All of the Things

I got my hair cut today, so the chunk that was burned away and the hair around it are now one length. I consider this some kind of victory.

I spent five hours last night making origami Christmas cards in order to avoid knitting on the sock.

A few days ago, I cast on for the sock in order to avoid knitting a certain sweater.

I have now made cards for everyone I can think of, and handed them out, so even the extra stuff I made up to make more Christmas prep work for myself after I already finished all my Christmas prep is now finished. I am out of luck. I guess Christmas had better come soon, before I decide to repaint my bedroom in holiday colors.

These cough drops make me want to throw up.

I am not throwing them away, though, because if I do, I will not have any cough drops, and I'm not buying more.

I just took my second dose of antibiotics. So hopefully, there will soon be improvement...

This is my last day of work until next WEDNESDAY. This is a mini-Christmas Vacation for me.

I have yet to watch The Muppet's Christmas Carol, and that makes me sad. I cannot find a copy to rent or to buy. Tragic.

In other Christmas news, Jennifer showed me THIS:

Source: mediatinker.com via Laura on Pinterest

And I love it and want to make one. It is the bestest Christmas tree ever.

Then, while I was reading the various blogs I follow, I discovered this hilarious abridged version of Jane Eyre by YA author extraordinaire Sarah Rees Brennan. She is so very funny.

My favorite part? The Helen Burns section. "HELEN BURNS: Would you like to be friends? I love you, Jane, and I also love Jesus." And, "HELEN BURNS: HERE LIES HELEN BURNS, DEAD OF NARRATIVE INEVITABILITY."

Dead of narrative inevitability. Best way to die, ever.

Merry Christmas! Have a Sinus Infection!

Sunday I woke up and felt blech.

Monday I woke up and felt a little more BLECH. Then I ignored it, went to work, went to Fort Wayne with Jennifer, forced her to open her Christmas present early, and went back home to collapse in bed and pray for a miracle overnight cure.

Tuesday I woke up and felt slightly better. Except I could not breathe. But other than that, better!

Then today, I woke up and felt Sinus Infection.

"Crap," I said to myself. "I feel Sinus Infection. Merry Flippin' Sinus Infection."

Then I had a glass of milk, because it was morning and that is what I do in the morning, since coffee makes me strung out like a junkie.

Then I listed my symptoms.

List of Laura's Symptoms

• Severe Sinus Pressure and Congestion
• Serious Chest Congestion and Cough
• Multicolored Mucus (ewwwww)
• Fever that Came and Went (which means sinus infection 'cause the cold is over)
• Can No Longer Hear Anything Except YELLING

Then at the end I wrote, "Laura has HAD HER FLU SHOT" and handed the list to Mom.

"Please help me," I said. "I will be at work all day, so I cannot call the doctor and wait for calling back and call more. Will you call and beg for help?"

"OF COURSE," said Mom, because she had wanted me to go to the doctor yesterday and also today.

"And can you tell him I love Z-Paks? They are the bestest."

"ABSOLUTELY."

And then I went to work. And I puttered around and did things, and my coworkers told me they thought I sounded (sound) like a three-pack-a-day smoker, and I said, "Gee, thanks so much for that."

THEN the doctor called and gave me my Christmas Present.

I get to have MEDICINE for my various infections. At dinner time, I get to go to the pharmacy and pick up the prescription he sent over for me, because he knows I am a Diseased Sort of Person.



Doesn't it look festive?

Merry Christmas, everyone!

What's so Magical About the Magic Hoodie? (Or, How I Accidentally Flashed my Mother)

This is the Magic Hoodie.

I first snatched this up when my friend Bailey told me how amazing it is. And I thought, I own no hoodie. Maybe I should own one hoodie. I will try that hoodie on. And I loved the hoodie so much, I instantly bought it (and so did Rachael). Then Bailey and I named a book blog after it.

The Magic Hoodie is magical for many reasons. Firstly, it seems to go with anything. The plain version (without big letters all over it) originally came in a few colors, all of which seemed to blend with anything in my closet. I picked the color you see above because I knew I would love it with blue jeans. And I do. In addition to the glory of color-coordination, the Magic Hoodie has never gone all rough on the inside like some sweatshirts do after a few turns in the washer and dryer. No balled-up fleece inside this hoodie! And the material has always felt relaxed, like your favorite old pair of jeans. Only in hoodie form.

But my favorite part of the Magic Hoodie is the zipper. It is not a full-zip, which I hate, because if you're wearing a sweatshirt cardigan, why not just wear an actual sweater-cardigan? And it is not a pullover, which I hate because those always seem to make me feel like I'm being strangled, and there's nothing as nerve-wracking as thinking your clothing is trying to kill you. No, this hoodie is a half-zip, which allows for optimum temperature control and allows you to pull it on without screwing up your hair. Or temporarily blinding yourself. Or getting stuck inside the sleeve.

Before you go out to buy your own, know this: There are no more Magic Hoodies. American Eagle Outfitters doesn't make them anymore. Which is grossly wrong and should be remedied. Do you hear me, AE?

Last night, I had come home from work wearing my Fancy clothes, then switched my sweater for the Magic Hoodie, leaving on the tank top that I'd worn under the sweater. So my layers were as follows: undergarment, tank top, Magic Hoodie. It is important to remember that.

After an evening of making crafts for Christmas, I came out of my room to get a cookie, then went over to pet Darcy and chat with Mom. Darcy has pulled a muscle in her little doggy leg, and she is quite pathetic. So I rubbed her tummy and tried to make her feel a little better, then sat down across from Mom. I was extolling the virtues of the Magic Hoodie, because I was feeling particularly comfortable that evening.

"This hoodie is the Magic Hoodie for a reason," I said. "There is no hoodie better than this one."

"What makes this hoodie magical?" Asked Mom.

"THIS," I said. Then I unzipped the zipper.

My intention was to show Mom that the zipper only unzipped halfway, making the hoodie Magical for all those reasons I told you about before. What I really did was show my mother my breasts.

"DID I JUST FLASH YOU MY BREASTS?" I gasped, zipping the hoodie back up as quickly as possible.

You see, the tank top had worked its way down, so the neckline of the tank top was...well, let's just call what happened a Wardrobe Malfunction and move along. Because Mom wasn't the only person in the room, and I'm not referring to the dog.

Paul had walked in just as I was covering my nakedness like Eve in the Garden. He has plainly heard me shout my question to Mom, and now he could see the two of us crying because we were laughing so hard. Paul's a smart guy. He put two and two together.

"This is how you should meet men, Laura," Paul announced. "You should walk up and say, GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD!" Then he pantomimed unzipping the hoodie and flinging it open for all to see.

He used a funny voice, too. Paul is a funny guy.

"GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD" only made me laugh harder. I was crying and gasping for air at this point. Mom was wheezing and calling for her inhaler. So now Paul will have a new bit, which is using "GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD" every time there is any hint of my liking or dating anyone. I can tell that will happen. It is too hilarious to not use it.

I will never live that down. I don't so much care. And I'm really glad if I flashed anyone during my Indiana Girl's Gone Wild impersonation, that person was my mom.

Name Change

Yeah...I changed the blog name. It had been bugging me for a while, because this may have started as a knitting blog, but it really evolved into something more...humor-centric. Because I fall down stairs. A lot. So I impulsively changed it.

The web address will remain the same (so no need to update in Google Reader or anything), unless you would prefer I change it to match the title. Let me know in the comments!

Dear Blogger (and Google)

You know how I love using you? Well, I do. You let me write, you search for things, and you're an all around neat sort of...something. Internety thing. You know what I mean.

But here's the deal Blogger/Google: You think there are more of me than there is. There is one of me. And back when I started my Blogger account, it wasn't connected to Google the way it is now. It was DIFFERENT. And then you became one. And that was fine, no problem. But then you created G-Mail, Google Docs, and Google +, and in the process of doing that, I was forced to create another e-mail address so I could use all of those things.

Then you told me to link up Blogger with G-mail, but you wouldn't let me link it to my G-Mail address, because you think I'm two (three?) people, so you made another address for me, so now I am three (four) people. And that created another problem.

Because my original e-mail address is now associated also with a G-mail address, but said G-mail address is not, for whatever reason, allowed to post comments on any of the blogs I follow (explain that to me, please), I now cannot post comments on any Blogger blog. Which would be no big deal, except that IT IS A REALLY BIG DEAL.

So you tell me my account isn't allowed to post things, and that I should log into another account, except the first account that should work is linked to the bad account, and I would have to start all new blogs if I used the other account(s).

Are you confused yet? Because I am.

I tried to solve the problem by allowing myself to be logged into two accounts at once. That's a really good option to give people, Google. If it worked. But it doesn't, because each of your sites forces me to log out of one account in order to access the other, even though they are both me.

I tried to solve the problem by inviting my other personae to write and post on this blog. Nope.

So what I would like to see happen is this: I would like for you to invent a way for me to put my various login information from all the accounts into one little program, then let me click a button and make the button merge all those logins and passwords and accounts together, to create a kind of super-account, one that would be under one e-mail address so I could log in just once and I wouldn't be forced to delete the other accounts and possibly prevent my getting-at documents saved on Google Docs by one account or a blog started by another.

Confused? So am I. That means you should fix this, right? I would really like that.

Thanks,

Laura

Guess what?

Toilets FLUSH. Not at my house, but when you go to other places that aren't my house, they FLUSH. Also you can flick light switches, and lights come on. Again, not at my house, but STILL. And some houses (not mine) are WARM. They have things called vents, and hot air comes out of them because the houses have these things called FURNACES that make cold air into hot air. I thought only political candidates could spew hot air that effectively, but I have seen the light. Furnaces are the way to go. And SOME houses even have working refrigerators, and you can put milk inside them, and then, in the morning, you can have cereal.

It's fancy.

Also, today my hair is dry without having been set on fire. That's handy.

Why am I in such a brilliant mood?

Jennifer rescued me. I did not have to stay in the third-world of my house last night. I stayed in the FIRST world, the developed world, where there were lights and Lego Harry Potter. And it was fantastic.

THANK YOU, JENNIFER.

What's that burning?

Peru, apparently, exploded or something, because I have been without power since Tuesday night. There is no heat, there is no running water, there is no toilet-flushing, no liquids after 5:00 p.m., no internet, no Burn Notice, no lights, no refrigerator, and, above all, NO REASON TO LIVE.

"Laura, you're being dramatic!" you say. 

I say, "Try being a one-bathroom family of four when no one can flush the toilet unless they travel to the nearest town, which is 30 minutes away by car, and buy water. Talk about flushing money down the toilet."

But if all of that wasn't bad enough, there is this other problem. I have to go to work just like I do every day. Which means I have to find a way to be clean, which means washing my hair with bottled water, which is sometimes icy cold, like it was this morning.

Cold water is really cold.

Also there is no internet, so for all I know, one of the Republican candidates has already declared war on Iran. Hey--it could happen.

Not having electricity means I can't blow-dry my hair. So I came up with this ingenious solution yesterday, because I remember reading about someone doing it in Little House on The Prairie or maybe in Little Women. It was Little everything back then, apparently. And they also would wash their hair, sit by the fire, and dry it out.

Well. I was totally trying that.

So I fired up the gas fireplace a bit higher, and I tried it. IT WORKS AMAZINGLY. Especially if you are like Jo March post-train ticket, and your hair is super-short like mine. So I did it again this morning.

But between yesterday and today, something must have...changed. Maybe it was the distribution of product in my hair. Maybe the fireplace had been turned up too high for too long. It's anyone's guess. All I know is that as I was standing over the fireplace's vent, I heard a sizzling sound.

It is important to note that at no time was my hair actually touching fire OR the vent itself. My hair was touching AIR ONLY. Hot air, yes, but air all the same.

And that hot air from the fireplace totally scorched my hair.

I have like, two inches of hair? Maybe a little less in other places. But really, I cannot afford to lose hair to the fireplace or the hot air it produces. There is, quite simply, not enough hair to set fire to. Still, as I smelled that tell-tale scent of crispy-fried hair, I knew.

Now, some girls might be actually upset by the loss of hair to flame, but those girls can flush their toilet after they use it without walking down to the river and using a bucket to fill the toilet tank, and I am not one of those girls.

So, I dried my hair the rest of the way, put in the goop I use to make it look all cute and tousled, and went to work like a good little soldier. Because walking around work with fried hair is better than sitting at home with no electricity.

Happy winter, everybody.