20 Things I Remember From When I Was A Kid

1. I had about 500 stuffed animals, with names and backstories for each one.
2. The original 3 American Girls: Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly.
3. Lisa Frank was the shit. I had a notebook with a picture of a giant glass heart levitating over a checkered floor. It was the most beautiful piece of artwork I had ever seen.
4. I didn't get in trouble a lot, but when I did it was usually for not cleaning my room. If I got in trouble at school, it was probably for something like reading under my desk.
5. Calvin and Hobbes helped me win a geography bee.
6. The elementary school I went to had green carpeting, and none of the classrooms had doors. They had those weird cork walls on metal tracks that you could move to change the rooms.
7. I hated wearing jeans or pants. Only dresses or skirts, preferably pink. Culottes were also acceptable.
8. When my dad came home from business trips, he would bring us the little bottles of shampoo from the hotel.
9. One time at a K-mart, Emily and Pete and I managed to knock over an entire clothing rack.
10. When you talked back to Mom, she had a way of saying "Excuse me?" that would make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
11. Peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
12. Putting the cat in a pillowcase and dragging him down the stairs.
13. Putting the cat on top of the dollhouse and watching him slide down the roof. There were big claw tracks in the paint forevermore.
14. Walking home from school on The Path, and catching caterpillars.
15. When the music teacher was teaching us a new song, she would see me raise my hand and say, "Yes, I know you can play this on the piano."
16. Before we went sledding, we would put on our snowpants and go "sledding" down the stairs. The slick fabric made it really fun.
17. Out of all the Baby Sitters Club girls, I related to Mallory the most. All she wanted was to be left alone to read or write in her journal, and someone was always hassling her.
18. Taking karate classes along with the rest of the family, and hating them. The only good thing was that we often went out for pizza afterwards.
19. The sound of the trains in the distance at night when I was starting to fall asleep.
20. The time I convinced Pete to help me tear open a beanbag chair and spread the styrofoam pellets all over the living room. I didn't care that I got a massive spanking and sent to my room for the rest of the day. It was the most epic awesome mess I'd ever made, and I would've done it all over again.

Stuff I Bought on Valentine's Day Clearance

- Hershey's Kisses in a cool heart-shaped tin
- A set of two 13x9" cake pans (so I don't have to borrow my roommate's when I want to take a casserole to someone's house) in Romance Red
- A strawberry-scented candle in a jar
- A heart-shaped rose-and-tea-leaves scented candle, free-standing
- A plastic tumbler with a lid and straw, covered with pink and red hearts
- Two heart-shaped dishes that I thought were ramekins but upon closer inspection do not appear to be oven-safe
- A glossy pink and red heart-shaped serving plate
- A little rectangular tin that I may use for storing safety pins
- Surprisingly, no boxes of Whitman's or Russel Stover (I was tempted, but I prevailed)

Basically, I just love things that are pink and heart-shaped or -adorned, so every year around this time I clean up in the grocery store sale aisle.

Thoughts for today:
- I am feeling irrationally cranky; it must be close to Shark Week.
- Yesterday I tried to clean the goobers out of my 1-year-old nephew's eyes, but I couldn't do it without gagging. Sorry, Squishy, I'm just not that good of an aunt.
- Heeeeeey, sexy laaaaaady! (It's been stuck in my head all night.)

Ehhhh, I don't waaaaanna.

So I guess I lost steam towards the end of the 31-day challenge thing. Some of the themes were less than inspiring, to say the least. Others were so inspiring that I would have had to spend hours putting together a post that would have done them justice, and that was getting in the way of my laziness.

And now we're almost halfway through February, and I've yet to post something... not that I think my thoughts are so earth-shattering that I owe the Internet a constant stream of them, but I like to think that I give my readers *cough all 3 of them cough* a reason to keep coming back here.

Sooooo yeah. I'm not really working on any major projects right now. I draw or paint every day as long as my hand isn't cramping up, or as long as there isn't an important nap that needs to be taken. I've been getting a lot of very high-priority napping done, and that makes me feel very accomplished.

Thoughts for the day:
- When you usually wear your hair up, and choose to wear it down for one day, you get a lot of comments. Mostly along the lines of, "Wow, did you do something different with your hair?"
- Sometimes I miss green arrows because I'm making faces at myself in the rear view mirror. I knew I should have sprung for the tinted windows. (What? I get bored at red lights.)
- If I ever had to go gluten-free, I don't think I'd kill myself. I would be very very sad for a while, but hopefully I would be an adult and have a good attitude, and eventually adjust.

Day 28 - Surprise

I tried to think of something cool to blog about for this day, I really did. But I've got nothing. Some of these themes just don't lend themselves to cool blog posts.
This is probably about the most anticlimactic surprise ever. "Surprise!.... Sorry!" The opposite of surprise, if you will.

Day 27 - Regret

For today's theme, I wanted to find that Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin states that he regrets not being born with opposable toes.

But I couldn't.

And I regret that.

Day 26 - Winter/Summer

If the question is, "Which one is better?" then the correct answer is "Summer." Winter sucks. Fuck winter.
Winter sucks because it's cold. You're cold when you get out of bed in the morning, you're cold before you get in the shower, you're cold after you get out of the shower, you're cold walking out to your car and waiting for it to warm up, you're basically just cold all freaking day, every day, week after week. I HATE BEING COLD. Fuck cold.
And snow. MOTHER FUCKING SNOW. Snow clings to the hems of your pants so when you come inside, it melts and soaks up your pant legs so you spend the rest of the day with cold, damp fabric clinging to your calves. AGAIN WITH THE COLD, FUCK COLD. Snow sucks because you have to shovel it off your car before you can get in. It sucks because your car tires can slip and skid on the freeway or at intersections. I fucking hate snow. Sledding, skiing, blah blah blah. I hate being outside anyway. The only thing worse than being somewhere I hate, is being somewhere I hate in something that I hate.
Oh, but snow is so pretty when it first falls! Yeah, snow is fucking pretty. THE FIRST TIME. The second, third, forth, and sixty-seventh times it falls, it's just fucking irritating. And it sure as hell doesn't stay pretty. It turns gray and crusty and gross and full of rocks. Fuck snow. What a bullshit form of precipitation.
Summer - sunshine, daisies, beaches, whatever whatever whatever. The best thing about summer is that it's not fucking winter. You don't have to put on fifty goddamn layers of clothes every time you go out. Because that's yet another thing that sucks about winter - putting on your hat and coat and scarf and gloves and snow pants and boots just so you don't FREEZE TO GODDAMN DEATH. And then taking them all off when you come home, and they're all drippy and wet and they smell kind of weird.
FUCK WINTER. BULLSHIT SEASON.

Day 25 - ... Excuse me?

According to the 31 Day Blog Challenge Chart, the topic for today is "el. oh. vee. ee."

I find this obnoxious and cloying.

Instead, here's a picture from my sketchbook of something that makes no sense whatsoever.