The Edible TARDIS, The Inedible Domino

(As I named the post, I realized that I forgot to mention that at a Christmas party, while I declined eating a cookie TARDIS, I ate the Doctor's hand. He tastes very good. And I love my friends.)

Today, December 8, 2010, I was whisked away by the Time Lord in his TARDIS. Of course, it’s still today, but he took me with him three separate times. Oh, those were good times. But then he had to get his knickers in a twist about us bickering about drapes or grapes or something. That was when some seven-year-old kid snuck into our abandoned machine and took off, stranding us here. If you should see a boy in a blue box, or a man you’ve seen in pictures from a long time ago, let me know. Actually, no. Just the kid. Mr. Great Powerful Time Lord can get himself out of this mess! Insipid man…

            It is December 12, 2010. I’ve had a rather odd day. I awoke quite a bit early. Bebo and a friend were up during the night/early morning talking, and since I can’t sleep through anything, I spent my time conversing with them, which just made them talk longer. Do you follow? And, to wake me up, someone turned on blinding lights. Of course I dove into my sleeping bag! What else was I to do? But, of course someone trod on my side. Their startled reaction was almost worth the pain. Almost.

This morning, I re-met someone. It was like talking with myself, which I do, on occasion, spend my time on. And get this; his name is Joe. Cue my maniac laughter. Luckily, as we’re so much alike, I didn’t appear to scare him away. We talked about how we knew when we had originally met, we wouldn’t remember each other’s’ name, and we didn’t disappoint our past selves.

            Last night, in my delirium, I decided I wanted a list of all the people who have ever liked me (You know, LIKED me, liked me.). Why, you ask? Well, I want to find them, cackle hysterically while pointing at them, and then refer them to a therapist of the psychological variety. Oh, joy. Now I have another life dream to add to my list. However, I did just cross of “Lock yourself in a car trunk,” only a month ago. There’s room, I guess…

            I went tree shopping with my family today. It’s always been a stressful process. My family will not condone a fake tree (except for that one year when we were in between houses), and we never just go out and buy a tree. No. That would be too simple. We simply must trudge through rain or snow for a few hours before my family has chosen the tree to top all trees (so long as it will fit in the mass of wood they call a house), cut it down, and then haul it home to get it set up. This, of course, includes heaving it through a door. Poor door. As you can tell, it’s not my favorite of holiday traditions. (Although, when we once went to a store to buy a pre-cut tree, it was even worse.) Next year, my dad told me I would get to choose the tree. It will be a Dr. Seuss, double-topped, abandoned bird nested, wild tree.

            The last thing I have to add about today is not about today, but last night. Hugo taught Bebo, a few other friends, and I a little hand dance, if you will, with a cup. I taught it to my sister, and it proved to be rather addicting. We’ve come up with a few varieties of it. Sadly, the video has yet to be recorded. It should be up in my next post.

            It is now the 17th of December in the year of 2010. Have you ever been to a White Elephant gift exchange? I have. Last night was probably my favorite, but not because I got an amazing gift. No. It was the reaction people had to certain gifts, and, well, what those certain gifts were. There were cheese balls, white elephants, spy gear, utility toilet seats, and adult diapers galore! And then some people actually put on the pull-ups. It was quite amusing, but alas! I forgot to take pictures. Luckily, someone else did.

            The most amusing of all gifts were two fish (food and accessories included). Silver and gold, silver and gold! The guy who opened it squealed like a little girl, if memory serves. The rest of the night, he lay on his stomach watching them. “Look! They’re eating!” he announced as the proud new mother he is.

            Tonight I am going to help out at a drive-through life of Jesus. It should be fun. I hope I don’t embarrass myself as much as I did last year… I also hope I don’t freeze. It’s much colder this year. Details on how I humiliate myself will follow!

            Date: 12-18-10. Last night, I did not humiliate myself, as far as I know. However, one of my friends… In between cars, we were goofing off and such. That’s when my friends, who we will refer to as the Deplorable Aye, according to her wishes, began speaking in a British accent. It was rather amusing. Everyone else chirped in their best. After some amount of cars had passed, the Jesus of that scene told us, the angry mob, that we would yell in our English accents for the next car. We were about halfway through when the Deplorable Aye yelled her line of (and this is by memory), “Only God can forgive sins, aye?” She was too convincing, and Jesus started to grin. The whole group of people then lost it, and we broke down laughing. Jesus shouted apologies to the car, and we were about to re-do it for them, when they sped off, obviously scarred by the experience. The car who had been right behind them must have heard, as they too took off.

            Also, when we would finish our scene, we would yell out, “Merry Christmas!” The lame man had a habit of shouting, “Happy Christmas!” It wasn’t anything you couldn’t ignore, until… “Happy birthday!” he shouted.

            It is now December 20, 2010. The last two days have been rather entertaining. On the eighteenth, after I had changed into costume, I was told by a friend who I will refer to as Lars that Bebo had gone through as one of the first people. Bebo should have told me beforehand. I had been there, but I wasn’t yet in costume! I still could have found him! At that point, the Deplorable Aye and I raced around but all was for naught. Bebo and family had left. Now, I only found out about Bebo’s appearance because Lars, who was playing Jesus in the John the Baptist scene told me about how freaked out Bebo had been when he had said, “Hi, Bebo!” Later, I received this message from Bebo over the internet version of Facebook. “There one of the Jesus' said, “Hi Bebo,” and totally freaked me out. How does Jesus know my name?? I don’t talk to guys. And this guy had a BEARD!! I talk to them even LESS!!” Needless to say I went into hysterics when I read that. Oh, Bebo… Just for that, I gave that Lars permission to terrorize her during a one-day class us three desperados will share with him next quarter. Then she can be scared. 

            I have found out during the three-day event, that the majority of volunteers appeared to have a foreign accent fascination. I also found out that Lars cannot handle it when I accidentally say “prophet” in a British accent. It wasn’t even a true one! It was my very sad excuse for an American accent. But I wanted my line to have a different inflection than the other two, and the result was British. Poor Lars. Last night when I was on the scene again for almost the whole night, for half of the time, or so, the whole crowd of people would lapse into an English accent. See, he would take the John the Baptist role for the end of the night to relieve the other man, the Deplorable Aye’s father. Now, Mr. Baptist has a lot of talking to do. So, when we crowd people concurred that since the Deplorable Aye wasn’t working on the scene, we would go English. And we did. Oh! Lars’ face! It wasn’t just my slip of the tongue anymore, it was the whole scene (except Jesus) plotting against him! Or so it seemed. We were just getting bored. For the first line, his face would twitch. For the second, his smile would start. For the third, he was barely contained. He would then almost lose it when the crowd would rally together for the last question. After a while, immunization set in, but we weren’t deterred! We only had our fire and British to keep us warm from the rain, slush, and eventually snow.

And the snow stuck. We were soaked and shivering by the time the last car went through. But that last car! They get quite a different show. Everyone else gets what they get. For the last, though… In the water to wine scene, it was a musical. In John the Baptist, we went full-out British. During the lame man scene, they yell louder than ever. And those are only three scenes! Add to this that they were being followed by all of the volunteers from previous scenes, and you get a very unique experience.

When the Deplorable Aye said her line of, “But only God can forgive sins!” Jesus always would look at her, and say, “Well, let me ask you a question,” looking at her intently, while she acted surly. And then when we would yell, “Stone him!” and he would look at you… I felt like saying, “No, Jesus! I’m just acting! Just… pretending. I’m sorry!”

On the eighteenth, my sister was adjusting my headdress. It was askew. Then the headband that kept the piece of fabric on my head popped off! Because of her. It flew backwards, where the fire was. We couldn’t find it, and gave up, believing it lost to the flames, and I had to become a woman. At the end, we did eventually find it, right at our feet the whole time. Silly sister…

I really think it’s ridiculous that no one pays me any mind when I’m sick because I’m “always sick!”

I feel that I should add some confessions.

1.         I secretly wanted one of a few people from my scene to step just an inch to close to the fire… And then flame for a few seconds. Just to see what would happen. …Is that bad?

2.         I had a short-lived moment where it felt like someone saw right through me, and not in the usual, invisible way, but in the I-know-everything-about-you way. It’s a creepy feeling.

3.         I was beyond stunned that my sister not only willingly helped out with me, but actually enjoyed the people! She’s even more anti-people than I am which says a lot.

4.         I’ve found out that almost no one can creep me out these days. I mean, yes. I am almost as paranoid as Bebo, but I mean people I know. Try as they might, I do have to live with myself, and how could they possibly top me? I lurk, stalk, and add to that my me-ness. Bring it on!

5.         I almost did want a fake beard on the second day, when I was a man person…

6.         I never plan on placing my dead cat in the freezer. Ever.

7.         I should really be doing something more productive. Oh! I see an unproductive pile of books!

This one has absolutely nothing to do with the above event. I have recently developed a habit of singing my cat this song. It goes like this: “Soft kitty, Warm Kitty, Little ball of fur. Happy kitty, Sleepy kitty, Purr, purr, purr.” It’s from a television show I’ve never before seen, but thanks to some friends, I now sing it to my cat as a serial killer would to their victim.

The date is the 28th of December in the year 2010, but I wrote the following to Bebo on the 26th.

“Well, my grandma wore flashing green and red jewelry, my sister may very well have talked more than me, we kind of taught my cousins how to hula-hoop (one of our gifts to them), especially mom, one of our cats unashamedly begged for food and attention until she received it from my cousins (we also gave that cat a bath on the 24th), Mom trusted me enough to halve cherry tomatoes (and I succeeded. Quite a breakthrough), and after everyone finally left by 11pm, my family did a quick cleanup and them played an altered version of Mexican Train until 3am. I warned them at 1:30am (right before I accumulated a horrid 139 points) that we could stop. I practically begged them at 2:08am to let me sleep, and after we finished, we had to play ONE. MORE. ROUND. to finish a real Mexican Train game.

You should have seen my dad. He's ever so slightly loopy from the pain medication (and maybe something else). He wasn't quite as uptight around his family (and there were no massive complaints after!), and then... Dad on meds, Jessica woke up at 6am on Christmas (and the rest of us around 10am), plus my mom and I at any time past 1am... I thought I understood laughing so hard you cry, but it turns out, I've only teared up. Now, however... I couldn't see properly for a good few minutes. All because I said something along the lines of, "I'll let you do my math." Now I do believe I have two more quotes...

Ahem. My aunt to my sister about my dad's behavior around Jessica's gift of money- "He took it from you and smelled it!" Yes. He was on drugs. We apologize. We should have done this to him sooner.

My parents were talking about what if we had my entire extended family do one of my mother's workout things, conducted by her.

Dad- "Bilius would cry." (Bilius is my dad's...no other word... BURLY brother.)

Mom, laughing maniacally, "I know! I'd love to see that!"

Then I heard my aunt (the same one who talked about the money) talking about a business her and her brothers wanted to start. Something about a floating (or was it sinking?) body. Made you wonder...

That and we resurfaced the conversation about after death arrangements. My aunt is making her children dig her up to bury Uncle Bilius underneath her is she dies first. Yup. And now my parents heard some of it. Great Christmas conversation. Oh, and my Nana was referred to as loopy quite a bit.

I will expand upon the earlier conversation of death another time.

Now then, in a parting note, I would like to give a warning about Mexican Train. The set we recently got makes my mouth water. I mean this in every literal sense possible. It makes my stomach quake in hunger. The colored circles in the dominos look like M ‘n’ Ms, the middle thing reminds me of a lighter-colored fudge, and I almost put one of the train pieces in my mouth because it reminded me so strongly of those gummy snack things. It’s a good thing I have self-control, although my logic really needs some work. I mean, I REALLY wanted to at least shove it into my mouth to prove to myself it wasn’t edible. I think that one day, my self-control will fail, and some of the trains will need to be disinfected… Okay, no one should be salivating like this to the thought of marble and plastic.

Warning: Keep all pieces away from toddlers and college students.

Joe