The Clanking Of Crystal, Explosions Off In The Distance

2011 - another day, another dollar, right?

So many things happened during the year. Some good, some bad. Our first family trip to Disneyland, our first broken kid bone, a shit ton of glorious car troubles (GO TEAM HONDA!), a new home. For all the good moves I made there were plenty of mistakes too. Such is life, right?




I’d make some resolutions, but hey, who wants to put stuff in black and white that they possibly won’t have time to get around to? Not I. And like the overplayed hipster NYE anthem I used as my blog title (Death Cab) says, resolutions are just: for self assigned penance & problems with easy solutions. Yes, I need to focus on being more fit/healthy with my food choices. That is something I want. I need to not always say yes to every single favor asked of me because it makes me exhausted and grumpy. I could be more grateful for what I have in love and life. When one sits around and nitpicks the things that could be done better in this life there are plenty of improvement opportunities. However, the things that are good in my world far outnumber the struggles. I can't complain!



Things may not be perfect, but tonight I am going to be serving root beer floats to two of my most favorite people on the planet. And I wouldn’t change that for the world.



PS- Also in 2011 I did drink my first beer ever. Yes I am a sissy girl and I just don't like beer. It's icky. However, my cute pal Meggi did convince me to try a Lunch Box (a beer with orange juice & a shot of amaretto) and it wasn't too bad after all! Of course, I still haven't had another beer, but hey it could happen if someone doctored one up again for me.

Gaily They Ring While People Sing

'Carol Of The Bells' or 'The-Most-Scary-As-Shit-Christmas-Song-Of-All-Time'? You decide.



*flashback fades in*

January 1986. West Jordan, Utah. Terra Linda Elementary School. I am 6-years-old. I have on a rad purple striped shirt with coordinating beads. Pretty much the epitome of cool. And, today, we are going to watch the Space Ship take off! That sure as hell sounds better than lame ass math, yep. Woot!

So we all pile into the gathering area, AKA us plopping on the floor in front of a TV on a cart. It's on a news channel so obviously as a pile of kids, we're completely engaged in watching the TV. My floor-neighbor, whose last name was Davenport, was poking me in the back about every 3 to 4 seconds. He was a fella with blue eyes that I was certain I would marry (and my mother wrote something in his Valentine from me that year that I still to this day have no idea what it said, and of course now she cannot remember). Of course, I just looked him up on Facebook and if it is the dude who first came up, well I think I dodged a bit of a bullet not marrying him after all. Alas, everything happens for a reason I suppose.

Anyway, so we are sitting there watching a bunch of boring stuff waiting for THE SPACESHIP!!!! to take off. There is a teacher on board, a lady teacher. So this is cool to us, sort of, as we wait. Finally, there is a countdown and this shit happens...



Obviously, none of us really get it. "Is there a fire on the spaceship, teacher?" which was answered with "I don't know sweetie, let's watch Old Yeller instead, OK?" And she put on the movie and went off to talk with the other teachers. It was weird. I mean, why in the world are we watching this ancient ass Dog movie? Maybe it was a ploy to knock us all out from the boredom.



Well, by the time we got out of school we knew that the shuttle had exploded. And we had seen that happen real time. It was all anyone could talk about. It was sad. It was crazy! And so later that night I was watching TV with my daddy and they replayed the footage, except they set it to 'The Carol of the MotherFucking Bells' probably because it was still near the Christmas Season, I don't know why, it sounds stupid, but they did. I think it was to create drama and freak everyone out. And it worked...on me.

So now I associate that song with some scary ass shit I once saw at school. And heck, this song is just screaming horror movie anyway, at least in my opinion. To this day it stirs up emotion.