Triple Threat

I have these cousins known as the Gullers who we got from the marriage of my mom and dad, so I've known them since I was about 8. Before we moved to Louisiana, I used to love to go to their fancy house to go swimming in their in-ground pool. Most of them were a lot older than I was, but the baby of the family, Angie, was a teenager then and she was always so nice and sisterly to us. I remember thinking the way she talked was a hoot... the details are blurry but I have a distinct memory involving Wisconsin.

Angie is, of course, grown up now, and she, like her sisters, has an adorable life that is much deserved because she, like the rest of her family, is as nice as a person can possibly be. After one family reunion in Louisville, Angie, her fiance Brendan, her brothers, our cousins Kelly and Shannon, our Aunt Carol and Shannon (my sister) and I went to the pub and discovered we were kindred spirits. Then we went to her wedding in St. Louis and had a blast secret dancing. Then we cheered her on when she got on the show While You Were Out to turn part of her house into an Irish bar for Brendan, who is also supremely adorable. And then she went on to have a couple of adorable little boys, Dylan and Drew, who are 3 and 2.
I guess when you're as good at adorability as Angie is, you may as well go for it. So she and Brendan decided to have one more baby...

Silly rabbits.

My dad's mom had twins, one of which is Angie's mom, so multiples run in the family. But Angie got triplets this time. Triplets! That's like genetic's dirty joke.

We got to see Angie over the summer when we went to our cousin Kevin's wedding, and I swear, she is the most adorable pregnant with triplets lady ever made.
But despite carrying three babies better than I would with one, Angie's baby quarters got cramped and Jack, Emma and Grace decided to relocate to roomier digs on Jan. 16, at just over 33 weeks.

Because they weighed all of 3 and 4 pounds when they were born, they've spent the last couple weeks in the hospital but should be going home soon.

And that's when the real fun will start.

I really cannot wrap my mind around how insane life with 5 under 5 is going to be. My family can barely potty train the toddlers we have... and we share them among 9 adults. Can you imagine? Changing diapers for three infants and one toddler and wiping the butt of the other one? Feeding two toddlers one thing and three infants another. And somehow still managing to bathe, feed yourself, go to the grocery store, answer the phone, not jump off the roof?

I don't know how Angie and Brendan are going to do it, but I know that they will and they'll do it with their beaming smiles across their faces because that's just the way they are. They were born with that ability to count their blessings before giving an ounce of attention to their struggles.

And three simultaneous blessings have got to be pretty impossible to ignore.

What Happened at School Today

Yeah, so, sorry for the little freak out the other day. Things are much better now. Much Better.

I didn't think it was so desperate of a message until my dad called me to make sure I wasn't suicidal. I assured him that I'd be homicidal before I'd be suicidal, not that he felt any more assured by that.

Anyway, on to other things, like my graphic design class where I'm the only girl and non-Jesus-proclaimer in the entire class.

Seriously.

One of the guy's emails contains godfearing and one of them is just biding his time until he can start Bible College. On the first day of class, I was the only one who didn't bring in a magazine featuring football or lacrosse or hunting on the cover.

I stick out a little bit.

For our second assignment we were supposed to bring in a photocopy of an object we like. I chose to photocopy a chicken foot I got in New Orleans when Liz, Amy & I visited there. I don't know what role a chicken foot plays in voodoo, but I know it does something because I bought it in a voodoo store. I actually got two of them... one that was red and gimpy looking and one that looks like it could be a creepy old human hand... because I thought they looked cool. For class, I brought in the creepy humanish one and a photocopy of it placed eerily on the bottom of the page, like it was reaching into the space and getting ready to steal your breath.

I thought it looked pretty cool. And when the teacher said she liked mine the best (Girl Power!), some of the guys threw their votes my way too. Until my teacher pointed out the voodoo connection.

You should have seen the fear pale the faces in that room.

I tried to break the silence by saying, "That's right boys. You better watch out." I should have known my photocopy was too dangerous, too big a threat to god to get a laugh.

The godfearing guy looked at me like I was a glass-eyed voodoo queen from a desperate back alley trying to steal his money and said, "It's alright. I've got Jesus on my side."

Dude. It's a photocopy. Of a chicken foot. That was voted Best in the Class.

One of those days

Today was alright.

And then it turned into a horrific pile of shit that you accidentally step on and your shoe comes flying out from underneath you and when you fall down you smack your head on the ground and when you come to your face is in the shit and there're little shit flecks all over your mouth but you're out of it from slipping on the shit so you lick your lips without thinking and then you're eating the shit that made you fall and that's all over your face and that makes you vomit but you haven't really felt like eating so the vomit is really acidic and biley and because you're still disoriented you're puking while on your back and it's projectile enough to splatter into your eye and make you go blind in a really burny way and when you finally try to stand up and scoot out of the shit-vomit pile of blind smelliness someone comes along and kicks you with all of their might right in the belly, the belly that just yakked bile in your eye, and you get your period.

I'm not really expecting tomorrow to be any better.

Pretty Much the Sexiest Thing I've Ever Seen

I know this will probably shock most of you, but, well, I can't dance. Especially when sober.

But, if I could dance, I would want to dance like this. And be Beyonce in general.

Four Solid Years

I just realized that today, like this actual day, marks the start of my fifth year of blogging.

Four years done, completely... 411 random ramblings about what I'm doing... hundreds of hours spent in this strange little life archive thing I've got going on.

That's a shocking degree of commitment to something created from a misunderstanding. I hope it's been as fun for you, all five of you, as it's been for me.

Things I Read in the Inheritance of Loss that Made My Brain Twitch a Little

Let me start this off by saying that The Inheritance of Loss is described as "sumptuously written." I've never heard a book, or anything else for that matter, described as sumptuous, but now I may add that as a criteria on certain lists I keep.

As one of the main characters, a judge, sets off from his native India to pursue higher education and elevate his class:

"The judge was accompanied by his father. At home, his mother was weeping because she had not estimated the imbalance between the finality of good-bye and the briefness of the last moment."

As the judge's granddaughter sits with the family cat, Mustafa:

"Then there was the cat, Mustafa, a sooty hirsute fellow demonstrating a perfection of containment no amount of love or science could penetrate. He was, at this moment, starting up like a lorry on Sai's lap, but his eyes looked blankly right in hers, warning her against mistaking this for intimacy."

As Biju, the judge's cook's son who is trying to make a go at it in America with the hopes of elevating his class, is delivering food on bike for a Chinese restaurant in the dead of winter:

"...he began to weep from the cold, and the weeping unpicked a deeper vein of grief -- such a terrible groan issued from between the whimpers that he was shocked his sadness had such depth."

As Sai, who has been studying under a male tutor named Gyan, confers with an older female ex-pat:

"'Time should move,' Noni had told her. 'Don't go in for a life where time does not pass, the way I did. That is the single biggest bit of advice I can give you.'"

As Biju reflects on the life of his nemesis, Mr. Shah, an Indian who was working toward the American Dream as the Indians at home saw it:

"Photos of the exterior (of the house Shah had bought) had been sent to all the relatives in Gujarat, a white care parked in front. A Lexus, that premier luxury vehicle. On top of it sat his wife looking self-satisfied. She had left India a meek bride, scrolled and spattered with henna, so much gold in her sari she set off every metal detector in the airport -- and now here she was -- white pantsuit, bobbed hair, vanity case, and capable of doing the macarena."

As Sai celebrates Christmas with her older ex-pat friends:

"For the occasion, the sisters had brought out their ornaments from England -- various things that looked as if they tasted of mints..."

As the judge consumates with his wife from an arranged marriage, who he's just caught powdering herself with his treasured American powder and puff:

"Ghoulishly sugared in sweet candy pigment, he clamped down on her, tussled her to the floor, and as more of that perfect rose complexion, blasted into a million motes, came filtering down, in a dense frustration of lust and fury -- penis uncoiling, mottled purple-black as if with rage, blundering, uncovering the chute he had heard rumor of -- he stuffed his way ungracefully into her."

As all the characters are affected by India's fight for liberation from England:

"For crimes that took place in the monstrous dealings between nations, for crimes that took place in those intimate spaces between two people without a witness, for these crimes the guilty would never pay. There was no religion and no government that would relieve the hell."

As Biju calls home to India from an American payphone to check on his father during the revolution, only to have the conversation stifled by a terrible connection:

"He could not talk to his father; there was nothing left between them but emergency sentences, clipped telegram lines shouted out as if in the midst of a war... He stood with his head still in the phone booth studded with bits of stiff chewing gum and the usual FuckShitCockDickPussyLoveWar, swatikas, and hearts shot with arrows mingling in a dense graffiti garden, too sugary too angry too perverse -- the sick sweet rotting mulch of the human heart."

As Sai searches for the object of her affection, Gyan, in his lower class neighborhood after he rejects her for no apparent reason:

"The churches were dark; the missionaries always left in dangerous times to enjoy chocolate chip cookies and increase funds at home, until it was peaceful enough to venture forth again, that they might launch attack, renewed and fortified, against a weakened and desperate populace."

That was then, this is now.

I think it's a boy.

Not wanting to give my lizard friend any gender predispositions since I don't really know what gender s/he is, I put some androgynous photographs of Brooke Shields and David Bowie up in his cage when he moved in. S/he has pretty much ignored them until tonight, when I gave what I now know to be a HIM a bath and cleaned out HIS tank.

He'd been a little gloomy seeming today, so to perk him up I fed him. Romaine lettuce and cantaloupe... by hand. He enjoyed those snacks much more than the giant crunchies of gross he'd been dodging in his tank for the last week. Then I figured I'd clean out his tank to get it ready to move to its new home with Robin & Joe, a couple of Mack's pals. Robin is desperately in love with some guinea pigs she has, and when she saw my Facebook post about getting Creep from Betsy, she immediately said how bad she wanted a lizard. I offered her Creep because, well, I never meant to have him for life and if someone is that excited about getting him, he'll probably be better off with them. To clean his tank, I had to put him somewhere, and what better holding room than the bathtub with some toasty water in it. Betsy used to let him swim every now and then and he seems to love it. In my experience, I think he uses the bath to drink the water he needs for survival.

Anyway, I get his house all clean and set up again. I get him out of the tub and warm him back up with the heating pad. And then I put him back in his tank and go on about my business.

Well, he didn't just pep up. He got downright frisky.

I kept hearing him trying to climb the wall, so I went into the living room to see what the hell was so exciting, and I found him like this.
That right, all up in Brooke's face, trying to make out with her. He was standing upright on two legs trying to look in her eyes, and when I said his name, he whipped his head around at me as if to say, "Cock block much?"

So I creep...

Betsy up and left Lexington, moving to Louisville in an attempt to make me and Leiah madly jealous. Also because she wanted to and transferred to a better college.

She's lived around the corner from me since the spring, and in that time I've made many late night jaunts over to her house to turn off the lights on her lizard cage or bring her pet some crickets. I've watched him grow from this little thing that fit into your hand into this giant monster descended from dinosaurs that isn't too scary since he has no teeth. He has the most complex eyes, like when they look at you they know your past and your future and can sense all the things you need to apologize for.
Since Mack and I had spent the past couple weeks enjoying life with a hamster in L.A., I told my dad we'd take Creep for a little while. Mack especially liked watching him eat crickets, and having a third party in the house takes the pressure of the two humans having to entertain each other all the time. Some people have babies for that reason, but Mack and I aren't insane.

So my dad brought him over... and his tank... and his Giant Box of Accessories... and thank god Leiah was here when he did. She handled the lizard and watched him play in the tub while I cleaned his tank (this thing poops freakishly big turds). Then she warmed him with the heating pad and put him in his new home. He's cool, but I just wasn't ready to touch him.

I dumped in some crickets, watched him run around like a crazy man catching them with his tongue, and promptly began falling for this strange little guy.
With Mack gone for the holidays, Creep's been my companion. He's given me something to take care of and feed and observe. He's been entertaining and silly. And he even let me hold him and show him off to Mack while we were video chatting.

(Creep LOVES to video chat! He kept cocking his head like he was listening and looking at the person, using technology to supplement his all-knowingness. I guess a computer screen may have been like giving acid to a baby for a lizard tho...)

I think we've found a permanent home for him -- not ours -- and I've gotta say, I'm gonna be sad to see him go. He's started to recognize my voice and look at me like, "Hey. You again." I squeak his name out in the morning and I swear he knows I'm talking to him. I'm going to miss watching him hunt his crickets and crunch his kibble and the way he lays on his rock and basks in his UV light like a proud lion.

I am not going to miss his big turds.

Potty Talk

It's toddler potty training time in our family! Which means that as an aunt, I have to assume responsibility if I'm the only adult around when a kid says they need to use the potty even if I have no idea about the potty routine!

For instance, there was that one time Ben went to go potty and said I had to hold it. I lifted up his shirt thinking it was in his way and thus qualified as the "it" that needed holding, but he whined that wasn't right. I asked again what he needed me to hold, he gave another whiny ambiguous answer, and we shared a very confusing moment in potty training history. I called his mom to ask what was up with holding Ben's boy part for him when he peed, and she was like, "Uhhh, we don't do that. Don't know where he got that. But thanks?"

Which is why I'm glad kids don't form lasting memories until they're 3.

Somewhat related but too cute to pass up, Ben got new big boy panties for Christmas and was so excited he put them on as soon as he opened the package... outside of his jammies. Don't they just look great with his new Buzz Lightyear shoes???Renee is also potty training, but since I'm a girl and know how to potty, there's less confusion with her. Except when it comes to her reading material.

When she told me she needed the green book, I said okay, got up and went and looked in the toys for a green book. Coming up blank, I brought her a different one about happy farm animals.

Turns out she wanted the copy of Crime & Punishment sitting on the back of the toilet.Figures. While Ben sat on the floor reading the farm animal book like a normal 3-year-old, Renee voluntarily skimmed some Dostoyevsky, like a normal Doctor of Russian Literature.These babies. Teaching me more than college ever tried to and making me feel completely unprepared and moronic.

Sugar. And Spice.

Renee is just that age. You know, where she is so cute and so terrible all at the same time. And her favorite words are RIGHT NOW!

Over Christmas, while Shannon was on Crazy Baking Lady Marathon 2009, Renee, who has a major sweet tooth, asked her mom for some caramel that had been made by boiling condensed milk for hours and hours and hours. Shannon, being the Nicest Mommy in the World, a title earned in part by her willingness to let Renee use a cookie cutter to make heart-shaped cheese pieces and in part by her ability to keep her composure when she is being screamed at by a 20-pound dictator, scooped some caramel from the lid to give to her baby girl.

Apparently, that's akin to stabbing a puppy in the eyes with a spoon.

Renee shrieked -- there's not even a word for what she did but we'll go with shrieked -- "NOT ON THE LID!!!" so furiously all you could do was bulge your eyes and laugh at her. Shannon calmly looked at her like she was a patient on the psych ward and said, "Okay, you have to have a timeout. You don't scream at Mommy."

When Renee starts to lose her shit on me, I push her down. Gently, but it's a push and she falls down. And she laughs and forgets that I took all of 6 seconds to open the M&Ms.

You'd think with all the treats she eats, she might be a little sweeter, but I think we're past the sweet baby stage. Last Christmas she was so melty for love that when you'd give her kisses she'd smoosh into you like creamy chocolate. It was wonderful. This Christmas kisses are old news and now she wants candy dammit. And sugar bombs.

Luckily Santa provided her with the sugar, and Christmas morning went off without too much of a hitch since Renee was sufficiently medicated. For every present she opened, I'm pretty sure she had a piece of candy in her mouth.

The gold coins that Jewish kids get because, well, Walgreens had them.

A Christmas tree sucker that lights up.

Reese's peanut butter holiday character... unsure which because Renee never hesitates to bite off their heads.

Look at the yellow sucker eating/present opening multi-tasking!

It's basically the biggest elevator in the world.

Laila and I went to LA County Museum of Art yesterday while Mack listened to boring med school lectures. I've visited this museum a handful of times, enough that I'm starting to feel like I've run into an old friend when I see that piece of the man and the woman from Picasso's blue period, but they've added a building full of contemporary art since I left LA and I was dying to see the art inside.

We rode this giant escalator up to the third floor and went inside to an enormous room full of work by Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. Then we walked through a lifetime of work by Joseph Beuys, a member of Hitler's Youth who ultimately became a revolutionary art professor and environmentalist. And then we took in an entire floor full of self-portraits from a private collection.

After a couple hours, we were getting tired, so we pushed the elevator button to head back up to the third floor to exit. One of the gallery attendants asked us if we preferred to use the new elevator, and after stepping back a few feet, we realized that the giant glass wall next to us was actually an elevator door.

"It's the biggest elevator in the world," she said.

"Yes, please," we replied, turning our noses up at the piddly little familiar elevator we were standing in front of.

The wall parted and we scooted into an elevator as big as an elementary school stage. We had the entire place to ourselves, so we made some impromptu sort-of-self-portraits to commemorate the day we experienced the biggest elevator the world has ever known.And just to prove how big it is, here's a shot from floor to ceiling, with Laila for scale.

Wax On, Wax Off

A couple days ago, with weather that was just too gorgeous to pass up, Mack, Laila, Shahin and I headed to Hollywood to eat dinner and people watch. And because we're suckers for wax sculptures, we also stopped into Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.

(I should say here that if you are a teacher of any sort, you get free admission, so be sure to ask about teacher "discounts." Also, I love being a student again... discounts to the movies, to museums, to Madame Tussaud's and to J. Crew!)

I love Madame Tussaud's and am always amazed at how realistic and small the people look. For some reason, I imagine celebrities to be taller than me, but in reality, I'm pretty much the same height as Jamie Foxx and Shakira is like a 10-year-old. I also imagine them to be gorgeous, even in wax form, if their name is George Clooney.
Here are some of our other shining moments.Part of what made this outing so fun was Shahin and her desperate need for the Celebrity Mom Translator. If you're not versed in the Celebrity Mom Translator, here's your education.

Six Years Later

The day after Shannon and Charles got married, Leiah and I went to Indiana for our cousin's wedding and met up with the Scott side of the family, including our dad Greg. That was 2003.

It's almost 2010.

Our dad has been splitting time between here and Iraq, working on the rebuild and shooting guns that are bigger than my nephew for fun. He came back to the states over Thanksgiving, so we made a plan to catch up before I left for LA. He booked a smoking room at the Holiday Inn Express and it was official.

The first night he was here Mack and I met him for a beer near his hotel. It was the first time he and Mack met, and the conversation was aglow with contractor talk. Overseas contractor talk. A subject I know nothing about, which was good because it made me a good listener.

And I realized something.

My dad is happy. He seems to love being on missions, overseas assignments, rebuilds, away from home. He's a Marine, and I think that experience scratched an itch he has for danger and gave credence to his preference for being left alone.

That being said, I also realized he cares about his family. He brought us a copy of some 8mm films my Grandpa made of them as kids -- my dad as a 1-year-old walking up the driveway at my grandparents' house and eating rocks, my uncle Mike who died when I was 11 carrying around their pet raccoons, my aunt Deb leading around a giant horse named Buttercup. I saw my Grandma as a stunning 30-something on Easter morning and that ornery twinkle that my Grandpa has apparently had in his eye all his life. I learned that they lived in 12 Mile at the farmhouse I remember but that they also did a stint in Dayton, OH. And then I saw a video of me, about 6 months old, Shan, at the age Renee is now, and my mom, younger than Betsy is now.

For a lot of my life, my time with the Scotts was spent in the moment, for the weekend, enjoying them as they were at that time... which means that I know very little about who they were before these people assumed the identities of my dad, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles. I've had the opportunity to talk to my mom about her childhood, about the experiences that shaped who she is, and our relationship is richer for it. I haven't been able to talk to my dad about those things, so while some of me may feel like he's a stranger, a big piece of me understands that when you know nothing, you have the chance to learn a lot.

Cookie Monsters

Laila told me the other day that she'd never made Christmas cookies, and since that was one of my favorite parts of winter break when I was a kid, well, I just could not let her go another year without the experience of cutting cookies, sprinkling sprinkles, and eating raw cookie dough on the sly.

Plus, she needs to learn patience and how to see things through to the end, and nothing takes as much patience and sticktoitiveness as making three sheets worth of cookies and decorating all. of. them.

What I Did Today, A Day in the Middle of December

Drank a cantaloupe juice at my favorite beach restaurant, Elvira's Cha Cha Chicken... apparently its infinite deliciousness causes strokes.

Ate jerk veggie enchiladas, black beans and rice and fried plantains on the patio.

Watched Mack climb the rope on Santa Monica Beach.*
Dangled from the rings and remembered how wimpy my hands are.

* Mack climbed the entire rope twice so that I could get a picture of him at the top... proof he actually can climb it all the way.

It just doesn't seem fair not to show it. Especially since he almost shredded the top of his foot coming down the second time.

Like, totally, PS

I'm in LA with LAila, and OMG girls this age are TALKATIVE. Lord help you, Lisa.

So what have we been talking about? You know, hamsters, Taylor Swift, all the single ladies.

I have spent the day looking at pictures like these.



I had no idea there were so many photos of hamsters available for little girls with iTouch's. Hamsters and puppies. And PS, you can only talk about those things in a baby voice.

I love Laila, but I swear, if she ruins All the Single Ladies for me... She's already taken Lady Gaga's Poker Face; she better step off my Beyonce. Or PS, we're gonna have issues.

Three Weeks Ago Today...

Dulywed: Year 3

Dear Mack,

I was watching Top Chef on Tivo today and the challenge was to create a dish using the hotels of Las Vegas as inspiration. The Bellagio and Mandalay Bay were among the featured hotels, and the whole subject took me back three years ago when we spent the weekend at the now-demolished Frontier hotel, to that fateful night when you and I went to the courthouse and promised to be best friends for the rest of our lives in front of three complete strangers.

I remember wearing cowboy boots and picking the most ridiculous bouquet in the little chapel. I remember the minister pushing the play button on his tape player and cuing me to walk down the 6-foot-long aisle. I remember thinking how silly this whole show was and how tragic that some of the other couples there were actually taking this seriously. Our wedding, the one that legally bound us, was a joke.

But then, standing up at that ridiculous alter wrapped up with silk roses, something happened. Since no one else in the entire room mattered, I became fixed on you. I robotically uttered familiar phrases about sickness or health, richer or poorer, and looked into your eyes without being distracted. When I was told to say that I would be your best friend forever, I was jolted. That was a serious commitment, one I naively hadn't considered before that moment, and I had to make a decision right then and there. Staring at you in your grandpa sweater with your big smile and dangerous eyes, I agreed. I promised to be your best friend.

I know that there have been days, weeks, maybe even months in the last three years that I haven't been your best friend. In fact, it's possible and likely that at times I've been your worst enemy. But even in that darkness, in that indifference and carelessness, I'm still glad that I made the promise of friendship. It's created a bridge that keeps our marriage from going under, that gets us over the bad times and back to the good ones, that binds you to me and me to you.

This past year has been full of ups and downs, just like the roller coaster ride we went on at the New York hotel moments after we got married. You graduated from college and I got laid off from my job. You started med school, I started nursing school, and we both stopped doing dishes. We moved away from your family and came closer to mine. We traded endless sun, weekends at the beach and a constant state of poverty for rainy days, mosquitoes and feeling like millionaires. You lost judo the way you liked it and I lost fire dance as I was just falling in love with it, but you gained a judo friend who loves it as much as you do and I reconnected with the arts activism that gives me a sense of purpose. We got my older sister back, we left your baby sister behind. You had your issue with ProstaStrong and I had mine with Metamucil. We drove across the country in a state of delirium, shared the discovery of shadow people, almost died trying to move in and then sat on the porch swing swilling cold beer and getting bored of unemployment. I built a dollhouse, you dissected a human body.

I guess you could safely say this year has been unlike any we've ever had.

A few weeks ago when you were about to burst from resentment for a state narrowed by its dominant whiteness, we escaped to the cemetery to sit by the pond and preserve your sanity. In that small afternoon, while you held my hand so I could hang over the pond and get garbage out of the water, while we watched the fish have a feeding frenzy on bread, while that super fat ugly bird waddled over to our bench to get some attention, I felt like we were best friends, like we are appropriately balanced between helpful and hurtful, between together and apart, between supportive and disruptive. I felt like I did that day at Shakertown, when the whole world fell away and it was just me and you and cartwheel practice.

Of course I love you. Of course I care about you. Of course I think you are deliciously handsome and sexy and smart and funny. But as we spend more and more time together, the thing I value most about you is your friendship.

Thank you for the last three years and for the one we're starting today. Happy anniversary, Mr. T.

Things I Am Thankful For (in no particular order)

1. My family being so close.
2. A husband who knows how to download movies and tv shows.
3. Having friends all over this country.
4. The chance to go back to school.
5. An interesting, centrally located apartment.
6. Babies.
7. The Lexington Art League.
8. In-laws that I actually enjoy.
9. Being smart.
10. Having a gym membership that includes access to treadmills with televisions attached.
11. My mom's turkey with cornbread leek stuffing.
12. Radishes and beer cheese.
13. Beer.
14. Bourbon.
15. Cheap but cute Christmas cards at Marshall's.
16. My bicycle.
17. 40% off coupons at Banana Republic.
18. Tall boots.
19. My silky.
20. New underwear.
21. Hair cuts and curling irons.
22. Poi.
23. The UFC.
24. The Internet.
25. Student loans.
26. Fake down comforters.
27. Tivo.
28. The library.
29. Not getting tickets even though I speed all the time.
30. The snails that come out when it rains.