Clapping Hands

The mind works in weird ways. While I was at a bachelorette party in the N. Georgia woods last weekend (don't act like this isn't a common bachelorette party destination), my buddy Megan told us a story about a murder that happened years ago in the cabin next to hers. The picture above is of the actual cabin where the murder took place. Creepy. I decided to document the story-telling with photos of faces of several of the girls attending the party.

It was fun in a twisted, story-telling kind of way (this "twisted fun" was captured beautifully in the picture of Colleen below).

Anyway, the story was great until I woke up from my wine/beer/liquor stupor at 6 AM on the couch in the living room…the closest possible sleeping position to the front door of the cabin. There were 5 places to sleep upstairs and 4 places to sleep in bedrooms downstairs. There were 9 girls. I would have never selected this spot with a sober mind. The front door is obviously where the murderer enters a cabin. I immediately started hearing things…ya know, the usual night time sounds…rain, an animal breathing next to my ear, wind. Okay, so maybe not the breathing animal. This one threw me off as well. After the hearing things wasn’t enough to fully freak me out, the mind decided to take over the scary movie project. While I’m writing this, I’m playing that fun game where you arrive at a strange image or a thought, and you replay every thought it took to get you there. So, my ending image: CLAPPING HANDS.

All I kept thinking about was how I would be the first one to die. I mean, there are advantages and disadvantages to that outcome. Death would be the obvious disadvantage, but several advantages might include not seeing 8 other girls die. Once the brain hit that string, I couldn’t get over the fact that if 9 girls were murdered in one cabin, that would become a movie. That’s better than Bundy’s three in one night by a multiple of three. I assumed an intelligent murderer. Not sure why. Perhaps because I was in a cabin full of future Ph.Ds, I assumed that the man (yes, I pictured a man) that put us away would have to be smart. This led to the creepy thought of how a smart murderer would kill the first person in the cabin on the couch…ME!

I determined that he would obviously slit my throat. Why? Because then I couldn’t warn the others. But then I smirked to myself and experienced some internal dialogue, “Oh smart murderer, don’t judge a book by its cover.” By this, I meant, a girl with a slit throat is not simply a useless girl with a slit throat. In fact, she still has hands. My lasting image was me clapping my hands to warn the other girls. How clever of me. Call me Doc.

This would undoubtedly lead to them waking up from drunken slumber, and the result would be 8 v. 1. Advantage: 8 Ph.Ds.

I fell back asleep feeling much more content about the kind of person I am. What began as a selfish scary movie about me being the first one to die ended with a final unselfish gesture to save the lives of 8 amazing women.

"We are Siamese if you please..."

“This is the life, it’s just beautiful down under today!” No, I’m not in the shower scrubbing myself with a loofah and talking vainly about my “shark” as my teammate, Laney, would call it. It’s actually the first sentence on the back of an Australian bottle of Shiraz that I’m enjoying with my Siamese Twin tonight. It is one of our last nights together in Asheville. Tragic.

Before I discuss all of that though, I’d like to talk about loofahs since I randomly mentioned them. I was watching a show on MTV when I was eleventeen. It was a boy vs. girl show of some sort where contestants had to answer questions about the opposite sex to earn points. Unfortunately for the female host, but fortunately for me, this was a live show. She asked the male contestant, “What is a loofah?” He looked very confused, as most people that are contestants on an MTV show do. The host repeated her question, and then said with a smart ass, sassy tone, “A loofah, A-L-O-O-F-A-H, A loofah.” Props to her for watching the Scripps spelling bee and understanding the format, but she probably should have taken a closer look at the card in front of her with the question and realized that “A” and “Loofah” are two separate words. In a nutshell, her format was very Indian, but her spelling was very Caucasian. If I were the dude, I would have asked the origin of the word "aloofah." I would have followed that up with, “Are there any alternate pronunciations?” I just realized that this will not be funny to anyone who has not watched the Scripps spelling bee.

Another quick live TV moment that you Georgia folks can appreciate was the comment from one of UGA’s football geniuses following the win over Florida. When asked how they pulled off the win, he responded, “We played balls to the wall, maaaaan.” I really felt like I understood their game plan after that. Well said, well said.

Back to my Siamese Twin…I am going to miss that girl even though I’ll be glad when her head is no longer lodged in my neck. It’s been a long, strange trip as Bill Walton would say, but this separation surgery that is about to go down will be crazy. By separation surgery, I’m referring to my move back to Athens. Talia will never leave Asheville. It’s because of the mountains she says. Georgia has mountains…and fun bars, and most importantly, ME. I really will miss her, so I thought I’d take a moment to reminisce on our Siamese Twin-ness. Here are a few of my favorite things that I will miss:

(1) talking in our own language

(2) listening to her first laugh of the day

(3) drinking wine while we play computer and watch Intervention

(4) realizing that we’ve never remembered an entire episode of Hoarders because the bottles of wine were all consumed during Intervention

(5) telling her things that everyone else would judge me for and hearing her laugh about it

(6) listening to her tell me things that I would judge anyone else for and laughing about it

(7) chatting online while we’re sitting next to each other

(8) cooking dinners together...even if our meat is McDonald's chicken filets

(9) drinking Dogfish

(10) telling her I have some gossip and hearing, “TELL ME NOW!”

(11) making up our own lyrics to songs that exist and don’t exist…and, semicolon, whereas

This last one is why we are just like the Lady and the Tramp cats. We are Siamese and we pretty much sing everything. It’s probably really annoying to everybody but us. There are probably a hundred more things to list, but I can’t write a 4 page blog that nobody understands. I’m sure I have already exceeded the inside joke blog limit. This is simply a tribute to an awesome friend. In closing Boo Boo, Good Night and Good Luck.

Work for You Means Work for Me

I decided today why I don’t ever delegate tasks to other people. It’s actually a question on the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder interview...”Do you have difficulty delegating tasks to others..?” or something like that. I would certainly say YES to this question; however, I do NOT have that disorder. Actually, some people would laugh at the thought of me even attempting to pretend that I did have that disorder (i.e., my advisor, Josh, who is convinced I have the lowest level of Conscientiousness in the history of graduate students). Josh won’t read this, which is good. As I write it, though, I’m thinking about how conscientious he is and acknowledging the fact that he would search for my blog on Google for hours if he heard that I mentioned him in it. So, those of you who do read my blog and know Josh, shutup. And no, I’m not going to throw him a compliment at the end of this paragraph as if I am scared. Not my style.

Anyway, I hate delegating tasks to others for fear that they will do it incorrectly. Why? Because they do…every damn time. I’m reminded of this frequently and then kick myself in the vagine for being stupid and forgetting the rule. Forgetting the rule just makes more work for me, which obviously brings us to the title of my blog: Work for you means work for me. What a shitty concept…really. I’m by no stretch of imagination the most diligent ant in the colony, but I do sometimes feel like I’m shiftin’ dirt from my pile and people are just pilin’ it on when they’re facing the south end of my north bound ass.

Exhibit (no letter, because it will be the only one in this blog).

I took my team to Luella’s BBQ tonight for dinner. $11 limit including drinks…yes, I didn’t stutter children. No, you can’t use someone else’s money if they don’t use all of theirs.

“Coach, she doesn’t like Luella’s.”

“I could care less.”

That’s pretty much how it went. Food was good, I thought, but I do come from a place where free meals are good. Apparently, that isn’t a concept that has drifted down to scholarship athletes, but none of my concepts about how to cut hard, defend, and communicate drift down either, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I also shouldn’t be surprised that work for them (which was the easiest job ever) meant more work for me. By work for them, I mean, I give you $100 and you eat for 5 days. That’s $20 a day if my math is good…certainly not Rachel Ray material, but sufficient when you have a grocery store less than 3 minutes away and are surrounded by places that cater to poor college students. Come to find out when the Luella hating girls practiced after their day off, most of them ate only one meal prior to the 2 PM practice and one of our girls actually ate nothing. So, in a hasty, emotional moment, BB, our head coach, demanded that they return $60 for 3 days worth of meals and that we “hold their hands” to each of their meals for the next 3 days (this means I hold their hands because I'm in charge of team meals). OH JOY! To BB…thanks for taking a stand in my honor. To the girls…I hate all of you.

Keep in mind, I would not say anything in my blog that I wouldn’t say to the faces of the people in my blog. I can promise you that. If you read my last blog, you know I asked a man with horns why he had horns. Well today, as we left Luella’s and all I could think about was how giving my players $100 to eat ended up being me eating 3 meals a day with them, I told them, “Meet me at McDonalds tomorrow morning at 9, and…I hate all of you.” They laughed, and I kicked myself in the vagine.

Last Night's Insane Asheville Posse

I’m sitting here in study hall again. I guess I’ve been promoted, so I get to cover it on Tuesdays now also. Too bad my $47 a month paycheck (after taxes) didn’t feel the boost. It was fairly comical when I got my W-2 actually. A friend told me that you don’t have to claim income less than $500 on your taxes. It’s funny that I didn’t have to claim my income from a full-time job…

Anyway, I’m drinking coffee at 5:30 at night because I can’t keep my eyes open in this place. I owe that to my gallivanting around Asheville on the “snow day” until 1 AM. Despite the repercussions of this life choice at 8 AM, there were a few noteworthy moments from last night that I thought I’d share J

I’ll start with the strangest moment, a very good place to start (a lil’ Sound of Music flava there). This moment occurred at the conclusion of the evening’s adventures when Talia and I met our yellow cab on the Mellow Mushroom corner. His name was Kevin. That is how flowery love stories start, but this is not a flowery love story at all, because I would find it very difficult to fall in love with a man with horns. Yes, that is what I had said. HORNS. I noticed these horns immediately sticking out of the top of Kevin’s hat, and naturally, I commented on them without hesitation. I tried to be discreet about it, though, so I said, “Are those horns?!” Kevin smiled and acknowledged that the silver sharpened accessories were, in fact, horns. I think I asked him why he had horns, and he just sort of shrugged. If I were him, I would have responded that I thought horns would provide a nice addition to my 3 inch thumb nails, Insane Clown Posse T-Shirt, and red chest length goatee. But, Kevin must not have thought they all went together. Nice guy Kevin was. He doesn’t have a girlfriend though.

Then there was Erica… a real gem. Erica probably doesn’t remember me or Talia but she has our phone numbers in her cell, so it should make for a humorous, confusing moment at some point. Erica is a nurse by trade. Last night, though, she was a drunk and angry girlfriend who made the absolute most out of her frustration by living it up at Bier Garden. She eventually called her boyfriend to take her home, and so Rod (his actual name is Brad, but due to Erica’s slur, the initial introduction was a bit distorted) showed up and sat patiently next to her while she ordered rounds of shots for her new found friends. We bonded over YouTube videos, Erica’s reported suckage at basketball, and a Quesadilla. Rod was a real champ through two lemon drops and tequila. He even thought that the name Rod sounded cooler than Brad, and when he repeated it to himself a few times and pumped his fist, I began to question his manhood. It was after the fist pumping that I realized why we shouldn’t worry about large bar tabs…Erica and Rod left holding hands.

Finally, there was our evening ending event. Chasing Jorge. In contrast to “His name was Kevin,” Chasing Jorge sounds like a cheesy thriller about a druglord near the Mexico border. This is almost what happened. Jorge is Talia’s cat that we lost in the sunroom and found behind the refrigerator hissing. Overwhelming similarities, I know.

The screen just got blurry because my eyes closed. Study hall nap time…maybe I’ll dream of chasing a falsely named man with horns…it really doesn’t seem that strange of an idea after last night. Good times and a well-deserved toast to Kevin, Erica, Rod, and Jorge...last night's Insane Asheville Posse.