To run or not to run

I have been running for about six years now, off and on, and I know that there are people who run because they love it and it's exhilarating and challenging and gives them energy for the day, etc. etc., but I am not one of those people and I also suspect those people of lying. I love certain things about running, like being all sweaty afterwards and then showering and then feeling like the cleanest person in the world, and giving myself permission to eat everything all day, and also, what a great excuse to buy cute jogging shorts!! But mostly I run because not to run + to eat gummy worms for lunch = to get fat.

So I go for a run yesterday, and I'm maybe a kilometer in and my iPod's batteries die and I'm left all alone with MY THOUGHTS. And then about a block later I develop these crippling cramps in my one side, and sometimes I can run them out, or I can walk for a bit and they dissipate, or I can start breathing like I am my own Iron Lung, but I try all those things and nothing is working, and by this time I'm halfway through my run and it's just as far to go on as to go back, so I go on, but now I'm walking. I'm not sure how many of you have noticed this, but walking takes some time longer than does running. So I'm not breaking a sweat, I'm not burning off my french toast, I'm not listening to music, and the way in which I am not doing all these things is incredibly time consuming. I'm feeling wasteful and slightly screwed over.

If running wants to get back on my good side, it needs to bring me a cake or something.

Renovations

I like to think that I can do things for my ownself. I figure that women, in general, are pretty capable of opening their own pickle jars and buying their own drinks. The question is, WHY would we do these things when there's someone hanging around to do them for us? Why, for example, would I do anything about this massive wall bug?


I could. I could grab it by a leg and throw it out the door, or squish it with a book that I don't like all that much, or spray it with some Windex, but why would I, when Joel will be home in seven hours, and HE can do it? I screamed a little bit when I took this next photo, because I was hyper-zoomed in and it was all blurry on the little screen until after I snapped the shot, and everything rushed into focus and there was this massive bug RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!

Other things that guys are good for, besides shooing bugs out the door, is moving furniture and hanging pictures. We finally brought Joel's desk in to replace that stack of boxes that I've been referring to as 'the desk.'

That is my 'Reading is Fun' Wild Things poster that Joel bought for me from the Chilliwack library, which we hung yesterday. And that yellow thing on the desk is a ruler/slap bracelet that Joel was using yesterday to complete an assignment because I told him that we didn't have any rulers in the house. Earlier to day, whilst shuffling pens from my miscellaneous office supplies drawer into the desk, I discovered what a dirty lie that is. We have three rulers.

And for those of you who care where we hung our other pictures (ie. my mom), Boo's painting is in our bedroom:
and the Mennonites are in the foyer/living room/kitchen:


And for those of you who are looking these pictures and thinking that our suite is too spacious, that we have it too good for a newlywed couple and that we should be living in a cramped hole, you're right, it is, and we should.

Just wait until we move to Vancouver, and our foyer/living room/kitchen becomes part of the bedroom, and I'm sleeping in the bookshelves.

Wherein I'm suddenly passion about something and start berating you all and telling you how to live your lives

Do you ever feel like the universe is trying to send you a memo?

Two days ago, Joel and I were in need of a flick, so we borrowed 'The Day After Tomorrow' from our landlords because I had seen half of it four years ago and remembered it being good. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's about what would happen if global warming suddenly took off and the whole world froze over *pfft!* in minutes.

Last night, we watched 'An Inconvenient Truth,' because we'd both been meaning to see it. For those of you who haven't, it's 'Al Gore lectures on Global Warming and seeks to Advance his own Agenda and Make Himself look Awesome' and it's kind of smarmy and scheming, but he has a number of good things to say that seem to be scientifically sound. You know he's dumbing it down, but you also know that he's speaking to the general public, and that the general public is dumb.

This morning, Joel and I sat in on a lecture on global warming in some random biology class which basically reiterated 'An Inconvenient Truth,' only with less politics and slow-motion shots of Al Gore with his now-dead sister, and more legitimate facts.

Clearly, God wants me to know that we are trashing the planet. Not 'we' as in you and me (although we really aren't helping) but 'we' as in the collective, by which I mean oil and gas companies. The thrust of it is that when carbon-based fuels stay trapped beneath the surface of the earth in the form of oil, gas, and coal, the earth's atmosphere is balanced. When we burn these things for fuel, we're throwing CO2 into the air, skewing the balance, and it's getting dangerously close to the point where the balance will tip too far, too much heat will be trapped in the atmosphere, the ice caps will melt and we will all burn or freeze, depending on where we live.

Turning off lights you're not using and running the dishwasher only when it's full will only help in microbits (although right now we can use every microbit we can get, so by all means do those things, plus it's cheaper). Making it financially unappealing to mine coal and drill oil will force the powers that be to find alternate sources of fuel, helping in macrobits. Most people don't go green because environmentally-friendly appliances and the like are hard to find and expensive to buy. Cars used to be hard to find and expensive to buy. So did computers. When things become common, they become cheaper. If more alternate energy sources find their way on to the market, they will become more accessable to the public.

Ok, this is something I'm passionate about, but you might not be, so I'll more or less shut up now. Alls I'm saying is, if you care about whether or not your kids and grandkids and etc.s can live on this planet, go here, read this information so that I don't have to bore you anymore, sign this petition, write your MP and tell them to start taxing carbon as it comes out of the ground, or as it is imported in.

Also, eat more chips. Eating chips lowers the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, I tested it.

make me fries

I know, my second post in one day. This will now be followed by a drought of several days or so. So, my sister and I do a lot of phoning and emailing and Facebooking to make up for the fact that we're no longer living together, and I can no longer put on appropriate pants solely for the sake of walking up to the bus stop to walk back home with her. So today, she emails me a link to this video, and then phones me so that we can watch it together. Now, I'm posting this even though the only blog-reader of mine who is guarunteed to love it is my selfsame sister, but I just laughed so damn hard! It's a video of an old Pearl Jam song, 'Yellow Ledbetter,' and scrolling across the bottom are the lyrics the video-maker thought Eddie Vedder was singing (read: mumbling like a drunken bear). This is funny because I was a teenager in the nineties and totally in love with Eddie Vedder and thought it was totally raw the way he never articulated any of his consonants. There are other videos, including one for 'Evenflow' which contains the misheard lyric 'Heathen frog bought a road like buttered fries,' but they just weren't as good. Ohhhhh man. I gotta pee.

Because snackers don't REALLY crave crackers

I do not like to have chip-and-cookie-like snacks in the house, because I have no abilities of moderation, and if they are there then I will eat them, and then I will get fat and then I will have to buy new jeans and it will not be one of those fun shopping trips because I will have to buy jeans that I do not look good in, because I am fat.

Joel likes to have chip-and-cookie-like snacks in the house because he is a boy and a foot taller than me and could eat a bucket of trans-fats without breaking stride.

So we keep the chip-and-cookie-like snacks in a cupboard that I am too short to reach, and when I want a chip-or-cookie I have to hoist my bum up onto the little wedge of counter that is left after the toaster oven and kitchen aid have had their say, and put my foot on the sink, not in the part where you wash the dishes, but on the part in front of that part, so that I don't fall down while I'm reaching for the chips. I like to think that this little maneuver requires more caloric energy to execute than is contained in the amount of chips I am going to eat. However, putting the chips away requires more of the same, since throwing a half-full chip bag with its paper-clip antennae waving merrily back into an over-stuffed chip shelf constitutes one of those skills-I-do-not-have, and because I am profoundly lazy, I usually just eat the whole damn bag, so probably not.

Because she loves me most

So, my sister, who's artistic prowess I have discussed previously, once painted this amazing seascape. Two girls, one dark and one fair, are reclining on the waves and either watching a ship disappear into the sun or gazing at an old-style church, depending on who you ask. I ADORE this picture, not only because it's beautiful, but because it's my Seastar and I, forever immortalized in oil paints, and I love that shit.

Which is why I am proud to announce that THIS...

...is currently in my living room. Grassy-ass, Seastar. You are my shipwreck-filled sunshine.

The woman! She types!

Joel was amazed to discover today that I have continued to blog EVEN THOUGH WE ARE NOW MARRIED!

Now I have to go through and delete all the posts in which I call him a namby-pamby mama's boy.

My mango-sense is tingling!

Joel has a sixth sense that tells him when tasty treats are being prepared.

But it WASN'T funny in the morning

I finally ended up falling asleep on the couch at around 3:00. I woke up a few hours later, sweating like a fat guy, because I was in my sweats and covered in three blankets, but I was too disoriented to change either of these things, because I was sleeping on the couch with the lights on, and you know how that will mess you up.

So I ended up sleeping in way later than I usually do (but not TOO late, because if last night repeats itself I'm going to stab myself in the ear with a q-tip really hard and see if I can't puncture something) which threw my whole day back a few hours, shifting my afternoon-ravenous-cupboard-emptying frenzy to RIGHT NOW. But I've eaten all the crackers and all the bagels and the banana chips have gone stale and nothing else is immediately edible.

I am an angry fish.

This might be funny in the morning.

I went to bed an hour and a half ago. And lay there. Not sleeping. And the more I didn't sleep, the more annoyed I got that I wasn't sleeping, and the more annoyed I got, the less I was sleeping.

Was it the coffee I had TEN HOURS AGO?

Was it the curry I had for dinner?

Is it the fact that Joel is sleeping hard enough for the both of us? I've poked him a couple of times, just to see if he'd accidentally wake up and keep me company, but it backfired because he just rolled over and slept even harder. It's difficult not to resent that kind of determined sleeping.

I could not be more annoyed.

Cashlessity

Last Wednesday, Joel and I took one more step towards becoming a real couple...we MERGED BANK ACCOUNTS!!!

That's not actually true.

What we did do was shut down my bank account (this is a complete other story having to do with BMO charging me each month for the privilege of using their services, and being unwilling to stop my payments toward my student loan, and the student loan people refusing to acknowledge that I have a loan with them, and thereby refusing to stop my payments as well, even though I am back in school, and so we figure that if I just close down my account, they'll find my loan pretty quick. Or it'll just keep being lost, and I wont have to pay it off. wOOt) and withdraw all my money.

Then we went over to Superstore, where Joel banks, to put all my money into his account. No problems thus far.

THEN we tried to put my name onto Joel's account. We had all of my ID (which still has my maiden name on it, because I have better things to do, like eat a bag of chips) AND our marriage certificate, which proves that the gal on the ID (Rachel Plett) is now the wife of the guy on the bank statements (Joel Krueger).

They wouldn't do it. They said I had to have photo ID, with my new name on it.

I guess the thrust of that story is that A. I finally had to go and get my learners (again), so that I could have some current ID. Thankfully, since I've already had my learners for NINE YEARS, I don't have to have it for another year before I can book my road test. I just have to learn how to drive. And B. Until my plastic card license with photo and name comes in the mail, and I can use that to convince Mr. Banker that I'm not a money-stealing floozy, I have no bank card. I have no access to money. I've never felt so vulnerable in my life. What if I suddenly, desperately, need a chocolate bar? What if I have to buy a fabulous jacket, and it's on sale, for now and for only?

Scary times.

Conversation Joel and I actually just had

Joel: You know, getting married isn't all that different from getting a dog.

Me: *suspicious glance* In what way?

Joel: *look that knows he's cute, and that I probably won't get mad at him for saying this* Well, you have to feed and water them, let them out to go to the bathroom, and you're always picking their hairs off of things.



Which is fine, because that time I went to Costco without him, and Charmin Ultra was on sale, and he wasn't there to make his usual argument about how one-ply is the superior ply, because it allows you to chose your own ply, and I bought the 8-ply 106-pack, well, we just ran out of the sandpaper we've been using up til now, and so I busted out the first of the disposable hand-towels and let me tell you, no ass has ever been happier.

Let him feed and water that!

paedophobia

A few years ago, I hit the age where weddings started cropping up like kitchen ants. I mean it, they're everywhere, and you have no idea where they're all coming from, and you can't see the end. This year alone, there was my wedding in April, my best friend's wedding two weeks later, our emcee's wedding in a month or so, and then from early August until mid-September, not a weekend goes by without bells a-ringin' and birds a-singin'. My good friend, Joel's sister, cousin, and two best friends are all tying various knots. 'Tis the season.

And since 'tis been the season for a few years now, 'tis also the season for babies. All those 'firsts to get married' among us are the 'firsts to get preggos.' Val and Dal, Krista and Kevin, Nate and Erin, and now Nathan and Melissa are cultivating foetuses (or have popped. Kevin and Krista named their little potato Wyatt, of all things, and he came out looking like a middle-aged man).

Due to the recentness of my marriage, the things I wish to accomplish in the next few years, and the size I'm convinced our children will be, I live in perpetual fear of being pregnant. If I don't currently have incontrovertable evidence that there is nothing alive in my womb, then I'm positive we've had an oops. I hope that sort of thing goes away as the months wear on and I remain childless.

However, if I turn up in the family way in a few months, you can say you heard it here first.

My camera takes pictures from the future.

You know how sometimes you're looking through your old photos, because you're looking for one in particular, or because you're photoshopping zits out of yourself to kill time in class, or whatever, and you find an old photo of two people you know who weren't even into each other at the time (you think) but they totally hooked up and got married afterwards, and so you're looking back and you're like, wow, prophetic photo?

Vicky and Chris, this one's for you.

My sister's already heard this one

Ok, so I was pretty sure that somewhere I had blogged about how awkward my sister and I are, and how, during the year I lived at home, one of us would say something socially inappropriate/drop something valuable/be unable to keep shit together while getting on the bus, and the other one would turn to her and say 'You're so awkward! I can't take you anywhere!' But apparently not.

Anyways,

Now that I've married and moved, and Joel would never say that to me, my sister and I telephone each other frequently to say 'Listen to this awkward thing I did today,' and then tell about how we fell off a ladder/forgot to turn down the heat on the rice and so burnt it and so set off the fire alarm and couldn't find it to wave a tea towel at it for a good five minutes/farted on the bus.

So today, I phoned my sister to tell her how:
I was scrambling around trying to get my act together before my mom showed up today, because we had a major grocery shop to do. Joel and I have not been grocery shopping since the 1400's, and our meal options had been reduced to Mr Noodles with an egg, or Mr Noodles without an egg. Assuming we had eggs. Which we didn't. So Mom swung by at 1:15, I had class at 2:30, we shopped like madwomen, I have a well-supplied home again. I grabbed my hastily-thrown-together bag and darted off to class, this class in which we were writing in-class summaries of an article we were supposed to have read. Writing things in class, with time constraints, and paper, and a pen, causes me great stress. Why can't I just sit at home in my chair, with my computer, and email the thing to you? Anyway, I had read the article carefully and twice, and made notes on my summary-to-be in the margins. HowEVER, when I threw myself into my chair and reached into my bag, I pulled out the wrong textbook!!! Alas! My carefully-written notes! My hasty throwing-together of the bag! My 10% of my grade! I slunk up to my prof, mumbled something about how embarassing, see you in 20 minutes, and zipped home and back. Good thing I had a full 60 minutes to write that 2-page summary. Too bad I was sweating like a hog because of my super-jaunt back up the hill.

So that I can hold my head up high

We bought a new camera.

Let me 'splain. Way back when digital was cutting edge, my dad bought my sister and I digital cameras for Christmas. They were thick and weighty, and had a screen the size of a mini-wheat. It took a full five seconds of warm-up before it could take a picture. The video option was a solely visual experience. They were top-of-the-line, folks. We'd be taking group shots, and the designated picture-taker (that poor sap) would get to mine, hold it to his eye, pull it away, laugh, ask 'Is this digital?' and then make a comical show of trying to look at the screen and press the button AT THE SAME TIME. I'm telling you, it was novel.

Some five years later, Joel and I find ourselves somewhat out of date. People still get to my camera and go 'Whoa!' but that's because of its immensity, not its novelty. As the daughter of a man who loves his toys, especially ones that go *whirrrr* and *bing!* I was mildly ashamed of my technical retardation. So we used some of the fabulous dollars we recieved for getting married, and bought us a shiny new darling.

Aint she a beaut? She can hold 700-and-some-odd pictures at 7.1 megapixels, her screen is over half of her backside, her video function has sound, she can take pictures immediately upon start-up, and (best of all) she fits into the pocket of my board shorts. Sometimes, when Joel's not around, I nuzzle her.

We took her camping this weekend to see how she'd do, and (solely for the sake of science) we now have over fifty pictures of this family of ducks.

The camping trip is a tale in itself, but since I have a zillion assignments due tomorrow (ok, four), it'll have to wait. I'll leave you with this awesome shot of Keisha, our landlords' dog, chasing a goat.

The camera is awesome.

My mom sent me an email a while ago, asking how my critique went. So...

So, I'm in this class, see, and it's on writing fiction, and it's compressed, see, so it feels like we're handing things in all the time, hand-over-fist. But really, we've only handed two things in, and that's not so much until you consider that, for crying out loud, it's not even June yet.

So, we've handed in two short stories to date, and in my personal opinion, there's NOTHING more difficult than writing a short story. Unless it's having a short story critiqued.

See, we're put in groups of 5, and then we each print off enough copies of our own story for everyone else in the group, and then we all go home and break out our red pens, and read them, and make comments. That part is fun. The reading of other people's stories, the peek into other people's brains, the realization that I am a much better writer than some of these people, and somehow that matters.

But THEN we come back to class, and we get into our groups, and we share. We share what we liked, what we didn't like, what worked, what confused us. We say 'you shifted tenses here' and 'this sentence was awkward' and 'when I first read this, I thought it meant this.' We say all these things, and we try to be kind, because our turn is coming up, but we also try to be constructive, because this is why we are here, right? To learn?

But it's stressful. It's stressful to have people say unflattering things about something you've spent hours on. It's stressful to have people not get your vision, and have to gently explain to them that what they're suggesting you amend it to isn't in fact what you want to say, without sounding defensive. It's stressful to have the prof sit in on your discussions, and to be judged not only on your work, but on your criticism of others' work.

And THEN you get your second story back, a story which you kind of loved and which tickled you when you realized how it was going to end, and it's a full letter grade lower than your first story, which you hated.

And THEN you realize that the only thing more difficult than having a short story critiqued is revising a short story, because it's like trying to decide which parts of a child you like best, and hacking off the other parts, and then trying to rebuild a new child, but at least NOW you get to revise the one you love, instead of the one you wish you'd never written.

THAT'S how my critique went.

Love-sco

I love Costco.

I love grocery shopping in general, love coming home and filling my cupboards, love the thought that I can eat ANYthing I want for dinner (see also: that feeling after laundry day, that my whole wardrobe is open to me). I think they call it 'nesting,' this fondness for a well-stocked larder.

And so I love Costco doubly, because anything I buy at Costco, I wont need to buy again until 2034. And because anything I buy at Costco is liable to be oven-ready. Prep time will be half an hour, twenty-five minutes of which I will spend watching Scrubs.

And because Charmin Ultra was on sale, and Joel wasn't along to gainsay it, I'll be wiping my ass with disposable hand-towels for the next eight months.

I feel so decadent.

This Weekend: A play in four parts

Act 1: Friday

Friday evening, Joel and I went to Eat! Vancouver (exclamation point totally necessary). Never been? Us neither. But imagine, my friends, if the stalls in the aisle of Costco, you know, the ones that hand out little samples of Blueberry Bran Bars or Chicken and Monterey Jack Chimichangas, if those stalls were to rendezvous with the PNE, and their illicit love child were to be blessed with all the culinary attributes but none of the bizzare ingredients of an Iron Chef, THAT is Eat! Vancouver. Tiny kiwi slushies, scallops wrapped in bacon and skewered on a toothpick, slivers of mango, the world's only good potato salad, all free. Like the potato salad? Here's the recipe. And a bag of baby potatoes. Want some rice? Have some rice. Slip it into your goody bag you got when you came in, and walk by the rice place again. Walk by the rice place NINE TIMES!! That's right, in addition to the delicious samples of tasty tidbits, many places handed out freebies. All told, Joel and I got:

nine bags rice,

two packets of splenda,

three razors for Joel,

two razors for me,

five tea bags,

five packets of flax seeds,

four packets of raw sugar,

five servings of psyllium and oat bran cereal, which I actually kind of like,

and seven ketchup-packets of honey.

So we got free stuff, and we got full, and we got to have an evening out with our landlords. Well worth the twelve-dollars-and-one-food-bank-donation-each we spent to get in. OH! AND we had a cheese tasting. I've never been one to sit around and savor cheeses for their own sake, but if someone's going to sit me down and tell me about six different kinds of cheeses and let me spread them on bread and munch on them, I'm all for it.

Act 2: Saturday day

Saturday morning, Joel and I went on a mad shopping spree. We went back to Ikea to return the coffee table we bought the last time we were there, and which we may have inadvertently dented quite badly while still in the package, but which we don't feel bad about returning, because if furniture can't withstand a good ramming-into-an-overcrowded-hatchback, then it deserves what it gets. We also dropped by the massive Linens 'N Things, which is unignorably RIGHT NEXT to Ikea, and for which we had some gift card money. I had no idea. I would sell my right ovary to live in the L'NT. We found this fabulous space-saver shelf thing that goes over our toilet, to make up for the nostoragespace that we have in our bathroom, and we got the most badass doormat in the neighborhood (my sister actually commented on the badassedness of our doormat today when she came to visit, but that is another story), and we got a massive wooden salad bowl with these matching serving spoons, except the only pair of serving spoons left were broken, so we cracked open a set that had salad bowl/serving bowls/and spoons, and stole the spoons out of there. NOT stole as in did-not-pay-for, but stole as in the girl had to call in for the code because there was mysteriously no price tag on them, and someone's going to buy that set, and have to come back and say 'We didn't get any spoons.' And to them, I am very sorry. But isn't the bowl gorgeous? Doesn't it make you want to eat salad? Then we went to the mall and I bought ultra-high-quality running shoes for wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much money, which goes against everything that I stand for, but Joel and I have this discussion every year and YES! I value my knees over the amount of money I am about to spend, and YES! I realize that running is my only real sport and that this is the only sports-based expenditure I am going to make for the next twelve months (except maybe some really cute jogging shorts once I stop feeling so fat), and YES! logically it all makes sense, but my gut reaction to paying through the nose for shoes that AREN'T EVEN CUTE? Still sour. Also, I bought a pair of darling brown board shorts with yellow and blue stitching.

Act 3: Saturday evening

I think I've mentioned this before, and if I haven't, let me do so now. Our landlords are the most gregarious people in the land. When Joel and I move out, we will have forgotten how to conduct our own social lives. We won't be able to make friends or plan events for ourselves. It will be a disaster. Saturday night, our landlords threw a pop star party. Everyone came dressed as their favorite pop star, and there was much kareoke. Since I've always wanted to be Avril Lavigne because she's so raw and edgy, even more so now that she's all processed and hot, and still raw and edgy, and because she's more distinctive-looking than Kelly Clarkson, who I've also always wanted to be and who I share a birthday with, I dressed up in my favorite black short-pants and my favorite miscellaneous tight t-shirt with something random on it (knots, in this case), put on too much eye make-up, and affected a completely disinterested manor. Also, because I wouldn't be generic punk without a rad pair of chucks, and because I don't own a pair of chucks, and because you can't wear shoes indoors and the party was indoors and my outfit wouldn't be complete without a pair of chucks, I borrowed a pair of Joel's socks and made...

SOCK-CHUCKS!!

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Those are not, in fact, a pair of Converse high tops, circa 1992, they are socks. Socks meets four Sharpies meets old shoe laces. Rad, though, hey? I won best-dressed, and I give credit to the sock-chucks. Here they are from the side.

I know. Yes. Two and a half hours. Totally worth it.

Act 4: Sunday

Mine own seastar Greyhounded out to visit me today. We assembled a coffee table, played a round of one-on-one Taboo (which I won), visited my grandparents and played two matches of Sequence (Kruegers vs. non-Kruegers, which Joel and I won, and boys vs. girls, which Boo and I won), played one-on-one-on-one Taboo with Joel (which, since I have a Swedish mind meld with both Boo and Joel, I won), polished off a bag of dried apricots, and ransacked the Walmart before parting. Dried apricots and stomach acid, in case you didn't know, are like Mentos and Died Coke. If you don't believe me, you can come over and listen to me fart.

On that winsome note, I will end this longest post ever. Many happy returns.

7

I had a pseudo-streak going of quasi-consecutive blogging. Very half-assedly productive of me. But I'm boring now, and my days are spent in this big leather chair, fiddling on the computer.

HowEVER, there is a new phenomenon sweeping the nation (or, at least three of my friends' blogs), and it's called: List Seven Random Facts About Yourself!!! Most of you (the people I hang out with in real life) will know all of this, but YOU, oh Internet, have no idea.

1. I only ever use one of my eyes at a time. I see in 2D and have no depth perception. I didn't know that it wasn't normal to see two of everything and to close one eye when you read until I was 22. I wasn't formally diagnosed until last year.

2. I can't drive.

3. Or ride a bike.

4. Or operate most things with wheels. Lots of this may have to do with #1.

5. I truly enjoy a peanut butter and pickle sandwich.

6. I broke my big toenail off about three years ago. I was chopping wood in my bare feet, and the chopping block fell over on it. It took a year to grow back, and it's never been the same.

7. I like to sleep on my back with my hands folded on my ribs and my ankles crossed. Vampire style.

I'm supposed to pick seven bloggers who have to do this now, or they'll get seven years bad luck and no one will think they're hot and their next kiss will be a flop and their dog will die, but all of the bloggers I think would do a thing like this have already done it.

Except Robyn. Robbie, you have to do this now, or all these bad things will happen to you. And Ryan will never do laundry as long as you both shall live, or even offer.

In completely other news, check out these photos of balloons popping! Tres bizarre!