Thank heavens most of you do not think you are normal. I am among my people. And I liked that some of you think you ARE normal, but you come here to see my lack of normalcy. That works for me.
In all, 12 of you identified as normal and 36 said you definitely weren't. And yes, I know I have over 100 comments. The rest were you guys coming back and out-abnormaling each other. Y'all kill me.
Some of you said normal was in the eye of the beholder, but I don't know. Is anyone gonna say Joaquim Phoenix is normal? Some people just aren't. Hunter S. Thompson. Not normal. And one of my favorite people ever.
But speaking of things other people do, am I alone in this? Okay, maybe this first part I am alone.
Sometimes I look on my sitemeter to see who is looking at my blog and how they found me. Like, yesterday someone Googled "yellow salamander" and found me. When in the Sam Holy Jehoshaphat did I ever mention a yellow salamander?
At any rate, someone was looking at a post I wrote back in August of 2009, so I looked at it, too. And below is what I saw:
"I went to the nursery with my friend The Other June today. Did you ever notice whenever I do something with The Other June, I end up showing a picture of me? Could it be because TOJ does not wish to be photographed? Or is it that I really have no friends and TOJ is my Snufalupagus?
"At any rate, I did buy these gold pine cone Christmas tree ornaments. Because they were necessary."
You guys. I forgot I bought those pine cone tree ornaments! But I DID buy them, in August of 2009! This means I did not use them LAST Christmas, and did not pull them out of my brand-new exciting Rubbermaid tubs THIS Christmas. Somewhere in my house were those ding ding ding and dang shiny pine cones, just waiting to be on display, and not on my ears, but WHERE WERE THEY?
I had to go to bed last night with these pine cones on my mind. Some people have Georgia on their mind. I have pine cones. Oh, I was bothered. I got up this morning and commenced to lookin'. My stupid-arse camera battery died, and I similarly have no idea where my battery charger is, because I removed the charger from the wall to plug in a Christmas tree light that has glitter floating in it, because apparently the baby Jesus was found in a manger of glitter, so obsessed am I with it at this time of year.
The point is, I photographed my search with my iPhone, which was not good, but it is all I have for you.
Here I am with my coffee, headed to the attic, where I am certain I put the dang pine cones. I say this because I had already searched every nook and cranny down here last night.
What is a "cranny"?
Whenever I head to the attic, Winston emerges from nowhere, because he loves going up there to murder voles. This works for me, as I do not wish to see voles. We have a win/win with Win, here.
I pulled down the attic stairs, and here is the stupid yellow ribbon Marvin put on the stairs, which is unnecessary because the attic is in easy reach right in the hallway. So all it serves to do is make the steps slippery. Perhaps he is wishing Tony Orlando would come back and he didn't quite understand the rules re the old oak tree.
Please also note the shipping popcorn, as every time we get a box, Marvin opens the attic and TOSSES the empty box up there, resulting in 21048502 boxes full of shipping peanuts falling on you each time you pull down the steps.
Honestly, these had better be the most wonderful glittery pine cones the world has ever seen.
My iPhone was delighted to be up in that bright, warm, orderly attic.
I hunched around up there, where it was probably 20 degrees, for probably half an hour, searching through boxes of ridiculousness. We have stuff up there no one will ever need again. Marvin has saved every note he ever took in every class during college. Really? Why?
Then I started getting mad. There was a chair way over yonder, and a chair up here. I started putting chairs with chairs, purses with purses, empty boxes with empty boxes, dead voles with dead voles.
I found this lovely wrapping paper, and I know it seems like this is a dream sequence, with the blurry photographs, but did I mention the iPhone was happy with me?
I also threw out a bunch of crap that was just, you know, UP there for no reason. Like, last summer, Marvin made a shark costume out of his car's floor mats? (don't ask) He put the rest of the cut-up floor mat up there. Like he might USE it for something else later.
Finally? FINALLY?
SUCCESS! Oh, how I'd been PINE-ING for these.
They were in a box of stuff to wrap presents, just not CHRISTMAS presents. Why did I think that was a good place to put them?
Tallulah was very interested in their vole-y smelling selves.
A vole is just a mouse with a larger snout, by the way.
They stupidly try to hang around our attic every once in awhile, but why? Hello, snowball? This is hell. Three cats.
There. Seventeen hours and 80 pounds of attic dust in my nethers later, the pine cones are on my tree. If I didn't have a blog, I probably never would have remembered I bought these.
If I didn't have a blog, I might leave the house once in awhile. But why? There's all this glitter to look at in here.
