So yes anyway we were supposed to leave NYC at just after six on Sunday, sort of right at the cutoff of when most flights started getting canceled. We were lucky to make it out of New York and so were home and settled by yesterday. Lots of people didn't make it out and there are obviously millions more that live in the areas that are being affected by Hurricane Sandy. Please be safe everyone! I'm sending many optimistic thoughts your way.
Ryan is off of work today again as both the treasury and fixed income markets are shut down. So I'm off to spend the day with him shortly but I wanted to get something up here first This post idea is totally stolen from This old post by Kayla Aimee by the way. I'm totally not above stealing obviously. Our newly-married friends should be super relieved that their tablecloths are not currently stashed in my suitcase. Unrelated note: I need a bigger suitcase.
Five Things Friday - Childhood Edition
My favorite childhood toy was: books. This is a true story. The only thing I ever did when I was little was read. I learned to read really early because when I was two (and then every couple of years after that) my mom up and had another baby and I got good at entertaining myself and doing it quietly so as not to wake all of the babies.
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| Those babies turned out to be ok I suppose. |
I'm actually fairly certain that my parents bribed the neighborhood children to be friends with me because I never wanted to play Ghosts in the Graveyard because it interrupted my reading time. Like I think my dad literally got a go-kart one summer so that he could give my "friends" rides around the block while I sat on the porch and waved as they went past. I did not personally ride in that go-kart because it looked dangerous, just like jump ropes and hopscotch. One time I read a book about a boy who had a go-kart though.
My favorite song from when I was little was: "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" by Cutting Crew. Except I took the song way too literally. Like I really thought the dude in the song died. And then when I learned more of the lyrics and heard "I just died in your arms tonight, it must've been some kind of kiss," I was all like "What the fart? Is this some sort of vampire mumbo jumbo?"
Sidenote: I did not say that out loud of course as 'fart' was a word that earned one a time out if one's mother heard one utter it. Other words that earned timeouts included 'stupidiot' (A genius combination of 'stupid' and 'idiot'), 'screwnut' (A word young Lauren once heard her father use while driving and then repeated), and 'vomitous' (A word young Lauren learned from the dictionary after her mother had outlawed all of the other insults Lauren had used on her sister Jordan.) I should mention that at one point in my life my mom actually took the dictionary away from me when she caught me looking up the word 'whore'. I blame that incident entirely on Green Day. I got the dictionary back though after I called my dad at work and he had me on speakerphone in his office and everyone heard eight year old me say "Daaaad! Mom's banning books again!"
Another Sidenote: I'm also very knowledgeable on the subject of how to get one's self a timeout on Christmas Eve. It's very simple. You simply spend weeks organizing photos and making your mother a special photo album with sections for each of her five children. And you put your sister Jordan's section last so that your mom is all like "Ohhhhh this is the sweetest thing you've ever given me...WHAT THE!? LAUREN!!!!! TIMEOUT!!!!" when she finally notices that Jordan's pages are a combination of bad pictures of Jordan and pictures of monkeys that you have cut out of your father's National Geographic magazines. The best part of this story is that later that night my mom called her own mother to wish her a Merry Christmas and mentioned my atrocities which then made my grandmother ask to speak with me and instead of being all inflamed she was like "Well Lauren honey, I can't say I'm surprised at this turn of events seeing as how your mother got herself in trouble on Christmas Eve when she was about your age because she baked and wrapped a whole package of dinner rolls and put her little brother's name on all of them and put them under the tree." And then I got off the phone and shouted "Grandmother says this is all your fault because of the dinner rolls! She says you should be the one in timeout! Merry Christmas To All And To All A Good Night!"
This reminds me that I also quite liked the song "Waterfalls" by TLC, which was introduced to me by my older cousins one summer when we were spending time with our grandparents in Tennessee. In retrospect it was probably inappropriate for all of us to learn every word to that song and then perform it for my sweet grandmother. Hopefully she did not know what lyrics like "Tootin' caine in your own vein" meant.
My favorite childhood memory is: NOT camping. I will write an entire post on the horrors of camping at some point but right now I just want to say that the song "Ticks" by Brad Paisley seriously over-romances the concept of checking someone for ticks.
My childhood crush was: Yep. Probably the same as most girls my age. Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Although I totally hid this fact from everyone. (Probably not well) My sister was also in love with JTT and thought that the fact that they had the same birthday meant that they were probably going to get married. And then I would be like "Please JORDAN," and then go to my room and write Jonathan Taylor Thomas another letter that was all like "Dear JTT, (Do you mind if I call you that?) I still have not received a response to my last letter, which I understand. I'm sure you're busy filming episodes of Home Improvement and avoiding meat, but I just want to make sure that you would never marry someone that has the same birthday as you and eats chicken nuggets like it's her job. I'm still single! - LRM"
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| Meow! |
The thing I was most afraid of as a kid was: Everything? I've mentioned this before but I was an anxious little bug of a kid. I was scared of the dark. I was scared of aliens. I was scared of being the last one awake at a slumber party. I was scared that my sister Jordan was going to drown after my cousin told a ghost story about a girl that drowned. And I didn't even like my sister Jordan. (In case you couldn't tell that from the rest of this post.) I was scared of my basement because there were clearly murderers hiding in the crawl space. I was scared that someone might put my hand down the garbage disposal and I was sure that if I was the last one into the house from the car that I would both get kidnapped and be called a 'rotten egg'. I was also scared to be the first one to enter the house from the car. This made situations where I was one of only two people in the car very hard for me. I was scared of geese and bees and, after reading The Guinness Book Of World Records, that I would get hiccups that would last the rest of my life. Also, inexplicably, lemons and limes made me nervous because they didn't make sense as a fruit. They never got sweet? This was obviously pre-gin-and-tonic-days.
My poor parents.
How would you answer these questions Blogstalkers?
(Also, I'm going to start putting my favorite comment from the previous post at the bottom of each new post, because you all crack me up. If you have a blog, I'll link to it there as well!)
