Freaky Friday

Why are things always so much more fun when your parents tell you not to do it? I am so terrified at this point of what karma is going to bring to me with my children that I am considering building a house made entirely out of steel. I know that in a previous post I talked a little bit about us going down the stairs in the laundry basket but I think it would be a lot more fun to talk about it in detail.

My mom was always wondering where her laundry baskets were and why they were never around when she needed them the most, sometimes it was because we were to lazy to put our clothes away so we would let them sit in the laundry basket and go to it instead of to our closets. It only makes sense because if I wasn't wearing my fourth of July overalls that my grandma adorably embroidered with my name, I was wearing my looney toones overalls so therefore they either were worn strait out of the dryer or the next day so it was a waste of time and energy to even consider putting them where they should go. But I am going to go ahead and say that most of the time the reason why my mom couldn't find them is because we had either broken them or because we were finding a way to enhance its quickness with my old roller blade wheels. We had such a good set up, we would put a Living Scriptures VCR tape in and sit angelically on the couch until our parents bid us farewell to go to dinner and a movie. Once we heard the garage close we would stop the tape and collect every pillow we had in the house. Lucky for us we had four gigantic pillows so we would put two of them at the bottom surrounded by my parents bed pillows and then two against the wall. Not because we were worried about damaging it but because during a previous run we discovered that those walls feel like someone hitting you in the face with a pillowcase stuffed full of concrete. So there we were taking turns and about halfway down the stairs we would hear a strange dragging noise. When we stopped long enough to stop throwing each other down the stairs and look for the problem, we discovered the carpet was being pulled off the stairs. Oops. We looked at each other, kicked it back in place and continued to see who could push someone fast enough to do some real damage to their bones. One day the saddest thing happened, we were too heavy to go down the stairs so the front of the basket would catch and we would flip forward over the top. But don't worry, the perfect idea came to me after someone slapped me in the back of the head with a foot long summer sausage. If we rode backwards with our legs out of the basket and held our weight to the back it still works. This also made it much more fun because the person going down had no idea what was about to meet them and I will tell you what, there is nothing funnier than holding a broom across at head height and watching their face as they are clothes lined and flip down four stairs.

I have some sad news... I have to start only posting a Freaky Friday once a month. But this way I will post more posts in between :) I have found that I blog less for some reason but don't worry, I have some great things to blog about!

I'll take a milk chocolate and some sugar wafers.

Last week my dad introduced me to something that will bring rays of sunshine into my life at this time of Spring still acting like Winter. Bleck. Not only is the weather effecting my emotions but my hair has been a non stop battle of static that has made it so that I am forced to carry a dryer sheet around in my pocket to run through my hair when it gets to looking like I just put a fork in a socket. It is pretty bad when you are now known as the dryer sheet lady because in one sitting you found three in random places within your reach. So there is this truck that drives by my work every day and has a musical horn, yeah it honks a song. I need it. Imagine what I could do if I had one of those. My dad calls up and tells me to come downstairs quick, little did I know that this truck was actually an ice cream truck for adults. Except for that it doesn't have all ice cream, it has everything you can imagine from cookies and pop to pancakes and steak. When the man opened up the doors I wanted to burst into song like on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when they go into the giant edible room. If you are wondering, I would be Agustus in the scenario. None of you can tell me that you wouldn't want to dive naked into a river of chocolate. This truck is comfort on wheels, I considered going to get a prescription of Prozac but after seeing that the treat truck has the same effect I am going to go with this option. The only difference is that Prozac doesn't go straight to your hips.

Sooo I have a correction.

So Sarah informed me that Jais actually pushed Sarah into the river. Sorry for the misleading but regardless, the rosebush story remains true. I will try to make my stories a tad bit more accurate... or not. But to make this worth your while, I have attached the best ab work out ever. You are welcome.

Freaky Friday

When people see my scars, they usually come to their own conclusion that they are softball battle wounds or from my xxxHaRdCoRexxx days of blading. (Rollerblading for all of you that don't know what that sweet sport on wheels is. Plus, I didn't want my grandma to read this and tell me about the time she saw the report on KSL about the Emo generation and cutting.) But now the real story of them will unfold.

There is a rumor in our family that once when we were camping with our cousins as small children, Sarah pushed Jais into the river. To this day it is still denied, but now I am reminiscing a lot of memories that lead me to think it true. The Shook's were our neighbors that lived down the street from us. They have two daughters that our mine and Sarah's same age and we were always playing together. I am sure when we announced we were headed over there, our mom was delighted because she could now have two hours displaying her breakable Precious Moments before we returned home and they were re layered in bubble wrap and put back in the child/fireproof safe. Well back in the days when it was safe to let your children roam around outside, Sarah and I walked out of the house and headed off down the street. I usually chose to drive my big wheel but due to some complications it was in the shop. We were carefully trying to keep about six inches in front of each other because it was always a race to see who would get to ring the doorbell, and with my six cylinder being replaced by twelve inch legs, I hardly stood a chance. That was such a treat for us, for some reason when you are little, pushing buttons that made high pitched dinging noises was almost as entertaining as "accidentally" putting a spoon in the microwave just to watch it explode. And you know that you never hit the doorbell just once when you were little. You would push it once and if the door didn't open by the time the bell was done chiming you would hurry and hit it again because it should just never take longer than one and a half seconds to answer the door. My parents eventually wised up and put in a door bell that chimed the Battle Hymn of the Republic. We lost patience after the first two minutes. Anyway, to get up to the door, you had to walk along their deadly front walk that was lined with rosebushes that we imagined opening up to the center of the Earth and swallowing us. We half ran to the front door and I was half a step ahead of Sarah, it was such a rush to feel for once, my little finger hitting that golden doorbell button before her. When I turned to do a victory dance, it was quickly ended by a hipcheck that sent me sailing into the rose bushes. Rosebushes are like quicksand, the more you squirm to get out, the worse it is. I thought that I had never experienced anything worse than the time that I broke a big wheel peddle but believe me, this was definitely topping that. I learned a couple valuable lessons from this: one - never have rosebushes that close to your front door, 2- if you are ever needed to bandage up a small child that has just encountered a rose bush you will need a Costco sized band aid box, and 3- never EVER beat Sarah to the doorbell. I will eventually be posting dates and whereabouts of Jaislyn and I's book tour to promote our new auto-biography, "Living With "Accidentally" Being Pushed"

As I run screaming.

So while you are all decked out in your green clothes, St. Patties day socks, and Clover head bobbles, I am hiding in my office and trying to avoid that annoying little thing known as pinching. I forgot it was St. Patrick's day. I usually don't dress up for holidays because I am a fun sucker. A sucker of fun ideas and fun celebrations that have to do with me walking around in a shirt that has some cheesy holiday saying on it. Unless it has "If you pinch me, I punch you" written in green sequins on the front, then I am totally not interested. Who even thought of the idea that it is ok to pinch someone for not wearing green? Do I punch people for not wearing pink? I mean, I totally give them props for thinking of something so stupid that is now a huge phenomenon but I blame them for all those days that I was tortured because my mom "forgot" to send me to school wearing green, and when I was caught I tried to use the excuse that I had green on my underwear, and then when I was pantsed (spelling?) to prove it, my secret was exposed that I wasn't a total tomboy because my panties had hearts! HEARTS! I know there are a few of you out there that are saying, "well yeah, if you did all those things to me like you did to your parents, I would send you in a shirt that said, 'give me a noogie because I am not wearing green' in ugly brown sequins" But its ok, so far today my avoidance of being pinched is simple, every time I pass someone, before they say anything I say "Green underwear." and it follows with a grown person kicking the wall because it was one less person they could pinch.

Freaky Friday

Because my parents didn't feel it necessary to sign us kids up in ice skating, we treated them to hours of us and our imaginations going to infinite and beyond.

I am pretty sure the reason why our parents didn't want us to have ice skates is because it is just another sharp object they would have to worry about us kids hurling at each other or Mitchell using them to cut the cupboards some more. We were allowed two things to cut our meat with, butter knifes or safety scissors because we were the kids that would pay each other off in pokemon cards to see who could run faster while cutting out a paper snowflake with moms sewing scissors. So we invented our own type of ice skating. It is called carpet skating and it really is a big deal. When we came up with it, it was around Christmas time when we had our wooden shoes set out in hopes of getting something from Sinterklaas the Dutch Santa Claus because we knew that the American one had heard ALLLLL about us. So the carpet became our rink and the wooden shoes became our skates, we were almost unstoppable. We would fight over who got to wear the ones with the windmills and who had to wear the boring pink ones because whoever had the pink ones was always the crappy skating pair (Jenny and Steven). We now needed the perfect tunes, since my dad knew to hide Janet Jackson's Rythm Nation album because if my parents had to listen to Black Cat one more time they might ship us to Neverland, we had to settle. So there we were, doing triple lutz's and back flips, spins and twists to Radio Disney's pop rendition of "A Whole New World" This is probably one of the more safe things that we came up with so my parents didn't seem to mind. As a matter of fact, last year we even had our mom try to do a sit spin, if you are wearing the right socks it amazing. You should try it. Nick tried it once and said he was done but the swivel marks in my carpet and the wooden shoes under the bed lead me to think otherwise.

It's begun.

The sleep deprivation is beginning to detach my brain from my spine causing my IQ to drop 56.5 points and me to fall into daydreaming spells that end in me waking up after being shocked by my keyboard because I have drooled a lake into it. I know that it is just one hour and that the solution for MOST people is that you are also going to bed an hour earlier. Well reality check guys, I had a hard time going to bed at 10 before the dreaded daylight savings and would usually end up telling Nick stories about lawn gnomes that stole my rollerblades while I was selling bead lizards down the street until midnight. Well now he gets a whole extra hour of that because my body refuses to rest until ONE. Its weird, ask Nick, I could be quiet almost all day but as soon as my head hits the pillow and Nick is trying to fall asleep, my mouth starts jabbering like someone was winding me up all day and didn't release the key until Nick wasn't wanting to hear me speak. The only way I can get you guys to feel what he feels every night is if I tell you to imagine that right when you lay down to go to sleep, someone puts one of those wind up monkeys on your bed that bang the cymbals together and foam at the mouth, oh and that's not all, because at the same time he is jumping up and down and singing "This is the song that never ends." Now don't you all feel sorry for Nick. So if someone would like to offer him a place to sleep until daylight savings time ends, feel free to email him at his personal email, savemefromamanda@yahoo.com.

Freaky Friday

Do you remember Xena Warrior Princess? Of course not because your parents let you watch stuff like Power Rangers. Well guess what? We weren't allowed to because it was violent. Our parent's knew the kind of ideas we would get. Trying to turn the dishwasher into a robotic dinosaur, beating kids up at school because we just know they are spy ninjas from Antarctica, and talking to our watches in hopes of coordinating a surprise attack against our church teachers. Xena was on Sundays after church when our parents would lock themselves in their room for a nap because wrestling us in sacrament meeting was exhausting. I know Xena was also violent but our mom and dad had no idea we watched it because we would sneak watch it while they were in a peaceful slumber... Until one Sunday we were caught.

EYEYEYEYEEEEEEYYYYYYYYEYEYEYYYYYY! Sarah (Xena) flew off the couch and nailed me with a roundhouse kick to the head. This didn't phase me because I (Ares) was busy clubbing Mitchell (Joxer) over the head with a turkey leg while he was biting Shanna's (Gabrielle) calf. Things were getting heated and we were starting to hit more aggressively, land harder and use real knives. I was in the middle of a barrel roll split when we heard the noise we didn't want to hear, mom and dads door flew WIDE open. Alisha missed her cue to change the channel to Sunday videos. That was her only job and she failed, and we suffered dearly. "YOU AND YOU AND YOU GET TO YOUR ROOM!" Her bangs were sticking straight up so we started to snicker and she silenced us with her dagger gaze, and you, she pointed at me, "You come with me, I want you to show me how to do that spin thing..." Ok that part didn't happen. We were all sent to our rooms to spend the afternoon until we were called down for supper. So we marched upstairs, attempted to wash off our permanent marker tattoo's and battle wounds and sulked. After a while we started to hear some noise downstairs so we decided to sneak a peak. We caught my mom in the middle of body slamming my dad from the couch wearing Sarah's Xena outfit.

Representing the 801

Did anyone even announce that we had to start dialing 801 now? It took me by total surprise. Just like that time that my stairs tricked me into thinking there was one less than there actually was and I missed it. I tried to call my parents at home and hear, "Welcome to Verizon Wireless..." I didn't listen to the rest because that was clearly not my house... Unless my mom picked up a robotic accent and renamed our house from "Beware upon entering" to "Verizon Wireless." But knowing my little brother and sisters ability to change their voice to trick you, I called again. When "she" answered and said "Welcome to Verizon Wireless," I fired back with, "I know its you, you annoying little freaks, now give mom the phone." But the robot proceeded to tell me that she is now charging me an additional 200.00 for the month for disorderly conduct towards a machine. I asked my fellow housemates what was going on and one of them was smart enough to know that we are now required to dial the full ten digits. Doesn't the phone company know it is hard enough for peoples normal sized fingers to dial just seven numbers on their tiny telephones that have buttons the size of grains of sand. I know my fingers usually dial 235 when I am just trying to push 2. So now I have to waste another precious 1.62 seconds of my life dialing the extra 3 numbers. Doesn't sound like that much right? Well I place about thirty calls a week, so that is 48.6 seconds a week, 2527.2 seconds a year and if I live until I am 70, 123832.8 seconds are wasted on dialing an extra 3 numbers every time I make a phone call. That is 2,063.88 hours of my life WASTED on your extra 3 numbers. Do you realize that that is two thousand plus hours that I could be using to learn to play the oboe?