A House is Not a Home (Glee Cast Version)

Just fell in love with this version in an instant! Ah, "Glee" almost makes me miss high school!

Sparta in Action

I recorded this last night. Sparta is in love with this toy!

Bleach-ed

This post's soundtrack as today is Laundry Day for me!


It's one of those weeks where you know everything is going to happen! Everything is going to keep you on your toes and you have no down time whatsoever!!! So why am I treating it like it's not?! Sunday I spent the day on the loveseat in the living room watching "The Tudors" and the Carolina Panthers game. We shall not even mention that game anymore! Yesterday after four classes, I spent the majority of the day sitting in bed watching "Glee" episodes or just messing around. I accomplished reading half of my Film assignment and writing a few pages in my book... and writing a few pages in my book counts towards zero homework assignments.
I have two papers due, and three articles... I think it's three. Yeah, three... unless I get my Rumors column going, then it's four. My articles are due tonight at 5. One of my papers is sort of due tomorrow... it's Peer Review Day or as the teacher said, "If you don't have your paper, don't show up." Well that sucks because that gives me over two hours to kill before my next class as I don't like going back and forth between campus and the apartment multiple times a day, so..... I must finish my paper by 10:00 tomorrow morning. Yet here I am writing a blog with another "Glee" episode on pause listening to the whirling of the washing machine and my laundry theme song "Laundry Day" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. That would be cool if I had a sing-along blog!! Yeah so, I'm feeling really random today.

The truth is I've been in a good mood. Well, I'm still in a bad mood getting up at 8 a.m. on MWF, but that's more of a I'm so exhausted and in a fog at that hour that I'm in default bad mood. But, I'm in a really good mood all of a sudden. Maybe it's because I've been giving myself "days off" when I shouldn't and I bought a few bags of candy at Wal-Mart! Ah, sugar!!

It could be that Sparta is in my life! I love that little cat! I haven't had a depressing night sitting in my room with nothing to do since he got here! Instead, I've been standing out in the hallway until 10:30 at night throwing a catnip-filled sock or a furry mouse as Sparta chases it down the hall every time like he's on fire. There should be smoke coming out of his heels. He is an amazing little cat, and confession: I've been a really bad mom!

On Saturday, I decided to be an adult and clean the bathroom toilet and sweep the bathroom floor because it was piling up with cat litter. Father had bought me a new bottle of toilet bowl cleaner with bleach and I couldn't figure out how to open it. You were just supposed to pop the cap with a simple twist, but it wouldn't pop! So, when I turned around, the cap finally popped and I accidentally squeezed the bottle squirting bleach directly into Sparta's eyes and on his paws as he was directly behind me to investigate my chore.

Sparta yowled and fled the bathroom. I had to chase him around the apartment three times in order to catch him. He wouldn't come anywhere near me! All the while, I'm saying, "Oh Sparta! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry! Baby! I'm so sorry. Come back!"

CC, on the loveseat, was wondering what the heck is going on as his new housemate is running around the apartment after her cat, screaming. Then, he laughed when he found out the truth.
Finally, I captured Sparta and began to wash out his eyes and release him. Then, I see him licking his paws and face, and I'm thinking, "Oh #$&*, he's going to poison himself and I'm going to come home from the football game and find a dead cat that I paid $250 for!"
"What am I going to do?"
"Give him a bath!" said CC.
"My gosh, I don't even know how I would go about doing that."
"Well, you could... no, you're not going to like that suggestion."
"What? Throw him in the toilet and flush?"
"No," answered CC, "put him in the dishwasher."
My mouth hung agape. "Oh my gosh! He'd drown!"
"Told you you wouldn't like the suggestion."
In the end, I tossed Sparta into the kitchen sink and began to bathe him with a washcloth. Oh, he was NOT happy!!! However, he behaved surprisingly well, only meowing once and never trying to scratch out my eyes or make it impossibly difficult to hold him down with unnecessary wiggling. When I dried him off, Sparta refused to let me near him for the next couple of hours.
Thankfully, Sparta survived! He is perfectly healthy and back to normal. Though my friends aren't going to let it go!
"Oh, Sparta, look how white your paws are! They look like they've been bleached."
"You know, he can't see that toy! You blinded him with bleach!"
"How's Sparta? Has he forgiven you yet?"
"What did you do to Sparta today, Lex?"

Thanks, guys! I swear, it was an accident!!

Sparta after his bath

"Riding Through this World"

(And I order you to listen to this song while reading: "Sons of Anarchy" opening theme )

In September on the FX channel, a TV show premieres just in time to make me not give up on TV all together after long, happy-go-lucky, never-actually-funny sitcoms throughout the summer (you know, except for Shark Week because that's AWESOME!). It's called "Sons of Anarchy" and it stars some legends:
Charlie Hunnam (Green Street Hooligans)
Katey Sagal ("Married with Children," "Futurama")
Ron Perlman (Hellboy, The Last Winter)

I don't remember why I first started watching this show. Usually I don't get into shows unless I already know the actors in them or if I happen to sit down to something Kate's watching and just happen to like it... something that doesn't happen often because she enjoys MTV. I think maybe it was the colorful advertisement in Entertainment Weekly. Whatever the reason, I sat down to the first episode and the show took off! I was unused to TV such as this! This was real stuff. It was like a movie every single episode! I was thrilled with the action, the characters, and the appropriately-placed humor. Here was an excellent TV show.

Now, we're in season three, which is proving to be slower than the previous two seasons though still entertaining. I'm one of those fans that will tune in every week even the show has completely lost its touch. I have dedication like no other! But I digress...

The plot in one sentence is you follow a motorcycle gang as they run in with other gangs or "clubs," control the police, try to make a living, and protect their family in a small California desert town. The show is rated TV-MA because, yes, it shows violence and a lot of sex. It's a TV motorcycle gang. We're not talking about Bikini Bottom here. It's a rough town and no matter who you are, if you're caught without a gun, you could get seriously hurt with some of the ruffians that live in Charming. But the violence, the sex, the action... that's not the main reason I tune into the show.

With season three, I recognize a new love budding in me over the show ...I've always wanted to be a part of a big family that lived close together. My family... we're not family reunion people, especially not now after the divorce. How do you have a joint family reunion when the two sides won't talk to each other? It'd be like a Hatfield/McCoy family reunion (which is funny because I AM a 7th generation McCoy. One day we'll discuss Von Hippel disease!)!! What a disaster! Whenever I wrote stories, I also wrote in first person and the character that was most like me always lived with a large family. One of my favorite stories I wrote was called Famous Family and it was a huge family of actors living on the same block and going about the Hollywood world. I loved it. The "me" character had two older brothers, one sister, several aunts, several uncles, even more cousins, both sets of grandparents, and was never without attention and family love. I truly believe in "it takes a village to raise a child," and that's what you get with "Sons of Anarchy."

Yes, they murder people. Yes, they smuggle illegal guns. Yes, the unattached men screw everything in site. Yes, they have made some horrible, poor decisions. That's not what makes it so great. What's so great is the family dynamics among this gang, the Sons of Anarchy. Wives or "old maids" and other family members are also members of the club even though they don't have patches or ride. Because if one of them gets hurt... the whole gang goes after the culprit. There is a togetherness among them I have never experienced before, a togetherness I tried to create among the boys that never stuck.

My favorite character is Gemma - mother of the vice president and wife to the president - no one messes with her family! She doesn't take crap or let anybody walk all over her. She is independent and strong. I wish I could be like her. Now, I'm not going to be tying up a caretaker to a wheelchair in a garage as a hostage because she threatened to turn me into the FBI... but I will start telling people, "Hey, you can't talk to me like that! Keep it up and there's the door."

I kind of just did that to one of my friends, one of the boys. I got fed up with the way he talked down to me. So, I told him how I felt, and he didn't like it, and well... it remains to be seen whether I lost a friend or not. But, they say change is a good thing. I don't want to have friends that talk to me like that or blow me off all the time. No regrets. He is a great person, but I don't need that kind of negativity in my life. There'll be no replacing him, but it's time to either fix the problem or move on as my self worth continues to plummet because of his heartless words.

I'm an oddball, everyone knows it! I should have to wear a sign or something. Maybe I'll never find a Sons of Anarchy of my own, but it's definitely something that will continue to pop up in my writing. Because I that's how I use my gift: if I don't like something about this world that I can't change, I'm going to get on my computer and write a new world, one that I can change. And, it'll be bad a$$!

Like a C-List Stalker Movie

I saw The Viking today hand-in-hand with his girlfriend.
And, I began shaking so badly that I nearly fell off my bike. It literally took me at least two minutes to try and lock the darn thing to the bike rack.
It's been nearly a year.
This reaction should have stopped by now.
I don't even know what it means.

No point to the comic. It's just depressing. Cyanide and Happiness

Shaking up the Snow Globe

Operation “Sparta”

Status: Complete

Operation “Sparta” was a success. I just turned in the paperwork and payment a few minutes ago to guarantee Sparta’s permanent stay here at the apartment. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. After last night, I was about to drag him back to Charlotte this morning!

On Saturday, I loaded Sparta into Little Honda and we headed off to Cullowhee. Sparta behaved well in his cat carrier though he was quite vocal with that piercing yowl of his. He was constantly distracting me from driving by bribing me to open his carrier via cute belly flops and rolls wanting his belly scratched. We arrived at the apartment in the late afternoon and I was shocked by Sparta’s horrific reaction to the new place. In the Outer Banks, Sparta had immediately taken to the beach house. Here, without Piddy Paws, he cowered under my bed for several hours before eventually venturing out to meet CC. The little vivacious cat I knew and loved was gone. Instead was a rather depressed-looking, frightened kitten. It made me think the whole idea of bringing him up had been a mistake. All I could imagine was Piddy Paws at home wondering where Sparta was and Sparta here wondering where was Piddy Paws and why he had been uprooted from his old home. I still can’t think about it.

Sunday: Sparta grew to be more adventurous and playful. Still, there was a lacking spark that makes Sparta SPARTA! He’s a wild kitty, playful, never serious. Where was my little troublemaker? He continued to become more himself, and CC and I had a great time with his last night as I had bought him some new toys at Wal-Mart, including a laser pointer. Sparta has never seen a laser pointer before and didn’t immediately take to it. He responds to toys with noise. Here was a silent dot of red light scurrying around the floor, and he didn’t know what to make of it. Eventually, he got the hang of it, and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Last night: Sparta is unused to being locked in a room, but I have to do so at night because his litter box is in my bedroom and I don't like my door to be open and unlocked when I sleep. It makes me even more paranoid than I already am. So, Sparta spends the night in my room.

Last night, he decided it wasn't fun anymore and started getting mischievous. He yowled a bit and he kept jumping up on my desk where are a lot of trinkets for him to knock to the floor and make a big mess. My sleep was interrupted quite a bit, but none as bad as The Incident at 4:30 this morning!

There is that indescribable sound when glass hits glass and shatters. This is the sound I heard, waking me immediately from sleep. I didn't even have to look over to know what was broken. It was my snow globe collection!

Sparta, in his ultimate and deadly curiosity, had clambered up onto the unstable shelving that housed my snow globes on the top shelf. Maybe if he had knocked a few off, they would have survived. No, Sparta took out two layers of the plastic shelving along with all the snow globes, all the ceramic breakable statues, and all the figures. When I turned on the lights and looked out over the mess, FIVE out of the ten snow globes were destroyed and one of the ceramic statues I had painted as a ten-year old was broken. Somehow, everything else survived.

X's mark what died last night.

Glitter. Sparkles. Fake snow. Water. Glass. All of it was everywhere in a huge puddle and some splashing on the electric cords near the scene of the accident.

I didn't say a word to Sparta. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I didn't ask for help. Missing Piddy Paws more than ever, I kneeled on the floor and began picking up the shards of my different snow globes and ceramic tarantula, putting the pieces into a plastic Food Lion back while Sparta, scared out of my mind, watched in a corner. When I could spot no more glass, I placed a huge towel over the spot of water and soaked up as much as I could, then dried off the surviving snow globes and figures, put them away in a cabinet, and went back to bed where I finally did cry as I came to the realization that maybe Sparta needed to return to Charlotte.

This morning I was still unsure of whether I wanted to turn in the checks which would seal the deal of Sparta's living in the apartment. I decided that if I returned home after a full day of classes and found the apartment upside down from Sparta's wicked paws, I would immediately drive back to Charlotte, drop him off, and drive back home. My train of thought swerved from track to track throughout the day. Take him home, keep him here, take him home, keep him here... When I returned to the apartment, everything was in perfect order. I called out "Here kitty, kitty!" and here comes my baby boy running down the hallway to me. He sprinted into my arms and began purring so sweetly.

"Alright, baby boy, we'll make this work," I told him and turned in the check. Sparta is officially a member of my apartment family!

SHOUT OUT!!!!

To the girls, which include Barney, who I eat lunch with! Today we played Ice Cream Musical Chairs. We all bought ice cream at Freshens then in a circle, switched our ice creams among each other. I had chocolate with Reese cups pieces. Barney had cookie dough with caramel syrup. I have no idea what the other two girls had but it was DELICIOUS!!!

"There's a party in my mouth and everyone's invited," sang out Barney's boyfriend.

This ice cream musical chairs thing needs to become a daily tradition!! Hopefully, my declining balance points will last out the semester, haha!

Nightmare Part Duex

Another nightmare:

It was the end of class and we were returning from a trip outside. The class and I exited the elevator, and I was standing in the hallway next to a water fountain. My brown school bag was slung over my shoulder, I think I was wearing a scarf and a jacket. In my hand was my Samsung cell phone. It began to ring Adam’s ringtone so I answered.

“Hello?”

“Uh, who is this?”

“Lex. Who is this?”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation word-for-word, but the caller was The Viking. Apparently, Adam had tricked The Viking into calling me by telling him he was calling someone else. In the real world and in this dream world, The Viking and I are not allowed to speak to each other as ordered by Western Carolina University. And here we were on the phone breaking that rule. It was horribly awkward. And, it was upsetting. The Viking got off the phone as soon as he could. There was no talk of reconciliation.

As soon as I hung up, Adam jumped out from behind a corner and was jumping up and down, grinning.

“You two talked!” he cried.

I began to scream at him, telling him how horrible he was for forcing me to talk with the one person I never wanted to speak with. Even worse, forcing him to talk to me when that’s all I wanted but that’s all he didn’t. I woke up after I told Adam we were no longer friends.

I don’t know what was worse: the dream or waking up and realizing I hadn’t actually talked to The Viking after all.

When I relayed this dream to Cody, he laughed and couldn’t understand why it was a nightmare.

…Anything that deals with The Viking IS a nightmare!