I guess if I'm going to choose to drink beer in bed...
I done had a accident.
...I really should use the nightstand and not set the bottle on the volatile soft cushion-y surface of the mattress.
(Yes that's a can of Dr. Scholl's foot odor spray, a bra and a laptop in my bed. Yes, that's a hilariously huge pair of underwear I've got on. Not sure why I'm embarrassed of those things, when it's clearly a photo to be embarrassed of for other reasons.)
Tonight, I figured out a solution at the Verdi Mart. Beer with a cap on it!! (Yes that's Miller High Life and yes it's 32 ounces. What?)
This kind of reminds me of a Facebook thread between my mom and me:
I still haven't made my bed, Mom.
A complete list of the items in my bed besides me, the Miller High Life (and the bowl with the chicken leg) in it: Dr. Scholl's foot odor spray.
A bra. My laptop. 2 t-shirts. An external hard drive. My camera. A New Orleans guidebook. Headphones.
My mom's travel hairdryer she lent me for this trip.
Bookbag.
3 books.
2 magazines.
A calendar.
1 pair of pants.
A watch.
Two bracelets.
A bottle of nail polish.
Phone charger.
iPod charger.
My purse.
It's not all Sunshine and Lollipops here in New Orleans...I have a few gripes. Here is an incomplete list of the 'Banes of My French Quarter' Existence here in New Orleans:
MULE CARTS.
These stupid mule-driven tourist carts drive around the French Quarter all day long and all night long. There are tons of them, and they are so annoying because they drive really really slow in order to explain every detail of the French Quarter to visitors for an exorbitant price. Did you know that 75% of all wrought iron in the French Quarter was imported from France, and the rest? Yes, it's made right here in the USA. BORING. You better hope you never get stuck behind one if you're in a hurry. They also have no headlights or tail lights or concern for traffic laws. It really makes you want to NOT "Stay Back 15 Feet". In fact it makes you want to drive your car into the back of the cart and make the Minnesotans go flying. (It's not their fault. I love Minnesotans.)
A couple of Kady-isms have been inspired by this particular bane of my French Quarter existence:
"There is no headlight on that mule and that's dangerous."
"Ugh...that mule is in my spot."
Here's video of how ANNOYING THEY ARE. It does not help that we live around the corner from Brad and Angelina (who get their house's picture taken at 0:16 and aren't even here right now).
_________________________________________________
2AM GARBAGE SERVICE.
OK. I do love being able to throw garbage bags from our apartment down onto the sidewalk. That's kind of the system here. You just put a straight up garbage bag on the street. And then, about three to four times per day, the garbage truck comes by and gets them. What I don't like is the 'middle-of-the-night' pick up time because it wakes me up pretty much every night. I stumbled out of bed at 2am to take this video of how LOUD it is. And, during the day of course it's just one more irritating traffic obstruction (see 1:24 in the video.) Also note at 1:31 how they just send the plastic bins flinging anywhere and they land where they land. Summer and I have seen them careen into parked cars. And when they fling the bags, the garbage juice goes everywhere all over the street, which is why you don't ever want to go barefoot like I did that one night. *cough*
You can skip the middle part of the video, it's just a bunch of boring garbage juice being squeezed out of the bags by the squisher. (One of my secret 'What-if' fears is 'What-if' I accidentally jump into a garbage truck just as the squisher comes down?)
During today's 5:30AM pick up, when I was still trying to sleep, I got to listen to them fight with each other about streets and boundaries and who was supposed to be where and who was stealing who's street. The fight ended with a "YOU BETTER TAKE A RIGHT ON CANAL. YAH. RIGHT ON CANAL."
First off, I hate the whole 'Tall/Grande/Venti' thing, and refuse to be a part of it. I always just order 'Small/Medium/Large' like a normal person. But that's not why this Starbucks sucks. This Starbucks sucks because they have the slowest employees I have ever experienced, and none of them know anything about coffee. Here is an example of the conversation:
Starbucks Employee (SE): "What can I get for you?"
Me: "Large cold press with a half-inch of cream."
SE: "What?"
Me: "Large cold press with a half-inch of cream."
SE: "What's cold press?"
Me: Seriously? You're the one who works at a COFFEE SHOP. "Large. GUH... VENTI. ICED COFFEE. Half-inch. Cream."
And of course I end up with a large cream with a half-inch of iced coffee, which prompted Summer to say, "75% of Americans think a half-inch is this big *demonstrates four inches with thumb and forefinger*. I know this because I'm a hair dresser."
Also, I have never actually seen Paul Rudd's taller, cuter doppelgänger, and am beginning to think that Summer made him up. Because, honestly, how can you get any taller or cuter than this?:
Seriously, every time we drive by this guy, run by this guy, or walk by this guy, and I mean it's like every day, because his little stand is just down Decatur, I just get really ANGRY. Don't you think it's a little hot out for a wool hat? I hate the beret. That's right Jude Acers. I Hate Your Hat.
"They wrote all of our ages on the backs of our legs so you could see people's ages. I passed a 64 year old guy and sang the whole way past him, "WILL YOU STILL NEED ME WILL YOU STILL FEED ME, WHEN I'M 64!" He said nothing. That one made me feel really dumb because it took me longer to sing the song than it took me to pass him, so I was still singing it for a while after I was already ahead of him. And then I thought, What if he thought I was being mean? Think about it. Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? Embarrassing."
I received the following email from one of my most faithful readers, and let me tell you, IT MADE MY DAY:
Kady-
I walk by this pic (attached) everyday at work at the San Diego airport.
I just realized today she could be an older version of Summer perhaps?
-Davin
I hate wet clothes. I am not the girl that can go to the beach, go swimming, then put on her pants and have a wet crotch for the rest of the day. I can't do it. Sometimes I even opt NOT to get in the water for that very reason. Ideally, I make sure to swim first when I get to the beach so that I have plenty of time to dry off before it's putting-on-clothes time.
Well, one day in Costa Rica, we had ten people in one SUV plus one quad. I was riding on the back of the quad with Ted, the Californian. Here we are, happy and dry, on the way to the beach:
Granada 6!
When it was time to go home, I hadn't had time to dry off, so I just put a towel on the seat, and sat on it with my wet butt, making sure to leave six inches of space between Ted's butt and my crotch.
At the stop sign, the SUV pulled up with all my other friends in it. Dustin rolled down his window and asked, "Donde esta... YOUR PANTS?"
Thanks for your patience; it took a while to get through them all. But guess what: in the three years since I've been writing in this ridiculous blog almost every day...
...The coolest thing EVER to hit my blog happened last week.
The good people at Postcardly contacted me! They loved my 1,000th Post(card) giveaway and wanted to help me celebrate!! They are giving fiveof my readers 10 free personalized photo postcards!!!
If you want to win one of these five fabulous prizes, just submit a comment to this post. It's that easy. I will randomly select five winners from the comment section on October 1st .
You do not have to be from the USA to win. However, the recipients of your postcards need US or overseas Military Post Office (APO or FPO) addresses.
You do not have to be a member of Blogger to enter the contest by commenting. Just select 'Name' under the Identity option and type in your name. If you need help, email me at kady (at) aladyrevealsnothing (dot) com.
I will post the winners on October 1st. They will be responsible to contact me with their email address so that I can deliver the prizes via email.
Thanks for reading. Three Years, 1000+ Posts. What is Next for A Lady Reveals Nothing?
Have you ever taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test? It asks a variety of different questions to categorize your personality, one of the categories being "Introvert/Extrovert". There are 10 questions in this category. I score a perfect '10' for Extroversion. And by that I mean that I am 100% Extroverted, not that Extroversion is perfection. I don't have one Introverted bone in my body. I don't like being alone with my thoughts. I need people around me to recharge. I am energized by people. Ask anybody who has ever been in my presence.
Warning: Her blog is great and all...but you may get her side of the story, which is the incorrect side of the story, just so we're clear.
Also, you're not allowed to love her blog more than mine, or her more than me, this means you JACQUI.
This is the long version of a story I blogged about last summer. Remember those long-ago innocent days when my cutie pie eight-year-old (now nine) nephew Murphy who happens to have Austism spent three months with my parents and me?:
Well, Murphy dug a hole under the deck big enough to sit in. He did this by taking one handful of dirt into the yard/sidewalk, spreading it, and repeating for 9 hours per day over the course of four weeks. We allowed it at first, but started to worry that the foundation of the house was becoming compromised (ha!). Also, the yard was looking like a sandbox, which was driving my dad CRAZY. So we decided we had to do something about it. But what?
The Shifty Sand Sifter
When you're dealing with severe autism, you have to pick your battles. Well, let's say you did pick your battles and allowed the digging of a HUGE hole under your deck but now you've had it and you can't allow it anymore. What do you do? Sometimes 'NO' doesn't mean 'NO' because it used to be 'YES'. You gotta be one step ahead. You gotta think like you never thought before. So...what should we have done in a situation like that?
We could have put fencing around the underneath part of the deck, but he could easily have outsmarted that -- unless it were the expensive lattice-style fencing. Too expensive.
We could have sprayed the dirt with the hose each morning which would have made it less sift-able, and thus less attractive to his sensory need to dig and spread. But that would have made mud, and Hal would have freaked out about wasted water.
We could have put down old area rugs. But it was just too big an 'area', and...we didn't have any junk ones.
The solution was simple and stared us right in the face. We were going to have to distract him away from his little sandbox under the deck. Give him something else to do. And then an idea hit me like a ton of bricks. A kiddie pool! We could fill it with water and he could play in there instead! Of course, I would also need to be more proactive. Less lazy. 'Watch' him, as it were.
The morning after my resolve, we woke up in typical Kady-and-Murphy fashion, staring at each other, face-to-face. (This is when Murphy was at his happiest, cutest, most adorable, in our waking up moments.) I was giddy to break the pool news! I sing-songed, "how 'bout today, we have our breakfaaaaaast, and then we get out of our pa-jaaaaamaaaaas, and we get in the ca-aaaaar? And How 'bout we drive aaa-aaaallll the way to K-ma-aaaaaart and then, how 'bout we buy you a POOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!???"
And then my non-verbal autistic nephew, who had never spoken a single sentence to me in his whole eight years, looked me square in the eye, and said,
"How 'bout we don't?"
Here's a photo tribute to the little dude, the person I miss most in all of Minnesota:
With uncle Pete, quite possibly my favorite photo ever.
Well I had to go back to his place on Wednesday. It was another two hour visit, (last time was three+ hours). I overheard Mr. Minister tell Miss Annie that he was "as busy as a long-tail cat in a room fulla rocking chairs." But we passed the time famously. I found out who was and was not the father on Maury Povich, caught up on my Housewives of New Jersey, and somehow, I'm not sure how? found myself on hands and knees in his front yard, digging in the soil helping him plant a palm tree. I advised him on how to get it out of the pot and spread the roots and to give it a good soaking. Later, I swept his living room with a tiny broom. But it's OK! He bought me Popeye's chicken for lunch, in another unexplained trip away from the house while we were inside.
I met one of his daughters. I asked her, "Is it true your dad has 25 kids?" She said she wasn't sure the exact number but that sounded about right. She said, "they talk about 'Papa Was a Rolling Stone'. That's him. I thought I was the youngest until last year when I met two younger than me." And then she started talking about her sister Kawanna. I said, "do you mean Kawanda?", because I remember there was a Katrina, Kareena, Katanya and Kawanda. But no Kawanna. She looked at me like I was a crazy person and then said, "Oh yah, see you know better than me. Her name is Kawanda."
The problem (that we eventually resolved!) with Mr. Minister's meter issue was bigger than anybody expected, and another team from the lab showed up to help, and while we were all collaborating, Kadrell, one of the customer service representatives from the energy company, was enjoying some of the Minister's pickled pigs lips. She offered me some. I said OK, because, what have I learned from traveling the world for a year if not to always try new and different foods? I told her to just tear me off a tiny piece so I could get a taste. It tasted pickled. Brine-y. The texture was a little firmer than wet bread, with little hairs. Here is the conversation that took place between Kadrell and me:
Kadrell: "what do you think?"
Me: "I don't love it. So how is this a lip? Is it like the bottom lip of the pig?"
Kadrell: "It's like this. Pigs don't have lips. They have snouts. Do you know what you're eating?"
Me: "What? Butt?" (yah right. Why would they call the butt a lip?)
Kadrell: "Close."
Me: (ohhhhhhh...) "Front-butt?"
Kadrell: "Yes. You're eating the pig's front-butt. You're eating pig vagina. Didn't you notice it was hairy?"*
I gasped, horrified. It was hairy! I looked up. Hoping, praying for it not to be true. And all I could see was Mr. Minister, laughing so hard at me that his cigarette fell out of his mouth.
*Ripped off of the onion.com
*There is some debate as to what a pig lip REALLY is. I still don't know.
"Is there some kind of colonic you can do for your uterus?"
"I felt a lot prettier before I looked in the mirror."
"You have done absolutely nothing to annoy me. But I'm so aware of your presence."
"I hate cauliflower. Everything gross looks like it. Warts look like it. STD's look like it. 'Cauliflower ear'. You know, what wrestlers get. Your mom's elbows."
"I am so sick of men acting like their wife looks so great on their wedding day."
