Viewer Discretion Advised

My skin is prone to warts. I have gotten them ever since I was a little kid. They aren't gross or nasty (well, except this one planter wart I had on my toe in high school), they are just small little flesh colored bumps. I have this one on my knuckle that has been burned off with liquid nitrogen twice already, and it won't go away. I decided this week would be a good week to get that wart and two others burned off because I start school and work next week. I know they blister up when they are burned off and I didn't want unseemly blisters on my hands with all my classmates and co-workers looking at them.

When the doctor first went to freeze them off she did one little squirt of liquid nitrogen on each wart and then said I was good to go. I basically said, "Look, lady. I want these suckers gone today. I don't want to have to come back for another treatment. Maybe you should squirt more of that liquid nitrogen on them."

WHY.

WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT AMANDA.

I mostly blame my current situation on the second round of freezing.

Right after they got frozen my skin was tingly and uncomfortable for maybe 20 minutes. Then my knuckle, where two of my warts are, started to swell. It was like a blister, but with really really thick skin. My entire knuckle skin was the outside of the blister. I was thinking to myself, "If I were to rip the skin off this blister I would reach the bone." It was so strange. And the wart on my palm wasn't blistering at all.

Three hours later the real fun began.

The real blisters started forming. They were sensitive to the touch, but not bad at all. The one on the palm of my hand looked exactly how I expected it to look.

But the blister/growth on my knuckle was horrendous. I don't even like looking at it. But it being ugly isn't the worst part. The blisters kept filling up and filling up with fluid. By 8:00 at night they were rock hard. Any and every slight movement of my hands hurts.

And I decided this was the worst week of all to get them burned off.

WE ARE MOVING ALL OUR CRAP INTO OUR APARTMENT.

This means boxes and boxes and tons of unloading and tons of hand movement. What. Was. I. Thinking.

Online it says that blisters are "nature's band aids" for burns, but screw that, I needed to drain these suckers if it was the last thing I did.

16 fluid ounces of blister juice later, they went down.

Purloined Package

Now is the season of textbook sales and rentals for college students. Within the last few days David has ordered 4-5 textbooks online that we have been waiting for in the mail. He received his first one yesterday and his second one today. We were at home when the delivery man rang the doorbell, so when we saw him walking away we knew it was a package. The package was from Chegg, a textbook rental company. David was anxious to see what book it was, so he immediately cut the tape and opened the package. He started pulling out random things, telling me out loud what each one was:

"A piece of gum"

"Something from Mary Kay (lip gloss I think)"

"A can of red bull"

"An ad for HuluPlus"

"An ad for Chegg"

"Is there even a book in here?"

And then he looks at the shipping label on the outside of the box and it says "Ceci ____." Oops. This is the roommate that just moved into the house I'm staying at two days ago. We haven't said more than a cordial "hello" to her. I don't know why she got a package from Chegg that had no book in it, but we taped it back up and set it right in front of her bedroom door. 

She'll never know...

P.S. I had David look over this post (like always), and asked him what the title should be. He suggested the one I used. I literally had to look up the definition of "purloined" because I have never heard that word in my life. Where in his brain is there room for odd words like that??

Cookies

I made some cookies for the missionaries the other day. Good old chocolate chip cookies. I have made chocolate chip cookies probably 23,854,739 times in my life. There was nothing that could go wrong.

The recipe calls for "softened butter" and since refrigerated butter is rock hard, I always microwave it. My mistake in the past is that I microwave the butter until the point that it is boiling, basically. I wanted to truly get "softened" butter this time. I microwaved the butter for a few seconds at a time until it wasn't hard as granite anymore, then added it to the sugar/vanilla. The recipe said to beat it until it got "fluffy". Mine looked like little pebbles. The mixture was not sticking together. I figured once I added in the flour and other ingredients it would all work out.

I added all the other ingredients and now the mixture looked like sand.

It was kind of like moon sand. It would stick together if you pressed it together, but otherwise it wouldn't. I tried mushing it together with a spoon thinking maybe there was just a bunch of butter chunks in there that didn't get spread out and that made it dry. 

No luck.

I tried microwaving it so the butter would melt and make the cookie dough more moist.

No luck.

I finally showed it to my mom showing her how weird the cookie dough turned out. This had never happened before. One tiny glance over at the bowl and she asked "did you add the eggs?" Ummmm..... NOPE. How do you forget the only real liquid ingredient in your cookie recipe? You focus too much on the softened butter, that's how. I added the eggs and all was well in the cookie universe. 

In the Nude

Today I was going to the bathroom, and right as I finished I noticed there was no more toilet paper left. We keep the toilet paper under the bathroom sink, which is just outside the toilet/shower area. I just wiggled and bounced around a little bit to shake any drops of urine off me, and then I waddled over to the sink to get the toilet paper just like I would any other day.

But this wasn't just like any other day.

This is the view from the sink, where I was in the nude from my waist down reaching for the roll of toilet paper.

We always keep the blinds closed so the neighbors can't see us changing. BUT NOT TODAY.

 I forgot that I had opened the blinds earlier today to let more air into the room. Below is a picture of one of the many people that take walks in this neighborhood.

Just to give you an idea, this is how I was positioned, reaching for the toilet paper, when I noticed the dreaded blinds were open, exposing me to any passer by who happened to look my way (note: this is a reenactment. This was not the actual location or the outfit I was wearing for the incident).

The Pass

I went on a family vacation recently to a beach condo. It was inside a gated community, so I had a pass I had to keep on the dashboard of my car to get in to the community every day.

One day me and David were driving to the grocery store to get some things for dinner. It was a gorgeous day. The sun shone brightly down on our two door car. We drove along, gazing at the palm trees along the road without a care in the world. On such a nice day I couldn't help but roll down the window for a fresh sea breeze.

It happened in slow motion. I lazily began to twist the lever that let the window descend into the depths of the car. The window was one inch down, and I could already feel the gentle breeze wisp my hair aside. I could smell the salt from the ocean a short distance away. The more I rolled down the window, the more I felt the wind. My hair began to whip around me. It felt like riding a gentle roller coaster on a warm Summer day. I closed my eyes for a brief moment to etch the moment into my memories. That is what pure joy feels like.

As soon as the window was all the way down I leaned back on my sun-warmed seat to relax, and that is when I saw it. The wind began to raise the edge of our pass off the dashboard. It slid towards the open window; slowly at first, then with more vigor. In my mind I was shouting for David to catch the paper before it exited the confines of our vehicle, but there was no time to shout to him. His own animal instincts that saved us in that moment. He snatched the paper up just as it was leaving the car and saved it from leaving us forever. David handed me the pass for safe keeping. I carelessly placed the pass back on the dashboard not thinking that anything would come of it. Mere seconds later we rounded a corner and the wind shifted directions. Before I had time to react I saw the paper lift off the dashboard. In one smooth motion it floated upwards, twisted, and flipped before my eyes. I couldn't process what I was witnessing. The wind gave one final gust and pushed the paper past me and out my window silently. It was as if the pass was never there in the first place. It was lost forever.

Or so I thought.

In the immediate aftermath David and I exchanged glances, silently asking one another, "Do we drive back to get it?"

"I think it's lost," I said, with despair in my voice. When put in a position to save the pass that allowed us access to our beach condo, I had failed. We would need to retrieve a new pass.

David, being the optimistic person he is, debated what action to take in his head. He then turned the car around, determined to find the lost pass. Understanding what he wanted to do, I straightened my back and began looking on the road for the blue paper. There were blue tinted shadows on the road that made it particularly difficult to see. We drove slowly wary of other drivers behind us that might want to pass our vehicle. When I had lost all hope of finding the missing paper, David was determined to keep searching. Not 100 yards further and something caught my eye. Could it be? Could we have really found the lost pass? I kept my thoughts to myself for a moment, not wanting to get my hopes up in the event that I was wrong. As we approached the spot on the road where I believed the pass to lie, I urged David to hastily stop the car. He pulled off to the side and there, between the two driving lanes on the road, was the pass to get into the community. I couldn't believe it. We had found it! David then opened his door and strategically ran towards the paper, dodging traffic along the way, as he retrieved the cherished pass. All was well, and we could continue our trip to the grocery store.

Being Creepers

Today David and I went to this "water ice" place called Rita's. I don't get it because all ice is made of water, but I heard it was amazing. It is kind of like a thick slushy, and we got soft serve ice cream with it. Pretty delicious. The Rita's we went to has only been open a week, and didn't have an outdoor seating area, so we ate it sitting on a bench pretty close to another restaurant. This other restaurant did have outdoor seating.

As I was eating my water ice my eyes lazily wandered over to the tables nearby. I suppose I was staring, but I'm a people watcher, so that's just what I do. David was facing away from me looking in the same general direction as me. As I was watching, a waiter came by the tables to deliver some food. He looked over in our direction, glanced down, then pretty quickly looked back up and continued looking for a few seconds. I was in a nice relaxed mood, enjoying the sun and my water ice, so I just kept staring, not really thinking about it. Eventually he broke eye contact and continued delivering the food he was carrying.

Me: I think that waiter just stared at us. But it wasn't just staring, it was like a double-take. He looked away then looked back at us and stared.
...
Me: It was probably because I was hard-core staring at him.
David: Hahah you were? I was too. It was probably because I was like this:

 Neither of us had known that the other was looking at the waiter. And thus it turns out the waiter is not the creepy one, but me and David are.

Too Strong.

Today I learned that I am just too strong.

I love reading in bed right before I fall asleep, but I hate getting out of bed to turn off the light. One time I even tried tying a string around the light switch so I could pull on it from bed and turn the light off. It only worked once and then I couldn't get the string to stay on anymore.

Since string-pulling days I have upgraded to a book light that clips on my book. It's great. But sometimes by book light gets all kinked up so it won't shine on the right spot of my book. Today I was pulling on it to straighten it out, and the whole light portion came right off. It didn't even feel like I was pulling very hard!

Lucky for me, the light still works, I just have to hold it in my hand instead of clipping it to my book.