I freaking love the internet

I've been putting off the daunting task of sorting through and selecting the photos I want to print out of the thousands I've taken the past 2 years. After I broke the photo printer I needed a new way to get prints to send out to grandparents and great-grandparents. The plan was to put them onto an SD card and take them to Walmart, which I've been dreading for financial and anxiety reasons. Well, the other day I happened upon a friend's facebook post about a website that was having an insanely good deal on photo prints for 2 days only. This got my ass into gear and I spent the next 3 hours going through all of my photos and ended up selecting 377 to be printed, 151 of which I got for free! I freaking love the internet. Thank you, shutterfly.com! I should be getting the prints in the mail soon and I'm so excited to finally get back scrapbooking and such. However, since I only ordered single prints I still have to decide which ones to make copies of at Walmart to send out to everyone, but now it will be a much easier and cheaper process. I'm actually glad that I broke that printer now, I saved us a lot of money in the long run.

Another thing that I'm loving about the internet right now is the new 6-second video sharing app called Vine. Technically I can't use the app yet because it's iOS only for now (beyond annoying when that happens), but it's been fun seeing my friends' vines. There is a website called vinepeek.com that streams vines in real time and I'm obsessed with it! People lead such interesting and beautiful lives. There are a lot of absolute wackadoodles on there too though... and cats.

I know this post reads like one giant multi-company advertisement, but I swear they aren't paying me. I just wanted to spread some happy customer love.

Well, crap!

The other day we acquired a VCR to play old movies for our son and a relatively old photo printer. Our little guy has been asking to watch Bambi, but it's not on Netflix and we only have the VHS version. Clint set up our "new" VCR and was about to put Bambi in, but I remember all too well the dreaded sounds of shredding tape, so I said, "wait, we should test it with a movie we don't care about." I did a quick search for such a movie and selected Oliver and Company, despite the fact that I actually do quite like it, I just know it doesn't tend to be a favorite for most. We slid the tape in, pushed play, and immediately heard the sounds of doom from within the cursed machine. My movie is ruined! I should have run out to the garage to grab one of the crappy old non-Disney cartoons, but I was in a hurry and I thought for sure it would be fine.

Then came the testing of the photo printer. Our grandparents have been asking for some printed photos for the past few months and we've been seriously slacking on what should be a laughably easy project. Problem is, I haven't printed any photos since Christmas of 2010, so it's really no small project at all. In the past I've enjoyed scrapbooking and I have a few nice picture frames that I would like to put to good use, but for whatever reason I just can't be bothered to make my way to the Walmart photo kiosk. So, this little at-home photo printer that MIL gave us seemed like a good idea. Clint tested the thing to make sure it was functional before we brought it home and then he set off the buy the ink and paper for it. While at the store he called me to ask what the ink cartridge said and tried to walk me through the "really easy" removal process of the cartridge from the tiny printer, but I was getting frustrated and started aggressively pushing and pulling the darn thing trying to wrench it out until finally I realized I had the whole thing turned on it's side instead of upright like I thought. It turns out I totally scrambled its brain, but I didn't know it until after Clint had forked over a wad of cash for the ink and paper. I feel really stupid, Clint just laughed and laughed. Hopefully we can return the unopened items so I don't feel extra terrible. I guess we'll be making that trip to the photo kiosk afterall. And hey, we'll save money in the long run and the photos will be better quality, so I did us a favor, right? He'll be returning the ink and paper and buying a Bambi DVD, assuming he can find one. They better not be locked in that dumb vault.

Saved from a chicken coop

Today was good and rather different. Clint and I took our son to visit my mom and MIL for some family time. At my mom's house we picked up a few useful items like a VCR, framed cross-stitches, peanut butter cookies and two suitcases full of my younger sister's clothes that she left behind and I'm stealing. Quite the haul, right? While there, I sat in an old rocking chair that has always been around and my mom said to me, "your grandmother saved that old chair from a chicken coop and refurbished it." I stopped rocking and looked at her and she continued, "she thought it was too nice to leave in there." So, there you have it, chicken coop chair.

After that we headed to MIL's house for the first time as a family since our epic blow-up more than a year ago. I was a little nervous that it would be tense, but we quickly fell back into a comfortable rhythm and the hours-long visit was nice. MIL sent us home with a photo printer, a remote control pig, a light-up simulation aquarium wall fixture and a wooden whistle that sounds like a train. Silas had a lot of fun visiting his grandmas.

Now, I need to figure places to put all of these interesting gifts. Except for the cookies, I ate those.

I should've eaten those darn peas.

This week has been rather unlucky. For starters, I've been in a borderline depressed mood that I can't seem to shake. People have been saying all the wrong things to me on top of it, like they have a running bet on who can make me lose it first. I know certain things would help like exercise or at least getting the house clean, but I can't get motivated. I simply can't be bothered. However, that has been the least of our problems.

Monday, Clint woke up with strep throat and after getting his antibiotics he took a nap on the couch. He then woke from his nap with excruciating pain in his big toe. We chalked it up to a case of spontaneous acute arthritis caused by complicated strep, because that was Google's best suggestion. Over the following couple of days the pain worsened until he was crippled and he spent a couple hours in the ER getting xrayed. It turns out he has a calcium deposit near his joint and his infection somehow spread from his throat to his toe. This kind of medical weirdness happens to Clint all too often. This is a man whose appendix was located in the wrong side of his body. He's an alien. So, a lot of money and a few prescriptions later he is slowly recovering and taking the week off of work.

I personally don't believe that the number 13 is unlucky. Clearly, I have to blame the bad luck we're having so far in 2013 on the fact that I forgot to eat black eyed peas on New Year's Eve. I knew I was going to end up regretting that oversight. Don't ignore your superstitions, people!

Nothing says delicious like BIOHAZARD

Clint works at a hospital, so he often regales me with stories of the disgusting and heroic alike. I'm used to hearing some crazy things, but the crazy doesn't usually follow him home.

Yesterday at the hospital there was a gift exchange amongst the coworkers and the handing out of gift cards by the higher ups. He was also given his customary free calendar for the coming year. All in all it sounded like a nice time and he told me that he brought home some fresh fruit, cookies and chocolate covered peanut brittle. I thought that sweets sounded good with my morning coffee, so I zeroed in on the bag of cookies and brittle... and I couldn't believe my eyes.

Exhibit A:

The images that came to mind so thoroughly grossed me out that I had a difficult time convincing myself that this is just hospital humor and the bag is clean. Once I was able to push past my gag reflex I discovered that these treats really are quite tasty. Disgustingly delicious!

P.S. When titling this post I was compelled to Google the line "Nothing says delicious like" because I was curious about whether or not I ought to add quotations anywhere in the title. The first thing that Google search came up with was just too fitting not to share.

Exhibit B:

With that, I bid you adieu.

My cat hates my OCD

In my house we have two sets of drinking glasses that are similar, but not the same; one set is more angular while the other is nicely rounded. I prefer to drink out of the rounded glasses because they are more visually pleasing and they feel nicer in my hand. I feel an actual aversion to the other glasses, though I couldn't tell you why. They're just... wrong. Those glasses are reserved for my husband who probably isn't even aware that there are two slightly different sets.

As I was lying in bed at 12:30am I heard the all-too-familiar sound of glass breaking and my anxiety spiked. I knew right away that it was one of mine because I stupidly left the smallest amount of chocolate milk at the bottom of one on the little table by the Christmas tree, and my cat is a fiend. It was disturbing to pick up the shards and vacuum up the splinters of an endangered commodity. RIP friend. Not really, but seriously.

Other weird shit: 

- I have to sip the fizz on a freshly poured soda or I'm afraid I'll get bad luck (It doesn't matter whose).

- If I touch cardboard or construction paper I then must lick my hands where it touched, because I hate the feeling so much (also, I just gagged thinking about touching construction paper).

- I once rode an elephant named Petunia in the Knoxville Zoo. That isn't an OCD thing, but I couldn't think of anything else to say and I thought there should be at least three points made in this section.

The crazy man across the street

• Yesterday, I walked across the street to drop some things off for my friend at the appointed time of 4 o'clock. She mysteriously wasn't at home, but her weird father (who she lives with) answered the door and when I saw his red-rimmed eyes I was overwhelmed with the sense of "something isn't right, run". I've always felt uncomfortable around him because he is a very odd duck, but this feeling of danger was new. I unceremoniously handed him the Christmas cookies and fled, feeling like a spaz and blaming my anxiety disorder. It's a difficult thing, trying to wade through the muddy waters of "is this useless anxiety or good intuition?", either way the urge to get inside and lock my door was very real.
  
  An hour or so later my friend called me and we had a slightly awkward conversation about why we didn't meet up when I thought we had it planned. She asked me to go back over to her house to pick up the Christmas gifts she had for my son. I was struggling with how burnt out I felt after my anxiety had passed and she could tell that I wasn't thrilled about going back over there, but I sucked it up, pulled on my coat, and trudged through the snow to her front door, all the while trying to hide as much of my face with my hood as possible because I was feeling so damn sketchy. When she opened the door I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact and I was giving one word answers to her attempts at conversation. She handed me the gifts, I told her an uncomfortable story about how tight my coat fits this year (I couldn't think of anything real to say) and then I was out the door. I kicked myself all the way home because I was absolutely certain that I had been rude for no better reason than that the chemistry in my brain is wack. I spent the following hours trying to think of something to say in a text message that might excuse my behavior, but I finally fizzled out and couldn't manage even a "thank you".
  
  Fast forward to 1:00 am, I saw a frantic and depressed social media post from this same friend saying that she had wrecked her car and needed to find a new place to live. I called her and through her tears she explained that after this minor car accident her dad EXPLODED at her. He told her the most venomous things: she's worthless, the worst kind of scum, the worst mother, a whore with kids from 2 different fathers... a useless, pointless, waste of space. He hates her and regrets her existence, and worse. All because she got into her first car accident ever and needed a ride home. She is beside herself, she's going to return all of her children's Christmas gifts to try to get money to survive on because she needs to find a safe place for her and her children to live. The man is mentally ill and this incident is not the first of its kind. After calming down a bit she told me that earlier in the day before I saw him he had actually crashed the back of his pickup into his boss's garage and messed it up, and with that information I felt like I understood what set him off. I did my best to try to explain to her that all of the horrible things he said to her are actually a reflection of what he thinks of himself after his own car accident and that she is none of those things. She is a good person and a wonderful mother who was dealt a bad hand in life. I told her that I felt his storm coming hours before her accident and that he was a ticking time bomb. I feel so bad for her, but she said talking to me helped.
  
  She is feeling hopeless and I'm going to do my very best to help her in every way possible, but there really isn't much I can do except offer support. I wish I could do so much more. I wish I didn't have to live so close to this deplorable man.