The Return of Mutha Naychaaaaaa

I, for one, have been saying that the winter of 2011 was going to be a very snowy, very extreme winter since August.

For once, I am right.

How was I able to tactfully deduce that New England was to have record snow fall at the tail end of 2010 into the new year?

Simple. Acorns.

Explain? Surely.

Every fall morning, as we trekked up to the bus stop, our whole neighborhood crew would stomp on the acorns that fell on our neighbor’s driveway. [Ah, the simple things that caused us such pleasure.] Being the very astute, and might I add publicly schooled, children that we were, we developed a scientific hypothesis that, to this day, has yet to fail me.

(Please note hypothesis in correct hypothesis statement format)

If there are a copious amount of acorns to fall from the Jenkins’ trees, then the following winter will “be a bad one” [think snow, and lots of it.]

This was very important to us, because with lots of snow comes lots of snowdays and that was something our town rarely saw.

Our small neighborhood cult carefully followed through with our experiment for years, and by senior year of high school, we had determined that our hypothesis was actually a scientific theory. [This is where you need to recall that a hypothesis becomes a theory once it has been proven true, scientifically] From then on, the amount of acorns were directly correlated with the amount of snow we got that winter, and that was that.

Fast forward to fall of 2010.

As I am leaving my parents house and enjoying my favorite season of Indian Summer, I drive by the Jenkins’ house, windows down and it happens.

An all too familiar noise. The same noise that filled me with glee as a five year old.

I heard the cracking of acorns.

Immediately I knew that this was going to be one of those winters.

After racing to my office to share my experience with someone, I soon realized that no one would understand what I was talking about. Even if I attempted to explain our neighborhood howcanyounotunderstanditsatheory logic, I realized that my co-workers would most likely look at me like I was loosing it.

Acorns? Really?!

I found myself reverting back to a traumatic childhood experience, when I tried to tell my mother that my childhood dentist had pulled out one of my teeth sans novacane, only to be sat down and told the difference between make-believe and reality. [side note: even as a 24 year old, I still believe that the tooth was pulled out un-ethically, and have other victims to corroborate my story.]

So, I decided not to share my story with anyone; that is except for my co-worker, Jackie.

Jackie is wonderful. I find she accepts me for my non-traditional ways of rationalizing things and often times even entertains the idea that some of my thought processes might actually be true.

So we made a bet.

I wagered based on the acorns (which said that we were getting snow, and lots of it); she wagered based on the Farmer’s Almanac and other “more reliable sources” (which said that this winter looked to be particularly mild.)

The stats thus far?

• December 2010 shared 20 inches of the fluffy stuff, while January 2011 dumped Massachusetts with 38.3 inches.
• February isn’t looking to be much better, with a storm coming tomorrow (that’s February 1, 2011) with the potential for 18+ inches of snow in some areas. Ew.
• There has been a snow storm every Tuesday through Thursday for the past 4 consecutive weeks.
• January has been the third snowiest month ever recorded in Massachusetts
• 49 of 50 United States have seen snow this season [[per usual, Florida is the problem child, right George W. Bush?!]

So for now, I am pretty confident in the fact that my acorn theory will live on, and even become more accurate than the Farmer’s Almanac….

Stay tuned, and get out your shovels.

28 Easy Steps to Digging Out Your Car

How to dig your car out of a snow grave.

Feel free to print these directions out and put them in your glove box.

...no seriously....

1. Open car door from passenger side. Why the passenger side? Because snow will fall into your car, and it is up to you whether you want it to fall on the driver’s side seat, where you will be sitting in 10 minutes, or on the passenger seat. I opt for the passenger seat, but should you enjoy a wet bum in the morning, I would open the driver’s side door first.
2. Turn off all windshield wipers. Why? Because snow is heavy, and most windshield wipers can’t sweep 15 inches of snow off the front of your car effortlessly. Unless you want to risk having the screws in your wipers strip, causing them to not work, I suggest making sure they are off before doing anything.
3. Start car…this can often go in tandem with step 1.75: pray that car will start.
4. put both front and rear defrosters on high.
5. enjoy that freezing air that just pelted your face because your car hasn’t had a chance to warm up.
6. find gloves and snowbrush/scraper
7. wear one glove upside down because you accidently have two left handed gloves in your car.
8. Start sweeping off passenger side window, going from top to bottom, and moving around toward the back of the car. This will give your car a chance to thaw the windshield before you get to it. I also find that my rear defroster works much faster.
9. Advance to windshield. Do not be scared. You are better than the windshield.
10. Start brushing at the end of the glass, running vertical strokes from the top to the bottom of your winshield.
11. Continue Step 10 until you have reached the middle of the windshield and can no longer reach.
12. Walk over to other side of car.
13. Repeat Steps 10-12.
14. By now, your defroster should be helping, if only a little. If you have ice stuck to your windshield, continue to step 15. If you have a clean windshielf, free of ice, skip to step 17.
15. take your scraper and identify the area where the defroster has done the most work for you. This is usually in the lower middle portion of your windshield. Do not start in the top corners, as those are the most frozen.
16. Gently scrape, or in some cases aggressively hack, until you can see the glass. Create a small clean section, and work around its perimeter to increase the size of the cleared section. Continue until your windshield is cleared.
17. Move onto the wipers. If you didn’t do an adequate job removing snow the first time, take time to clear the snow out from under/around the wipers by flipping your wiper up and ridding of all snow/ice. Don’t be afraid to get aggressive close to the wipers.
18. Clean off the actual wiper blade by running your scraper along the part that runs on the glass. What is the importance of this, you ask? Well, once you get into the car, you are going to run your wiper blade, and if you don’t clean it completely, you will find that you have an ineffective wiper that cleans, maybe a streak or two of your windshield. To avoid having to get back out of your car, do this quick step while you are already out there.
19. Walk to other side of car.
20. Repeat steps 17-19 on your other wiper.
21. Get in car and run your wipers. See that your windshield is clear enough for your liking. If it is, move on to step 22, if its not, get out and redo steps 17-20. No, running wiper fluid will not magically fix the fact that your wipers aren’t doing anything for you.
22. You are now ready to get your car out.
23. Put car in drive. Drive you ask? Yes, drive. Putting your car in drive, and inching forward a few inches will give you more leverage and space to put your car in reverse and build power and speed to get you out of the snow grave you are in. Now stop asking questions, I know what I am doing. So, inch forward a few inches.
24. Now, put it in reverse, and gas it relatively powerfully. The little extra space you gained from inching forward should provide you enough space to gain some power and get your car right out. Should you still be stuck continue to step 25.
25. Put car back into drive and repeat steps 23 through 24. Do not continue to floor it in reverse. This will be your gut reaction but it is important to fight it. If you continuously floor it backwards without gaining any ground, your wheels will dig you into a tractionless hole and you will get stuck. No traction= no way for your car to move= major problem.
26. Continue to do steps 23 through 24 until your car has removed itself from the spot. I affectionetly call this “rocking.” It typically takes me one to two rocks to get my car out of its spot. Do not give up! Provided that you have rocked correctly, you will be able to build up enough speed to get yourself out of the spot!
27. Once out of the spot, it is completely appropriate and normal to scream gleefully/congratulate yourself/do a happy dance.
28. Glare at the perfectly clean suv that just drove by. They have a garage, you don’t.

This Is An Intervention, Literally

This is an intervention, literally.

lit·er·al·ly [lit-er-uh-lee]

–adverb
1. in the literal or strict sense
2. in a literal manner; word for word: to translate literally.
3. actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy.
4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.

(definitions pulled from dictionary.com. Thanks a bunch!)

To use the term “literally” means that you are not being metaphorical, figurative, or symbolic. You are being literal, hence the use of the term “literally” [vicious cycle isn’t it?!] The moment you use the term “literally” to describe something being over-the-top amazing, big or wonderful, you are usually questioning your own credibility.

Example?

There were literally a million ants surrounding the anthill in our driving.
So, you are telling me that you actually took the time to count and confirm that there were a million ants, or were there just a lot of them? How can you be sure you didn’t miscount?

Sally died of laughter…literally.
Really? Because unless you recently attended Sally’s funeral and her autopsy concluded that she did, infact, die from self-enduced laughter, then no, Sally didn’t literally die of laughter.

I ate nothing today. I am literally starving.
Calm down. You are not starving. Starving means your body is shutting down and saving all of its energy for vital uses. The fact that you can actually state that you are starving proves that you are not. You are hungry, eat a granola bar…and start using literally correctly.

When I heard a crash, I literally flew down the hall.
Wow! Congratulations on being the first person to fly anywhere! Unless you are some sort of superhero, you most certainly didn’t fly down the hall, but most likely ran down the hall at a very quick speed. Perhaps figuratively you were flying, but you most certainly weren’t in a literal sense, and if you were, you should bottle it and market it.

I literally lost my mind when I couldn’t find my car keys.
So, in addition to finding your keys, you will also need to find your actual brain that you seemed to have misplaced, because if you literally lost your mind, your physical brain matter is among the missing…

The Correct Way to use literally:

Asia is literally the biggest continent in the world.
Why yes, yes it is.

The entire town was literally wiped out; no one survived.
Sad, but grammatically accurate.

So to conclude, unless you really have received thousands of responses from your email asking for donations, leave out the term literal, or else you might find yourself losing the interest of your readers…literally.

Its Raining....Birds?!?!?!

Yet again, current events have drudged up old, otherwise forgotten childhood stories, that I no doubt buried deep into my memory for obvious reasons…

I seem to have this odd fear of swarms of birds since my grammar school years stemming from a few mild live occurrences [which wouldn’t affect any normal child.]

To start, I suffered extreme emotional distress when trying to memorize the entirety of Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven" for a fifth grade homework assignment. My inability to understand poetry combined with my diagnosed chronic migraines made it nearly impossible for me to retain/memorize/speak coherently about any piece of literature; that is until I grew out of the migraines [and also the poetry portion of my education.]

The second event is relatively hazy, or perhaps not even a separate event at that, but I remember distinct images I used to envision during our bird unit in Language Arts. Our class either read a book about a man trapped in his home being swarmed by angry flocks of birds, or I had come to this very detailed visual on my own. Since I doubt the Sudbury School System would allow eleven year olds to read about killing birds, and the latter certainly wouldn’t surprise me, I am sure I came to this vision on my own [probably still scarred from my memorizing days.] Regardless, however this vision did originate, I have a strong memory of a swarm of crows flying down a brick chimney and killing me…one would ask the question of why I wasn’t put into therapy or on anti-psychotic meds much earlier in life.

Similarly, later in life, I was on a leisure run, minding my own business [ha, ya right, since when is running ever leisure] when I was rudely confronted by a giant goose. Whether he mistakenly took my heavy breathing for death threats, or he thought it would just be a funny joke, I soon found myself sprinting away from a charging Canadian Goose. I mean, come on, I already hate running, do we really need to add in attacking animals when I am trying to do something good for my body?!

At any rate, ever since then, I have always had an awareness of birds, their droppings, and their potential sneak attack from above, behind and any other direction; especially if said bird cannot fit in the palm of my hand.

Imagine my distress/anxiety/freak out when I found out there are now birds falling out of the sky in masses.

Yes, there are birds falling out of the sky.

On New Years day, in the little town of Beebe, Arkansas, thousands of birds mysteriously fell from the sky. Don't believe me? Google it.

This is my ultimate nightmare. I am scared of getting hit by water balloons and bird poop, never mind getting sideswiped by a dead bird carcass. This just gives me even more anxiety whilst walking in the street: it doesn’t matter if I avoid stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk if I get whacked with a falling bird. Just sayin’.

Also, does this mean I should stop saying things like: “yeah, okay, when pigs fly?” Because that is a phobia I am just not ready to think about coming to reality.

2011, Don't Be A Jerk

Things I learned over my vacation a la list

• I still haven’t perfected the bloody mary. This makes me very angry.
• It is completely possible for 5 grown people to catch a cold from a two year old
• My confidence as a parallel parker increases exponentially when parking between a car and a snow bank. I mean, you can hit the snow bank.
• I find myself spending ridiculous amounts of money on things I don’t need during my casual vacation, mid-day mall crawls. That shirt that looks like a moo-moo that you cant ever wear in public but is just sooooo darn comfortable? Sure! I am on vacation, of course!
• I’ve become partial to napping.
• My DVD collection is still missing from my move. I am getting nervous, as I havent hit my "Overboard" viewing quota this month, but thank god it has been on repeat on TBS.
• Snow emergencies in Boston are the spawn of satan, as is the process for getting a Charlestown parking sticker.
• I am remarkably resourceful when making a homemade ice luge.
• Staying logged in on gchat via my cell phone drains the battery in a ridiculous amount of time.
• Watching my family open gifts they love > getting a really awesome gift myself.
• Measure twice, cut once…or in my case I should just measure. Period. [Thereby avoiding my moving in of shelves that wont fit in my apartment, only to then need to move them back out.]
• During the annual Christmas Day Gingerbread House Making Competition, I find that I become much less anxious after a bloody mary.
• It takes three 20-somethings approximately 20 minutes to find, read, decipher between and purchase the correct type of baby motrin/advil/Tylenol/oxycotins/horse tranquilizers
• It is completely possible to get twelve hours of sleep after laying on the couch all day. Criminal Minds episodes are mentally exhausting.
• I am a self proclaimed expert at getting Sass out of the snow with little to no problems.
• Bostonians still stock up on water, canned food, first aid kits and candles the night before a big storm. This is New England people, it snows here. Buy a shovel, snowblower, and a jeep. You will be fine.
• It has become physically and emotionally impossible for me to not cry during the candlelight singing of “Silent Night.” Its gotten to the point where people now look to me in anticipation prior to the lights dimming.
• If I don’t stop soon, I might need to have an intervention about Intervention.
• It isn’t efficient to travel down an icy Charlestown hill in heels….especially after drinking.
• If you double the size of the jello shot, said shot will require double the time to congeal, unless, of course, you prefer cloudly/partially liquid jello shots. Woops!
• I am still completely stupefied at what people do all day long should they not work.
• It is completely possible to avoid your computer for 14 full days.