news you can use #20: it IS possible to have your eyelashes burned off by a flaming hot oven; VS models forced me to buy five swimsuits; and the unveiling of quasi

today's news you can use! is going to be a bit different.  you can thank my insane schedule for that one.  my day involves back to back to back to back meetings, so i'm actually posting this from my phone.  (whoever doubts my love for you should be feeling ashamed right about now!)  anyways, there are some important unimportant things i feel like you should know:

1. it IS possible to have your eyelashes burned off by sticking your head in a 450 degree oven.  i did it last night, and yes i am serious.  

so you know how i like to bake, right?  seeing as though i'm allergic to 90% of packaged goods, i experiment with various recipes to make something yummy and delicious and full of sugar.  well last night, i decided to make some "cinnamon-oatmeal-whole-grain-banana-muffins."  (they are delish, p.s.)  well, this being an experiment, i continually checked on them.  (i treat muffin making very seriously.)  

(here i am baking in my kitchen.)

apparently, i must have stuck my head or face too far in because this great rush of flaming hot heat seared my face, burning off half the length of my eyelashes.  i don't have a picture because i didn't take one.  i was too busy crying.  i three-way called my mom and quasi to determine if 911 would accept "burned eyelashes" as a legitimate emergency.  they both said "NO."  

suffice if to say, my left eyelashes are now shorter than my right eyelashes by a considerable amount.  fortunately, i have decently long ones to begin with.

2.quasi and i are planning a quick getaway weekend soon, so i order not one, not two, but five swimsuits from victoria's secret.  i'm not even kidding you, those VS swimsuit models are always trying to convince me that if i buy their swimsuits, i, too, will look like them while wearing them.  i'm not sure if they take into account the 6 muffins i ate for breakfast or the 4 fajitas i had at lunch.

(i got all five of these swimsuits.)

3. the post about my DIY project, a panic attack, and the unveiling of quasi's identity is coming very very soon.  just not over here.  it's being debuted somewhere else.  (i'll give you a hint - it's going to be posted next tuesday a.m. so get stoked and mark your calendars accordingly.)

my momma

 my momma and me a few years ago after my last collegiate soccer game

i hope everyone had a great weekend.  my mom is still felling really, really awful and she is having allergic reactions to the oral steroids the doctors have her on so her body is covered in hives and her throat and tongue are still swollen.  she's having trouble eating because her body is so out of whack, she's even reacting to her "safe" foods.  asthma and allergies go hand in hand, so now her asthma is giving her a lot of problems.  houston's air quality doesn't exactly help, so she has been looking to move either near national jewish hospital in denver or johns hopkins.  she is a patient at both hospitals which are stellar in the fields of asthma and allergies.  she's feeling really down and frustrated.

 it's killing me to see her go through this, and i feel completely and utterly helpless.  please, please continue to pray for her.  

while i have pretty severe food allergies, mine are nothing compared to my mom's.  she is essentially allergic to everything she eats, so she eats very small amounts throughout the day and is on a strict regiment of strong antihistamine medications.  living with severe food allergies and having had multiple anaphylactic reactions is terrifying to say the least, yet my mother is still the strongest, most positive, upbeat person i know. 

some people have asked me what exactly she is allergic to, and simply put: everything.  i know it doesn't make sense, but essentially we monitor her diet with the "parts per million" ppm.  as she's gotten older, we've had to decrease her threshold to "parts per trillion" or ppt.  she's primarily allergic to sulfites, which are preservatives found in everything and can also be naturally occurring. she obviously has to eat in order to sustain life, but she has to do so in small amounts, so as not to trigger a reaction - it depends on the quantity of ppms or ppts in the food she's eating.  it's all complicated and i won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say, it's trial and error sometimes, unfortunately.

i'm kind of frazzled right now, so the old woman kicking ass story with her cane will have to wait.  thanks for sticking around even while i have nothing to entertain you with.  i'll try to be back later today.

oh, and while we were in the hospital she made me promise to tell my blog bfffffs two things.  she was a liiiiittle out of it on all the drugs and oxygen she was receiving and made me promise: 

(1) i would post a pic of her looking all ET-like:

(2) she is convinced that hospital bed sheets smell like poop and she does NOT appreciate poopie sheets.  she just wanted you all to know.

thank you, i love you all, and i will beat you with my cane

i cannot thank you all enough for your prayers, thoughts, love, and support.  anaphylactic reactions and severe asthma are unfortunately a daily reality for my family.  it's beyond terrifying, so your prayers and words of comfort mean so much to me.  the one good thing that can come out of my mom's health situation are medical journal articles and studies bringing about awareness.  her case is such a rarity (only one other person in the u.s. has food allergies as severe as hers), making sure it is documented and studied is important.  my mom and i were released from the hospital late last night with lots of breathing machines and steroids, and now she's home and doing well.  my dad also came home from europe last night, so he was able to stay home from work today and be with her.  that means i'm back in the office.  ugh.

i seriously have so much blogging material from our hospital slumber party that i'll have to share with you later.  (i've got a crapton of work to catch up on.  i was working from the hospital on my phone and laptop as much as i could.)  just to give you a little preview of stories to come: 85 year old woman with a walker begins wielding it as a weapon on the male nurses.  i promise you, it's funny stuff.

and just to share a little family tidbit with you all: as of this past sunday, my little brother is officially legal and he's all grown up! it's still so weird to me that in a few short months he'll be leaving for college. my family and i live in the same city and are extremely close; his leaving will especially affect our 11 year old sister who calls her big brother her "best friend." here's one of the pics (we are doing some serious squinting in the sun) we took at the sunday lunch celebration after church (sans pops who was still in europe thanks to the volcano spewing ash all over the place):

my momma with her three babies

hospital slumber parties

hey friends, i'm blogging on my iPad from my mom's hospital room. she was admitted yesterday after having an anaphylactic allergic reaction. looks like we'll be having a couple more slumber parties here because the swelling in her throat and tongue isn't going down as quickly as the doctors would like. my dad is still in europe, so i'm staying here at the hospital with my mom and making sure my siblings are taken care of. please keep my mom and i in your prayers. i would love and totally appreciate lots of prayers! the steroids are keeping my mom wired, so i have yet to sleep! we've stayed up watching movies and playing games on the iPad. so i guess it was money well spent!

why i'm so glad i woke up alive this morning and didn't die in my sleep.

i know the post title sounds serious and that's because it kind of is.  not really.  so last night, i'm sitting at my kitchen table attempting to put a second permanent invisishield cover on my iphone.  (the night before quasi had put the first invisishield screen on UPSIDE-FREAKING-DOWN leaving my phone a sticky mess.  long story.  i thought my life was over yesterday and my phone was going to be ruined forever.)  oh, and i was baking more of those easter bunny sugar cookies.  i started with ten boxes and i'm down to two.  don't judge.   for those of you who are familiar with those invisishield things, you have to be really precise about it.  plus, they're $30 and this was the second one since the first got all effed up, so i was a little bitter about spending $60 for a damn protective shield.  well, technically i didn't buy them, but it was still money that could have been spent on other things.

anyways, so like i said i'm sitting at my kitchen table trying to have the concentration of a surgeon conducting a dangerous, evasive brain surgery.  one wrong move, and the person iphone is dead.  while i'm totally absorbed with the task at hand, my little nugget has dragged out her toy basket and is throwing her toys all around the apartment.

she's kicking bones with her paws, watches them slide across the wood floor, then chases after them sliding into walls and making a shitload of noise.  i'm trying to get her to stop and be still for a little bit because she's totally ruining my focus style.  naturally, she doesn't listen because she doesn't care.  she's like a teenager, but at least i can lock her in her crate.  last i checked with CPS, you're not allowed to do that with kids.  supposedly.  we'll see.  

so i put the screen on the phone, finally, and admire my hard work.  i then turn to see my little nugget head laying sideways on the floor trying to stretch out and reach a rawhide that has slid under the couch.  (this is a nightly thing.  drives me insane.)  so she's making this awful scraping noise with her claws on the metal bar under the couch.  it's like nails on a chalkboard but worse.  finally, i finish my iphone surgery and get up to get the bone so she'll stop.  

when i bend down to get it, she jumps on my back and bites my ponytail.  (she's obsessed with ears, ponytails, and buns.  it's really weird.)  i jolt up very quickly and as i do i knock the back of my head on my coffee table and fall back to the ground.  i try to stand up, but when i do i fall back down and i'm seeing all these black spots.  

i touch the back of my head and see a tiny bit of red.  no, i'm not bleeding profusely or anything, but enough to say, shit, i'm bleeding, i coud be dying.  what if this is brain fluid?  omg, i don't even have a will.

my head is pounding and i fear my brain is hemorrhaging.  i lay on the couch for a few minutes thinking, i can't even call 911 because that damn invisishield on my phone is still drying!  maybe if i scream loud enough my neighbors will hear me.  but what if screaming makes my brain bleed more?  these are the thoughts going through my wounded and bruised brain.  eventually i get up still feeling wobbly and text my mom.  very carefully, of course because my phone is still drying.

me: mom, i think i'm dying.

mom: no, you're not.

me: yes.  i have a concussion.

mom: how?

me: bailey's bone went under the couch, when i went to get it, i slammed the back of my head into the corner of my coffee table.  i saw stars.  and not the famous kind.  and blood, too.

mom: you probably do have a concussion.  have you thrown up?

me: no, but i have cookies baking in the oven.  shit!  i have cookies in the oven!  they might be burning while my head is bleeding!

mom: go eat your cookies and call me if you throw up.

me: but what if i'm so incapacitated i can't call?  and why are you always telling me to eat cookies.  you are such an enabler.  you want me to be fat.

mom: bailey will call.  and you could never be fat.

me: oh, no!  i can't go to sleep tonight!  what if i have an aneurism in my sleep and i wake up dead!

mom: you can't "wake up dead."

me: you know what i mean.  what if i don't wake up?!  i'll be like liam neeson's wife who hit her head in the terrible ski accident and then went into a coma and never came out of it!  what if that happens?!

mom: then i'll be sad.

thank you, mother for your undying love and support.  fortunately i did wake up alive this morning.

like mother, like daughter: THE ga edition (aka - why i know for sure that my little nugget and i were meant to be)

so while i've was out of town for a business trip, bailey stayed with her mimi (aka - my mom, aka - free doggy daycare).  since i don't have kids of my own, my little nugget head is my baby; and like any good momma, i worry about her and check on her throughout the day.  here's the scene that went down yesterday morning:

me: hey mom, how's my little koo bear doing?  is she crying for her mommy to come home??

mimi: no, she loves it at her mimi's.  she's watching tiger woods apologize on tv right now.
mimi: but after about 2 minutes, she yawned and decided he bores her.  she isn't buying it.
mimi: she much prefers watching lady gaga.

getting all webMD in your face: food allergies

now that you all know what the title of my blog really means, a few of you have asked me some other questions.

a lot of you know that i have a few food allergies, desiree from at clemson girl and bathwater asked me what exactly my food allergies were and bathwater specifically wanted to know how i survived on marshmallows alone. 

good question since i've never really gone into any detail about it.  the answer is: i starve myself.  well, not really, but that's what i tell people when they ask me at a luncheon why i'm not eating.  actually, when i'm at a luncheon and i can't eat any of the food, women always ask me: oh my gosh, meredith!  why aren't you eating??  you're going to wither away to nothing.  you're already skinny.  i typically give them a dirty look and say: i'm not skinny, you're just overweight, so you think i'm skinny.  oh, and i'm anorexic.  'rexies don't eat, ya know.  it's irritating, to say the least.  though maybe if i had kate moss' willpower to not eat, i would go that route.  unfortunately, i don't.  i love food and i love to eat.  clearly.

anybitch, food allergies are a lot more complicated than a lot of people realize.  for example, just because i can eat something from one restaurant doesn't mean i can eat that same dish from another restaurant because each place uses different ingredients and has different preparation methods.  for instance, i can't eat apples during certain months out of the year when ragweed and mold spore counts are high.  for a couple months out of the year, eating certain fruits and vegetables when environmental allergens are high causes my mouth to break out in blisters.

so in a nutshell (no pun intended) here's what i'm allergic to.  and you should know, my food allergies weren't always like this, they've just gotten worse as i've gotten older for some reason.  apparently people can both grow out of and into food allergies, unfortunately.  so some of these are fairly new (like within the past two years), so it's taking some getting used to. 

milk
(yes, this also means ice cream, certain cheeses, yogurt, and anything creamy delicious)

soy

nuts  

(primarily almonds.  i think i may be able to eat some other kinds, but i just avoid all nuts just to be safe.)

shellfish 

(i.e. oysters, shrimp, crab, lobster, etc. - anything with a shell on it and lives in the ocean.  duh.)

certain kinds of fish

beef

avocados

mushrooms

SULFITES  

(the biggest, baddest bitch of them all)

the sulfite allergy is the most serious of them all because it is a preservative found in A LOT of different kinds of food.  here's just some of the foods that contain sulfites: wine, bottle lemon and lime juices, molasses, dried fruit, grape juice, frozen potatoes, fresh mushrooms, guacamole dip, salad dressing, vinegar, fruit topping, gravy, sauces, pickles, maple syrup, imported sausages, certain deli meats, prepackaged muffin mixes, cider, soft drinks, beer, pre-made pie crust and pizza dough, crackers, boxed cookies... the list goes on... so you kind of get the idea how it's somewhat difficult to to "grab a meal on the go." 

the reactions i have from accidentally eating foods i shouldn't have eaten can be very, very mild and not life threatening like itchiness or tingling.  The more moderate reactions include hives, stomach cramping, vomiting, and a drop in blood pressure.  The most serious reactions are include swelling of tongue, lips, and airways to straight up anaphylaxis (i.e. you can't breathe).  obviously the most life threatening reaction is an anaphylatic reaction in which your airways close completely and you are unable to breathe.  this isn't a good feeling.  it's scary and hopeless and you feel like "oh, shit, i'm going to die."  because if you can't breathe, you die.  unless you are a superhero and can breathe through your skin.  i'm not a superhero, just a superbitch so breathing through the skin doesn't work for me.  this mean that an epi-pen is my best friend.  "epi" gets to go EVERYWHERE i go.  and if i have a reaction i get stabbed by epi.

my mom is actually a medical freak when it comes to allergies. like she's been stabbed with the epi lots of times.  i am NOTHING compared to her.  she has eight different kinds of food she is able to eat without having a severe anaphylactic reaction.  part of the reason why i'm so crazy is because i am constantly worrying about her.  she is actually being studied by a lot of doctors around the u.s. and receives testing from a research hospital in denver, colorado called national jewish hospital.  my little sister also attends that research hospital for her medical issues.  unfortunately, there is no "cure" for severe food allergies, there is only awareness.  having asthma on top of food allergies typically doesn't help much either.  the food allergy and anaphylaxis network actually has a fundraiser walk each year.  you can check it out here and see when it'll be coming to your city. 

well, now that i've given you a lesson you could have received from webMD, i'll be back to talking about THE ga tomorrow.  or maybe i'll answer one of your more tantalizing questions... we'll see how i'm feeling.  if you hated this very boring, but educational post - sorrs.  if we're going to be BFF, you better know what you're getting yourself into.  (i'm talking to you, trifecta - jess and money.) 

oh, and i guess i should answer the question: what do i eat??  i eat banana bread for breakfast every single morning, pretty much.  since a lot of breads have milk and/or soy in them, i have become the betty crocker of bread baking.  seriously.  i'm kind of awesome at baking.  99% of everything i eat is organic.  i eat lots of chicken, pork, egg whites, brown rice, beans, sweet potato fries, and veggies.  i have this great pizza place i love in houston that i go to every now and then.  i just have to eat the pizza without the cheese!  for sweets, i eat rice dream (kind of like ice cream, but not) and lots of vanilla sugar cookies and oatmeal cookies.  for snacks i eat organic blue corn chips, rice cakes, baby carrots, back to nature cookies and honey graham sticks.  i can pretty much eat anything a "normal" person eats, just sometimes it has to be highly modified!  i follow a lot of recipes in a monthly magazine i receive called living without.

and don't forget to enter my first ever giveaway!!  giveaway ends this wednesday, and a winner will be announced thursday morning!!

the hangover's baby carlos is now a member of our family

mom: so your brother has some sort of character day at school tomorrow and this is what he's going as:

me: aaaaaaahahahahahhahahah

me: hahahahahahhahahahahah

me: hahahahhhhaaaahahahahhaha

mom: okay, that was his reaction when he came walking down the stairs wearing your sister's old baby doll, too.  i guess i don't get it.  she wanted to know why her baby doll was strapped to him and where he was going.  he said the baby's name is carlos?

me: ahahahahhahhahahahah - YEAH!!

mom: hmm, but the baby doesn't even look hispanic.  it has plastic blonde hair and blue eyes.

me: BAHAHAAHAHA, i know.  so this is why he's been trying to grow a spotty, peach fuzz beard?!??

mom: apparently.  okay, i guess i just don't get it.  he said i needed to see the movie.  not happening.  i'm going to bed.

motherhood FAIL.

i'm gonna be honest with you guys today - i have nothing to make your lives more exciting or awesome today.

here's why: for starters, it's monday and the weather sucks today.  it's rainy and cloudy and dreary and the snow was too short lived last friday.  and the bigger reason: i'm a bad mom.

i thought i was being a good mommy by getting baby bailey new special dog treats.  by new special dog treats, i mean these chewy, nasty, beef sticks that are apparently the worst possible thing to give dogs.  (question: why the eff would they sell them then, you and i both ask??  answer: the same reason why they sell mcdonald's for human consumption.)  anyways, so i get bailey these chewy "treats" - which she freakin' LOVES, by the way.  i give her four, actually.  (i think one may be the limit for little dogs.)  so as she's eating her treats and wagging her little tail, i'm so stoked that she's loving these treats and i'm busy thinking i'm the best new mom ever.  now, let's fast forward to four hours after she enjoyed the "treats." she gets these weird hiccups, her ears are turned down, and she's looking up at me with the saddest little face ever.  i pet her and ask her what is wrong (as if she's going to answer).  she then proceeds to show me what is wrong by puking up chunks all over the floor.  i'll spare you all the vom details, but she basically threw up her weight in those damn treats.  and then i text my mom crying and told her i'm the worst mom ever.  she texted back this: "wait until you have a human baby and you mess up big.  but i guess you turned out okay."

{this was me.  except my baby was a boxer/boston terrier mix and the poison was bad dog treats}

stuart little's underwear

little sister [tells me goodbye and kisses me goodnight, then turns to my mom and says]: mom, i need new panties, mine are getting a little too small for me.

mom: really?  okay, santa will get you some for christmas.

little sister: MOM!!  oh my gosh, seriously?!  i have two things to say: 1. that's inappropriate and weird for santa to pick out panties for me, and 2. i need new panties NOW.  it's not a gift, it's a necessity. [she's 10 years old, by the way, people and she actually talks like this.]

me: [cracking up] little sis, why don't you just start wearing the kind of panties i wear?  i'll get you some tomorrow during my lunch break and bring them to mom's house.

little sister: umm, meredith, stuart little wears bigger underwear than you.  no, thanks.

21st century: fueling germaphobia & hypochondria

i am already a self-admitted germaphobe.  i have found there are many others like me out there.  with all the public hand sanitizers and clorox/lysol wipes supplied in grocery stores, it's no wonder why germaphobe addictions continue to be fed.

apparantly the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  so here it is, here i am taking the first step, here i am admitting i have a problem: i am a hypochondriac.

 i have reached this self-diagnosis from a myriad of experiences.  sometimes when i get a really bad headache or migraine, i'm convinced that it could only be one of three things: 1. at any moment i'm going to have a brain aneurism, 2. i have had a tumor that has been undetected for months, or 3. my brain is swelling rapidly and without quick action, i will surely die.  these headaches are typically accompanied with a quick phone call or text to my mom, and the conversations always take on the same kind of structure:

me: mom, i have a really bad headache.  i think there's something wrong with me.

mom: i agree.  there is something wrong with you.

me: no, really, i'm serious.  i think there is something physically wrong with my head.

mom: yeah, i know.  i'm serious, too.  i think there's something wrong in your head, too.


(she clearly does not understand the severity of the situation; i could die at any moment.)


when i feel even the slightest bit warm, i take my temperature.  when i have a sore throat, i inspect my tonsils with a flashlight for redness or infection.  when i have a really severe stomach ache, i make sure it's not on the side where my appendix is (because it could have ruptured, you know).

i think i've always had the tendencies necessary to become a hypochondriac, but it has most certainly been fueled thanks to web md, discovery health channel programming, and my favorite, house. 

i mean seriously, just now when i went to discovery health channel's website, the first thing that came up was this photo and caption:

what IS that skin lesion?  is it a simple spot or something DANGEROUS? and i think to myself, "well, sh*t, i don't know.  i thought it was just a paper cut, but now i can't really be certain!"

please let me know i'm not alone in my affliction.  isn't the best way to overcome a problem in a group??  okay, i'm going to drink some oj; someone in my office is coughing today and you can never have too much vitamin c to boost your immune system...

xo

-m

friday story time, vol. 1: the cockroach

there is something you should know about me: i HATE cockroaches.  i hate everything about them.  their color, their creepily long attennae, their disgusting legs, the fact that many of them can fly, and the fact that they can pretty much survive through just about anything confirms that they are the spawn of satan.  they are evil, disgusting, deplorable creatures to be feared.  you heard me, FEARED.  i don't know when, how, or why my fear of these demons got so out of control.  fear typically comes about as the result of our experiences or may often be a learned behavior.  growing up, my mom was never particularly afraid of bugs.  i mean, she didn't like them, but she knew how to use a can of raid.  perhaps it's been the culmination of my experiences with cockroaches that solidified my terror.  one particular and very recent experience comes to mind and i feel compelled to share.


remember in my october 1st post how i mentioned i'm often driving around a lot to meetings, events, etc.  well, this particular day i attended an event we were hosting about an hour outside of houston.  (you will see later why this tidbit of information about the time spent in my car is important.)  so i make it to the event, meet with the area's united states house of representatives' congressman and other local stakeholders, and stay for part of the luncheon.  i have another meeting downtown i have to make, so i quietly excuse myself.  i get on interstate-45 and begin the 32 mile drive into downtown houston.  in my passenger seat, i have my giant handbag large enough to carry the amount of rice needed to feed a small country for a week, a water bottle, and my laptop case.  (i keep my car clean* and i don't leave crap in it, albeit the two tennis rackets in the trunk.)  so i'm driving along the five-lane highway of i-45 listening to pete yorn's "crystal villages" and dodging houston traffic when all of a sudden i see a dark object slide (or crawl) across my passenger side floorboard.  my immediate reaction: "oh sh*t!  that had to have been a cockroach!"  my heart starts racing and my palms become clammy.  i turn pete yorn down (as if turning down the music will make it better), take a deep breath, briefly close my eyes (i am still driving, you know), and think through my options.  "okay, meredith, you didn't actually see what it was on the floorboard.  it could have been a penny.  pennies are brown, right?  hmm, no it was definitely bigger than a penny..."  bravely, i peer down over my passenger side floorboard... NOTHING!  i see nothing!  success!  "whew," i think, "that could have been really bad."  just when my heart beat starts to return to normal and i ease back into my driver's seat, i see it dart across the floorboard!!!  it IS a cockroach!  a giant, disgusting, creepy crawly spawn of satan!!!  i swerve into the lane to my right, barely missing an oncoming ford F-350 diesel truck.**  the guy behind me flips me off and i see him mouth a word that rhymes with "ditch."  i don't care.  i have a creature in my car from the paleozoic era and i have no idea how it got there!!  my fight or flight response kicks in: i am definitely a flight kind of person.  at this point i am halfway standing up in my driver's seat, scared to touch anything in my car.  i would have opened my car door and duck and rolled out onto the freeway if i could have ensured that i would have lived.  i saw an approaching exit, and quickly veer over three lanes of traffic.  at this point, i look around at my surroundings and realize i am in the absolute worst part of town i could have possibly been in.  i don't care.  i have to get to a gas station or something!  i have to get out of this car.  i fly into what i think is a gas station.  it has one gas pump, no real sign identifying it as a legitimate fuel station, and a taco truck.  i'm jumping out of the car as i'm putting it in park.  i'm shaking and in a cold sweat.  i look around me and realize i am surrounded by non-english speaking construction and maintenance workers eating tacos.  let's just say i stuck out like a sore thumb in my three-inch heels, black pin-striped business suit, and pearl necklace.  i call my mom because she always seems to know what to do.


me: "mom!  you're not going to believe what just happened to me!"


mom: (pause) "what?"


me: "well, i'm driving along 45 trying to make it to this meeting i have downtown when i see a massive cockroach crawl across my floorboard!  i had to get out of my car.  i almost died, but i'm at a gas station or something now.  and there's a taco truck.  the cockroach is still in my car, i'm standing outside, and about a dozen mexican men are staring at me."


mom: "meredith, get in your car now.  do you hear me?  you're going to get raped.  drive somewhere safer."


me: "MOM!!!!  i don't think you heard me: THERE.IS.A.COCKROACH.IN.MY.CAR!!!!!!  i am not going anywhere!!!!  can you come get me?"


mom: "no, i cannot come get you!  go somewhere safer!  the cockroach is not going to bother you, but those men might."


me: "no.  they are the least of my worries.  baby satan is in my car!  fine, i'll figure it out.  if i don't call back in 10 minutes, call the police."


i stomp inside to the little gas station and shout to the clerk: "there is a cucharacha in my carro!!  i need bug spray!!"  (as you can see, my spanish isn't any good.  i took french for six years.)  the poor clerk didn't understand me,  (i wonder why?) so i start running down the only two aisles in the tiny station.  aqua net hairpray!  that oughta do the trick!  i pay five bucks for the 25 cent hairspray and run back out to my car.  taking a deep breath, i fling open all my doors, and holding the aqua net like a .45 pistol, i shout, "alright!  where are you, you little satan creature?!?!"  nothing.  there's nothing there.  great.  i'm just going to have to sit and wade this thing out.  i sit on the curb and start to cry.  (yes, i'm feeling sorry for myself.)  i'm in a nice suit, a great pair of heels, my hair actually looked semi-decent that morning, and i'm sitting there crying and sweating in the 90 degree sweltering heat and humidity.  all of a sudden, i see it!  it crawls right out, onto the pavement, and flies off!!!!!  it was gone!!!  wasting no time, i slam all my doors shut, and get back into my car... 


victory washed over me, and it felt good.  i had slayed the dragon that day.  i had an encounter with the devil, and i won.  good always prevails over evil.

xo
-m
 *you'll find i keep most things clean.  germs, messes, and disorder give me panic attacks.
**yes, it's true - everything is bigger in texas.  that goes for trucks, too.  especially trucks.