I'm not a big fan of clothes. I mostly wear them to please other people or to stay warm. When I get home, I always have more clothes on than I am comfortable with. A lot of times, I immediately take shit off and then go about my post-school/work activities. The main thing that coerces me into keeping my clothes on is the disappointing lack of heat in my house. Even then, I still disrobe and just put on a pair of pajama pants and a hoodie. More than 2 articles of clothing total is overrated. Panties especially are overrated.

I always wish I had more awesome scars. Let's see...

Well I guess my most notable scar is one that is now hard to see. I have a small scar on the inside corner of my left eyebrow. I was around 7 years old and it was the 5th of July. I was playing with those poppers that you throw on the ground to make sparks while some older kids in my neighborhood raced bottle rockets down the street. They would lay the rockets down flat on the road, light them, and race them along the road. Well, one of my neighbors lit a rocket but kicked it accidentally as they ran back. Before I could really do anything, the rocket took off and hit me directly above my eye. I was a wreck. I remember this being my first scary experience ever, so I asked my mom if I was going to die. When she said no, I believed her and was so much better. I got stitches and the doctor told me that if it had hit me just a centimeter lower, I'd be blind. He also said that he couldn't get all the gunpowder out, so I shouldn't light any matches near my face. Looking back on it now, I think he was joking.

My most bad-ass looking scar is actually has the dumbest story. I have a long, gnarly, raised scar on my elbow. When I was little, my bike was too tall for me. I was straddling my bike, and leaning from side to side, touching one foot to the ground and then the other. And I fell on my side and hit my elbow. Should have gotten stitches. Now I just have a gnarly elbow and a stupid story. I should have said I was going 95 mph on my bike or jumping cars or something. But no. I was just standing there.

For years I had a ton of small white scars all over my legs from several serious cases of poison ivy. I'm incredibly allergic. Some people can catch it just by looking at it--I can catch it just by being downwind of it. The treatment for my worst cases involved steroids and bleach. Ugh. Luckily I've been poison-ivy free for a handful of years and my scars have faded away.

I just found out this week that I have either cysts or tumors forming on my jaw, in the chin area...so I'm guessing that sometime soon I'll have an interesting scar to add to my collection. Not sure how I feel about that.

"What's your regimen?"
I'll refrain from detailing my regimen, but let's just say it involves lots of squat thrusts, lunges, stretching, and bending...requires many reps, and gets me all hot and sweaty.

"Are you a regular?"
It's something I could always do more of.

FIRST OF ALL: PLEASE!!!!!
DO NOT WIKIPEDIA THIS BOOK OR RESEARCH IT IN ANY WAY!

I'm very passionate about that. This book loses it's magic if you don't allow yourself to get lost in it. So, please, don't try to read about it--don't even read the back cover! Just pick it up, start on page one, and get lost in it.

All I can tell you, some of which you will probably get from the cover:

It is the story of a boy in middle school and the people he interacts with. The boy has an intriguing eyesight disorder, he plays soccer, it takes place in Florida and does involve tangerines in a big (interesting) way. It involves freak accidents (and intentional horrors) that almost seem supernatural but at the same time so logical. It involves violence, crime, and death; beauty, knowledge, and virtue.

For a book written for middle-schoolers, it's phenomenal. It was the most moving book I had ever read at age 13, and I promise it still ranks in my top 5 ever. It was the first book (one of few ever) to make me cry.

I'm sure if I re-read it now, the vocabulary would be below me, but the feelings would still be there (except for the fact that I now know all the secrets).

Speaking of vocabulary...
I have this strange talent (disorder?) where I remember where/when/how I learn words for the first time. ALCOVE. I had never heard the word 'alcove' before reading this, and now I will never forget it. Does it play an important role in this book? NOT AT ALL. Not in the slightest. It probably only appears once, but hey, that was enough to learn it and yeah... enough.

I did learn one other word in this book but it is important, and I can't tell you. It will ruin some of the magic.

PLEASE...read it. Don't try to find anything more out. Just Read It.

Somehow, through a chain of events I don't quite recall, I got a paper route when I was in sixth grade. Every Wednesday at 5:30am, I got 250 papers delivered on my doorstep in five bundles of fifty. Those were pretty heavy. I would lug the bundles in, cut the binding, and start folding them into plastic bags.

Actually, before that I would take the first paper off the stack and count how many ads were in the middle (not like printed box ads in the paper, but stuff like the grocery store pages and full-page car dealership ads that were printed on their own paper and just placed in the center of the paper). That is how I would determine how much money I was making. I made 6 cents per paper, plus half a cent for every additional page of ads. My average rate per paper was 7 1/2 cents.

When I finished putting the papers in plastic bags and those bags into canvas paper-carrier bags, it was time to wash up and get ready for school. By that time, my hands would be entirely black from handling warm straight-off-the-press papers. Often, I would also have streaks of black on my face from where I had tried to scratch an itch or swipe hair out of my way.

When I got home from school at 3pm, I would grab one of the canvas bags with about a third of the papers in it. I would deliver those by foot on a route near my home, then come back for another third. This next route would take me a little farther from home. The last route took me even farther. It was pretty inefficient, having to walk home 3 times when my house was at the southernmost point of my overall route--but the papers were HEAVY and at this time I still weighed 85-95 pounds. For 250 houses...my route was pretty long. However, I couldn't drive, and riding a bike with a hundred papers is harder than it looks. So I walked it and hauled ass because the papers were guaranteed delivered by 6pm.

After only a few months, I gave up on this job. It was just too much work for a skinnyass 12 year old girl, especially when it started to get cold. And for those of you who hadn't stopped reading to do the math, I made about $18.75 for 4 1/2 hours of work. Just over $4/hour. Thinking back on it all...this was probably in violation of a couple of laws.

Who would've thought that I would still go into newspaper?

Paper Planes by M.I.A.

Okay, I can't really see the album art because it is really small right now, but I don't think that it is the right one. Whatever. Plinky needs to work on that. Anyway, I really wanted to hate Paper Planes when it came out and started being overplayed, but oh my god...it's just so damn addictive!

There is only one flavor on earth that can compete with the magical taste of Fried. That is Burnt. I love me some burnt food. Not blackened through, but definitely cooked more than it should be. What do I like burnt? Almost everything that is supposed to be cooked. (So no, I do not like burnt salad). I do, however, love burnt pizza, burnt eggs, burnt meat, burnt Fried (not to be confused with burnt fries, which are also yummy), burnt cookies, burnt bread, burnt potatoes, burnt burritos, burnt corn on the cob....
The list goes on and on.

Why burnt? Well, I can date my affinity for burnt back to two early childhood experiences. The first was this terrifying experience at a very early toddling age. I had been eating a sandwich and a large peace of bread got suctioned to the roof of my mouth. I could not get it off, I thought I was going to choke, and I just bawled and bawled and bawled and my parents had no idea what was wrong with me for the longest time. Ever since then I have HATED soft bread with a passion. I toast all of my bread extra well. Olive oil? With crispy baguette. Sub sandwiches? Toasted (double-toasted if from Subway). PB and J sandwiches? On toast.

The second experience was not an event, but more of a regular part of my youth. My dad would burn everything. Granted, he never burnt anything badly...but most things he cooked were a little more well done than the dish probably should be. But I was a daddy's girl. I can remember nights at dinner when my mom would say something about my dad burning the bottoms of the dinner rolls and I would jump to his defense and vow that I liked them better that way. The same goes for steaks. Whenever my mom or sister would criticize my dad for burning something, he would always jokingly defend his food by saying "It's not burnt! It's GOLDEN brown!" :-D I love him.

The Jolly Green Giant
Who better to represent Agriculture?

Colonel Sanders
If he can keep the original recipe secret, he can handle Homeland Security.

Rich Uncle Pennybags
Mr. Monopoly himself should chair Treasury.

Ms. Frizzle
Best representative of Education ever!

Energizer Bunny
Of course he's a logical choice for Energy.

The Welch's Grape Juice Girl
Perfect for Health and Human Services.

Smokey the Bear
He'll keep forest fires from destroying our Interior.

The Third LIttle Pig
The only one with enough sense to build a brick house should do fine as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Rosie the Riveter
Ideal poster chick for Labor.

Optimus Prime
He's got my nomination for Transportation.

Leiutenant Dan
You don't need legs to sit in the chair of Veterans' Affairs

Billie Hayes
He'd make some OxyClean magic happen in the Commerce chair!

Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold would make the perfect Attorney General/Secretary of Justice... Kindergarten Cop meet Terminator.

Carmen Sandiego
The Secretary of State must be well-traveled.

Bed
... 'nuff said.

It's one of the funniest and most disturbing movies that no one's ever heard of.

Alright, so I like cookies...a lot. And I'm pretty hyper and can be kinda gross. And unfortunately I can sometimes be a little quick to jump.

You say "Ok, what we're goin' for is a vicious, man-eating, rabid squirrel"
and I immediately insert "Rabbits aren't vicious. They're all cute and cuddly, so... "

And you really just have to shut me up and redirect.