Lots of Lulz

A couple of times a year, my family would pack up everything and drive 6 hours to Canada to visit relatives and friends.

My entire family would stuff themselves in our Lexus, with me in the bitch seat between my 320 pound grandmother and my tiny 90 pound brother. I had to keep my balance so that her overwhelming mass would not cause me to tip over and crush my little brother.

Mom packed all the vintage 60’s Italian music into the car, while my dad set 3 bags of opened sunflower seed bags into his cup-holder clearly preparing for the 6 hour sunflower seed power hour.

Mom would always scour the entire fridge, making sure to put everything edibly organic in a huge cooler for the ride over, ranging from watermelons to grapes to celery, to nuts.

However, mom was never one for sugary snacks, and thus was labeled a taboo item for me. However, it gave me all the more reason to obsess over the wonders of glucose and find different ways attain sweets from mom:

“Product Presentation”: Age 6

mom said no

“Cute-sie Face”: Age 7

mom still said no….

“Nonchalence”: Age 9

Nowadays, in the hopes of a change of heart, I would politely ask my mother if we had any sugary snacks:

“Mature Request”: Age 11

All of a sudden, in a fit of hellish rage, my mother would begin to verbally pronounce the satanic devotions that are sugar products, crushing my 11-year-old hopes of ever having a sweet.

Needless to say, I did not attain any sweets that day, or any day there or before after.

I proceeded to read an interesting book mom got for me, flipping and reading as much as my heart pleased.

Then, out of the blue, I had to pee.

I had to pee really reaaaaally bad. Like I thought my bladder was going to rip itself to shreds if I didn’t find a bathroom NOW! I tried in earnest to get my dad’s attention in the best way I could without releasing my bladder control valve of steel.

When I finally grabbed his attention, I announced the urgent news…

Dad began to seem flustered and told me to wait until the next exit.

I waited…

And waited

And waited….

By then, I began whimpering and filling the entire car with my urgent laments.

In an act of saving the car and his sanity, dad veered off the highway and skidded to a stop on the side of the road. Before the car came to a complete stop, I shot out of the car like a rocket!

my wobbly legs and paper thin bladder prevented me from walking properly, and I basically crawled on my belly to get to my forest sanctuary.

I clung like a monkey  on life-support to a nearby branch and let loose. It was the best feeling in the entire world…kinda like heaven…

I then skipped back to the car.

And we continued driving.

Soon enough, we felt the car stop and as we opened our eyes, we saw my grandmother’s house in good ol Canada.

My legs were so wobbly and mangled from being in the car for so long, but nevertheless,  I stumbled into the fresh air with a gasp of freedom within my lips.

I have to admit… I love my trips to Canada with the family (and my magical rainbow-spawning powers)!

As with every American family, my family has been trying to go green and protect the environment in little ways, like recycling. At my house, we have two waste bins in our kitchen, one for trash and the other for plastics and bottles.

It always feels like I am helping the environment whenever I add my water bottle into the recycle bin, knowing that my awareness is somehow helping the world and its ozone layer or its snow caps or whatever.

Then I would proudly watch my father take the recycle bin to the garage, where the contents would be later brought to the curb for garbage day.

One day, mom told me to take out the entire household’s trash to the curb, a task that was normally assigned to the opposing adult in the house. My 8 year old mind interpreted this offering as a sign of my emerging growth to adulthood.

Skipping to the garage, I happened upon the family trash bin that was 3 times my size with a stench that stank to high heaven.

Nonetheless, I was a woman now, who is big enough to handle anything, especially something as monstrous as the family trash can. So I took the huge trash bin in our garage and hauled ass to the curb which was about 100 meters away.

the screeching ear-aching cat-fighting sound that the trash bin emitted had absolutely no effect on my nerves of steel….well, maybe a little….

As I reached the curb, unaware of where I was walking, a stone crossed my path…

and before I knew it, I and the huge bin plummetted to the ground…

spilling its wonderful contents all over my hair and clothes.

Then I felt a clunk of plastic hit my head…

then another and then another.

I lifted my eyes…

and i beheld a shocking sight…

yes…water bottles…..PLASTIC water bottles all intermingling with the past food waste of the previous week.. Needless to say, I was outraged.

My parents, my wonderful “save-the-world” parents threw the recycle-ables in the same bin as the trash. What kind of species am I living with??? Don’t they care about the globe? About the ozone layer? About birds chewing up these plastics and dying of plastic poisoning or w/er they die of?

My anger slowly turned to despair. My green environment friendly world was nothing but bleak and desolate. With a heavy heart and dirty clothes, I trudged back to the house in an absolute stupor.

Nothing seemed to matter to me, not anymore. I picked up my doll that I was playing with earlier and tried to seek some sense back into my life…

but all Dolly could do was smile at me….I invoked her help once more…

My rage suddenly sprang back to life. I was a rummaging, senseless, earth killing machine, destroying my room and all its inhabitants with my jaws of life.

As I was in a frantic “break-down throwing-away” mode, I heard my mother calling me for lunch.

My heart began to race, my eyes widened, and my pulse grew louder and louder. What is this feeling? It has been so long, an hour even, that I felt this feeling. It was Happiness.

I raced to the table, running on clouds of pink cotton candy and sugar canes, and dove into my food, happy as a squirrel at a nut factory. The world’s worries were no more.

The end

(But seriously, recycling is always a good idea, and we should all make the effort to separate our trash and recyclables and present them as such when taking the garbage out. Get a recycle bin and be aware of what’s going on with the environment!)

The end…for reals

I remember the one and only time I ever walked in on the most awkward restroom situation.

I was eating at a restaurant with friends and as most animals do, I had the sudden urge to use the bathroom. So I excused myself and made a dash to the ladies’ room. As I neared the door that beckoned bladder relief, I heard loud wailing coming from inside.

thinking it to be some upset little toddler and its mother trying her best to soothe the wailing thing, I thought nothing of it and proceeded to open the door.

However, what I discovered inside was a completely different story…

I stopped dead in my tracks….and so did they.The intense angry glare from the comforting friend was enough to make me stop immediately in my tracks and suddenly feel like I intruded into a private room. The second girl’s sad teary eyes looked me up and down and basically followed me as I half-skipped and half-floated to the nearest stall I could find to hide.

When I was inside the bathroom stall, the couple on the other end deemed it safe to resume their current conversation. And the story became more awkward and weirder by the second.

Pretty soon, my urge to pee was taking over, and there was a still deep conversation going on right outside my stall; the sound of my tinkling would only call everyone’s attention to my poor and sad existence. However, nature took front seat to my terror.

As a precaution, I am also very obsessive compulsive about people hearing me “go”, so i proceeded to flush periodically to hush the sound of my tinkling.

those ladies probably thought I was trying to power flush a giraffe or something of a large and grand scale, since I continually flushed for 5 straight minutes.

Then the moment I was dreading most…walking out of my safe haven of a restaurant bathroom stall. I waited to see if the ladies would make the effort or the move to leave. But they continued to talk…for what seemed like hours.

I soon became worried about whether my friends were still waiting at the table. I decided to muster my courage, brace myself with my head down to avoid eye contact, and dash out the stall.

I calmly opened the exit door

I ran as quickly as I could to my friend’s table. Fortunately they were still there, and when they saw me darting like a rocket out of the ladies’ room after my almost 30 minute hiatus, they only had one idea of what exactly went on in there…no matter how I swore by my story, I was soon baraged with every “making a poop” joke in the book.

and thus, an end to another lovely evening in my sad life.