He Who Climbs the Fence

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, its… wait it’s not superman… I thought he was the only one capable of leaping tall structures in a single bound, but I was wrong. I have two wonderful dogs, a black lab named Jet, and a chocolate lab named Tonka. Jet is three years old and has been a resident of our household since he was eight weeks old. He is a field dog, which pretty much means he can never run out of energy… EVER. He would make the energizer bunny break down in tears! Anyway aside from being full of energy he is a total sweetheart. I mean he has his flaws… but who doesn't. Anyway he can’t stay in our house by himself, so he is banished to the backyard when we go into town. Poor Nanna! (wait… put down the phone. Don’t call the animal cops on me. I put water out for him and he gets fed twice a day, I promise! Plus you have to admit most dogs in the car at the store look really miserable, so really I'm doing him a favor.) Anyway we have a fenced portion of our yard where he and Tonka stay while we are away. This proved to be too short to keep the rascal in, so I added higher fencing to the previous structure. Overall the fence is over 5 feet tall, which seems taller than necessary… or so I thought. Apparently our dog was misnamed, we should have named him Superdog!!! Because he really is able to leap tall structures in a single bound. Actually Spiderdog might have been more appropriate, or Superspiderdog, because he jumps up and then climbs over the top portion of the fence. He can even climb out of his kennel if we leave the dog house in it. I love him to pieces, but he drives me crazy with his Houdini like impersonations. That’s it… we should have named him Houdini, the dog who can escape unlikely locations. Anyway if we don’t put him in the kennel before we leave he will be waiting for us in the front yard upon on arrival. If we didn’t live by a roaring highway I might be less inclined to be upset every time I see him out there. For now he has to go in the kennel whenever we leave, which makes him unhappy, but it is better than having him running wild. And this has been my amazing adventure with a dog who thinks he is Houdini.

Remiss

Sorry I have been neglecting my duties of entertaining all of you. Thankfully this means I only have to apologize to a few people since there are not many viewing my blog. For those of you who have been waiting for an update… prepare yourselves. I have started on a few posts that I never actually posted, so I will post them all now as a peace offering. Enjoy the new stories and I will try to update this more often! For now enjoy reading my latest Amazing Adventures! 

Who Wants a Clean House?

ME ME ME ME ME!!!! I want a clean house Niecy! I don’t live in the Los Angeles area, but boy oh boy I want a sparklingly organized house! The kind of house you walk in and are almost blinded by the twinkling of the cleanliness! I would love a house that is so organized that a complete stranger could walk in and find everything I had written down on a list. This would make me super happy! I mean our house is nice, really nice and believe me my mom works hard cleaning up after all of the tornadoes that constantly run through our house. With all the people living in our house, plus all of our guests our house can go from clean to… let’s say not so clean in a matter of moments. Well, it’s more like a couple of days, but it feels like only a brief moment.

Anyway, my mom and I have started in on our journey through a somewhat clutter home in search of a happy organized home, a stress free oasis, a relaxing getaway, a peaceful place to spend quality time with the family. In the episodes of Leave it to Beaver the family was always able to spend some quality time together in their lovely home without searching for backpacks, homework, car keys, dish towels, or fingernail clippers. I am not saying that my mother or anyone for that matter needs to be a slave to our house. I just want to organize it in a manner that will inspire others to keep their things pick up. There are signs in Idaho that say, “Idaho, too pretty to litter”. I would like people to feel that way about our home. Instead of throwing the dirty clothes on the floor I would love for them to take a look at their room and think, wow it’s too nice in here to just throw junk on the floor. Or be in the rec room and think it’s way too nice in here to leave candy wrappers on the piano. So here we go… off on another adventure! I’ll let you know how it goes. Grab a garbage bag and a giveaway box and join me on my next adventure. And this will be my amazing adventure for a clean and organized house!

Psychology of a Library

Taking courses at a community college can be quite the experience. One of the best things is that the students are incredibly diverse. I have taken classes at a community college as a junior in High School and sat next to a 57 year old in my pre-calc class. Needless to say Skagit Valley College encompasses many different nationalities, age groups, political parties, religions, and its fair share of loonies! This spring quarter I have spent many (almost every) weekday afternoons in the library working away on homework and other endeavors, so I had my fair share of run-ins with many different students. I had been harassed for my vote by every student body representative running for office, mistaken for a student from a lab group, asked for assistance watering the plants, and my favorite sought after for psychiatric help. Apparently taking one quarter of Psychology 101 makes you a psychologist! I wish I would have known that before I wasted all my time on other classes. If I would have known a five credit class could guarantee me a full time occupation, I might have taken it early in my schooling.

Anyway one day I was headed out of the library and I was spotted carrying my psychology book by one of the previously mentioned loonies. This woman, who I’m guessing is around 35 years old walked over looked at my book and asked me, “Are you in a psychology class?” I thought she might be curious about if I liked the teacher I had, how hard the course-work is, and do I plan on further perusing a job in the field of psychology; so I answered yes. A word to the wise, never say you are taking psychology to a 25 year old woman with a scrunchie on top of her head wearing any type of cartoon character shirt! It is a bad idea! Pretend you can’t speak English, run away, hit them in the head with your text book, and do whatever it takes to GET AWAY!!! Make your escape, you’ll thank me later!

So I said yes and that apparently was the signal that I was open for business. Strange, I thought being a psychiatrist would look a little differently… you know a big office full of leather furniture and a chase for the patient to lay down on… or at least like Lucy’s stand in A Charlie Brown Christmas!

 But here I was with a psychology book which must mean trustworthy advice for life altering decisions could be received from me. She then went on to tell me some strange story about her life that resembled what I imagine a days of our lives episode. After about 5 minutes of her going on about how her boyfriend wasn’t really there for her and he isn’t emotionally supportive and all of her self-diagnosed disorders, I was about ready to fling myself off a building. I told her I was sorry about her relationship problems and I hope she is able to work through them and started walking out from the lobby area. Then she followed me. I was slightly disturbed that she was following me and I was afraid if I went to my car she would get in and try to come home with me. She asked me about one of her self-diagnosed problems and I could only bite my tongue. It was so ironic because earlier that day in my psychology class we had talked about psychological disorders and the misdiagnosis that people give themselves when the self-diagnosed. It was too funny. I finally escaped from the crazy and ran to my car.

That was my adventure with a crazy person in the library! 

Once Upon a Flight to Idaho

If you have ever gone on a relatively short distance flight you are probably familiar with the comforts of a bombardier Q400.

 

As you can see pretty small, some might even say tiny! Some of you may be thinking that is 500 times bigger than the plane you had to take from Anchorage to Valdez or wherever you have had to take a little Cessna, but I believe these planes might have even less room for your person! You crawl in the door on your hands and knees, or at best look like one of the ape/men on those ridiculous evolutionary timelines, with your lip stuck out and your knuckles dragging the ground. You think to yourself, “oh no! I’m on the wrong plane. I’m not taking a nonstop flight to Munchkin land.” Possibly in a panic you may turn around to make your escape, but the other giants have filled the plane and there is no way out. In a desperate attempt to keep your cool you make your way to your seat as quickly as you can.

 I felt absolutely ridiculous hunched over like a cavewoman with my neck craned around making me look even more odd. I found my seat without any difficulty other than a crick in my neck. Since I was flying         S-O-L-O I did not have the joy of sharing the impossibly small area that is your seat with someone that I knew. No, instead I got some jackwagon who was about as friendly as a rabid Cascadian dog. (If you are wondering what that is, it is a wild dog that lives in Cascade, Idaho. They were originally used as guard dogs for people living there, but made the owners so nervous that they let them run free. Unfortunately these wild dogs formed a pack and made new wild dogs that roam the streets trying to lure you in close enough to bite a chunk of flesh from your person.) Anyway you get the picture; this guy was not very nice. Now maybe he was having a bad day, maybe he was really tired, maybe he was also less than enthused about the small space we would be stuck in for the next hour and a half, or maybe he was just rude. Who knows? We didn’t exchange much conversation. What little we had went like this.

Me trying to be as sweet as possible: Hi. How are you today?

Mr. Odious: uarah (he mostly spoke in grunts). Fine.

Me: I’m glad to hear it.

Mr. Odious: uarah… yeah.

I figured that those few grunts meant either 1) he had little knowledge of the English language or 2) he really had no intention of chatting it up on our flight. No worries, I had a book and my iPod more than enough entertainment for the next few hours.

Our tiny little plane began its very long path down the runway; though I am pretty sure for a while we were just riding around in circles. The ascent in most planes is a little on the rougher side of life, but to get up to those speeds and off the ground it seems reasonable. Unfortunately for my flight the take off was one of the smoothest parts of the flight. We jostled around uncontrollably for about thirty minutes until they “steadied” the plane long enough to turn the seatbelt light off.

You would have thought that little light was a starting gun at the races. 15 of the 60 or so people that fit on the plane shot out of their seats like the plane was on fire. I had my headphones on at the time and thought I had missed an important announcement. Something like “attention, this is your pilot speaking, the engines have simultaneously exploded, the wings snapped off, we are leaking fuel, and the windshield wipers have quit working. We are advising everyone to run down the aisle and jump out of any available exists. You will most likely die, but it is better than exploding in a ball of flaming plane. As always thank you for flying Horizon Air.” I ripped my headphones out in a panic when I saw the masses leap from their seats to find out what I had missed. Then one of the flight attendants said “we will be bringing the drink cart and complimentary snacks now. The drinks are…” I was glad we were not exiting the plane midflight, but I was still concerned about the people who seemed to be confused about our arrival time. Then I realized that this mob had formed to use the one and only lavatory on our plane.

I have never been inside an airplane bathroom before, but judging by the way the people entered and exited I can only imagine that it is very small. The people were already hunched over in the aisle with their hair grazing the ceiling. But to get into the bathroom was apparently a contortionist act. People were undoing their pants before they backed into the “bathroom”. When they came out they looked like a human pretzel and had to unfold before they could make it back to their seats. Despite seeing this act, waiting behind ten or so people, and the fact that the flight only lasted about 45 minutes more I was astonished that people couldn’t figure out a way to hold it. But for the entire time the seatbelt light was off there were a line of people going to the bathroom, I swear some of them must have gone in there more than once.

I decided to ignore the maniacs at the front of the plane and go back to my movie, Freaky Friday the original version. The attendants worked their way from the front of the aisle back towards my seat. When they got there I decided to pass on any liquids, just in case that Dixie cup of liquid lead to me using the bathroom on the plane. However, Mr. Odious decided that he would have some refreshing beer, which he hot-breathed in my direction the remainder of the flight, oh the joys of small confinement with no means of escape. About one minute after the drinks had been distributed the smooth part of the flight was over.

We shook around the plane and the seatbelt light was turned back on. The rest of the flight was like some sort of roller coaster ride. We would climb up bumping about on the way up only to drop suddenly and leave the pit of your stomach feeling all weird. A man up the aisle from me was apparently trying to steady the plane by force, and when he found he couldn’t he decided to take it out on his seat, which he almost completely removed from the floor. We continued this cycle for the next 40 minutes or so until we reached Boise. When we landed I thought my worries were over, but I was wrong. The same starter gun is used to release the people from the plane when you land. Everyone flings themselves into the aisle and pushes toward the unopened door making for a nightmarish setting for any partial claustrophobic. Regardless of the mob scene in the isle the man next to me decided that we would join the madness, which he symbolized by standing up. I wonder what he would have done if I had just sat there, keeping him from the aisle. But instead I got up, grabbed my purse and stood there waiting to get off the plane. It was obvious that there was not enough room to even add another person much less any baggage, but that didn’t stop him. Oh no! He leapt into the aisle and began opening the overhead compartment, which I was standing directly under. I thought about giving him a good jab to his unprotected ribs, but decided that would not get me off this plane any faster. I finally made it off the plane and realized how nice it is to stand straight. And that was my Amazing Adventure on a flight to Idaho.