Kitten's Korner

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Toilet Brushes, Hummers, and Satallite TV

I’m in a human video group in my church. We went to the Fine Arts Festival to compete and got invited to nationals in Denver, so we’ve been doing a ton of fundraisers so that we can go. Today, we did a car wash. We went down to Auto Zone, which is where everyone holds their fund raiser carwashes. We don’t get as much business as other people, but then again, we don’t have sorority girls in bikinis dancing around on the corners holding the car wash signs. This is perfectly fine though because we’d rather get dirt old cars than dirty old men.

Personally, I’ve never been particularly fond of Hummers. In the words of Thorn, they’re shoeboxes on wheels. But when the Audio Visual Hummer pulled up to get a washed, I flipped. Audio Visual is a business in our town that sells really expensive home theaters, kicking car sound systems, and stuff like that. Their ‘mascot’ is the Hummer that came to get a wash. It’s got two slashes painted onto either side of the car, spinners, wicked awesome woofers, and a little hookup on top that allows them to have satellite TV in the car! Now you probably understand a little bit more why I was so excited.

Except for the Hummer, every car had bug splats on the front, some more then others. Usually, I got stuck with the job of getting those suckers off. For a while I was using a little red and white toilet brush, but then one of our leaders said to switch to a softer brush because it was less likely to scratch off paint. Then the toilet brush was used to scrub tires.

Sometimes, I’ll see a person and think to myself “Ya know, I’d really like to be friends with this person.” It’s really easy to complete this goal if you’ve just met the person, because when you go up and start talking to them, they’ll just think you’re a really nice person. But if the person is a guy, and you’ve been around them for a while, when you just walk up and start talking, they might think that you’ve suddenly got the hots for them and pull away. One of the guys in the human video team, Jimmy, is a person I’ve been wanting to make friends with, but have been to afraid to confront because I didn’t want him thinking anything. But today, I was talking with another one of my guy friends, KC about Dragon Ball Z (one of the Japanese cartoons I like to watch, for those who don’t know what it is) and then Jimmy came in and started up in our conversation. We got talking, and then KC went to go do something, so Jimmy and I just sat and talked for a while. So thanks, KC, for helping me out with this sought after friendship.

Business was starting to slow down a lot, and we were just getting ready to pack up when a guy rolled in with his truck and asked if we could wash his four wheeler that was in the back. We all happily agreed. It didn’t take very long, but it was one of the highlights of the day.

After the long carwash, I took off my green flip flops with the see-through flower on the top off so that they could get sprayed down with the hose to get all the soap and grit and stuff off, when I realized my feet now have tan lines. My semi-tan feet (I’m still pretty pasty) have two white strips and a white flower on the tops. Fun fun fun. I bet no one else has gotten a tanned the shape of a flower on their foot before. So ha! I feel special!

And now, I sit here writing this half asleep, totally worn out from a combination of work and heat, but the thought that I’m going to Denver on Monday for the FAF Nationals, still gets me jumping. But not literally. Not enough energy.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Lots of Junk About My Life This Last Week

Last Saturday, I went out of town with G-ma for a girl’s day out thing. Of course, we went in the Miata. There was just no accepting the alternative!

Anyway, we went to Famous Footwear where I got new tennis shoes (my old ones had a hole in the toe) and green Converse High Tops! Robo was so jealous! We went to the mall, Barnes and Noble, and a gorgeous Chinese restaurant called China Road. Not only did they have amazing food, but also for a centerpiece they carved a white bird and a beautiful yellow flower out of some kind of vegetable (Mom thinks that it’s a radish). I had such a fun time, despite the 104-degree weather.

We got new carpet today. It was supposed to happen yesterday, but something went wrong (I’m not sure on all the details yet) so they did it this morning instead. My brother stayed the night at G-ma’s these last two nights because when the old carpet was taken off, it revealed a bunch of tack board that Mom and Dad didn’t want us stepping on.

I’m a volunteer at the local library, and the other day at the end of my ‘shift’ there was a knitting class there. My friend, Thorn, who went every week, had been telling me about how fun and soothing it was and that my friend’s girlfriend, Robyn was one of the teachers, so I decided to go. Robyn taught me the basic technique, but I kept doing something wrong; the yarn kept getting too tight around the needle. I thought I was copying her exactly, and I was starting to get a headache out of frustration. So much for being “soothing.” But she found out what I was doing wrong and things went great from there on out. Doing it right calmed me down a lot, and Thorn and I went on knitting even after class was done. We sat in the back of the library with our yarn and needles and chatted.

I’ve finished a story I’ve been working on since halfway through the year. Now all I have to do is send it to my wonderful editor (aka, Dad) and have him check it out. We’re going to send it in to get published once all the little quirks are fixed. I’ll post it on the blog, too.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Supersize Me

Supersize Me is a movie that makes you very self conscious of just how much junk food and physical activity you actually have in your daily life. I was watching it today while my brothers were at G-ma’s, and I realized that I do next to no physical anything. The strongest muscles in my body are probably my fingers because they get such a work out hitting keys on the computer keyboard and piano and turning pages in the new Harry Potter book that G-ma and G-pa bought for me and that I have become addicted to. (It goes everywhere I go and my nose is always somewhere between its pages.)

Inspired, I jumped off my lazy butt and went to the garage to grab my bike. I felt mocked at the sight of it. To emphasize my lack of physical activity, dust, cobwebs, and even a spider web complete with little black spider in the middle covered my bike. There was another spider crawling around on the handlebars. After much dusting and a little bit of time pumping up the tires, I was on my way out. I didn’t go much of anywhere, just spent an hour riding through the streets of my town. I went to G-ma’s to get some water about half way through (it was pretty humid outside today) I rode around downtown, and just basically wandered. I did find a house for sale with a box of flyers, which I grabbed. I do every time I see one and keep them in my room for if I ever need inspiration for a house in one of my stories. Just a fun little thing I do. Anyway, around a half hour through the trip, I started feeling rawness on the inside of my legs by the seat. I am so going to feel that saddle burn in the morning, but I pushed myself to go the full hour. I did it, and I am very proud of myself. Surprisingly, I don’t feel very tired at all, which means I’m either not in as bad shape as I though I was or I didn’t work hard enough. Oh, well. I’m hoping to do this as much as I can for what is left of summer holiday. Only three weeks left. Better make the best of them.

When I finally got home, I was greeted at the gate by Mom, who was watching Bear play in the backyard. He was butt-naked, so I assumed he was running around with the hose or something. Anywho, he ran up on the patio and started to pee. I don’t know if he’s ever seen himself pee before, because we usually don’t let him run around naked. He was very amused by it though.
“Look, mommy!” he cried, starting down at himself. “Look at that!”
Mom and I laughed. This was the second “potty moment” in the back yard that Bear had this summer. You can read the other one in my entry “Monkey Boy Is In Our Kiddie Pool.”

And the last thing, as I promised in my entry “100 Things About Me,” here’s the story of how my friend Thorn and I met:

When I was younger, my best friend in the world was my next-door neighbor, KayKay. One day, we went to one of her friend’s houses, which was a block away. When I walked into the friend’s back yard, I saw a girl dressed entirely in black running around carrying a baby doll with a small group of children chasing her shouting “Give it back! Give it back!”
Wanting to play the hero, I somehow got the girl next to a wall and punched her as hard as I could in the gut. (I’d never do that today. I regret what I did)

As it turns out, the kids, including the girl, were playing dress up. The girl, who turned out to be Thorn, dressed in black play clothes pretending to be the kidnapper, and the family was chasing her around the yard trying to get their baby back. It was all just a part of the game.

I don’t quite remember what happened next, but I’m pretty sure that the horrified kids ran to get their mom and I was never allowed back there again. Somehow (I don’t remember this either) Thorn and I met again, this time in a much friendlier way and we ended up being best friends. Life is a curious thing, ain’t it?