Sculpture 101

Hey everybody! Sorry about last week. My Internet was out at home and I wasn't about to write a 1,000 word document on my smart phone-are you impressed I have a smart phone? Good me too. I have enough problems with typos as it is. I did however end up going to the DMV instead of posting--I know exciting!--and was planning on telling you all about that glorious experience, but instead, I'm saving that for next week, and would like to share with you a story from my college years, mainly because I was thinking about it the other day, and realized that it is a story that needs to be shared.

Ok so I was in liberal arts college back in the day. And if you know anything about the advisers in any liberal arts college, you know that they are generally a bunch of free thinking aholes that encourage you to take classes that "you like" or that "sounds fun" without ever explaining that there are things in college called requirements that you must meet in order to graduate in 4 years. So. As a sophomore, baby Maria ends up taking 4 different Art classes for no reason, that don't end up meeting any of her major requirements. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed these classes very much. But the fact that I wasn't planning on majoring in Art because I don't like living in a studio apartment and not bathing for weeks on end should have been brought to my attention before I wasted my precious Pell Grant on Sculpture 101. But so it goes.

Here we are in Sculpture 101. And I am confronted with the largest accumulation of Art People I have ever seen in one room at a time in my entire life. Art People are an interesting breed. Something you should know right off the bat is that they are exceptionally cooler than you. Its just a fact. Accept it and move on. Snuh. So here I am in this room filled with people that are cooler than me. And all I'm thinking is sweet, I get to play with clay for the next 3 hours.

I'm looking around at the Art People trying not to be intimidated, and notice that there is this little blond haired girl with a felt bag hanging by a string around her neck. Nothing that weird there. We are in an Art Class. I'm sure that's just where her soul resides when its not out being her Muse or whatever, I says to myself. But then I notice that the bag....is....moving. And she keeps making a point to touch the bag and move the bag, and makes sure that the other Art People are noticing her touch the bag and move the bag. Side Note**I'm a big eye watcher. Chances are if we meet, I'm going to watch where your eyes go, so that I can document the exact moment that you glance around for other peoples approval. Its just a thing I do that makes me feel better than you. Just let me have this please. Thank you**

 So this bag shifting and eye glancing continues as the Professor is talking and explaining how the year is going to go. About 30 minutes in, and blond chicky slowly reaches up to the felt bag, pulls the draw string and takes something out. Its in her hand and I cant see it very well. I just assume its a toy or her phone or something not alive. I am mistaken. She is holding in her hand, in the middle of Art class, a  fucking live creature. At first it looks like a hamster, but then after my initial shock wears off I realize that it is in fact, a baby flying squirrel. I shit you not. For those not aware, flying squirrels are much smaller than normal squirrels, which would explain how this one fit into a tiny felt bag on a string. This is what a flying squirrel look like: http://www.jandaexotics.com/images/Flying_squirrel.jpg

Now. I love small animals. I think we established that in my Small Pets post. I think they are cute and fun and interesting, even if I'm not very good at keeping them alive. But. To bring an animal into a college level class, and then to take it out, unprovoked while the professor is making his opening remarks? What the hell?

At this point I'm alternating between these 3 emotions: Jealousy--how the fuck did she get a flying squirrel, I want a flying squirrel, Curiosity--I wonder if she will let me hold it, god damn it I really want to hold that thing, and Annoyance--what the hell is wrong with you? You are holding a flying squirrel in the middle of a college class during a lecture by the professor and are in the center of a circle, and thus visible by everyone. Please fall off a cliff and don't survive.

At this point people are flat out staring, some of the more outspoken APs are making comments out loud about this spectacle, and the professor is trying very hard to ignore the fact that he is now competing for the Class' attention against something with a heart the size of a pea. Crazytown is fucking loving this. Shes eating it up. Shes got a hint of a smirk on her face and is staring directly at the professor with huge eyes like this is a completely normal thing that she is doing and that she is paying close attention to every word coming out of the professors mouth.

But Wait. It gets better.


Craytown realizes that the initial shock is wearing off. Shes losing the crowd, and she cant have that. Crowd loss at this point will result in an hour and a half of cutting in the bathroom when she gets home, so instead, she gently sets tiny baby flying squirrel #1 on her shoulder, and proceeds to reach in the felt bag and pull out tiny baby flying squirrel #2, AND tiny flying squirrel mama.



I'm about ready to spontaneously combust. What the Fuck is going on? Why isn't anyone acknowledging how messed up this is? Why isn't the professor telling her to put her live animal friends back in the felt bag from whence they came? My OCD and anxiety are on overdrive and internally I'm having 15 strokes.
 

 I'd like to tell you that the professor put a stop to this insanity and made Crazytown feels stupid about her child-ish need for attention. I'd like to tell you that Crazytown was embarrassed and that for the rest of the semester she was normal and didn't resort to extreme measures to get what she craved. I also really wish I could tell you I went up to her after class to say something kind in the hopes of easing her embarrassment and thus was allowed to hold tiny baby flying squirrel #2. I wish I could tell you these things. But I can't. Crazytown continued to bring the squirrels to class until the Professor, after 3 weeks of this nonsense, finally asked her in a far too nice tone to "please stop taking the animals out in class" to which Crazytown simply shrugged and roller her eyes like he asked her to stop chewing her gum so loud.


The morale of the story is as follows: If you own a baby flying squirrel(s) that you carry around in a bag on your neck, for the love of Christy Brinkley, don't be a douche: let me hold one.

Valentine's Day 101: Hi my Name's Maria and Im Romantically Inept. "Hi Maria"

Good Morning everybody. I hope this Friday finds you in good health and spirits. I'm in decent health and moderate spirits from eating Totinos Party Pizzas every night for the past week since its -27 here, and going to the grocery store to buy real food is not only laughable, but semi-dangerous as well. I'm sure my body has absorbed enough preservatives in the last 7 days to preserve me for decades after I pass from this life.

Being that Valentine's weekend is fast approaching, I figured we could talk about Love and Romance....and more specifically what it's like being a cynical piece of garbage like myself and still trying to incorporate these two things successfully into a relationship. I can start out by telling you, it's not easy. Especially if you are a chick. I'm supposed to be the one that has a shoebox full of old napkins and locks of hair and mixed tapes that memorialize specific romantic moments in my current relationship.

Well, here's the thing: I don't.

To be honest, I don't even know where the small collection of birthday/v-day/anniversary cards my husband has given me since we started dating went to. Which is sad because I had a few from when he still liked me, and there were some pretty nice things in those cards that I doubt I will ever see written on paper and given to me again. So it goes.

I'm also pretty shy about publicly announcing my affections for anyone, really. I think I have maybe had 3 things on FB through my entire FB career in regards to my husband that weren't either making fun of him or referencing him through a youtube link to a guy getting kicked in the balls. Why? Because it makes me feel all squirmy inside. I get weirded out with the thought of presenting my love to the world on a silver platter. Plus, I have an internal image I'm trying to uphold, and that person is cool as hell and doesn't have time for petty things like feelings, bah.

But sometimes, I start to feel bad about my inability to express my affections for the people I love. And there is no other day in the entire year that makes me feel more romantically inept than Valentine's Day. It really is a double edged sword since not only do I need to fake being romantically gifted on the giving end of things, I also need to fake enthusiasm for receiving whatever comes my way in the form of home made dinners, flowers by the dozen, teddy bears holding hearts, and boxes of chocolate that I don't even like.

Now I know most of you other cynical bastards simply refuse to celebrate Valentines Day and don't buy in to the holiday that is about forced consumerism. And on the one hand, yes, I agree. But on the other hand, I think--especially if you are cynical--that it becomes really easy to take the people in your life for granted, and Valentines Day is always my wake up call to try a little harder to show the people I love that I do. You cant always just assume people know, and Feb 14th is my yearly reminder to get over myself and get my act together.

So today's posting is in honor of everyone out there that has a hard time showing people how they feel, like I do. I have found there are simple ways to make the uncomfortable process of showing emotions, easier. In the next few days, take time out to do a nice thing for someone you care about. Give them a card that tells them what your relationship with them means to you, but for the love of god leave the room when they are reading it, and if they start reading it out loud, you can legally punch them in the face. Or take someone out to get their favorite food--it doesn't have to be fancy and expensive, just something you know they really like. Or sure, go ahead, even buy someone valentines flowers, but to make it less embarrassing, the card should read something like "I bought you these because your farts are making the house smell really bad, and I was hoping this bouquet would help"

Being romantically ungifted doesn't have to be your disability anymore. You can do this. I for one am planning on buying my husband a 12 packet of Reese's hearts, and making homemade tacos--why you can eat like 15 of these without getting full is a scientific mystery-- for our valentines evening, and I'm sure it will end up splendidly.

So Happy Valentines Day. I love you. There I said it. But don't get used to this or anything.
~Maria

My Littlest Pet Shop......of Neglect

Goooood Morning you! I have some Shout Outs to start with today.

Special thanks to the following people who submitted ideas on how to build that magic rainbow cake I showed you a picture of a few weeks ago: Rude Barb, Steph A, Rachel B, and Molly M. I am grateful that you cared enough to toy with the notion that I was actually ambitious enough to build a cake that requires separating out dough into 27 different bowls. Thanks for believing in me.

And now some Worldwide Shouts: Apparently visits to this site have increased dramatically over the past few weeks. You crazy Canadians upped your readers from 14 to 50. UK, same thing there, 60 of you wanky bastards stopped by last week. And waaay down in Australia the one reader that I was pretty sure was just a narcolepsy-ridden koala bear that happened to fall out of his tree onto a laptop consistently every Friday, must actually be a person, with friends, because there were 16 of you here last week. And back in the USSA, there were like 500+. Now I know that these views could realistically be from only a handful of people, but either way, it made me pumped to see, so thank you very much. Continue to pimp out my site, and I'll continue to give you 80% of the non-existent profit I make from doing this every week.....as long as you promise to stop burning me with your cigarette lighter.

On to the show. Alright so throughout my life, I have always loved animals. Like every child in 1st grade, I wanted to be a veterinarian, but once I figured out that Intro to Logic wasn't going to cut it for my math requirements for vet school, the dream died, and I let that ship sail. But that never stopped me from being able to purchase animals. On the whole, I'm very good with large animals. Dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cows. I can handle those, their needs are more easily identifiable, and not meeting them can result in some obvious signs of distress. But small animals, ehhh not so much.

I have had a series of unfortunate small animal disasters in my time, spanning the decades. But I believe it all started in 3rd grade, when I was given a Beta fish as a gift. If you know anything about the world at all, you of course know that a Beta fish can literally live its entire life in a puddle, successfully. They are like the most resilient bastards in the entire fish world. I had a friend in college that stopped feeding his and stopped cleaning its tiny tank, and the thing lived for like 3 years eating its own shit. I mean, they are nuts. So you'd think even a small child would be able to care for one, given the proper tools.

This is what my Beta fish looked like after 3 hours in my house:

I don't really even need to tell you that he was dead before the next morning. But I will: he was dead before the next morning. I think it had something to do with the water temperature, or my childhood home being close to power lines, but either way, it was still the first sign that I should probably not be responsible for the lives of very small creatures.

Fast forward to college. I'm sharing an apartment with 2 other people, and after a impromptu visit to the Humane Society, I come home with 2 baby parakeets. Frank and Norman. Did I think about how my roommates might feel about this? Absolutely not. This is what baby parakeets look like:

Only after getting these little guys home did I think to go online and read about socializing parakeets. I honestly assumed that since they were babies, they would trust me and love me and sit on my shoulders and sing along with the radio and it would be so cool to have them around as pets. The first sentence of the first article I found on google stated the following about raising parakeets: "To correctly socialize a baby parakeet, owners must spend an average of 8-12 hours a day handling and training their new friends to ensure complete bonding can occur and formation of trust develops." 8-12 hours.What the fuck. 8-12 days later, and I've resorted to setting their cage outside on the front step with their door open in an attempt to get them to fucking fly away into the sunset or with the hope that some drunk college student will steal them. No such luck on either counts. So I was forced to return them to the Humane Society, who at this point should have probably put up a flier with my picture on it letting their employees know not to sell me anything with a heart smaller than a golf ball.

Fast forward again, 2 years later, I graduated from college and moved back home since the 1986 Chevy Nova I had been driving for the past 5 years finally died and I needed to save up to buy a new car. Again, I take an impromptu trip to the Human Society. And again I come home with 2 new little friends. This round, 2 baby mice. Stumpy and Squinty. Stumpy for the missing tail that his birth mother had eaten off at the time of his delivery, and Squinty for the fact that he seemed to be missing an eye. What can I say, I have a weak spot for creatures that justify the existence of natural selection.

My mother was horrified that I had 1) paid for mice and 2) brought them into her home. I told her it would be fine, I knew what I was doing, and that they would stay in my room. As the days went by, I noticed that Stumpy and Squinty didn't seem to be getting along very well. Squinty had taken to attacking Stumpy in the middle of the night so I would awake to the sound of tiny mouse screams. After again doing research after the fact, I learned that you are never supposed to have 2 male mice in the same cage, so the brain dead HS employee who insisted that they would be just find together is really responsible for what happened next.

I let them go in the woods.

At different tree stumps mind you, with little piles of food. I said good bye, and apologized for being such a shitty caretaker. I especially felt bad for Stumpy, who was probably not going to survive the week since he had been sustaining nightly curbstompings from Squinty for the last month. I would be lying if I told you I didn't cry a little. I think it was a combination of genuinely feeling bad that my actions and carelessness could cause the death of something so tiny, and the realization of the fact that I really am terrible at caring for animals smaller than a basketball.

Since this last episode, I have successfully raised a 90 lb Chesapeake Bay Retriever puppy from 6 weeks to his current 3 years. And aside from his ridiculously good looks and occasional rough housing, he is a good dog. And seems pretty happy to be living in the Q household.

Last night my husband told me his boss just bought seahorses and that the male is pregnant. I wish you could have seen the way my eyes lit up like a Christmas tree upon hearing that.
OHMYGODYOUCANHAVESEAHORSESASPETS.

I'm not going to let my jaded history hold me back on this one. Mark my words: I'm getting seahorses. And I'm going to learn what do to so that they don't die within 48 hours of purchasing them. And they are going to be fucking kick ass and they are going to have little tiny sea horse parties and balls and will go floating about drinking tiny martinis and wearing tiny necklaces made of seashells.

Have a super weekend.

~Maria