Did you know I have a family?

It's true. I'm not an orphan like poor little Kelly.
Here is my Family:


Now, let's take a closer look...
Here is my dad. Also known as Rex. Or...Spiderdad? Anyway, he's hip. He's the hippest.

He loves BYU anything and Scifi almost anything. That's what I love about him. When I come come, I get to watch cool Scifi movies and shows with him and if I don't understand something, he can explain it even if he's never seen it before. He just gets it. ha. He's a top soccer refaree and was a top coach when I was little. He used to get thrown off the field when bad calls were made. haha. And I'd say, "That's my dad!" He loves keeping up with us kids. He loves listening to the music we listen to and going to concerts we go to. My favorite story of dad that shows who he is exactly is...
We were on vacation, staying in a hotel...Doug and Emily and I stayed up late watching The Twilight Zone and decided to go out on a midnight run to Wendy's or something. Down in the lobby, we saw dad laying on the couch with a remote in his had watching tv....but asleep. We all giggled...poked him...tired to wake him up. "Dad? Dad...you should probably go to bed."
"No. I'm watching this."
"You're watching...Man of the House on tv?...you better just go to bed. haha..."
He shifted and protested and finally just said, "No, if I go to bed it means my vacation is over!"
This is dad sleeping through mom reading scriptures to us. haha. Here is my mother. She thinks all occasions are good for her big down coat; she gets cold a lot. And she loves her children so she wears the fur hats they bring back from Russia even if she looks so funny in them.
Here are some texts I've saved from my mom over the past little while...I don't want to explain them because...I just don't want to. They're far better at face value:
"Thank you o BAMA"
"Cool. You are HUCK finn and tom SAWYER"
"Thanks. I show up every day. That's why homer simpson go crazy. Don't mind if I do."
"You are welcome. You are a good college girl. Thanks you fro putting them in the corn field."
"How's your staring problem? Mine is not solved. I am on the bus and I do not want to be caught staring :) :) :)"
"Want some cat hair soup?"
"This one lady on my express bus must be a man."
"That is a new career. Naming hopeless dolls."
"That is so nice of you Addy to rip Nacho's face off and set her on fire. Very nice. Such sweet drug wars. Very good."
"Airplane you on? Love, Yoda"


Ain't they sweet?


These are the boys. They're the oldest. Robbie likes to tackel people and sometimes pull them onto his lap, like he did to doug here in this picture...
And this is Robbie's gorgeous wife Sarah. She fits right in. She calls me on the phone singing Phil Collins and calls me "Nat the Rat." She's so fabulous. Robbie got a good one.
And Doug likes to wear ski masks when mom says, "Get dressed for caroling."
Something funny happened in our family. The older siblings somehow got the short stick. But Robbie still bullies Doug and I still force Emily to get me things from the kitchen.
We're awesome.
This was a boring blog because I didn't feel like doing it but I did it anyway. So. Eat it. I'm awesome.

Did you know I have cats?

I have cats. Did you know that I have cats? I'm not a gross cat person who smells like pee and invites strays in. No. I just happen to have to cats who rule. Rule harder than your stupid cats.


This is Nacho. We got her in July 1998. She's 11 now. This is how we named her: We couldn't decide. Emily and I were in LOVE with her, she was so cute with ears too big for her head. We came up with all kinds of names but I don't think she liked any of them. Robbie, the oldest brother was waaaay too cool for kittens or anything that wasn't No Use For A Name back then, so he didn't care one way or another who she was or what her name should be. We ended up submitting names in a hat and pulling them out, talking about them. What should we name you? Or cat's name before her was Sgt. Tibbs. Robbie got fed up with us stressing over what to name her and said, "Just name her Nacho. Her name is Nacho, okay?" (Named after an Aquabat member) and we all said okay and we said, "Nacho," and her ears pulled back. And we knew that was her name.
Now, Nacho and I have had an interesting relationship. We got her in July, so I like to say that she's my cat, since it was around my birthday. She would sleep on my pillow at night, and I would sleep with no pillow. But, man. She's mean. haha. Once she gets the look in her eyes, she doesn't give up. Once she wants to destroy you, she won't stop until you are destroyed. The only way we have found to stifle this killing instict is to throw a really heavy blanket over her and run away. One time she got mad at me, I don't remember why, but I was slowly backing away from her, out of my room. She was sitting, staring up at me a couple feet away with her ears back and her eyes huge. Oh, she was mad. I just kept slowly taking steps back and then BAM! She jumped up to my FACE. She grabbed the back of my head and started biting my forehead. And man she's hard to pry off you. I just grabbed her and threw her to the ground, slammed the door and ran off. hahaha. What is wrong with her?
She also won't drink just water from a bowl. She would rather dry up and die than drink like a normal cat. When she was a baby, I spoiled her and wanted her to love me the most so I would keep a fancy dish in the hall by my room and pour fancy bottled water in it. Ever since, she won't drink water if she doesn't see where it came from. If it's old and stagnant, won't drink it. She needs to see it pour out of a Fuji water bottle orrr...her other favorite, from the sink. She lays on the toilet seat until someone passes the bathroom then makes a little, quiet, questioning purring sound. She cocks her head as if to say, "Would you mind?" So you turn on the faucet for her, and she laps away. She's not a normal cat. She's also huge. She weighs like 18lbs. She's huge and slow moving (unelss she wants you dead) and we love her.

And then there's Addy. Let's discuss how she came into the family first, shall we? Well, there we were. On the street. And the white trash family down the raod had a box of new kittens. How could Emily and I pass that kind of opportunity up? I always stop and play with the kittens or puppies in the Walmart parking lot. Ohhh I love it. So we were playing with this box of kittens and thought, we gotta get mom in on this. MOM! We want a kitten! Nacho needs a friend! Nacho looked over at us like, "please." We used all our logic, "Look how lonely Nacho looks....but they're so cute...what does money compare to love?..." Somehow it worked and we got to take home a little kitten. Oh man. Hahah. And she was nuts. Serisouly, we could have named her Nuts and it would have been just as fitting.
She was so nuts. She would just walk around the room with her eyes huge like she wanted to take everyhting in and suddenly, out of nowhere, she would pounce on something. Oh, what is that? What is she playing with? Oh, it's just a shadow. And now it's an indent in the carpet from where we moved the table...she jumped on everything. And got distracted SO easily. If she saw you from across the room, it didn't matter what she was doing, she would run to you and run up your pant leg until she was sitting on your shoulder. You wouldn't know what hit you. So then we thought, what should we name her? We thought of a few: Socks, Mittens, Muffins, Sam...but nothing stuck. Then we thought, well she probably has ADD...let's just name her Addy. Done. She likes to bring us presents. Frogs, dragonflies, lizards, snakes...anything she can find. She LOVES to bring home frogs. She never hurts any of the animals she catches, she just wants to bring them inside to show us and then play with them some more.She brings in these little frogs in her mouth and sets them down. Once they come out of their shock, they start jumping around and Addy watches them. She bats them with her paw and eventually pounces again, carrying the little froggy in her mouth over to us. See? See how good I am at catching it? I did that outside. I saw it. I saw it and I knew you'd love it. Do you love it? Do you? Did you see me catch it? .... Yes, Addy. We saw it. Now, let's take the nice frog back outside...

Ohhhh I love my cats.
I love my family too. Maybe I'll make a blog about them...

The Death of a Journal

I'm on the last page of my journal that I started ten months ago. When I first started it, I didn't like it because it had lines, and I don't like lines. And it wasn't spiral bound, and I like to be able to flip it open on itself. But then I started telling it all my secrets and now it knows me better than any other book. So I'm sad to leave it on a shelf and pick up a new journal that doesn't know me at all. I'm just supposed to start telling it all my secrets and hope that it accepts me? Well...fine. I guess I have no other choice. Unless I just flip open this one again and start from the beginning...write my new story in between the lines of the old one...but that would be messy and obnoxious to read. So, there is no other option than to move on. Close one book and open another. I've done it before. I have a total of probably over 15 journals since I was 8 years old. So I know how to do this. But, it just hasn't felt so hard before. It's probably different now that I don't live with my parents so I don't have to write in code and also because I have a lot more of myself figured out than I did in middle and high school. So it's more real when I write and not just: "Adam talked to me! Mr. Wright put us in the same group because he totally knows I like him. I mean, who doesn't know I like him. So I was standing next to him and he was like, 'You ready to cut open this pig?' And I was all, 'Oh yeah. I'm tough.' And he laughed. Oh man, he totally thinks I'm funny. YES!" (That is probably very close to a real life journal entry).

I guess I should say some words:
Journal, I'm really sad I have to leave you now. You were a really good friend to me during hard times. Whenever I had too much inside of me, you knew just how to soak some of it up so I could breathe again. You're a good keeper of secrets. You could get kind of heavy and I didn't always want to take you everywhere with me, but you would get sad if I didn't, so I always ended up taking you with me anyway. You made my arms stronger. And don't worry, I'll pick you up again because I love reading through your pages. I won't be far away.

Welcome new journal. I hope you can handle my abuse.

Ex's

Maybe no one ever reads my blog because there are no pictures on it. Or probably because I never write on it. Orrrr because no one knows it exists. Those are all fine because it's just the internet that will explode one day.

Let's talk about ex's.


This is my ex-job. John R. Green Co. Quality products for school and office. They really were quality products. I packed boxes full of colored pencils, pens, chalk, desk calendars, books, fake snow...you name it, we sent it to teachers. One time Carissa and I bought a bunch of that fake snow (I think $100 worth) and we put it all over her floor and turned on the fog machine and we had a winter wonderland party. Why? Because we are awesome.
And that job was awesome. I packed the boxes like Tetris and carried an 80lb box across the whole warehouse once. I was buff then...I miss that job.


This is my ex-roommate. She left me for a mission. Here are things I miss about her:
Sometimes when a song would come on, she would start to sing like a pop star and plug one ear...but then...she'd just plug both ears and close her eyes and sing really off key and I would pee my pants. Anytime she would talk to Kelly Thomson, Kelly would say, "Rachel...shut up." She loved that. She also would put random items down my pants if my crack was showing, take pictures of me when I looked bad and write me hate mail. We ran a 5K together. When we were having a bad day we would come home and turn on Buddah's Delight and dance to it. I hope she gets sent home from her mission early....

I guess I have more ex's like...ex boyfriends and ex hobbies but. I think I'm done.

My animal fear.

In lieu of Kelly's recent blog about his fear of deer, let me explain my animal fears.

As many know, I fear crustaceous animals. Fear them like Kelly fears bee-spitting deer. Crabs, lobsters, crawfish...Oh gosh. Just thinking about these crunchy, pointy, surrying-accross-the-sand-at-you animals makes my skin crawl. (As I sat there thinking of other adjectives to explain them, my face distorted as if I were watching someone throw up....you know...that disgusted, uncomfortable feeling. That was my face for a good minute and a half).

I had a few encounters with these animals on my trips to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans; a few being way too many for me.
On the beaches of North Carolina with Carissa...oh North Carolina. That places is a horror story. If you even think about going out on the sand at night: crabs. Everywhere. They like to hide in the day time...but at night, they think they own the place. We went down the the beach at night a couple of times and it was like I was being prepared to walk through a zombie-infested warehouse. "What if I see one? What if it comes at me?! What if I step on one? They'll attack! OH GOD!!!" We walked out onto the sand and I, convinced that the crabs would run away if they felt the vibrations of my steps, stompped the whole time we were on the sand. I stomped and screamed, "I AM AN ELEPHANT! I WILL CRUSH YOU ALL!!" I flung my flashlight all around me in a frantic search for crabs so I would be prepared to kick sand or scream at them. At one point I was so afraid of crabs coming close to me, I began to stomp fiercly, flash-dance style, screaming "DON'T STOP ME NOW!....I'LL MAKE A SUPER-SONIC MAN OUT OF YOUUUUUU!!!" Crabs fear Queen? Crabs fear ME! I am the QUEEN OF CRABS!
I threw rocks. Kicked sand. Screamed Queen songs and at one point demanded Carissa to, "GIVE ME YOUR TASER!" She didn't think that was safe or humane (although she pinned down live insects and frogs when she was young; what does she know about humane?)

I think my favorite moment with crabs is when Carissa and I visited an island. On this island there was an area of still water off from the ocean. It was beautiful, however, also infested with water crabs. "Don't worry, they only touch or pinch you if you step on them," said Carissa. Moments later one swam up to her and pinched her butt. I was NOT getting into that water. I somehow plucked up the courage to swim (I refused to walk in fear of the crabs) across the still water to another small island of sand but I couldn't fidn the courage to go back. I ended up freaking out and having Carissa carry me across on her back as I frantically said, "Is that one? I think that's one. I feel them on my legs. I think they're swimming behind me. Carissa, they're on me. We have to get out of here..."

So. I'm afraid of crabs. That's the point. Kelly is afraid of deer....I'm afraid of crabs. God created scary animals on this planet.
I hope there are no crabs in heaven.

Ikea

I'm going to Ikea today. So..I have to think of all the things I need...
Why not think on this blog.
Good idea.

- Bathroom rug I hate having to dry off while I'm still IN the shower. Especially in my tiny weird brown shower... I want to stand on a furry rug and dry off on that.
- Maybe one of those other bathroom rugs that go under the toilet. My family always has those, they look so fancy. But if you accidentally pee on the floor...that rug is done for. So...I'll have to weigh the amount of times I accidentally pee on the floor against style...see what comes up.
- Trash cans. Two of them. One for each of my bathrooms. That's right. I have two. The downstairs one is for teeth and hair and everything because it's just across the hall from me. But, I have to go upstairs to shower. And they need trashcans. I keep blowing my nose and throwing it away in the toilet...and that's weird.
- A stuffed animal. Ikea always has the best stuffed animals. I already have two best friends I got from Ikea: A stuffed fox named Chester because he is SO stoned all the time. (Like Chester from Sifl and Olly) and A giant stuffed shark named Hambone. He watches shark week with me and sometimes comes to work with me when I'm sad. He's such a pal. I can always go for a stuffed animal.

Other than that, I can't think of much else I might need from Ikea. I know I need more records to sit on my floor and listen to. And I know I need some nails to hang up my ELO poster. Oh, and some more dresses and possibly another bathing suit (I might be going on a boat this Saturday, I gotta look my best). But those aren't Ikea things. Perhaps I'll be walking down the isles and see something that just CALLS my name. And I'll say, "Oh, I must have this!" And it'll probably be something strange and unnecessary like a shoelace organizer or an ice tray in the shape of body parts. I don't even have any shoes with laces.
I could use some new sandals....maybe Ikea will have some of those. Or maybe they'll just have sandal holders and organizers and posters with a trendy design of screenprinted sandals.

If all else fails, I can always come home with the free, tiny brown pencils that are great for games such as Scattagories and Boggle.

Littlefoot's mom died. Sara's dad died; he was the only family she had and she was forced to live in the attic. Thomas J. was stung by bees and needed his glasses. Largeman told Sam he couldn't be with her, he had to figure things out. Peter just didn't want to grow up, Wendy had no chance. Christian's first true love died in his arms just after he found out she really loved him. Wilson floated away. Trevor was stabbed and all he was trying to do was some good.
Life is sad.
And then I puke.