The Hot Childs (in the city)

Thursday, January 6, 2011

The Holiday Season

Now that the holiday season draws to a close and we anxiously await its end on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I have enough time to lie on my bed amidst the sounds of the recycling truck and write an update.

I've been doing a lot of great things. For instance, today I cleaned my walls. You may be thinking, "Walls? Does one need to clean walls? That sounds ridiculous!" Well I still don't know if I am supposed to be cleaning my walls on a daily basis or if I live in some sort of weird vortex room that necessitates this, but my walls were covered in thick, nasty, freaking weird gray dust. It probably looks like I have a meth lab in my closet or something. Anyway, with the closing of the holiday season, I finally cleaned them! So maybe I will stop waking up sneezing now! Exciting!

I did a little bit of holiday travel over the past few weeks. Before Thanksgiving, my mom got involved in some sort of black market gift card business, so we had enough money for me to take the minivan down to Kentucky! Woo hoo! There, Teresa and I attempted to stay in a hotel modeled after Native American teepees. Somehow, as if that is not racist enough, the owners call the place Wigwam Village #2. I mean, come on. Your average first grader can tell the difference between a teepee and a wigwam. But our experiment ultimately failed and we were too scared to actually sleep in the teepee on the side of the Kentucky backroad with its chain-link lock, so we ended up sleeping in a Super 8 a few miles away with a Louisville slugger under our bed and a kiddie pack of beer in our mini fridge. KENTUCKY!

I also traveled to Ball State to pick up my sister from college. This was exciting because I finally got to see Ball State from a student's point of view, something I have never known and contributes to my status as the black sheep of my family. I had a great time watching the finale of Dancing with the Stars, eating cheetos, and reading OK! like a real college student. The next day, on our way home to Valpo, I accidentally drove us to Illinois.

But I eventually made it back to Valpo! For Thanksgiving and Christmas! One memory that I will forever cherish (other than the ones with my family, the ones of eating and crying and laughing and watching Lifetime movies, etc, etc) is the friendly, competitive game my friends and I invented. It's called VALPO BINGO and it involves spotting people from high school. First person to hit five gets BINGO. I saw my dentist out one night, but unfortunately he wasn't on my bingo card. None of us have had a BINGO yet but we have many years ahead of us.

In Chicago, my holiday celebrations included baking a diabetes-invoking amount of cookies with baby Cooper, taking baby Sophia to a holiday concert only to find out it wasn't a orchestra playing... but a French horn chorus... so... 15 French horns... and nothing else, realizing that the candlebra in our living room was Danny's menorrah after the 5th day of it being lit, and hosting a potluck at our apartment. After some confusion, the potluck ended up being almost entirely taco and pasta themed. This seemed weird at first, but lately, all I've been eating are tacos and lasagna, so maybe it wasn't as off as I thought. We also hosted a lovely game of white elephant. Highlights included gifting Brandy's leftover B12 vitamins and a lock of my hair.... hahaha isn't that the CREEPIEST white elephant gift ever? Clearly, that one was from me. Somehow I ended up with the best white elephant gift received though: a bottle of Baileys and a sweet mug. It almost made me feel bad for only contributing a lock of my hair.

And now I'm just taking things slow and yelling, "I'm going to Africa!" every couple of hours. Sometimes I yell it out of excitement. Sometimes out of fear. Sometimes to try and get what I want, like Blackhawks tickets out of some guy I don't really know. Sometimes to guilt Mallory into doing things with me. I apologized to my roommates for talking about Senegal too much. They said they haven't noticed me talking about it at all. I guess all of those conversations have been in my head. They said that all they ever hear me talking about is babies. I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts, a few worries, but honestly, I'm not really dwelling on them because I know that any expectations I have are probably wrong. And my little Ugandan summer gave me just enough African experience to fill in those really huge questions. But on the whole, I am going to let Senegal answer for herself, when I get there.

I actually made a new blog for Senegal... a travel blog if you will. After careful deliberation and polling of my friends, I decided on this:

lisadidwhat.blogspot.com

So yall can check that out later.

In the mean time, I'm going to get back to watching Friday Night Lights, researching oyster allergies (APPARENTLY I AM ALLERGIC???), and preparing for Oscar season by watching every single movie.

Happy 2011! Watch out for dead birds falling from the sky!