Barbed wire

Only to me and only in Salem. My not-so-good luck continued this weekend. It started with my concussion on Friday (the symptoms of which got worse Friday night-near fainting and seeing flashes of light...I didn't tell my mom because she would have made me go to the ER and I was soooo NOT going to the Salem Memorial District Hospital ER.....no thank you. I'm better now anyway). Saturday was a pain free day, no freak accidents, no running in to anything. I hung out with the 'rents and played with the dogs (who make me laugh just looking at them). My brother and I went to the movies Saturday night and saw Remember the Spartans. Now, I thought it was terrible but when my brother also thought it was terrible, I knew it really was because he likes all the really stupid movies (Superbad, anyone?). When we got to our parents house, we decided to let the dogs in the basement (country dogs live outside, but it was cold that night). Tim went to the basement door to let them in. I asked him how he was going to call them without waking up mom and dad (it was around 1am), he was all cocky and said "just watch". Well, he let out this whistle that I could barely hear and I was right next to him. Next thing I know, the dogs came running down. I just looked at him and said "ok, Dog Whisperer!" and we both started laughing....then he said, what's that guys name? Pedro Martinez?"-I then proceeded to laugh so hard that I swear I almost wet my pants...when I corrected him (and pointed out that Pedro Martinez was a baseball player, not a dog whisperer), Tim said "same thing". Nice. I then had those kind of giggles where you can't stop no matter how hard you try. Nothing like getting a second wind at 1am!

Sunday, mom made a nice big breakfast (yum!) and I relayed the Dog Whisperer story to her...when I got to the punchline, mom looked at me blankly and was like "what? That is his name (Pedro Martinez)." When I corrected her as well, she said "oh, well I knew it was some Hispanic name". Nice Mother......We went to church and then on to Wal-Mart (I only went twice this weekend...that's a new low!). My plan was to head back to St. Louis right after church as I had many hours of cleaning ahead of me at home (there really is nothing like the threat of house guests to get your ass in gear!). Dad took my suitcase out to my car for me, came back in the house and said "we have a problem". Seems one of my tires had a piece of BARBED WIRE sticking out of it. Not something you hear of everyday. So, needless to say, I was gonna need a new tire. Well, there are no tire places open in Salem on a Sunday (not like here where there is a Dobbs on every corner....), so we had to go to Rolla (approximately 30 miles away), mom and dad followed me to make sure I didn't have a blowout on the highway....I wasn't stressed about the tire, I was stressed about the fact that it was now 2pm and I had planned on being home by now.....

I had heard rumors before that the tires of my car are expensive-well we found out the rumors are true. We went to the Wal-Mart in Rolla, they had the tires I needed but also informed me it was gonna take two hours......TWO HOURS??????? That almost made me cry....they were asking all sorts of questions-do you want this? do you want that? I was like-I don't care, just put the damn tires on. We realized we had a bit of a situation-see I had some frozen Lean Cuisine's in my car that we figured would keep until I got home, but definitely wouldn't keep for two hours...in the sun. And wouldn't you know it, Wal-Mart had none of those little Styrofoam coolers in stock...we improvised, however. We bought a storage container, filled it with ice and pronounced it our "Ozarkian Cooler". Bingo, worked like a charm. So, while we waited, we decided to go eat since none of us had eaten lunch. While eating, dad looked at me and said "Well, Happy Birthday". I realized he was talking about the tires-that was WAY too nice of them and I felt a bit guilty about it....I realize I have the GREATEST parents in the world and I have no idea what I'd do without them....anyway, so the car finally got finished and I was on the road at about 4:15. What a smooooooth ride! Guess it made up for the curb I hit last week that threw my alignment all out of whack........

I spent the evening last night cleaning like a mad woman. Laundry, dusting, dishes, trash, you name it-I was doing it. Here's a visual for you-I needed to get an old dresser out to the curb because today is bulk trash day. The dresser wasn't heavy, but I live upstairs, so imagine little 'ol me trying to drag a huge dresser down the stairs....I did it, by God! What's funny is that I went back outside probably 20 minutes later and the dresser was gone! The dumpster divers didn't waste any time picking up that special jewel! Not sure what they're gonna do with it, considering it had no drawers........