Daily Newsie

Mickey’s post about the Wet Banana — which I didn’t even know existed, but apparently it does and is quite superior to the Slip’n'Slide — got me thinking about the ridiculous things we did as children to amuse ourselves. My older brother J is two years older than me, I’m in the middle, and the baby of the family, N, is five years younger than me. (Yes, we told him he was a mistake, and yes, it turns out that I was actually the mistake. Best mistake ever, is all I have to say.) We lived in town until I was about seven, when we moved to the scary farmhouse with a broken toilet and a nest of fire ants in my closet, so up until then my playtime activities were pretty normal — biking to the park with friends, playing in the sandbox, swinging hard enough so the swingset legs came out of the ground, and so on.

Then we moved to a place so remote that it didn’t even have a street address, and suddenly my brothers and I had to find ways to amuse ourselves. One of our favorite activities was riding J’s blue plastic skateboard down the hill next to our house, leaving twin wheel-tracks in the grass. This pastime filled many happy hours until my mother noticed the stripe of dead grass and made us stop. She also vetoed exploding creamer cups and ketchup packets with a hammer on the sidewalk to the house, which really sucked because that was awesome, and I seem to recall she was none too happy about our attempt to ride the laundry basket down the stairs.

(Over the years, we’ve noticed that most of our good stories end with slumped shoulders and the phrase, “… and then Mom made us stop.” It was always Mom, since she had the pleasure of staying home with us all day long.)

So J and I shifted our focus to outside activities. We built a lean-to with branches, empty feed bags, and fallen leaves, where we would spend nights waiting for my father to try to scare us (he always did, and I always pretended not to be scared). After listening to Bill Cosby’s go-kart sketch, we took the wheels off of the lawn mower and built a crude go-kart out of two-by-fours to ride down the hill next to the pasture (Mom didn’t care if we tore up that one). Dad actually made us stop that time, because he needed to mow the lawn. In the wintertime, J and I would build igloos and giant ramps that would launch us and our sleds high into the air before we came crashing down on the other side — or got clotheslined by the wire stretching between the trees.

Now, the only reason I’m going to mention this next bit is because my father will call me out in the comments if I don’t. My older brother and I loved to ride our bikes, and would spend hours biking from our house to the tiny hamlet of Orangeville to get some ice cream at the Nor’ Pole. (That place was awesome, by the way.) We thought we were the cat’s pajamas with our mean cycling skillz, so we formed a daredevil group called “The Trixter Blixters” and would stage dramatic talent shows for our parents in which we would — gasp! — steer with one hand or — zounds! — stand up on the seat while riding. To their credit, my parents always acted suitably impressed at our prowess. Until, that is, the day when J was trying to torment me by dragging a rake behind him as he rode across our rock driveway (I hatethe sound of a rake scraping rocks) and wound up crashing head-on into our new mini-van. We decided not to tell anyone what happened, but apparently it was pretty obvious.

And then Mom made us stop.

Crap.

People, I competely missed my bicentennial. And I was all excited for it, too — Post 200: A Retrospective Jubilee. Since June 2, 2006, I have toiled (I originally typed “toilet”) away at my own little corner of the internet, although apparently not very diligently since 200 posts in more than two years is kind-of pathetic. Whatever. I was busy. Yesterday was the big two-oh-oh, so today I shall celebrate my bicentennial-plus-one and pretend that I meant to do it that way all along.

It’s appropriate that the mayor and I were just talking about Brooks Mitchell this evening because his untimely death was the topic of my second and third posts. In my time as a reporter I came to value people who remembered my name and treated me with respect rather than scorn at my chosen profession, and Brooks was definitely one of those people. It broke my heart when he died.

Some of my favorite posts have to do with my former life as a journalist, including the night I let a Southern girl do my makeup, when I met a woman who rescues blind horses, the day I spent wandering through a cemetery in borrowed boots, and my horror at finding half a grasshopper in my pants. In late 2006 I decided to go to graduate school, sparking a mass of posts about literature reviews and theories. Somewhere in 2007 came the coolest moment of my life, a difficult break, a milestone, and a tragedy of epic proportions, followed by this year’s milestone and thesis frustration … and you, my blogfriends, happily came along for the ride.

I thank you for your patience and encouragement, especially as I struggle to keep momentum going in these final days of NaBlo, but I have to warn you that I may resort to writing bad poetry to fill space. What rhymes with “Dr. Nerd Crush”?

Today I had lunch with some reporters from my former place of employment, which means we spent two hours nibbling appetizers and recounting our favorite horror stories between fits of laughter. (One friend has been at the newspaper for less than three months and already has a stock of crazy happenings.) One of the stories that always gets trotted out at gatherings like these is the Fire Hydrant Story, which I shall share with you here:

I had been at the newspaper for only a few months when my editor came lurching out of his office to my desk. He had a story, see, and it was perfect for this new talent. Someone from a nearby town had called in to say that, the night before, a car hit a fire hydrant outside their apartment complex … and no water came out. Therefore, the hydrant was a sham, and Nearby Town Fire Department just put it out there for show without actually hooking it up to the water main. Editor wanted me to check this out.

OK, fine. “Did you get the number of the guy who called?”

“No.”

“Did you at least get his name?”

“No. But I have the address of the fire hydrant, and I want you to go over there and look at it.”

As reason was in short supply around there, it did no good to point out that most fire hydrants don’t spew water when knocked over. My editor bothered me about it all afternoon, so I finally packed up and drove to Nearby Town to look at the stupid thing. I was unsurprised to find the hydrant in question completely unmarked and surrounded by pristine grass — no signs of tire tracks or gouges. It was obvious that this hydrant hadn’t been disturbed, but, ever the vigilant reporter, I tried to find some locals (no luck), knocked on the door of the fire department/city hall (no luck), and called the Nearby Town VFD chief’s cell phone (no luck).

Finally, having exhausted all my options and still seething that my editor didn’t get the source’s name and phone number (the first thing you ask for when someone calls in a tip, by the way), I let him know the story wasn’t going to make. He evenutally dropped it, but not before a coworker asked me if I’d thought to interview the hydrant for its side of the story.

I did eventually return to Nearby Town to pose for a picture with the fire hydrant, but I never did figure out whether it had ever been knocked over. I guess that’s one of those mysteries that shall endure, like why I sometimes feel nostalgic for the newspaper despite all the idiocy that thrives there or whether there are actually any hemlock trees in my other editor’s yard.

P.S. Courtney — once my voice teacher found out that my hair hadn’t been its natural color in years, she asked me to lay off the dye to let her see what I looked like with mouse-brown hair. She was a funny bird and I liked her, so I obliged. And Monica, if I’m having a good hair day tomorrow I’ll snap a self-portrait in the bathroom mirror and post it.

Having entered as a brunette, I came home from the hairstylist today as a carrot-top. It’s part of my lifelong mission to never be boring, to do the best I can with my incredibly fine hair (fine as in thin, not fine as in fiiiiiine), and to cover up any gray hairs before they can make themselves known. I inherited my hair from my mother, who had beautifully long locks as a teenager but wore it short as she got older; in fact, I was the one who taught her how to dye her hair to cover up her grays. I was always bent over the laundry sink in the basement with a bottle of Clairol, turning my locks from blonde to orange to blue to brown. My natural hair color is a light brown — the kind people call “dirty blonde” or “dishwater blonde” — but I don’t think I’ve sported my natural color since my freshman voice teacher begged me to give the follicle kaleidoscope a rest. If I remember correctly, that was shortly before I let a boy dye it cobalt blue just in time to go home for the holidays.

Before I was brave enough to color my hair, I made do with lemon juice and Sun-In. Remember that stuff? Unfortunately, no one told me about roots and touch-ups, which is why my junior prom pictures featured a smiling DailyNewsie with pretty ringlets that were top-half brown and bottom-half blonde. That was back in the day when my hair actually reached my shoulders and I would religiously apply mayonnaise and egg whites until it slipped through my fingers like silk. (The fashion magazines I read then didn’t mention the fact that your hair would smell like potato salad for the next five days, but I coped.)

The decision to cut my hair came shortly after, if not immediately after, I managed to get a round brush stuck right at my cowlick. I was trying to blowdry while brushing to give myself a little volume, but instead twisted the brush the wrong way and had to have the brush cut out of my head. First, though, my mother coated the surrounding area with baby oil and the better part of a bottle of Show Sheen from the barn, and my brother snapped a picture for posterity. It was then that I learned to accept the limitations of my lackluster hair and to focus on what I could do; namely, dye it every color of the rainbow.

I’m not sure what my point is, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that I have red hair now, and I love it. That’s good enough for NaBlo, and good enough for me.

I used to absolutely love “Ally McBeal.” It was just the tonic my weepy-teenaged-drama-queen self needed, and I drank it down like water every Monday night. In one episode, therapist Tracey Clark advised neurotic Ally to come up with a theme song she could sing to herself when she needed a little kick, and suddenly Vonda Shepard burst into The Exciters’ “Tell Him” while Ally bopped down the street. Clearly, I thought, a theme song makes everything awesome — especially if one can get Vonda Shepard to sing it.

For nigh on 15 years I’ve mulled my theme song options and have yet to come up with anything. A former flame once told me he heard “Isn’t She Lovely” when I came into view, which is sweet but I can’t take it seriously because it’s actually about a baby. An online test I took several years ago said my theme song should be “Walkin’ on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves, which is kicky but tiresome after too long, and another meme I found said I should walk around to “Groove is in the Heart.” I don’t know — if I’m going to have a theme song, I want it to have actual lyrics that mean something.

If I stretch back to high school, I remember my theme songs being “Happy Girl” by Beth Nielsen Chapman and “Killer Queen” by Queen. Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger” was my theme music while I was charging through my internship and my first job in 2004, then for a while it was “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John. But to be truthful, I can’t really think of any songs that have carried me through my entire life, probably because my taste in music shifts so frequently. I guess the closest thing I have right now to a theme song is “Everyday I Write the Book” by Elvis Costello, just because I can’t stop listening to it.

So, what songs play when you walk down the street?

Somehow I managed to delete all the comments from my last few entries, although I’m still not entirely sure how. Blame it on my sheer exhaustion from trying to juggle three babies (not juggle in the literal sense, you know, although that would be a handy talent) in my husband’s Sim world. I made him a character years ago in the hope that he and my Sim would hit it off, but no such luck. Instead, he’s decided that his goal in life is to marry off six children … which means that he had to have six children. It makes me tired just typing it.

So I got him a girlfriend (not nearly as cute as me), and they set to work populating Pleasantville with Sim babies. Melissa, his girlfriend, was waddling around with child when Beloved decided to stargaze on the patio with his telescope. Lo and behold, he was abducted by aliens. Melissa wandered through the house for a while, incredibly frightened and huge, until Beloved was unceremoniously returned to Pleasantville the next morning. But what’s this? He’s pregnant! I was incredibly amused because I’d never had an alien baby before, but my amusement quickly turned to horror when Melissa went into labor and delivered twin girls. Not two days later, Beloved birthed an alien boy.

Now the three of them — Beverly, Deanna, and Jean-Luc — are toddlers, and Beloved and Melissa are exhausted all the time. I usually love playing the Sims to relax a little, but this is really beginning to wear me out. Once they get through the toddler phase and can do things for themselves it gets easier, but for now it’s a constant cycle of feeding, bathing, and potty training. As soon as one of them is happy, another starts crying. And, in real life, the husband and I smile at each other because the most pressing thing either one of us has to do tonight is make sure to start an episode of “Family Guy” before we both go to bed.

Speaking of real life, there isn’t much to tell about the weekend. My university played its last home football game yesterday (and lost), so we went out for breakfast with a friend and then froze half to death at the stadium. Afterward, Beloved went over to the mayor’s house to do some computer work while I made my contribution to the weekly discussion on Blackboard for my crisis communication class, and last night was so uninteresting that I can’t remember what we did. Today I went to the library for a few hours, then decided I didn’t want anything that we had in the house for dinner. A quick trip to Target, dinner at Ryan’s, and we were home again just in time for “The Amazing Race.”

Now that I’ve bored you all to tears, I have a request: I’m going to Pennsylvania for a few days next week and desperately need blog topics I can post on the fly. Is there anything you’ve been dying to know about DailyNewsie? If you don’t come up with anything, I swear I’ll spend five days telling you stories about my other Sims.

I got my official rejection notice today from the Central States Communication Association. It didn’t say much about why my paper wasn’t chosen — the comments included were all quite positive, actually — but, nonetheless, it wasn’t chosen. I’m minorly bummed, but it’s nothing an evening of junk food and cable television won’t fix. I may end up going to the conference anyway, since a close friend of mine got an e-mail saying her paper was in the top four and I can’t let her go to St. Louis and be all academic without me.

It’ll pass, I know, but for tonight I’m going to be mopey and eat too much. Then tomorrow I’ll wake up, pack up my books, and head to the library to focus on the next chapter in my academic career: the Human Subject Review Board application necessary to begin research on my thesis. Things are progressing nicely in that arena, but I’ll explain another day so I can, in true NaBloPoMo style, milk another post out of it.

I thank Stacie over at Buried the Lead for asking to see my tattoos, because it allows me to squeeze another post out of yesterday’s topic. (NaBloPoMo is harder than I thought, so this new development pleases me.) Without further ado, I give you — in chronological order — my ink:

This was my very first tattoo, done in March 2003. My father and I went together to get these, and he has a matching one over his heart (that, obviously, doesn’t say “Mama”). It bothers me a little because the ribbon doesn’t match up like it should, but it’s on my back so I don’t spend a lot of time looking at it. Gray is the ribbon color for brain cancer awareness, which is why there isn’t any color in it.

This was done on the spur of the moment in June 2004. I had just graduated with a degree in journalism and scored my first “real” reporting job, so the Best Friend and I drove to a nearby town and celebrated by getting my right ankle tattooed with a quill and inkwell. I saw a much cooler one on a blog the other day, but I try not to sweat it because, well, it’s rather permanent. I may get the quill colored in one of these days.

Courtney knows all about this one, since she sat next to me and held my hand while it was being done. In early summer 2005, a group of us from the Snooze went to a local tattoo parlor because a colleague and I wanted to get tattoos. This one was another split-second decision, but it turned out beautifully. It’s over my heart and has actually gotten more gorgeous as the years went by.

My best friend and I have always considered ourselves two pieces of the same puzzle, so in December 2005 we got matching tattoos to seal the deal. My piece is dark blue and hers is pink. We left the other sides open to show that we will “fit” with other people as life goes on, but we’ll always fit best with each other. This one is on my right hip and, like the others, has faded nicely.

It seems weird that two and a half years went by with no tattoos, but maybe I was busy. At any rate, in early 2008 I started wondering what to get my father for Father’s Day. My dad is pretty much the greatest person alive, so I wanted it to be something to show him how much I love him. I decided to get a tattoo in honor of him, but couldn’t figure out what I wanted it to look like until I heard this song by James Taylor, an artist my dad and I have always loved …

… and so I came away with this:

I’m sorry I don’t have a better picture of it — here it’s slathered with Vaseline and oozing ink — but I’m too lazy to get out the camera. After this picture was taken he added an ellipsis trailing from “daddy” to the heart to even it out, and it looks wonderful. I got it on my left leg because, believe it or not, I used to be a cross-country runner and so was my dad.

That’s all, folks! The Husband and I are already plotting my next body art move, so stay tuned for more details.

I want another tattoo. I have five of them now, the most recent a gift for Father’s Day, and I’m getting that itch for more ink. I notice that the more I get the closer together they come, which makes me nervous because I’m pretty sure I’m fresh out of ideas. So far I have two for my mom (one of which matches a tattoo my dad has), one for my best friend, one for my (former) career, and one for my dad … and that’s pretty much what’s important in my life. Of course, my husband is pretty cool, but if I’ve learned one thing from celebrity gossip it’s that matching tattoos are the kiss of death in a relationship, and I’ve kind-of gotten used to having him around so it would be weird if we weren’t together anymore.

So I decided I want something huge and beautiful and colorful, but I’m not entirely sure what. I was thinking the other day about things that remind me of home — not necessarily my mother or my father, just home — like morning glories, thunderstorms, candles, grapevines, peacocks, and horses, and the idea struck me to get a morning glory vine climbing up my back or across my shoulders. Or maybe I could get an entire flower garden, with violets, lilies of the valley, morning glories, black-eyed Susans, hyacinths, lilacs, and peonies. Or maybe a horse underneath a grapevine, watching a thunderstorm roll in with a peacock as a candle softly illuminates morning glories twisting up a trellis.

A lot of tattoo sites show mathemeticians’ and physicists’ geeky-but-cool tattoos, like star maps, Feynman diagrams, or pi, but I doubt I could get away with inking Benoit’s theory of image restoration and repair on my person, although it would come in handy should I ever go into teaching. I’ve wanted for a long time now to have a fake mustache tattooed on my index finger so I could go incognito at a moment’s notice, but even my most fanciful friends are opposed to the idea. I suppose aspiring press secretaries should be circumspect in their body art — but how funny would it be to dodge a difficult question by suddenly turning into a Snidely Whiplash look-a-like?

I was sitting on the couch being weepy this afternoon — that’s what I do when I’m sick, and I am most definitely fighting off something right now — when my favorite commercial of all time came on TV. Now, I’m not a fan of the so-called “Christmas creep” that means stores start putting out ornaments in July, but how can you argue with the adorable-ness of this?

So that got me thinking about some other Christmas commercials of long ago, including this one:

And, of course, this one, which always makes me cry a little:

And what roundup of nostalgic Christmas commercials would be complete without the Coca-Cola polar bears?

What are your favorites? Go on, share!