Happy Christmas, Y'all.

From all of us at Eric and Annie's Home for Dysfunctional Christmas Cookies.

Posting every day is hard work.

And boy, do I suck at it.
That said, bring on the shitty iPhone photos!

That turned into some seriously delicious salsa. 

Let me remind you that this is a dumb cell phone picture.  But seriously?

Everthing here is a wild shade of green.  That house waaaay waaaaaaay back

in the distance?  Oprah's, apparently. 

A baby gecko fell off of the ceiling on right onto my laptop keyboard today.
Stay tuned for more updates.

Relationships and Other 13 Letter Words.

(note: There will not be any other thirteen letter words in this post.)

New relationships are the silliest clusterfuck of emotions and awkwardness that has ever existed.

So, in a new living situation, you're constantly learning new things about your partner - most that you love (hopefully!) and some that simply baffle you, such as his inexplicable love for those shoes with the toes in them.  The things you don't love, you accept (or change, if the matter at hand is terrible taste in shoes... love you E!) and move on, growing closer and developing a tighter bond.  Quick to forgive, slow to anger, and so on.

The hardest part, as I've been learning in the short time I've been here, is dealing with your own self-loathing without coming across as too neurotic or brain-damaged.  It's easy to overlook how many things you've come to hate about yourself until you are living with this person who previously thought you were absolutelyperfectineveryway (riiiight?).  Then all of this insecurity starts to bubble to the surface:

"Oh my god, I hate me feet. If he ever sees my feet in broad daylight he will run away forever while projectile vomiting."

"I SWEAT WHEN IT GETS HOT OUTSIDE! HE CAN NEVER FIND OUT."

"My right boob is way bigger than my left boob.  I am a fucking freak show."

I'm making jokes here, but it's actually sort of alarmed me how much of the day I spend worrying about all of the things I hate about myself, and  how they'll all join forces to drive away this guy that I love.  I've lashed out at him, in pathetic attempts to hide my insecurity underneath anger about... anything really.  Anything I can get my hands on.  Where does that even come from inside of us?  I know I'm not the only one.  What in our lives causes us to believe that we are undeserving of a good and fulfilling love?  That there's something so wrong with me that I couldn't possibly be in a successful relationship?  Do we blame that on the media?  On failed past relationships? 

And how do we move on?  How do you learn to love yourself as much as you love everyone else in your life?  I don't know the answer to that just yet, so I guess this post is incomplete, and maybe a little depressing.  Sorry about that.  The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, though, right? 

To be continued... sort of, or probably not.

On a lighter note, passion fruit is my new favorite anything ever.

...I love baby goats.

You guys, this place is the perfect combination of Green Acres and... I don't know, some television show based around the beach.  Bay Watch!  Yes.  It's like Bay Watch, because everyone here is gorgeous.  I've just been lurking in the shade, my pasty white skin glowing like I just fell off of a radioactive waste truck.  It's all very tragic.  So, I guess the Bay Watch part of the combination is less than perfect, but at the very least, I'm getting an opportunity to face my insecurities and also get sunburned a lot.  Yay?

Friday night we went to see Lukas Nelson in his father's (Willie!) bar.  It was an awesome show, with an odd mix of dirty hippie, dirty surfer and dirty redneck.  Very nice.

E's house is surrounded by farm animals.  Mostly of the goat and horse persuasion.  Did  you know that baby goats are basically puppies?  They are the cutest, most amazing little animals on the plant.  They bounce everywhere, tails wagging and heads bobbing.  It is completely ridiculous.  I'm in love.

Speaking of my puppies, I miss my dog.
His birthday is on the 27th and of course, I'm going to miss it.  I'm weary of bringing him out here because he would have to stay outside because E is allergic to dogs (but less so cats? a likely story) and Oliver was just not raised to be an outside baby.  I cried when I left him with my parents.  You just can't explain to a dog that you're leaving for a while, but you'll come back to see him and he didn't do anything wrong.  I am the worst dog-mom ever. 

Now that I've turned myself into a weepy mess, here are those boring pictures of sand you were looking forward to, Steven:

These were all from the super-touristy, beach-front-condo part of the island.

I'd be okay with never going there again, but the beaches

are gorgeous.

HI.

Not "Hi!" ... HI! 
Like, Hawaii.
Because that's where I am.

That was anticlimactic, wasn't it?

More specifically, I am in Maui, in the most perfect little house in the most perfect little town. 
My mind has been sort of blown the past few days, combined with an outrageous case of jet lag, so I don't have much to offer right now.  It took me about 12 hours to start applying for jobs, though, if that tells you anything.

So, there are things I really like about Hawaii, like how its so vegetarian friendly and the people are wonderful and you can go from a gorgeous countryside to the beach in under twenty minutes.

And then, there's the thing I love about Hawaii:

I know!
(ALSO: I am two days late on my "post every day" promise, but I'll keep it up from now on!)

I KNOW.

I am the worst blogger ever.  It's a fact, I've accepted it.
So here's the run-down of the last few weeks.

...
Um, nothing, really.  I've been working and schooling my little heart out.
Last day on the job was this past Friday.  It was tougher than I expected.
I cried like a baby, but not before making it to my car, so I'm calling it a success.
Friday night was the company Christmas party.  Super fun.  My bowling
skills are non-existent, but my cheese stick eating skills are out of this world, so
it all balanced out.  Went to our Going Away Party Bar afterwards and closed the place down.  There may or may not have been some Justin Timberlake and Vanilla Ice karaoke.  I'll never tell.

So now we play the waiting game.
The problem with me and the waiting game is that I'm completely neurotic
(if you haven't already noticed)
and so these next three days are going to basically consist of me sitting around thinking of all the ways this whole thing could just come crashing down on me.  How many ways can I screw this up?  A lot, is the answer to that question, and I will be playing them all on repeat over the next 72 hours as I pack a random assortment of my belongings into this really sweet luggage I found at a thrift store (7 dollar bills, y'all!).

I don't know why I have such trouble accepting good things happening to me.
It's not like I've led one of those super tragic lives full of orphanages and tuberculosis -  why can't I just let happy things be happy?  Well.  I can.  And I'm going to.  So, put that in your pipe and schmoke it, Universe.

Oh!  So, I made a promise to myself to blog every day while I'm on this extended trip - we'll
see how that goes.  I've got to develop some sort of self-discipline, and so we're starting with blogging.

My next post will be from about 4,000 miles west of here.  See you guys there.

A very Happy Holidays to you and yours from my boy, John McCain.

Meh... and also, shrug.

I am redefining unmotivated these days, you guys.
I just spent 15 minutes combing a knot out of my hair.  That's how hygenic I've been this weekend.  I may have to shave my head in order to get my hair back under control.

I was putting forth that half-assed effort at grooming because I was inspired for about thirty seconds to run to the store for ingredients to some really delicious (by starving African standards) meal I was going to cook.  I resigned pretty quickly to this here computer chair and a 32 ounce Naked Juice (Blue Machine!), which is basically food anyway.

I've already mentioned my inability to be anything resembling useful at work, which was especially true on Friday.  I downloaded this sound bite to play every time someone in the office/on the phone/anywhere within listening distance did something I deemed Sad Trombone-worthy.  There were approximately 349 instances, give or take a few.  Sometimes I played it just to cut people off who were boring me or asking me if I had gotten something (anything) done.  This may be a testament to my immaturity, but the louder I played it, the funnier it got (to me). 

So of course, after a few hours of the Sad Trombone, I was all, "DUDE.  I have three weeks left at this job.  I should spend all of it creating a soundtrack to this office."  I had visions of adding cartoon noises to all of my coworkers daily tasks and everyone laughing joyously, with the exception of Arch Nemesis Coworker, who would stew quietly at her desk with the occasional heavy sigh because WHYISANYONEEVERHAPPYANYWAY?!  So, I set to work on the internet, and found a really obnoxious Hallelujah Chorus to play when 5 o'clock hit.  I tried to test it out (forgetting my speakers were on full blast), and much to my surprise, sounds of a woman moaning and panting very dramatically started blaring from my desk.  Turns out, I had accidentally clicked "Female Orgasm." 

Story of my life.



Oh, and Steven (and everyone else), this is E:

He told my that I was allowed to introduce him using this picture.  Probably because he thinks it makes him look intimidating/manly.  That's true and all, I guess, but I've never seen him make that face in real life, so I think it's a little dishonest.

Now this?  This is the Eric I know and love:



It's weird introducing boyfriends to blogs.  But at least in the future, when I mention him, you can picture a guy in a really effeminate nightgown and know that that's who I'm talking about when I write of our wild Sexcapades.

(just kidding!)

Fin.

Procrastination Station! ...all aboard? Nevermind.

My lovely, most wonderfully tender-hearted Blogpals, I write to you from the floor in one of few open spots in the heap of nonsense that is my living room.  Something about these last few weeks has left me completely and utterly disabled when it comes to things like cleaning, or carrying my belongings upstairs, or applying makeup, or fixing my hair... really anything that takes more than 45 seconds to a minute has been eliminated from my daily routine.

I am just walking around in these clouds of uselessness, you see.  And not those clouds.  I haven't smoked pot in years.  These clouds are head clouds, but not the dark rainy kind.  They are enormous white puffs of cotton, and they are probably shaped like ice cream or bunnies, but I haven't taken the time to notice.  I am simply dazed.

I turned in my letter of resignation at work, which is the most exciting thing that I have to tell you (yes, that's as good as it gets).  It's mostly only exciting because I wrote it in my best Old English (very poor), which my supervisor will find humorous, and my human resources manager will find annoying.  Two birds with one stone, you know.

And so the awesome thing about turning in your notice at your job as that every day when you wake up, the usual feelings of misery and empty longings for a slow death are replaced by thoughts like, "AW, HELLZ YEAH.  Only X more days until I never have to go to that horrible, wretched place ever again!"  And that is a wonderful feeling, I am telling you.  The downside is that while you're at work, people keep putting things on your desk, and you keep pushing them around with your ruler, never really accomplishing anything.  And then you spend an inappropriate amount of time leaned back at your desk, dancing to Vampire Weekend and coveting jewelry on Etsy because why not?  In a few weeks this stuff won't matter and what are they going to do, anyway? Fire you?  Probably not.

So, it's been a couple weeks of unusual uselessness on my end.  I just sort of find myself standing places, looking at all the things that need to be done, and my mind wanders and... well, here we are.  I'm supposed to be packing up my belongings now, but you guys, I have accumulated a lot (A LOT!) of things while living in this little apartment, and I just don't know what to do with it all.  Moving with it is not an option.  Maybe you would like to take it off my hands?  I have some studious owls that I purchased at an estate sale.  Or perhaps a clock shaped like a record is more your style?  Maybe some paintings made with love by me and my roommate and a box of wine? A poster with Albert Einstein riding a bicycle?  These are just a few of the treasures I have to offer.

I badly want to tell you where I am going and the cause for all this absent-mindedness, but I am sort of liking keeping secrets.  So, I'm going to keep it up.  It'll be fun, I promise!

We had two couch surfers this weekend, it was... drunk?  Yes.

it got a little weird later in the evening.

Guess what I have?

A plane ticket!
...Guess where to?
(wrong!)
(Quiet, Steven!)

I'm coming back soon, you guys.  Promise!

College is Ruining My Life.

...and my blog!

Also, it has occurred to me recently that I am just sort of a boring person by nature.
Anyway, I'm working on fixing that. 
But because I am actually supposed to be doing  homework, and there's this cute boy in my kitchen
cooking dinner (I feel like everyone should have cute boys in their kitchens for cooking things), you're going to have to settle for yet another cuddly Oliver picture.  I know, it's probably better than anything I could come up with, right?

I promise I'm coming back soon.  I haven't even been able to keep up on my blog-reading.
This is getting ridiculous, really.

OH!  And today I saw an armadillo that wasn't dead on the side of a highway.

First time in my 22 years as an Arkansan.

It was exciting.  Trust me.

Happy Fall, Y'all.

Mine is the one with the hearts - but didn't you already know that?



Restorative Raving.

It was a bit of a rough week, friends.
Work and school teamed up and became this amazing ass-kicking duo,
and I was their arch nemesis. 
It was looking pretty bad, I thought they had me beat.

But then last night, thanks to some old friends and some glowsticks
and maybe too much beer, I was able to crazy-dance all my frustrations
out and am feeling much better today.

It always surprises me how much one good night with people you love
can turn a whole week's worth of anxiety and stress into nothing.  I'm not
the type to feel "blessed," but I am so thankful for the people in my life.

There's something really freeing about being nothing but a flash of light in a dark
room... and of course dancing your ass off. 

My brother is in town from Denver.  Family time today.

Have a great weekend, guys.  Reading your blogs is keeping me sane.

I'm Alive (kind of)!

I feel like I haven't taken a breath in a week.

And you know, if you can't breathe, you can't blog.  Oxygen to the brain and etc.

Anyway.  I have yet to find the light at the end of the tunnel, so here's a really cute

picture of Oliver.  Because why not, really?

He adopted Alyssa's old couch after she moved in.  Sometimes he just piles all

of his toys and it and leers at me from across the room while he clutches his girraffe's throat

in his mouth.  Do you feel like thats something to worry about?

Eh.

Self Control.

I am, as we speak, battling the overwhelming desire to eat pie for breakfast.
Right now, at 6:30 AM.
First of all, I should not be awake right now.  Every day I think, "someday I'm going to wake up and be okay with this.  My body has to get used to it eventually."  But in the same way that my body will NOT go to bed before midnight, it cannot accept 6:30 in the morning. It is sick and wrong and 6:30 is for waking up, giving the conscious world the finger, and going right back to sleep.

Anyway, so I'm not eating pie.  I'm eating a granola bar.
I don't know why though.  I mean, I'm going to eat the pie.  There will be pie in my belly before this day is over.  So why can't I just eat it now, otherthanthefactI'dvomiteverywhere?  Who made these rules?

In an unrelated topic, it's week 5 of the semester and my mind has already slipped into "Who really needs a college education, anyway?  We're totally going to get blown to pieces before I get a chance to use it."

But I mean, really.

Intercepted.

Puppy Playdate.

We have had two couchsurfers in the last week, and I am feeling like a road trip. 

Which one of you is going to let me come visit?

A Surfer and a Festival.

I know, the "Surfer and..." posts are getting a little tired, but I mean, it's all I've got.
We could talk about school, because that started this week.
We could talk about how a prolonged drunken hookup who I've affectionately named Lavaca
(the town he's from) is in my Psychology class and how the next 16 Wednesday nights are going to be wildly awkward and I'd rather fail out of college (again) than have to sit through another three hour class with him.
We could talk about that, but I'm a little squirmy just thinking about it.
So we won't.

Instead, we'll talk about how we had another last minute couch surfer this weekend.
Another very cool dude.  He came up for Fort Smith's very first River Jam Fest.
The crowd was disappointing in size, but the bands really brought the place down. 

The thing is, I'm a little (very) drunk, so I'm just going to post some pictures,
curl up with my dog, watch The Land Before Time (God bless you, Netflix Instant Play),
and pass out.

I have the cutest dog/roommate ever.

Everyone nurses a hangover.  That's the surfer (Calvin) in the background.

Soaking up the beautiful weather at the riverfront.

Edward Washboard Hands.

Goodnight, folks.

Pointless.

Impossible to get a good family picture.

No, Oliver!  Look at the camera!

Defeated.  It's hard out there for a single dog-mom.

A Surfer and... A Lasagna.

I wish I was starting this post by apologizing for my absence, but:
"I've been climbing Mt. Everest!"
"I've been attending medical school!"
"I've been held captive by an outrageously good looking bunch of Portuguese men!"

But, you know, that's not the case.
What's really happened is that I've gotten this new roommate
(you all knew I couldn't handle living alone)
and we've been busy creating masterpieces in the kitchen.

Yeah, that's not true either.
But we made a lasagna!
And that is the truth!
Proof (photos brought to you via shitty iPhone camera):

Farmer's Market fresh veggies

Those Japanese love their phallic vegetables.  This is Japanese

eggplant.  Obviously we purchased them for really mature
culinary research purposes, and not because they look like Gonzo's

penis.

Wait for it..

Lasagna!

Then this weekend, there was this couchsurfer. 
We played Jenga.
Proof (brought to you by a real camera, but hey, I'm no photographer):

We're pretty certain that this was a record-breaking game of jenga.

Didn't bother to confirm that, but we're pretty sure, anyway.

The surfer (Matt) and the tower.

Building a "giraffe."

Jenga art.

Oh, and then there was Marcy Playground.

Right here in Fort Smith!

A whole night of 1995.  It was a glorious experience.

Proof (brought to you by Coors Light):

and to answer your question, it smelled just like Sex and Candy.

So, but, I've missed you guys dearly.

Let's never be apart again.

Oh, except that school starts back tomorrow and my life is officially over.

See you around Christmas, Blogpals.