happy Thanksmas! (or Christgiving?)

So, in approximately 3 hours, little sis and I will be driving out of the 'burgh and back home to Virginia. (downsizing from a city of 350,000 people....to a little town of about...ooooh.... 10,000?)

And the Bourquin family will commence celebration of Thanksmas.
(this is due to the fact that Dad will once again be MIA, overseas for Christmas this year....So, we're just getting in ALL the goodness this weekend.)

therefore:
Thanksgiving + Christmas(early) = a weekend of Thanksmas/Christgiving SHENANIGANS!








and have I mentioned how happy I am to be spending it with these three?



*(except, not in swimsuits. of course....)

honest.

So, I'm not exactly positive how this is supposed to work, but wendy and steph have nominated me to "honesty-scrap" (or something like that?) So, I'm supposed to give you a list of 10 things about myself.

not too hard, right?


Welllll.....here it goes:




1. I've been to 20 countries. (well...21, if you can count a layover in japan?) I've had four different passports...but my current one only has two stamps in it (which i find rather depressing)


2. um....on the topic of passports: somehow things got a little confusing during the manufacturing process of my third passport, and the US government decided i should be.... a man.
(unfortunately, i didn't discover this until i was halfway through a multi-country tour of europe.) soooo- everytime i went into a new country i just assumed that the passport-checker must think i was a cross-dresser. (very awkward)

3. I have an unhealthy love of diet rootbeer...and i have been known to consume an entire 2 liter in one sitting. (with very unfortunate results...as you can imagine: that much carbonation cannot be consumed without negative side effects.)

(don't worry...it was diet)

4. When i was in highschool, we all had to take the ASVAB test (It's pretty much like the SAT for Armed Forces/Military) I got a perfect score on the battery/electronic section. (do NOT ask me how)....and the US Military called my house every day for a month trying to recruit me. (i tried to explain to them i just wanted to go to college to be an art major...I didn't like batteries. or electricity. or fixing thing....but they still wouldn't leave me alone.)

5. I love listening to classical music on the radio when i'm driving...(but i always change the channel before i turn off my car) I'm always afraid that if someone gets in the car with me later, they'll find out what a music-nerd i am.

6. I took gymnastics as a child. (until my parents realized that: A) i will never be coordinated enough to do anything but a somersault B) the average size for a gymnast is about 5 ft.....

(you could tell from about...oooooh....day 1, that i was going to be a wee bit over 5 ft.)

7. I played the bass drum in our highschool band. (yes. they were desperate)

8. When I was in first grade, I wanted to be an actress. I would spend hours in front of the mirror practicing facial-expressions. I even developed a facial "exercise-routine." (I guess it never occurred to me that acting required more than making faces...)

9. I was on the swim team when i was 9-10(ish). I was never very good...with the exception of the breaststroke---and nobody could beat me. (it was my one and only year of athleticism)

10. I started playing the violin when i was 3. Sometimes i feel like it's my 3rd arm. Two decades is a long time...

Sometimes I have dreams, and my violin takes a leading role. Is that something I should look into? (dream interpretation? help?)

the rest of the rules....
1. Must thank the person who gave you the award and list their blog and link it.

(thanks steph and wendy!....)

2. share 10 honest things about yourself...

(did that)

3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.

(oooh....I'm never very good at this part. But, if you feel like listing 10 random facts about yourself, I'd love to read them!?)

a few thoughts about animals, and pets...

Facebook has recently begun alerting all of its users not only about potential new-friends (and people you may know), but also of old friends that they think you should "reconnect" with...

why is it that (in my case at least) these all seem to be animals....?

in ONE day alone, this is what FB had to say to me:



make friends with Moko, the dolphin....



suggest friends for Bear, the dog....


Oh, and don't forget to send Coco, the monkey, a message...

really? REALLY? ...I mean it was weird enough when FB was taken over by middle-schoolers and people's parents. But now? I'm cyber-stalking PETS?!




Oh, and on the topic of pets.
(and since I have one of those now)
Can I just share a quick story about this little pumpkin?


She got her first haircut+bath this past weekend.
(Karen and I were feeling ambitious. So, we got out the snippers, and went for it.)

*(actually Karen just held little Piper. I was the one doing all the snipping....and it turned out pretty well!? Even though I may have cut off a few of her wiskers. woops? Dogs don't really need those anyways, right?)

So, post-haircut, it was BATHtime.
We've never given her a bath before. (yep: adventure.)
So, we filled up my tub with warm water, lathered her up with puppy-shampoo, and scrubbed away....

she was not thrilled

at all.


But, we finally finished and removed our shaking, wet-rat-looking-puppy from the tub and dried her off...


and she was still not thrilled.

in fact, she kindof hated us for the next hour.



(fast forward a day)



I was taking a shower on Monday night, and Piper starts FREAKING out as soon as I close the shower-curtain. (She's never had a problem with me showering before) ...But, she was LITERALLY going crazy: whining and whimpering and all those sad puppy noises that just break your heart.

She thought I was getting a sudsy-puppy-bath.

And she was VERY concerned.


So, I ended up having to take a shower with the very end of the curtain open (so Piper could rest her little paws on the edge of the tub and make sure I wasn't dying).



But that wasn't enough...

nope.

I had to let her lick my toes during this entire showering process (as she continued to whimper and wine) so that she would be assured that I was not suffering from traumatic bathtime.




(we have a very sensitive and thoughtful puppy)

my tragic lovestory:

I love autumn.
I LOVE it.
The leaves, the crisp-weather, the impending scarves and boots and sweaters (and cardigans!)...
The pumpkin-flavored breads and muffins and lattes...

I love it.

Unfortunately, I think that this lovestory may have a tragic ending...because it seems that I am allergic to fall.

{fall+me=not so good}

I woke up on saturday morning, and couldn't really see out of my right eye. I looked in the mirror, and discovered that I looked something like this:

(just add about two decades to this little kid...and maybe swap out her overalls for a pair of pj's and THAT is what I looked like. No exaggeration.)

PUFFY

very,
very,
very puffy.



The weirdest part? (the SAME THING happened to me last fall!) I woke up one morning, and SHABANG! (one eye was out of commission. Huge, puffy, and definitely out of commission...)

I blame fall.




And below is the picture I texted to Karen (who was away for the weekend) in an attempt to gain sisterly sympathy for my puffy-plight. Do I look pathetic?...because I felt it.



(*oh, and this is about 3 hours after I woke up...and after I convinced my eyeball to de-puff enough to open...after lots of ice, and benadryl, and other de-puffing activites.)

however, as I look at this picture now...I'm beginning to think that my whole HEAD was a little puffy.
oh dear.

And no worries, I wore my glasses for two days in order to disguise the cyclops-ness of my head, and this morning I woke up and it's almost all normal-looking again! (hurray!) It's just a little puffy...and every once in a while I can see part of my puffy-under-eye in my peripheral vision.

(awkward)


and so goes my unhappy tragic lovestory of Fall.....


*disclaimer: this was NOT pinkeye. It didn't hurt. Didn't itch. Didn't do ANYTHING except PUFF.

LOOOOOST!?!?

what: string cheese
where: somewhere in my house
why: ....it's saturday? and I obviously become forgetful when it comes to my snack-food-placement.


oooooh dear.....I'm having awful visions of finding stinky cheese months from now....(or maybe I accidentally added it to the load of laundry I just did?) yikes.

telephone poles.

So, I was driving to work this morning- and suddenly was just really weirded out by the thought of telephone poles. (I know, random...but, it's Wednesday morning? What do you expect?)

I think it all started when I passed a big tractor-trailer, who was carring (one) very very very long wooden pole. (You know how people carry extraordinarily-long pieces of plywood? or hardware? or Lowes/HomeDepot-esque supplies in their trunk or truckbed, and tie little orange flags to the end?...so you won't run into them?) Well, just imagine that, but on a much larger scale. (a very very very long wooden pole hanging off the end of a tractor-trailer truckbed, with a HUGE orange flag attached to the end.)

And I thought to myself...(in normal Wednesday-morning fashion)...What in the world is this huge wooden pole for? Wouldn't it be easier to just chop it up? And it seems like a bit of a waste to have a HUGE tractor-trailer transporting just one pole.

And then I had my Wednesday-morning epiphany. (it was a telephone pole)

But, then I started thinking about it...and telephone poles are really just odd. And archaic. (archaic would be the right word, right?) I mean, the world is full of so much ridiculously-unbelievable technology. And we STILL stick big wooden poles in the ground?

And where do you find trees for telephone poles? I mean, they're huge. and perfectly straight.
Do they have special telephone-pole-breeding-forests? Where only ridiculously tall&straight trees grow? I mean, have you ever really looked at a telephone pole? And really thought about how many hundreds of thousands of billions of those things there are around the word?

(where are all these tall skinny trees coming from?)





anyways. those are my mid-week ponderings.
(and bless you all for reading this much about telephone poles)

ooooh, it happened.

technically, i'm not a puppy-mama. (since this is karen's dog) ...buuut, I would like to say I'm at least one step above just an "aunt"...right?