Band-Aid and Fireworks

Sometimes you have a band-aid on, and you know that to make things better you have to rip it off. If you leave it on, it may feel OK for now, but eventually the wound underneath may rot and you may end up having to amputate a limb, so you decide that, YES, it is better to take it off. You may think about taking it off slowly to cause less pain, but in reality that only prolongs the pain. So you decide to rip it off, and you know that there's a chance that there will be more pain and damage if you rip it off, but then again, there's a chance that ripping it off will cause extreme momentary pain, but in the long run the wound will heal faster and things will be back to wonderful. And even if ripping it off causes more permanent damage, and a scar will remain there as a sad reminder, but at least you'll still have your limb, albeit scarred forever!

Wow, that was way too much of a philosophical crap! I'll just add that I think fireworks are overrated, and adults who go to see fireworks when they don't have children, are in need of much help. As a child I used to be amused by fireworks for no more than 5 minutes, because at the end, they're all really the same. But seriously, to be an adult and voluntarily go to overcrowded areas to look at fireworks is just wrong. While all the nuts, especially those from the suburbs (fucking suburbanites!), were squeezed together and OOHing and AAHing over some ridiculous display of glorified fire crackers, I was sitting comfortably in a backyard with a few close friends, enjoying good food, and a wonderful conversation, while everyone was within a comfortable non-intruding distance from the others. We even had our own sparklers.

Solving a mathematical problem

For the past few years I have been getting sick at what I thought were randomly spaced out times of the year. In a way, that's true, because Easter is not on a set date, and it moves around somewhere between February and April. Finally, it dawned on me, I always get sick after holidays. What the hell?

Sure enough, right now I am dealing with an annoying headache that is usually associated with symptons of the flu. How the hell could this have happened? We can add that to many other times when I had the flu for a couple of weeks following Easter, Christmas, or a Fourth of July family picnic. And of course, my favorite is the time when I got the stomach flu after Christmas in 2002, and I was puking my guts out non-stop for 3 days. I even threw up when I had nothing in my stomach, which I believe is called dry heaving. Well, you can imagine the beautiful noises that accompanied that. At the time, I had just returned from college after finishing grad school and was living with my parents still. My mom treated me like I was dying. She didn't realize that the stomach flu was not a deadly disease. She now remembers that time and says how horrible I looked, sitting on the couch, not being able to lift my head, and resembling a chewed up rag more than anything else.

Point of the story is, I examined the patterns and finally figured out that it is the children that do all this to me. The problem is that kids are constantly carrying many viruses, and sometimes they don't show the symptoms, so when you see them at family gatherings, and hold them around, hugging them and kissing them and taking pictures with them, while they get snotty and spitty, you are really just giving the viruses a chance to exchange a little host for a big host with an immune system ready to fall apart at an instant's notice. Those evil little kids, they fool you with the cuteness and then BAM they take you down when you least expect it! Thanks little P and little S, I don't know how much candy I can put in your hands next time I see you just to show my appreciation for whichever of you gave me the nice virus that is chewing up my head right now!

Things for which to be thankful

Every year for Thanksgiving we have family over our house and do the whole stuffing our faces thing. It's always fun. I help my parents run around and get everything together before people get over, and we always end up with food that could feed an army. But hey, I'm not going to complain. I always took a lot of leftovers with me back to college and now back to my place. I love leftovers. I'm all about leftovers. But after that whole "I can't believe I ate that much" feeling subsides, I always think about how in the rush of things I forgot to think about all the things for which I'm thankful. I always promise to take a moment the following year and be thankful to get that fulfilling feeling of joy and maybe eat less. That's a huge maybe.

But here are a few other things I'm thankful for:

1) Post-it notes - I can't live without them, they're on my mirror, all around my computer and all over my desks at home and work - they complete me

2) The weather channel - it's amazing, they tell you what the weather is going to be like and you can get ready accordingly, they're mostly off, but eh, it's cool - Local on the 8s

3) Direct deposit - imagine how much time you save when you don't have to go and deposit your check in the bank, and it's cool when you check your account and there's that much more in it - yes, I'm easily amused

4) Twist-it eye liner - forget those eyeliner sharpeners, they never work that well anyway, the eyeliner loses sharpness after one use, and the soft black center gets stuck on the blade of the sharpener - twist it and go on

5) Gift registries - long are gone the days of filling your house with other people's taste, and seriously, I don't like thinking about what to get people, so everyone should do it, except that one chick for whose bridal shower registered for underwear, jeans, and lipstick (I'm not joking!)

6) The snooze button - if you know me, you know I am a snoozer, I once snoozed for three hours, I'm addicted - the snooze button also completes me!

7) Twinkies - they're the ultimate American snack, they define us, and they last forever, you can leave then on the shelf for ages, and still be able to eat them, they will survive a nuclear holocaust - mmmm, artificial spongy god-knows what's in them suppository-shaped "pastry"

8) Cheesy 80s movies - seriously, they're the ultimate girls get togethers entertainments, and I don't know about you, but most of my friends remember when those movies came out, and when you watch them you have hours and hours of amusement - not a dull moment wit 80s movies, back in the 80s, now, or when we're in our 80s

9) Jack Daniels - all those times I had to go to football games and it was really cold and no coat or sweatshirt could keep me warm, Jack did, and even when I put it in my half bottle of diet coke and snuck it into Wrigley then chugged it when my friends convinced me that the security people were going to take it from me if I didn't finish it before the 4th inning, it made me happy, REALLY HAPPY - Jack also completes me...

10) Blogs - if it weren't for blogs, what would I do with all the extra time I saved because of direct deposit - thank you blogs!