kim.
For evening round two we went to Royal Oak and had Margi's again! And Mexican food! We traipsed it up to Woody's with Matt and Mark and got good and drunk, rounded the evening off with a trip to a bakery where we ingested cookies like cyclones in Kansas and fell asleep promptly on Beth's floor. Oh, excuse me. For some reason I was feeling all "The floor with this awesome little yoga mat will be perfect" and the girls were, very hesitantly all "uh, ashley, are you sure?" and I'm all "yeah yeah it's great" and then slept not at all while Beth's cat loomed over me from her bed and stared until I had convinced myself when my eyes closed she was going to come over and suck my brains out of my nose. The Damned Cats can do that, you
know. Also, I'd like to introduce you to that which is Ashley's Drunk Paranoia.

But really, the whole point of the weekend was before all of this drunken happiness even occured. Saturday at exactly 4:45 pm we sat side by side with Diet Cokes and candy in hand (kelley spilled about sixteen pounds of Mike and Ike's EVERYWHERE BEFORE IT EVEN BEGAN, but, I digress...) and watched the one and only movie we've been waiting for since it was a sparkle in Brad and Jen's eye.
The Time Traveler's Wife. And every moment of Eric Bana's bare ass was totally worth the wait. Seriously, the man at any age is a heart breaker. I'm contemplating renting the attrocity that is Troy again and watching it tomorrow strictly because my new found crush on him has left me dreaming in mesh. He's wearing golden armor and suddenly disappearing bare assed into the night. Fighting with his punk ass brother, convincing his six year old wife he really can travel to the future. It's confusing and yet erotic. I need a better handle on that is Eric Bana and yes I mean that kind of handle. HA. Get it?
Seriously though, the man is smoking. Moving on.

Because we are who we are, the weekend ended epically. Beth did the impossible, at least, impossible in that I have NEVER ever succeeded in doing what she did today effortlessly. Please observe:


I miss them already. I was grouchy the second Kelley dumped me off in my driveway after a rousing car ride of Mama Mia soundtrack singing and have been sour ever since. Coming off 'Girl Time High', I'm pretty sure, should constitute some time in rehab but whatever. I'll just take my aggression out on some unsuspecting eight year old during dodgeball tomorrow. I love you girls. I miss you like crazy even though we talk four or five times a week about absolutely nothing. Lovelovelove.

How I spent my Day

Today was awful. I mean, I normally start every post with "hey, by the way, today sucked" but in general I did way more today that I disliked than on a regular basis. Really stupid stuff, like took our three labs on an EPICALLY LONG WALK and then bathed them immediately after, followed by sit ups in the driveway on a balance ball for all of our neighbors to witness. However, I'm taking a different path today. I won't tell you how terrible it was. No, no. Today you get to witness it first hand on your own.

Try not to throw yourself at the screen when you witness the hotness that is me post exercise and washing a dog:



THEN because Jeff bought me Twilight the Game, Afton and I had to play it. Can I just say that if you saw the movie and thought it was retarded and a complete waste of your time, the game is even more so. It is like a vortex of confusion that sucks you in and there's no end and the whole time you're playing you're going "I thought this was a GAME. Aren't games supposed to be fun? What part of playing a game makes you want to stab yourself repeatedly?" and the answer to that would, of course, be The Twilight Game. Observe and again, I'M LOOKING SMOKIN, try to control yourself.



Let's just say I won and the game was put promptly under my bed until I can somehow trick my brother into playing with me one day. Not for his pleasure. For my own, torturous enjoyment.

Failure is not an Option

The other day someone from work asked me to describe my mother. Actually the conversation was more along the lines of watching this terrible kid in my class defiantly give me the face of "piss off" and ran when I told him he was in need of a timeout. One lady was all "oh, my mother would NOT let me get away with that crap" to which I replied, "My mother left my sister in the parking lot of Walmart once as a form of time out." There was a long pause and before I realized that I had made Mrs. Earp out to be a parent worth of a visit from the Department of Child Welfare she turned to me and warily asked, "...wow....what's your mom REALLY like?"

How does one describe their mother? I've been thinking about it for the majority of my day and I'm still having a hard time coming up with the answer. Can any explanation really give your mother justice? Does the statement 'pick three describing words' tell anyone about the time she almost beat up a foreigner in a Subway over some napkins and a skinned knee?

Perhaps an ode or poem can capture the way she fell in love with a Celine Dion CD when I was sixteen and played it incessantly until I realized that perhaps going away to college the next year didn't sound like such a terrible idea after all?

No, no. Instead I said the first thing that came to my mind. "My mother is a Hit the Bricks kind of lady" to which my coworker asked, "like...she's on the run from something?" Befuddled I took a second and came back with, "I'm sorry, I thought that phrase meant Get out of my way before I hit you with this Brick. That's a more appropriate representation of my mother."

ERRRR let's try this again. This is my mother:


I won't even go into how much more she loves that dog than anyone else in my family. Really, it's a whole new level of bitter I'm coming to terms with.
I guess the best way to describe the aforementioned woman is, maybe, failure is not an option? Is that a description of a person? Because I mean it in many different ways, this being one of them:

My mom has this friend at work with terrible kids. Two teenage daughters that are relentless in their terrible habits and shenanigans and the eldest so outrageously slutty that she got her cell phone taken away for sending pictures of her bits and pieces (yes THOSE bits and pieces) to boys via text and THEN when she couldn't get her correspondence done any longer with her newly confiscated piece of technology she took HER MOTHER'S phone in an act of retaliation...took a picture of her ass in a thong and sent it to everybody with a penis that she knew. THAT kind of horrible. Perhaps you have a kid and they never clean their room or have a bad nose picking habit or what not and you might say to yourself regularly, "lordy my child is plum awful" but that would be nothing...that would PALE in comparison to this woman's whore hounds.
And so my mother turns to me after telling me this story and simply says (cocktail in hand, mind you):
"At that point I would realize I had failed as a mother. And I hate failing. It would be so upsetting to me that I would drag you all into one room with no windows and explain to you that I'm really sorry that this didn't work out, that I didn't do better or whatever and gas all of us. Me for failing and you all so that you never reproduce and create others stupider than yourselves."

That is what I mean by the idea If My Mother Were A Phrase she would be "Failure is not an Option". Because if she did fail she would clear out the evidence or rid herself entirely so she'd never have to hear about it.

If she were a drink she'd be Vodka and Club Soda with a twist of lemon. If she were a song she'd be something that began with The Platters, ended with Lil Wayne and met in the middle with our friends Celine and Shania. If she were a book she'd be 101 Bathroom Jokes for Friends and if she were a movie she'd be the kind that you cried really hard during but ended with a terrible joke that made the entire emotional ordeal well worth it.

She's really obscene. Really loud at inappropriate moments. Really drunk occasionally and really hates hugging but will hold your hair if you're puking even though she'll tell you the entire time she really hates that as well and might remind you about that time she did what she really hated because she loves you JUST THAT MUCH over and over again once you're feeling better. She's really a survivor. Above all, she's real.

And if she were a color? Something like rust; like a combination of dirt from working and longevity and being worn down but relentlessly holding on. She teaches me daily Failure is Not an Option. It will get better. Do not give up and when it gets really hard, please meet me in the kitchen so I can tell you the words again out loud with a much needed glass of wine.

Perhaps this was an Ode to My Mom. In hopes that one day, she never has to gas me.
I love you mom.

Clinton and My New Boots

Today is an odd sort of day. Absolutely nothing has been making sense. It was breezy and yet unbearably humid to start which made for a great head of hair in the morning followed by a ludicrous head of knotted hay by midafternoon. I got plenty of sleep and yet rocked a headache like nobody's business which has left me feeling fatigued and irrate. Bill Clinton freed some individuals from North Korea and yet I'm having an ankle boot conundrum that has absorbed more attention in my mind than it should have today. So I suppose I should just start where I start and let it be what it shall be.

The following conversation happened on my facebook today. Please observe the madness that is the female mind that all began because I cannot bring myself to buy a horrendously expensive pair of boots without Kelley's opinion and asked for her said opinion last night,which prompted the following:

you bring up an inner dilemma i face often. the ankle boot. am i a fan? absolutely not. are they cute on some? yes. most? no. i feel like in order to pull them off you must A. be on a runway (read: pole thin and pasty white and attractive in a bizarrely unattractive way) or B. be pole thin and mega trendy and pasty and have a super angular haircut that looks stupid, except on you and be attractive in a bizarrely unattractive way.

when paired properly they posses an almost mythical power to look AMAZING, but in general i hatey hate hate.

sorry to kill your dreams love. ps i'm gonna be there in like, two weeks...can you even handle that????

of course, because when one of us cries out in pain, another will answer and the third will feel it in her bones that there are happenings going on without her like a witch of Eastwick, so Beth decided to throw in her two cents:

The elusive ankle boot....it's always just out of reach.
ps. love.

followed four minutes later by:

Ok sorry I just actually LOOKED at the boots on Kelley's wall.

If you're not buying them I am.
Actually, would you mind if we both had them?
They are too amazing NOT to look perfect on us, no?

So, of course, I'm torn between my girls like a lover between Edward and Jacob. TO BOOT OR NOT TO BOOT FOR THE LOVE OF JESUS? I love them but HELP ME OUT HERE.
And then, just to make matters a little more interesting, Kelley followed up:

now i feel like the evil boot hater. i'm sorry, i wasn't implying they wouldn't look good on YOU (or Beth...you too love)...just that they're tricky. when wrong...it's like the Canklites from Caklonia (it's a real live place i swear) knocked on the door of whomever got them wrong, schmucked them over the head tied them down and inserted a bike tire pump into their calves and pumped until the ankle region is as large as their knees and left them to wallow in their cankle-ness. that's all. :) not that they find EVERYONE...just those who are unaware of their existence is all.

If you think you're confused, please just go ahead and ask me how long I spent trying to do research on a place called Caklonia and THEN ask me how long I spent sitting on my bed with my feet stretched out before me, one sock on and one sock off asking my cat "these aren't cankles, right?" before giving up all together and opting for ice cream with my sister. Clearly THAT will solve all of my cankle problems.
I'm no closer to boot problem when I see the girls have taken the conversation into their own hands by posting on Beth's wall:

PS...your hair is black again?!?!? how did i not know about this??? i feel like you just told me you went off cheese.

HELLO?? WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO HELP ME WITH THE BOOT PROBLEM? BETH RESPONDS:

It's not black, really...its actually the EXACT color of Ashley's right now. We were at dinner last week and realized that we are hair twins. Those last pictures that were posted were taken the day I got my color refreshed, which in fact makes it look much darker than it actually is.

I would never color my hair black, or go off cheese, without informing you.
Absolutely can't wait to see you holy crap.

If you can picture me sighing heavily in exasperation, please do so. Yes, yes, we are ADORABLE hair twins and thank Jesus no one in my immediate group of friends has stopped eating cheese. SERIOUSLY THOUGH. THE BOOTS. YAY OR NAY.

I love my girls a retarded amount. Only that love will carry me through the fact that not only am I questioning the size of my ankles because of them or the ankle boot as a whole, but also the serious repercussions of eating cheese and having black hair. I'm pretty sure I love cheese. I'm also pretty sure I've been so close to black at times I could have been Morticia Addams. Were these mistakes?! What else am I possibly doing wrong? WHERE IS CAKLONIA?!

To top it all off Bill Clinton went and got that Asian actresses' journalist sister from North Korea today and I couldn't help but be all "fantastic for you B.C. but I hope you scoured a few of their terrible, rat infested, sweat smelling gonorrhea breeding prisons for some other equally innocent American citizens before your photo op. and run back to the states," because...I KNOW I should be happy. He did a good thing. A great thing. And if she hadn't been related to the Asian actress with the great ass who starred in Kill Bill opposite Uma Thurman I doubt she would have been rescued at all. And that, my friends, is what I like to call: horse shit.

Someone please remind me politics and cheese should never go in the same blog post.