Ho-Hum Holidays

So my family and I celebrated Christmas yesterday on Christmas Eve...the first time ever we have had to break tradition. Normally we spend Christmas Eve at our grandparents opening presents, watching movies, and sticking bows on my dad while he sleeps. Christmas day is then spent with the whole family over...normal stuff. However, nothing was normal this Christmas. We had to celebrate it on the Eve because my mom had to work the day of. Now, I know my family is crazy...but I had no idea we had gotten this bad.

So we wake up and open presents...we're sane so far...then grandma comes over. The second grandma walks through the door she's already crying (nobody knows why anymore---we just assume its our fault and get over it). Anyways, she walks up to my mom and whispers to her, "Your father is drunk." Right. The only thing my grandpa drinks is tea and pepsi. So if he's drunk then hot damn, I'm drinking tea all day. We all shrug it off, cause me know grandma is crazy, and settle into the family room. My duty for the day consisted of getting everybody's drinks for dinner. So I hand my grandpa a pitcher of tea and ask everybody else what they want...tea was the popular drink. As I'm standing in the kitchen getting the drinks my grandma is sitting across the counter staring at me and my mom is cooking the mashed potatoes. Out of nowhere my grandma leans over the counter and says to my mother, "Nancy! Stacey has..." she then continues to make the hand motions of my belly growing out. Keep in mind, I'm only five feet away, in earshot, and staring right at her...so if she was trying to be conspicuous, you failed grandma. I'm watching her blatantly make these hand gestures and say to her, "No grandma, I'm not pregnant." Again she says, "Nancy, shes really..." Hand motions again. "Oh okay! You dont think I'm pregnant, you just think I'm fat. Okay. Right. Thanks. Yeah, okay, you can quit doing the hand motions now...no?...alright, then just keep doing them I guess." Needless to say I am now on a diet and grandma is now missing a few teeth. (Not to mention I got my revenge by hiding her legs. That was fun.) But this was just the beginning. It got so bad that my sister and I made up a game to entertain ourselves and deal with the brutal honesty that is grandma. We liked to call it "is grandma lying or telling the truth." Basically, the rules were that grandma would say something and we would then try to distinguish if she was lying or actually telling the truth...about 80% of the time it was lies.

In true Hoffman holiday fashion we spent the rest of the night all lounged in the living room in pain from eating so much. The margaritas came out, grandma went home, and we gathered around the t.v. watching "Elf", but mostly watching our pets. The dog was eating the carpet, the cat was eating tinsel, and dad was snoring. At one point the cat jumped in the tree and from then on out all we saw was the tree shaking and dancing...and meowing.

Todays been odd. Its weird to wake up feeling like its the day after Christmas while everybody is waking up to Christmas and opening their presents. Not to mention the weird feeling of being at home, but my real home is 600 miles from me...and I'm fat. Thanks grandma.

An Apology To All Guys

So, for the record, I hate being a girl. I dont think I realized how high maintenance I am until I got a boyfriend...because a relationship requires maintenance, and when its with me, it requires A LOT of it. So, to all boys--I apologize for all girls. We dont know why God designed us this way...to nurture, to care, or to just nag the hell out of guys. It is often said that girls got the worst end of the deal from the fall: We have "times of the month" (or for some girls--"the week of the bitch"), we have to go through childbirth, yada, yada, yada...all those disgusting bodily things that are painful that guys dont have to go through. Guys have nothing...or so we thought. Guys have the worst pain of all that is unbearable...they have to put up with us women. They have to put up with the nagging, the bitching, the weird emotions that have no reason behind it, the "month cycle", the crying, the unending process of trying to figure us out, the I'm-mad-at-you-but-I-dont-know-why-and-I'm-not-going-to-tell-you, the whining, the confusion, the DRAMA. Nothing in the world is more dramatic than girls, not even Broadway or Titanic (which we make guys sit through for 3 hours and watch and then listen to the soundtrack of Celine Dion). On top of that we have the manipulation. An example, a girl can be sitting at the table eating soup and need the salt and pepper from the cabinet. She will deliberately call her man into the room, pick a fight purposely for no reason, go through a whole argument (the whole time the guy is confused), blame the guy for some reason or another, then make up and ask him if he can get the salt and pepper for her. This is the girls route. The simple and more sane route would be to just get up and get the salt and pepper herself, but girls cannot be simple. It is not in our nature. It IS in our nature to be difficult....but were cute.

So...sorry guys. Sorry Jeff. Girls are stupid. There really is no purpose to us other than to create hell for you, but still look cute while doing it.

Bio Books, Sunflower Seeds, and McRib Sanwiches

So all day and all week long all I have been doing is studying, studying, studying. I'm down to my last chapter but my brain is so fried so i decided to take a brake. My bio exam is tomorrow and I cannot wait to fail it so I can be done with this semester. The highlight of my day came about two hours ago when i got home from work and ate dinner. I cannot tell you how excited I am that McDonalds brought back their McRib sandwiches. Those things are the best! I plan on going to McDonalds everyday and getting one until they take them away again...then i'll be sad. McRibs...mmmmm...like heaven sandwiched between two pieces of sesame seed buns. Well, I gotta go back to studying. Give you a hint of what I'm having to learn, it goes something like this, "Once the axons of preganglionic neurons of the sympathetic division pass to the sympathetic trunk ganglia (via a white ramus communicans), they may connect with postganglionic neurons..." I kid you not I made none of that up, that is straight from my study notes. I know what youre thinking, and i gotta admit it also...i didnt know when i signed up for bio that i was also taking spanish along with it.

Baxter, you know i dont speak spanish. (For Heather, to give her something to laugh about)

The Ghosts of Regrets

Have you ever literally been haunted by your past? So for the past half hour or so i've been lying here thinking. And all these scenes have just been rushing into my head of things i've said, things i've done, and things i've regretted and i am literally haunted by them. They make me cringe, they make me cry, they make me angry and regretful...they make me hate myself and what i've become. And so I sit here and do nothing but wince at every bad memory, every time i screwed up, every time i did something that wasn't my true hearts desire...every time i claimed to want God and then chased after my own fleshly hungers. Seems like lately i've been having more and more of these days. And as much as I regret them and long for them to be gone, i keep getting myself into them. Weakness...not exactly the most comforting feeling in the world.

So its a little after 9:30p. Just got done drinking margaritas and watching dodgeball with heather nunn. I'm sitting here waiting for my cookies to be done, and getting a little bored, so I decided to play on the internet a little. Everybody talks about how they google themselves to see whats out there. Well, I thought it was about time for a little google myself, and I found some pretty amusing alter egos of mine..enjoy them, i sure did.

http://www.jazzcampwest.com/stacey.html (Dig the wrinkles and the glasses)
http://www.shands.org/find/doctor/Physicians_Details.asp?id=490276U (Look mom! I'm a doctor, just like you always wanted!! And you gotta dig the haircut!)
http://www.phhp.ufl.edu/chp/chp_clips/whatsnews/04bowling.htm (This ones gotta be my favorite! Look at me getting touch rolling up sleeves to bowl!!! This actually looks a lot like my mom...i always knew i was adopted.) http://staceyhoffman.edinarealty.com/AgentHome/Homepage.aspx (From my blonde days.)
http://surgerynews.net/news/1203/other12308.htm (So here i am after my makeover...apparently i'm really ugly. Mmmm...i have such great self-esteem right now. Read the first line of the first paragraph..."Stacey Hoffman wasnt always a babe..." Ouch, guys, OUCH!)

Anyways, I'm done googling. Hope you guys got good laughs, I sure did. Especially knowing that i wasnt always a babe and am ugly, but HALLELUJAH surgery can change that.

Emergency Room

So the weekend started off to kind of a bad start the other day. I was at my parents house in Tracy for the night to meet my boyfriend to drive to Oregon the next day. The unimaginable happened. It was about one in the morning and I was relaxing by the fire doing some homework and waiting for jeff to arrive when my mother comes out coughing up her lungs...nothing unusual. So I walk by her to go outside and change my laundry and come back in. What I failed to realize before is that she was trying to talk to me but couldnt...she couldnt breathe. I walk back by her and glance up to meet my mom's face. Its covered with fear. She kept coughing and acting like something else was wrong, only she couldnt utter a word because she couldnt breathe. Five minutes later we were in the emergency room...me sitting at a desk doing paperwork and her in a backroom where I had no clue what was going on. I cannot describe to you the sheer pain and fear of that night. All I remember is looking at my mom bent over in her room gasping for a breath and being suddenly rushed with the thought "Oh my God, this is it. My mother is going to die tonight. My world is going to come crumbling down." No fear such as that has knocked me down so completely. My mother--the woman who gave me life, the foundation and strength of my family, the embodiment of the woman I so long to be--was at her weakest moment. And I was at my most helpless moment. Its like watching the superhero that you so idolize crumble and fall right before you. You watch them go day to day with this amazing strength and press on always, constantly encouraging you and making you ultimately feel more confident in yourself. Then one day their strength is gone and you see them at their weakest moment, when suddenly fear catches up with them. Your heart shatters. Your mind goes a thousand times a minute with one pounding thought "This is it. Oh my God, this is it. Please, dont let this be it. I cant lose her." I sat in the emergency room across the hall from my mom while she had triage done on her and it was the oddest feeling in the world. She was no more than 20 feet away but she seemed out of my reach now. I couldnt hold her hand. I couldnt hug her and tell her I love her. She couldnt even utter a single word to me...she couldnt work up enough breath to do it. Then the worst thing in the world happens...shes whisked away into an unknown room in the hospital while i sit with the clerk and get insurance lined up. Shes taken away--my superhero in shambles--is taken away where i cant see her, i dont know what theyre doing to her or whats happening. It was that night that I had the longest hour of my life, strucken with a fear i had never known. But the greatest comfort came when i got to see her again in her curtain room. I got to sit with her and hold her hand and take care of her at her weakest and most vulnerable moment. I got to kiss her forehead like she used to mine and rub my fingers through her hair and tell her i love her. I got to change her clothes from the soil she got on herself and cover her feet with my sweatshirt and hold her vomit bag while she threw up. All the same she would have done for me. For just one night I got to be her superhero while mine lay sickened on a hospital bed. I dont care if i sound cheesy folks. I almost lost my mother the other night. Youd do the same.

The Curse of Alyssa's Humor

So yesterday was kind of an awkward day all around. It started out normal. I woke up early to go work at the school with little kids running around screaming their heads off and latching onto my legs. This one little kid kept insisting on throwing a basketball at me and another refused to let me put her down. So there I stand in the middle of the playground holding one kid in my arms (who kept waving a branch in my face), running from flying basketballs, and all the while singing back-up for the other teacher who had an addiction for singing christmas carols. You'd think it was the circus.
But this is all normal. The abnormality started when i left the school. I was walking to my car checking my voicemails and i got this really random and strange one that went a little something like this, "Hello. This is Mr. Rufus, the teacher of one of your kids' classes. I'm just calling to inform you about your son's behavior today. He was very rude and disrupting and because of this I am going to need you to give me a call so we can set up a conference to discuss his behavior." I was speechless. Apparently I have a kid out there somewhere and apparently he's a real snot. I hate it when that happens.
The rest of the day was followed by just as strange occurings.Went to work where my last tabled i served was a table full of imbreeders...you think i'm kidding, i'm not.
Hung out with Heather Nunn and we're on the way to go pick up pizza and we stop at this market to get margarita mix. She gets out of the car and the next things i know, all i hear is her heaving. We're not quite sure what the heck happened. What second were on the phone with alyssa laughing so hard it hurts and the next she's throwing up in the parking lot of a liquor market. Thanks a lot Alyssa. Her humor made heather sick. Maybe if you quit making fun of my feet this wouldnt happen.
There were more weird things that happened after that. The phone calls, the alcohol, the sudden showing up of guys at my front door to take heather home. Strange...all strange.