Tools.

Although not the intent of this post, I am going to take a brief second to talk about my MacGyverism. I can make anything into a tool. Once, while sitting in the middle of the room wrapping Christmas gifts, I wanted to turn the light on as dusk had fallen and I could no longer rely on natural light.

I took all of the wrapping paper rolls and attached them into a long, 6-7ft pole. After a few thrusts of the wrist, the lights were turned on!

I think I learned these skills when I would entertain myself for hours in the kitchen. Not cooking, but playing with race cars and building tracks for them out of cans of soup and boxes of Metamucil. I also have a wonderful skill set when it comes to carrying things. After mom and I would go grocery shopping, I would tell her I could carry ALL $200 worth of grocery bags into the house at once. Many a time were my slender arms bruised from the poundage of plastic bags strung on them.

But now to the purpose of this post: Men.

My senses have keened to identifying tools over the years, both in real life and from a simple facebook profile.

In real life, the "RED ALERT!!" signs are boat shoes when not within 1 mile of a body of water (pools do not count), NorthFace jackets, facial hair on any gay other than a hipster or bear, dudes who drink PBR, and the ever so classy colored arm sunglasses.

Perhaps the college campus has been getting to me, but also include men who say "hey, brah" and blast Dead Mau5 like they discovered it. Guys still rockin' PCs in class can be added to this list, along with those who take advantage of the class discussion in order to spout their own ignorant views and flaunt that, "I'm an econ major, brah!"

Through personal experience, those who wear polo shirts - not polo oxfords - but short sleeved cotton polos... are tools. Not only because that look went out quite a few years ago, but nearly every ex has worn them and ended up to be a tool. The V neck is the modern day polo. Also those who have a Droid or flip phone. If you want to be retro, get a nokia brick. Otherwise, opt for a blackberry.

As for the internet - the obvious signs of toolage is someone with a shirtless default or with a photo shoot quality default. I do not care if your best friend is a photographer and needs pictures for her portfolio - do not make them your default, you vain, vain tool. Anyone with an entire album dedicated to a car, pet, or "body progress" gets bonus points. Typical facebook faux-pas: listing every friend as a family member, being falsely married to anyone (friend, celebrity, animal), and having a middle or last name of anything that is not one's actual name. I do not want to add you, Samuel Equality FreeTibet EarthDay Gyllenhaal.

Just a heads up to anyone who has any of these traits - you are automatically judged.

Stories from the Reeves Household.

Just got this email from my mom. Not even surprising.

"I’m trying to finish up stripping the last of the wallpaper from the wall behind our bed in the master bedroom and I’m up on the ladder getting the pieces off the wall above the door and all of the sudden the fire alarm goes off.  I wait a few seconds thinking if I move away from the fire alarm that’s on the ceiling it will stop.  When it doesn’t, I go down stairs to the alarm box and hit buttons trying to make it stop.  The sound is so loud I know all the neighbors are wondering what’s going on.  I can’t make it stop, so now I have to find the manual which is mixed up in all the other manuals in the lower kitchen drawer under your junk drawer.  The phone rings and I think it’s the alarm company but it’s some guy wanting dad.  I tell him he’s not here and hang up.  I go back to the manual trying to find the page that deals with resetting the alarm and the phone rings again….it’s the same man this time wanting to leave a message for dad.  I tell him I’m in an emergency situation and have to hang up.  I go back to the book, finally realize I have to put my “code” in and hit enter.  I do this and the alarm stops sounding.  The phone rings again..this time it’s someone wanting to do a market research.  Urg!  I go back upstairs to go back to stripping.  Up on the ladder I go, only to start hearing the sounds of the fire engines coming down the street.  I can see from our bedroom windows that the fire truck and emergency EMT is stopping in front of our house.

How embarrassing!!!!   All I could say is…um….sorry."

A stream of consciousness update.

I really dislike when my arms are cold but my legs are sweating. This usually happens under the covers or when I am wearing a t shirt with sweatpants.

I am going to skip my 12pm class tomorrow. We are discussing a book I didn't read. The last time we discussed a book I didn't read, I pretended to be preoccupied with drinking my Naked juice... for the entire two hours.

My laptop has 39 minutes left before it dies. Maybe there will be an asteroid crash and that is actually my estimated time of death. You never know. I kind of like it that way.

Right now I am craving the smell of the pump room at the pool. It's a musty chemical damp basement kind of smell. I live for it.

Also, as much as I want to go home, by the time I get there for Easter, it won't even look like home. Mom already repainted my bathroom to a fun grey color. Now she's making the kitchen green, Katie's room - cream, and the master bedroom - brown. We currently have fun wallpaper featuring grapes and sports and leaves. I will be sad when they are gone.

Sometimes I wonder if we all think the same. Do you think in complete sentences? I attach memories to places that have nothing to do with them. For example, when I broke up with a current ex a few years ago, it happened in my room. When I remember that, I picture the street by the science wing of my high school. Is that normal? Was I dropped as a child?

I will now tell you about my scars. I have a tiny rectangle scar on my right pointer finger under my nail but above the first joint. It is from when I was at the house of my south african friend with my mormon friend, Elizabeth. For some reason, Elizabeth and I were racing to the volume knob on the stereo below the TV. I got there first and she lashed out by stabbing me with her fingernail. It bled and scabbed.

I have a tiny scar on the underside of my chin. My dad tried to put a helmet on me when I was learning how to ride a bike and he closed a bit of my skin in the helmet clasp thing. I cried. Later, when I was 10 or so, my south african friend taught me how to ride a bike.

Once, when I was 13, my mom ran over my ankle with her SUV. I was in the back seat and she was slowing down to stop. I was overexcited to exit the vehicle so I jumped out when it was still rolling and my left ankle got caught under the tire. Surprisingly, it didn't break or anything. Just a bad sprain. I was on crutches and missed swimming that summer. I remember cold sweating on the ride home and then my mom's friend drove me to the hospital and told me I needed to create a really exciting story like Mike Tyson.

I am going to end this update here because I have to go pee and pack and make sure all my liquids are under 8oz.

Color of the Winds

This idea is stolen from a friend also named Tyler. Y’all should follow him because his pictorial stories are awesome. http://tylerawilson.tumblr.com/

Rather than going to Kroger’s or Walmart, my mother always shops at Remke’s. It is family owned and operated (although they recently bought out Bigg’s?) and therefore, prices are usually a dollar higher than usual. When buying for a family of four, it wasn’t unusual for Mom to spend $250 every two weeks when we went grocery shopping. 

Sometimes I would entertain myself during this hour-long hunt for groceries by making a “throne” out of canned goods in the cart and then sit on it. Or I would try all the free samples multiple times. Or I would steal the meat slaughter queue numbers and hide in an aisle and laugh while the butcher would call “49….49… NUMBER 49……50…50… NUMBER 50….” and this would go on for awhile as I would steal ten numbers at once.

However, my absolute favorite thing to do would be playing with the vegetable sprinklers. I would see how wet I could get my hair every thirty minutes when it started “storming.”

Still to this day, if I am browsing a grocery market and hear the tell-tale “krshshhhh” simulated thunderstorm noises, I try to make my way over to the produce aisle as quickly as possible so I can stick my hand under the mist. 

However, one day while I was terrorizing the store, I lost track of my beloved mother! I searched in the frozen food aisles, the butchery, the bakery section - she was no where to be found. 

I finally gathered the courage to approach the front desk that also doubled as the lottery ticked dispensary. 

Most people who worked at Remkes were either elderly women with various hairs growing from necks and fingers, or high school aged kids who hadn’t grown out of the “I don’t give a fuck!” stage. 

The woman actually made an announcement, "Would the parent of...Pocahontas Reeves... please come to the front desk?" My mom knew right away it was me due to my recent obsession with Pocahontas. She claimed me and later told the story to my grandma who said, "Oh dear, do you think people recognized him?! I'm going to have to explain this to my church group. What are they going to think?"

Every summer, my manager calls me "Poke" and, on moodier days, Sophia Loren.

A lighthearted blog about my stalker.

I have another blog. It is secret and just for my family to read. I generally use it to keep them updated about school and my plans for the future and the occasional vent.

A week ago, I posted about how rude people on my floor were. I was kept up until 3am because they were blasting Friends for hours. That shit had to be pretty loud to go through our main door and into my room. Also, they have a door slamming problem. I'm not sure if you know this, but a door slam sounds a lot like a gun shot. Imagine that at 5am in the middle of your slumber.

Someone from school found this and wrote nasty comments to each entry. This particular one was, "No one lives just to satisfy you. Get over yourself."

I looked on my tracker and this person had spent FIVE HOURS reading all of my past posts. And if that isn't creepy enough, this girl approached me when I was checking my mail at 2am last night and started asking creepy questions like, "Do you ever go out?" and when I gave her a confused look, she said, "Oh, I'm not checking my mail, I'm just investigating."

Investigating what? Me?

So I put my blog on lockdown and everyone who viewed it had to have an account. This person went out of his/her way to make an account "Mrspock101" and view even OLDER entries from two years ago for two hours.

I guess you aren't popular until you have a stalker. I'm flattered someone cares this much about me.

I am a bad restauranteur.

Really, I am. It is unfathomable that anyone can be "bad" at going to a restaurant, but I accomplish it. I am very polite and friendly to the waitstaff, but the problem comes when I sit down and eat.

I have acquired many of my father's eating habits. He always eats one thing at a time. All the peas, then all the steak, then all the salad. No flip flopping back and forth. Also, he insists on sitting with his back to the wall, as opposed to the door or the rest of the restaurant. He claims this is because, "if a shooter comes in, I want to see him! I don't want him to shoot me in the back!" I do it so if the conversation is boring, I can people watch.

However, this is more than a simple preference. If I don't get the booth side of a table or if I have to face a wall, my mind will go bezerk. If I am comfortable enough with the person, I will demand to sit where I want, but if not, by the end of the meal my brain is fried from staring at the same piece of artwork or the scrape in the wallpaper.

Also, I suck at ordering. I can usually decide what I want quickly, but it isn't without a brief moment of mental chaos. The root of the problem is that I forget what I dislike.

Example, tonight I ordered the Cajun Fettucini. I know what fettucini is - it is pasta. But for some reason, due to the vague description (cajun sauce, foreign word, foreign word, chicken breast, tomatoes) I thought it would be chicken breast topped with some sort of sauce and veggies. Maybe they were using fettucini as a flavoring in this dish? I was between that, Spicy Curry Udon, and Fish & Chips (I once had old style fish and chips in England. It was wrapped in a newspaper and very delicious. We ate it at the hostel watching Not Another Teen Movie.)

Whenever I am between items, I close my eyes and imagine each displayed in front of me. I imagine each, the scent, the taste - and then choose depending on which seems the most appetizing and makes my mouth water. This time it was the mysterious chicken breast.

Bad idea. Of course, it was pasta (not good when I am trying to cut carbs) with sliced chicken breast on top. The foreign words were some spicy ham meat and a hybrid of olives/grapes. Not appetizing. I also temporarily forgot that "cajun" = spicy. I dislike spicy. Guh.

I need to learn to stick to my favorites. Whenever I try to be "adventurous" it turns out poorly.

Oink oink.

I am so ridiculously, unfathomably pigheaded.

For some reason, it was instilled in me that saying "I'm sorry" is bad. I rarely say it. The few occasions I do are instances in which I accidentally bump someone and instinctually say, "oh sorry," or when I actually really mean it.

This makes it difficult for me to repair fights. Countless times I have been in a fight with a friend and been so stubborn as to not be the first to apologize that I deleted her number from my phone so to not be tempted in a momentary lapse of judgement.

I even prefer to be sad or upset for an extended period of time instead of saying sorry. But then again, I used to have the habit of putting my feelings on the table and the mindset of "never bottle anything up," and that quickly landed me in heaps of troubling situations.

This update was not particularly interesting. Maybe I am a bad blogger. Maybe I have far too much time on my hands. Here is a picture.