Camping Cyndi Style

I dedicate this post to my ma and wish her a speedy recovery. They say laughter is the best medicine, and who is more fun to laugh at than me?

So there are several posts which I have been meaning to write but just haven't gotten around to for some odd reason (ahem...LAZY!) Did you hear something? Me neither.

Here are some possible topics:
Camping, Cyndi Style
Diary of a Celebrational Binge Eater
Effects of March Madness on the Male Psyche, a Study in DVR Dysfunction

Any of these sound like fun to anyone? Hmph. Oh well. I'll just pick one at random and see how it goes. Time for eeny meeny miney. (*Hovers a finger over her computer screen in an act of topic elimination)

Camping Cyndi Style it is.

So over Easter weekend we went camping with Andy's family up on Cedar mountain in Emery county. Emery county Utah, for those of you who have not been there, is fairly dry and rocky terrain. It's perfect for dirt biking, ATV-ing, lighting fires, adventuresome bathrooming, and all the other things the manly men and boys in Andy's family enjoy. I confess, I had a great time as well, though I imagine I am somewhat of an embarrassment in the outdoorsy category.

For example, I wore jeans, a long sleeved shirt, a jacket, and a puffy white down coat. The whole time. Even sitting in front of the fire, which is where I stayed the majority of the trip. So much in fact, that I melted the bottoms of a perfectly good pair of shoes. They are brown, and did not have heels, which in my little brain made them the perfect choice for camping. Until the bottoms fell off that is. I guess Payless just ain't making them like they used to.

In any case, while I shivered like a weenie by the fire with my 16 layers of clothing on, the boys whizzed around in sweaters and t-shirts on their dirt bikes and ATVs. They catapulted over hills, bottomed out in gullies, somersaulted over handle bars, and still they got up laughing and continued on.

So when I finally did wander way from the fire, it was because I really had to go to the bathroom. Mind you, I am not one of these folks who can squat behind a rock and call it good. I tend to need some privacy and some sort of toidy to sit on. So I availed myself of one of the camper bathrooms. After completing my transaction, I got up and pulled the little lever that I assumed that would flush the toilet, but nothing happened. I pulled it harder and the toilet started to fill up with water at an alarming rate, but nothing went down the drain.

Panic set in. Here I was, trapped in an itty bitty cube with my knees by my ears, and I could not for the life of me figure the stupid toilet out. Sheepishly, I decided I would have to enlist the help of one of my nieces or nephews, and bribe them heavily with Easter treats to speak of my shame to no one.

I maneuvered myself out of the bathroom to find Andy standing guard for me. "Uhm. I can't figure out how to flush the toilet," I confessed. Helpfully, he came in and shut the lid then pulled the same lever I had been attempting to coerce into empyting the contents of the pot. "The lid has to be closed," he informed me.

"Oh." I replied.

I'm not sure why or how I attract embarrassing mishaps, I just know that I do. I think the more frightened you are that something embarrassing will happen to you, the more likely that very thing is to happen.

Later that day, I got the chance to drive an ATV with Andy, he riding behind me and holding on for dear life as I lurched about over hill and dale mowing dow sage brushes and frightening small desert creatures. He later confessed that he might have been the teensiest bit concerned for his life. Hey, what's life without the slight fear of a violent and painful death now and then? Hmm?

On the whole, the trip was fantastic. The food was amazing, the boys had a blast (and did not bathe for three days which always equates to a rare pleasure to them for some reason), I made Andy fear for his mortal life, and I conquered the mysteries of the camper toilet.

I really feally like I've accomplished something here.

Cyndi

Because I'm lazy...

Because I am lazy, and not funny today, I am going to use one of those little email questionnaire thingies for a post. So here it is, information you don't care about! Enjoy!

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? My mom tells me I am named after a lesbian army buddy of hers. My dad says he just liked the name Cynthia. Which is it folks? Hmmm?

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
I'm such a weenie now. I cry alot more than I used to. Prolly on the way to work listening to some beautiful music.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Not really. As a kid I used to try out different handwriting styles. As an adult I ended up with something that looks like something a schizophrenic might produce.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? A good rare thinly sliced roast beef. Beeeeeef (said in Homer Simpson voice while saliva leaks out of the corner of my mouth.)

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? 3 beautiful boys. 3 disgusting cats.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Yep. I'm pretty low maintenance. And I'd give myself chocolate. Nom nom nom.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A Lot? Who me? Sarcastic. Pssh! Naw!

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? I think so, but I hear that I had my adenoids removed as a child. I'm not sure what they do, because I've never missed them.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Why do that when I could throw myself off a tall building and encounter a bloody and violent death for free? Of wait, this was that sarcasm thing we were just talking about, huh?

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Marshmallow Maties (you know, ghetto Lucky Charms. The stuff that comes in a bag. Without prizes. With marshmallows that are shaped like parrots put through a meat grinder.)

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Nope. Laziness is my creed. In fact I will spend 5 minutes doing a creative dance and kicking my shoe against things to get the shoe back on rather then spend 1 minute untying and retying them.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Physically, no. Mentally, erm, no.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? A shorter question would be, "What's not your favorite ice cream?" Answer? Nuthin.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
Whether or not they're naked. Thankfully, most people aren't.

15. RED OR PINK? Red, all the way.

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Dangerous question that. I'll say my shyness.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? The friends and family I don't get to see often enough.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
Grey slacks ( I hate that word. I don't really know why. SLAAAAACKS. *Shudders), black shoes. The shoes that got runned over by the car in fact. It's in another post. Go find it. I dare you.

20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? A little chocolate Dove egg. Dericious!

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? My co-workers. I mean uh, no, I'm not posting at work. Ahem ahem.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Brick Red. Because I'ma BRICK da da da HOUSE!

23. FAVORITE SMELLS? Andy's undershirts after he sleeps in them, bacon frying, coffee brewing, freshly mowed grass, lemon zest, garlic (in food, not on breath), chocolate cake in the oven, rain on warm pavement. (Hey not all of it was food! Yay me!)

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My ma.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? She's one hot chicky.

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Basketball

27. HAIR COLOR? Blonde and brown

28. EYE COLOR? Greenish Blue

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Nope. But I do have some sweet cat-eye reading glasses with little diamonds on the corners. They're my "eccentric writer" glasses. You can't believe how eccentric I am with those bad boys on.

30. FAVORITE FOODS?
I shouldn't start, really I shouldn't. Again, shorter question, "Least favorite foods:" spaghetti, and generally anything involving cooked tomatoes.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Scary movies. Can't do the chick flicks.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Death Hunt with Charles Bronson. Pow pow pow pa pow!

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Black. Wow, I'm just a ball of excitement, aren't I?

34. SUMMER OR WINTER? I hate the cold, but I love the holidays and treats. So if we could move Christmas to July, that would ROCK!

35. HUGS OR KISSES? Both!

36. FAVORITE DESSERT? Sheesh. You people. Don't ask me this stuff. Creme brulee, chocolate cake, tirimasu, chocolate chip cookies, lemon tarts, millionaire shortbread...woops, slobbering again.

37. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Just finished Dolores Claiborne. Loved it!

38. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? I roll mouse-padless yo.

39. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? My nerdy DIY shows.

40. FAVORITE SOUND? My boys laughing, Andy singing, rain, jingly belly dance coin belts, crunchy fall leaves.

41. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles!

42. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Somewhere in Europe. I can't be bothered to look at a map.

43. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT! Does being extraordinarily un-coordinated count? I can also eat a bag of chips in a single sitting. Or an entire pan of brownies. Eh?

44. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? New Yahk.

By the power of...what the hell is that thing?

I was taken by a bout of nostalgia today and was searching for some 80s toys on the internet. I happened to run across a site that listed a bunch of old He-Man toys. All I can say is, wow. I can remember watching He-Man as a kids and thinking he was the positively bad-ass. Heck I even had a crush on him. But after looking at the toys...well.



So without further adieu I bring you...duh duh duh duh! Creepy toys from the past! (said with flourish in announcer man voice) Please keep in mind that all these toys are REAL He-Man characters. I have used their real names because I have no pity.

Behold! MEGATOR! Wow. I don't think I really have anything to add here. *Shudders.

TYTUS grinned over his shoulder as his shift manager hovered nearby. "Welcome to Viking Burger, home of the Gallon Grog, what can I get for you?" he said overly loud into his head set, hoping his voice would carry. As soon as his manager had passed he whispered into his cell phone, "Steve, I told you never to call me when I'm at work. What? No, I will not wear the outfit home again."

SSSQUEEZE sat in his lawyer's office, his arms curling under the desk, reviewing the deposition. "Yesss, thisss isss all correct." He confirmed. "Nacho Libre isss a sssscoundrel. I patented the Anaconda ssssqueeze back in nineteen eighty ssssseven."

"Are you sure?" asked Gary, TWO-BAD's blue head, weary of the shoe department at Bloomy's and the inquizitive stares he recieved. "Totally," reassured the perky sales girl. "Like the silver boot will totally bring out the blue in your right leg. And the leather boot will way complement the violet in the other." "Well, if you say so" both heads began, "Jinx! You owe me a coke!" they said in stereo, jocularly giving eachother the customary knuckle punch.

GRIZZLOR tried in vain to make the stodgy Americans see that waxing was not a custom of his people. "I am Frainch," he explained, "we do not, how you say, shave zee body. We only shaves zee laigs and zee face. Hon hon hon!"

After one too many Glade jokes in kindergarten, STINKOR vowed that one day, he would make them all pay. Someday, when he had his orange vinyl boots and matching vest, they'd all be sorry. "Who stinks now punks?" he'd say. Yeah. That would show them.

LOCKJAW may spend his days being a deformed amputee with circa 1378 a.d. military parts, but that doesn't mean this chap doesn't know how to party! Fortunately he keeps his g-string handy so he can drop by the techno club at a moment's notice and shake it shake it shake it. Oomcha oomcha oomcha, da da dum da da da dum da. (crazy techno drum beat)

STONEDAR says: "Dude! What? I had like this crazy trip where I was like this thing with lumpy dolphin skin. Only like my bones were like made out of toothpaste and I was wearing some tacky gold accessories. Wait, what? Dude. What you mean that's what I really look like? Dude! You're like freaking me out! Uncool."

Hope you enjoyed!

Cyndi

A treatise on concluding pet ownership

We're going to be moving sometime in the next couple of months. Unfortunately, the place we will be moving into is not pet friendly. I have known this was coming for some time, in fact, I have been preparing myself for it. Sometime soon, the kitties will be going to different homes.

The creepy thing is that I believe the cats understand this on some level and have altered their behavior accordingly. It's been at least four days since Gilbert last shat upon the carpet.

And Stewie, who only loves Andy, has taken to jumping up on my lap and prancing around. Almost as if to say, "Behold the soft gray glory that is my fur. Hear the beauteous squeak of my voice. You will miss it, yes? Are you truly prepared to allow the magnitude of these gifts to be enjoyed by someone else?"

Luckily, they can never go too long without reverting back to unsavory behavior. Take for instance, the other night. Directly after one of these guilt trips, Stewie hopped down off my lap and horked an esophagus shaped 4 inch long mass of compressed cat food and hair onto the carpet. Gilbert, ever unstable of intestine, witnessed this and horked a pile of his own nearby. Perhaps this is the cat equivalent of a pissing contest.

In any case, I feel horrible about it. And I feel even worse for not feeling horrible about it. I know I won't cry about not scooping cat boxes, not lint rolling an angora sweater worth of fur off my coat every morning, not sharing my bed with three cranky furry bodies, and not cleaning squishy piles of vomit and worse off the carpet.

I will miss the little boogers though.

Cyndi

When kids sneak the vacuum to their room

It is a well known fact amongst the general adult populous that children HATE cleaning. I can't say I blame them. I myself do not love to clean. I love to sit on my butt watching cooking shows and eating unhealthy food. I clean because I love what clean looks like. So you can imagine my curiosity when on Saturday night Matty stealthily snuck into the living room, slipped the vacuum out of the broom closet and tried to ever so nonchalantly drag it down the hall.

Now, Matty is a sweetheart, and it's not totally unlike him to clean in order to surprise me. But on this particular occasion, he had been playing in his room with his cousins who were over for the evening. I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but I felt fairly certain that left to their own devices, a group of children ages ranging 3 to 8 would not seek out a vacuum cleaner as a source of rousing entertainment. In short (or not so short) the Smomometer was violently bumped into "Uh Oh" mode.

"This is not good," I say to Andy who is sitting on the nearby couch.

"What's not good?" he asks inquisitively.

"Matty just came out and got the vacuum cleaner and took it back to the room." I explain.

No sooner had I said this when Jake wanders down the hall to where we sit. "Promise you won't get mad?" he says.

"No," Andy replies. "I will promise no such thing."

"Promise, promise you won't get mad?" He asks again, plaintively.

"No," Andy emphasizes once more. "What did they do?" he asks.

"Well you know Matty's Spiderman toy? They sprayed it all over the walls in the room."

Now this Spiderman toy, I am sure, was meant to spray out something like silly string to mimic spraying out a web. Problem is, what comes out the end of the cans is nothing like silly string. It's like wet blobs of colored magnetic snot that leave gray trails of slug slime where'ere they land.

Sufficiently alarmed, Andy and I wander down to the boys' room, where we find four little bodies scurrying about feverishly in an attempt to gather up lumps of sticky web goo. Interrupted in their frantic cleaning, four little sets of eyes note our presence with horror.

"Who did it?" we ask in stereo.

"We were trying to get it up onto the shelf," testifies spokesperson Matty, "and it sprayed all over."

"Did you spray it on the walls?" I ask.

"Andrea did," Matty reports, pointing to the three year old in the corner, "I was trying to get it back on the shelf."

"So you didn't spray any of it?" I ask.

"I was trying to clean it up," he explains, deftly avoiding my question.

With corporal punishment looming, all the culprits admit they might have sprayed a little.

Things like this just crack me up. Kids are such fantastically complex and calculating creatures. They somehow become so much craftier when they know they have done something wrong. I suppose adults are no different really. I know my eyes get alot shiftier before I sneak a cookie or run a red light. Not that I do that kind of stuff. Ahem. Hem. Cough.

Cyndi

Things I Will Do Soon

1. Post pictures from my first belly dancing performance this year. (Please note: I have to balance a basket on my head for one of the dances. If you've never seen someone whose face is simultaneously saying 'please don't let me drop this thing, oh no, it's slipping, it's SLIPPING!' and "Must smile, must smile! Crap! Face...twitching! Must...look normal with...twitchy face!', then you are in for a real treat. Yeah, I'm cool : )

2. Start a Flickr account or some such nonsense so I can post a slide show of my beautiful and talented boys on my blog.

3. Not eat the rest of the boxes of Girl Scout cookies ordered. I was indescribably proud of myself. I ordered...uh sixish boxes (don't judge me) from one of the daughters of my troupe members. And you want to know what I did? I brought three boxes to work and put them out on my desk for passers-by to nosh on. That's three boxes of cookies that have no chance, NO CHANCE of making their way to my backside. WOOT!

4. Give my snotty car it's friggin oil change. Yesterday the "Engine Oil Change Soon" turned into "Engine Oil Required" on the nag display. My car thinks I'm a moron I'm telling you. So much for polite suggestions. If that car were really as smart as it pretends to be, it would display "Engine Oil Change Soon" with a little box next to it sans check mark. Empty boxes cause my OC side to kick into overdrive. I'd prolly mow down an old lady and take out a couple street signs in my fury to get to the Quicky-Lube.

Cyndi

My Car is a Jerk

I won't spend any time berating myself for not posting nearly as much as I should. Although I do feel guilty. Very guilty. And I've been really busy, so I shouldn't feel guilty. I mean, it's not like that many people read this anyway. Not that you don't count, Mom. You do. Very much so. I'm doing the berating thing, aren't I? Oh well.

I complain about being old alot, which may seem ludicrous, as I am still in my 20's (not for much longer. Eek!) But I do feel old. Mostly because I react to change with the panicked snarls and quivery-kneed fear that is common to the elderly when encountering something unwanted and unfamiliar. Case in point: my car.

My car is one of these relatively new ones where there is a little electronic display that regularly tells you what your car is thinking. At first, this was great. I mean, this is a pretty novel concept, seeing into the mind of a car. And I want my car to be happy, I do. Well, did, until it started being mean to me.

At first my car was happy. In lovely green letters it proudly proclaimed it's mileage. Moreover, it was nice enough to let me know how many more miles it felt like it could drive before it needed to be fed again. Very nice indeed. That's back when things were civil.

Then, I made the grievous mistake of allowing my car's gas tank to become slightly less than a quarter full. Immediately, it beeped at me. Then started flashing in orange angry letters "Fuel level low!!!!!" (I might have added a couple exclamation points.) Anyway, after continuing to drive for a couple miles, a picture of little gas pump also began flashing. I can only assume that the car, angry about being driven further after expressly communicating the fact that it would like some gas, figured I needed a little help. "You must be special," thinks the car, "perhaps you do not know what fuel is. Allow me to show you a picture of what I would like. See? Do you recognize this? I NEED YOU TO PULL ME OVER AND FIND ONE OF THESE THINGS IN THE PRETTY PICTURE."

"Yes, yes, I know." I tell the car. It continues to flash. What is it about a flashing light that makes it seem so much more urgent? "Hmm," I think, "Well the light is turned on, I probably have 40 miles left. Uh oh. The light is flashing. It must be serious. I better pull over."

And I did. I allowed myself to be manipulated by a stupid machine. Since then, the car has realized its power and delights in frightening me with such warnings as "Tire Sensor Fault" -translation: "You're gonna get a flat tire, careen out of control and die. Ahhhhhh!!!" Or "Engine Oil Change Soon"- translation: "You better give me oil or I might just blow up on you. I can do that you know. Squeeeal...just kidding Gotcha! Ah ha ha ha!"

I'm surprized that a little orange picture of my car in flames doesn't flash on and off.

Mean car.

Cyndi