But What If He Has Got Slippery Hands?

I'm not sure what kind of music genre this song falls under. It's a little folk..a little Johnny Cash gospel...but from, like, when Johnny was a kid himself. There's something about the harmonica that I cannot deny. I will not deny. I must learn how to play one myself, in fact.

In the mean time, The Wood brothers don't have anything more official looking than these live performance videos on Youtube. This song was featured in the movie I watched the other night, The Greatest, that I talked about here. And yes, I still do wish I was this chick because things turned out great for her despite the fact that the love of her life is dead. The entire movie featured great songs, now that I think about it. Rent it if you're in the mood to cry. Same goes for this song. GEEZ IT'S BEEN A LONG DAY.

• Lovin' Arms by The Wood Brothers

More The Wood Brothers music on iLike

You Get A Kitten, And YOU Get a Kitten...EVERYBODY GETS A KIIIIIITTTTTEEEENNNNNN!

Remember when you were younger and all you wanted for your birthday was for someone to show up on your doorstep with a pet kitten?

Wish granted, Matt December.

This weekend, my friend Beth (whom you've heard so much about recently!) and I did a 5k with some coworkers of mine to benefit the Dillon Cope Foundation. Turns out the money actually goes to the Children's Hospital to benefit children with leukemia and they raised over $8,000 with this one walk alone. So, you know, we were feeling giving. And tired. And unshowered. As seen here:



After a grueling workout through the Amazon (well, Bloomer Park can FEEL like the Amazon), we had plans to take a kitten from my coworker, Crystal, who's cat had them eight weeks prior. Beth and myself were all "You know who needs a kitten? MATT. Matt needs a kitten."

And thus, we became the Oprah Winfrey's of gift giving.

A few hours later we were in the possession of one very sassy little boy kitten who doesn't like to be held. Seen here:



It might appear that we got the Bram Stoker of kittens, but I swear, he's nicer than he appears here.

In all honesty, buying someone a kitten without asking is irresponsible. It also can go wrong on more than one level. Like the way Matt mentioned at lunch after we had given it to him, "Man. I hope I'm not allergic to cats."

I thought that perhaps the best way to show you how much fun it can be doing something irrational and irresponsible was to tape it. Here you can enjoy us waiting impatiently because people who don't know to expect a kitten at their doorstep might leave haphazardly to go to the gym. Which makes giving you a gift difficult.



And here you can watch as he STILL DOESN'T KNOW and therefore, doesn't rush to answer his door when we realize he is not, in fact, at the gym at all. He's just ignoring us.



And last, but not least, the reason we're here. Little did we know that by the end of the day he'd be named Gene Wilder The Cat and head bumping Matt to show his affection.



Everybody needs a kitten. Ashley & Beth can make it happen.

A Great Loss

My mother washed my iPod.

She didn't mean to. I mean, really, it was my fault. I had it in the pocket of a sweatshirt and she had no idea it was in the laundry on my floor and bam. She pulled out a pair of headphones from the washer and the dreaded "Oh God...something more expensive is in here with these" feeling hit her stomach.

She's been trying to dry it out with a hair dryer for about two weeks now. I think we've finally pulled the proverbial plug on it's life.

You wouldn't think losing your first iPod to such an accident as this would be detrimental, but it is. It's like a piece of me is missing when I walk through the aisles of the grocery store, trying to avoid "helpful" staff. I can't fathom going to the gym alone anymore, or walking the dogs in the summer evenings. Listening to it illegally in the car is gone. And yesterday, when Beth and myself participated in the 5K, I wished more than anything I had it in my pocket, because this song has been begging for me to listen to it while I exercise. It's get me moving, like so many other weirdly great songs do.

So add it to your iPod for me. And protect that little guy...he's more valuable to you than you realize. It's VV Brown's "Shark In The Water" and I had to use a fan video because the company that owns her music video disabled embedding. Which is a shame, because she's a sassy strutter and I wish I could show her skills to you.

The song will have to do for now.

Best Friends Forever...Especially When I Need Fashion Advice

Today is one of my best friend's, Kelley's, birthday. She is 27. She's going to send me some sort of horrified message through email today about how I told the world her age, but I don't care. She's sassy and smart and beautiful and talented and the world should know that today is in recognition of her.

May 26th was my other best friend's, Beth's, birthday. She is 26. She is also sassy and smart and beautiful and talented. Recently, I've realized, I only associate with the fabulous. It makes every day run much more smoothly.

I just wanted to take a moment to say without them, who knows exactly who I would turn to at the end of everyday for whatever it is I may need.

Lord knows that Kelley has taken one too many "What kind of shoes do I buy with this??" phone calls at inappropriate times of the day. She knows how to bake and cook and drink all at the same time, which is quite a feat, let me tell you. She can take any task and make it look easy, like you're over thinking it when, really, she's just a genius and we're just all a bunch of dummies. She can find the humor amongst sadness. She can find beauty in destruction. She taught me how great wine and cheese together are. She taught me how to embrace myself.



Beth, on the other hand, can turn something funky and old into beautiful and new because she's just that creatively talented. She can paint and sing and dance, though she downplays her skills so much so that you would never know what lies beneath that serene face that listens quietly when you cry at Pei Wei over the mess that is your life. She can play sports like a dude. She can play video games like a dude. She can make calories disappear in the most fabulous tasting food. She can find hope in chaos. She can hear my thoughts. She taught me that wherever I might be, whatever I might be doing,I'm never alone.



Happy Birthday, my best friends. Thank you for all you do.


And please forgive me for the horrible pictures I just posted of you on the internet.

Good Things For Good Causes

Tomorrow, my coworkers, myself and my good friend Beth are teaming up at 9am to participate in the 5K for the Dillon Cope Foundation in Rochester Hills. All proceeds will benefit students at the University of Michigan or something in memory of one of their students. I wish I had more details other than that, but really, it will involve bagels, coffee and running shortly thereafter. Do you need to know much more?

And if that's not enough to tempt you, I'm not sure what is.

Pictures and stories of how Ashley fell down only forty steps into the race and had to be carted off on a gurney soon to follow.

Hopefully. Everyone loves a good "Remember that time you almost died exercising?" story. Almost as much as a "Remember that time you almost died DRINKING?" story.

"You're Gonna Need A Bigger Frame"

I don't need to remind any of you that I'm a Master these days. Completing something as fantastically wonderful as your Masters program gets you all kinds of cool perks. Your family lets you have the remote control more often because you can make executive decisions. You get better at playing Jeopardy when it comes on. The cat respects your personal space more at bedtime. Someone starts doing your laundry for you.

JUST KIDDING. None of that crap happens. And isn't it sad that I can acknowledge that happiness would come to me in leaps and bounds if only I could play more competently when Jeopardy came on or if someone would clean my underwear on a regular basis?

I didn't, however, get to go to my graduation ceremony last month when I received the title of MASTER. It's in Philadelphia and my family was busy and I had to work and trips to Philly don't just fly by the seat of your pants. Thus, I had to contact the school to have them mail my diploma to me. And Scott, in a moment of consideration and kindness, bought me a frame so that when it arrived I could hang it proudly on my wall and people could start to bow to it when they came for tea or to pay me their taxes. You know, the norm.

However, during one of my many crazy Spanish lessons my mother texted me several times with cryptic messages like:

"Where are you? Komos estas!?"

"You got something in the mail."

"What did you order online?"

"KOMO. ESTAS."

"I think it's your degree. You're...gonna need a bigger frame."

"Pick up Spaghetti on the way home. Pretend I said that in Spanish."

and so on and so forth. You can see my frustration at times towards whoever taught my mother to text.

Thanks for that, kind stranger. Truly. THANKS.

So I head home and pick up Spaghetti (in Spanish) and walk through the door and there she stands, smile on her face with what can only be described as the largest degree man kind has ever seen. Seriously, I don't think it's necessary, SJU. I appreciate the excitement and yes, now my mother who can't read close up anymore can actually tell what it says, except it's also IN LATIN.

THE WHOLE THING.




And you might think that the picture is a weird angle. I'm just holding it away from my body. It can't POSSIBLY be as large as her torso.

And that's where you would be wrong. Again. Don't worry about it. Before I became a master, I used to be wrong all the time.

Who Is In CHARGE?

I really need to turn off the Breaking News by CNN on my Twitter because every hour on the hour it informs me how many have died during the flooding or how many people are missing in Kenya after an explosion. Just today alone a plane has crashed, people are FLEEING Uzbekistan and Spirit Airlines had a strike. Today. You want to know what I did today? I ate a bagel sandwich, went to Meijer and applied for a job in Paw Paw. What is happening?! Who is in charge here?

It got me to thinking about Mother Earth. Partly because I recently watched the documentary Babies and they feature the song "The Earth Is Our Mother" and I was all "oh for pete's sake you bunch of hippies, the earth is not my MOTHER. The earth is like, a close friend. Someone I hang out with occasionally. She certainly isn't ODE WORTHY" which is actually kind of sad and sheltered of me. Just think. If we had been born even one hundred and fifty years earlier, a large portion of our lives would involve being outside, tending and killing animals, cutting down trees and trying to figure out how to make running water a feasible option. That's right. NO RUNNING WATER. That means pooping outside.

Pooping outside?! Are you kidding me? The biggest question I have today is how to get my laptop cord to stop unplugging itself randomly so I don't lose power while I'm in the middle of a rant. Think about how awful it is whenever you lose power on a grander scale! No running water? They might as well inject us all with Ebola and wish us adieu. That's exactly what losing electricity is like. Contracting Ebola.

So what does pooping outside, losing power and Uzbekistan have to do with an explosion in Kenya and poor Mother Earth?

I'm not good enough to her. I don't appreciate her enough. And this year she is definitely trying to tell us something, and that something is that she is PISSED. Epically, tragically, "you crashed the family car while I was out of town and you didn't even have your license" kind of angry that only a true mother can possess. Think about it. The natural disasters are abundant. Nashville and Little Rock are drowning. Haiti and Chile are shaken to destruction. Iceland has exploded. Sink holes are showing up in California and Guam.

The earth IS our mother, in a really bizarre way. And perhaps you forgot to get her a card on Mother's Day or didn't take the trash out or maybe even something really, really bad like forgetting to put gas in the tank after you borrowed her car. Whatever it is, you need to jump on it. We all do. I don't know if this means we need to plant more trees or buy cork shoes or what. But start thinking and think hard. Perhaps we can put our heads together long enough to stop a spill or prevent the next tsunami. For everyday something hasn't shown up on my door with 'destruction' spelled out on it's forehead is one more day that I'm just lucky. Because it could get here any minute now. And I'm nowhere near ready.

But then again, I'll bet Arkansas wasn't either. And they're only 764 miles away. I got lucky by 700 miles.

And so did you.

Hablo Espanol

I'm currently taking Spanish lessons with one of the mothers at my job. This means that every Monday night after an intense two hours of private tutoring and Spanish soap operas to help me practice, I come home with a heavy accent and start demanding things of my family...like, immediately. En Espanol. This also means that my mother picks up maybe one out of every twenty phrases I say and texts me haphazardly "Komos estas!" which is actually NOT how you spell "como esta" at all.

Lastly it means that my inner Colombian is clearly making an appearance. I've started taking up spicier foods and shaking my thing when I walk around the house. I speak English with an accent now. I tell my cat "vamos!" in the morning when we both have to leave the room so I can lock up and guarantee that she doesn't crap on my stuff while I'm gone.

My point is that being multi-cultural suddenly in a life where I'm not actually even a tiny bit of the culture I'm choosing to represent is kind of funny. Or awkward, you can take your pick.

And I'm not saying that because of this you need to go out and get the Lawson Rollins cd. All I'm sayin' is that there is a reason women fall in love with Spanish men as they make their way through the country side, sipping sangria. Sure, it's a tiny part Sangria. But it's mostly the dark hair, the accent...and the fingers.



Aye dios mio.

Like A Bastard On The Burning Sea

Does anyone remember that movie that Diane Keaton did a long time ago where she inherited a baby that she was TERRIBLE at taking care of and she ended the two hour fiasco by living on a farm in the middle of nowhere making her own apple-flavored baby food for the same company that fired her for having a baby to begin with?

More importantly, why do I watch that terrible film every time it's only TBS in the early hours of the morning on the weekends? It's not like it ever gets better with time! It's not like it even gets progressively more interesting the older I get. Like, hey, I've suddenly found an interest in making baby food for my own children!

Nope. Not even a little bit.

But I watch it. Just like I'm going to watch this delicious hunk of craptastic filmage when it hits the big screen. Because that's what I am. A sucker for Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel and a lot of poop.


The only real bonus you might gain from this is the song at the end, found here:



It's Passion Pit's - Moths' Wings. I haven't heard a lot of them yet, but from what I've got thus far, I'm digging it!

However, I'm not sure how much you can trust my taste anymore. I was just listening to Pandora with Scott, when near the end of a song I suddenly scream out "This is a JESUS song!" and Scott was all, 'Yeah I thought you knew that!"

And I'm all 'What?!? When is the last time I listened to Jesus music in front of you? Have you been stomaching this the whole time?!"
and he's all "Yeah, what of it?" and then I had to remind him that sometimes I need to be saved from even myself and that, as his role of the man, it's his responsibility to make these leaps in my honor.

That's right. Some of us even need to be saved from Jesus.

I can't wait to see what kind of results that's gonna pull up from Google Searches. And the comments! Heaven help me!

Ha. Get it? Alright, I'm done now.

Wine Tasting Part 2

I feel like I've been slacking recently. I know that I told you all I needed a few days break and then the car fiasco happened and blah blah blah, I appreciate all of your understanding. But still, there was a portion of me that screamed out in the back of my head "You fool! People get busy everyday! People get overwhelmed EVERY DAY. Why must you be so special you can quit what you do when they can't quit what they do?"
and I'm sorry.

I also feel like I've been apologizing a lot recently. It's just a vicious circle of guilt and confusion, much like family planned events at my house. But those are tales for a different day!

Where did I leave off? OH THATS RIGHT. Wine Tasting in Traverse City many moons ago. I think that we had just departed from delicious wines at Brys Estate and headed straight over to a place called The Jolly Pumpkin after a joyful jaunt in the car to some Lady Gaga.

At The Jolly Pumpkin, we each got a sampler of beer. In case you might be thinking that a sample of beer times eleven people isn't a catastrophe, you would be wrong. Because it looks a lot like the lush table at your local Bingo Parlor where Estelle and her ladies are gearing up to bring home the final prize. Gearing up takes a lot of booze.

As seen here. And this isn't even half of it! This was only four of the eight little beers in and you're so unsuspecting as they come one at a time. "Oh look, a lemon flavored pale ale! Delightful. Oh and here comes an IPA! Excitement abounds!" until suddenly you're elbows deep in everyone else's sampler screaming out, "ATTENTION. ABORT. MUST PEE IMMEDIATELY. MOVE THE BOOZE ASAP."

It would appear that I am suddenly uncouth and without class while out drinking beer and that's just not true. It turns out that I'm actually quite the lady as are Beth and Sarah, the two delightfuls I spent the majority of my time with. Because even when chugging a beer, Beth can hold her own. I believe if you look closely, her pinky might even be up in the video below as she kicks both boy's asses in a slamming contest.



From there, relatively beer'ed out and ready for more fun, we headed back to our lovely hotel. We promptly flopped down onto our relative beds in adjoining but separate rooms where we could call out to one another "What are you doing in there?!" all impatient sounding so that someone could reply "Get ready!" without actually being seen for the nappy napperson they were. This carried on for roughtly half an hour until about thirty seconds before we had to head out the door to our next destination, tapas. This means that the last thirty seconds was spent with items of undergarment thrown into the air calling out "Are these yours or MINE?" and then, after a rough go-ahead trying them, deciding they are in fact, someone else's.

We ended up at Firefly, a lovely tapas restaurant where I had far too much spicy food and Ahi

Tuna of Matt's. However, it was so nice to be somewhere where we could just enjoy food and one another's company. I'm pretty sure this was the kind of stuff I looked forward to as a kid when I went out to my family. Something like "I can't wait until I can go out with people I actually like and order something that's not on the kid's menu."

Little did I know then that the most exciting thing NOT on the kid's menu was wine, and not grown up chicken vs. chicken fingers. Thus, we live and learn the real lessons of life.

After dinner we meandered over to the one busy street of Traverse City where we had EVEN MORE BEER at Mackinaw Brewing Company at the urging of my good Alanna from work. I must admit, they can brew a mean beer. And we played something called The Finger Game which, trust me, we'll talk about at a LATER DATE. It's not as dirty as it sounds. Alright, it might be. But you know that just got you excited rather than nervous. Yes, that kind of excited. Oh and they also offered a wide variety of reading material, as seen below. Clearly we had to take full advantage of that.

After The Mackinaw Brewing Company we hopped into the cab and told our driver "Back to the Holiday Inn Please!" to which he said "Oh you're headed to the club for a little bit?"

What? No. It's na-night time. We would like to put pajamas on and find something fantastic on television to fall asleep to. I've been drinking copious amounts of liquor since eleven am. Turns out, that in silly small towns, places like your local Holiday Inn can house the most hopping venues and we found ourselves standing outside the doors of Shimmers...that's right, they named the downstairs club SHIMMERS, around midnight not sure what to suspect inside.

Looking back, I couldn't tell you what I ended up actually seeing there. I'm pretty sure I saw a lot of terrible dancing that is not even really describable at this point. We saw far too much fondling of one ugly person on another. A little bit too much butt crack and leather on heavy people. Oh and drinking. SO MUCH DRINKING.

I think I lasted about half an hour amongst the Night Of the Living Dead that is Traverse City's night crowd before I called it a night and passed out next to Rob's feet while they watched JackAss into the wee hours of the morning.

It was fantastic though, in every way

that I thought it might be. I love

road trips and can't wait for the opportunity to go on another with those that I hold dear. It has helped me to realize, even with small weekends and events with a only a few people such as these, that I truly am thankful for my friends. They are entertaining and intelligent and good people and every day that I spend in their company is one more day I spend becoming a better person. They make me want to be as great as they are. Thank you Martin Sisters for such a fantastic weekend I'll never forget. Well, that's not entirely true. Thank you Martin Sisters for a weekend I might not have already forgotten if not for all the booze you helped to supply. Thank you, indeed.