OC Squad

I'm an only child. You should pity me for the following reasons:

1) It makes your imagination run positively wild because you have no one to play with. (see previous blog posts - clearly this carries on into adulthood)
2) You have no clue how to deal with people your age until you're about..... 30.*
3) You feel shell-shocked around groups of large people. (in some cases, this may disappear during adulthood if you're lucky)
4) You are developmentally slow in learning about things like sarcasm, ganging up, and other social rites of passage.

* Thirty is my magical age in which I believe all the mysteries of life are suddenly revealed.



I decided a long time ago that as an only child, you can turn out one of two ways. You can either love people and want to be around them constantly (North Pole of only childism), or you can truly value your time alone and want to be around others only some of the time or rarely (South Pole of only childism). The more only children I meet, the more I find this to be true.

Several years ago Lainey, Kevin and I formed the OC squad, which stands for Only Child Squad. Since we spent a lot of time paling around together, we thought it only appropriate that we should create a name for ourselves - being a group entirely comprised of only children. We appointed Kevin president, because he is by far the brattiest only child among us.

Side note - if two only children marry, a ferret dies.

Lainey and Kevin are on the aforementioned North Pole - loving to be around people all the time. I am all by my lonesome at the South Pole, clinging on to alone time and being anti-people all by myself. And yes, I realize this is just a circle cut in half and that Poles don't really apply the way I've drawn it, but just go with it, okay?


Click picture
You may be thinking, "Geez, how many times have I talked to Mary at a party? How many of those times has she been thinking that?" I'm good at being a people person, is the thing. I've been a people person in every job I've ever had, and that's the issue. I'm so actively a people person all day at any job I've ever had, and because of that I have absolutely no spare time for it anymore in my social life. That's why I limit my outings these days! Plus there's the only child factor.

So it's not you, it's me. It's the predestination to one of the Poles of only childism. Someone has to be at the South Pole, and by pure genetic roulette that someone happens to be me. I probably still love you and stuff. Probably.

I'm fiercely loyal to my friends, but if you're some random that happens upon my conversation....you should probably take a look at my Pole diagram.

However, regardless of who you are - if you want to come to my house, sit in a corner with your laptop / whiskey and diet coke and watch the same episode of Flapjack with me at separate ends of the room and then, once finished, participate in a witty banter involving its thought-provoking existential plot lines - well, come on over! I'll be waiting.

The Quiver of Plenty

I sat here for ages trying to ponder ways to combine the words "thriller" or "apocalypse" or "zombie" with Mary, but they all sounded lame. So I just went with The Quiver of Plenty, which I will explain shortly.

Here's the thing, I like zombie movies and I've liked them a lot longer than you. I started liking them in a time long before they were popular, which makes me a visionary - just fyi.

Long have I planned my vision of the apocalypse and how I would be one of those resilient and solitary road travelers. If you do not like zombie/apocalypse movies, you'd be ill advised to continue reading. I'm about to discuss their concepts, at length, with myself.

Do you want to be one of the few survivors roaming the planet during the inevitable reign of zombie anarchy? Oh yeah? You do? Well guess what - you've got to have a well formulated plan or you gon' die. (pronounced yew gohn dahhhhh!)

First, you must pick your weapon. It has to be a particular brand of awesome, too. You can't just say "a gun."

You've got to add in some bells and whistles.

If you say "a gun" I will put you out of your misery. If you say "a sawed off double barrel shotgun with a silencer" I will high five you. I may even kiss you, if you let me.



Yeehhhhh behbeh. When I first saw this lovely creature in No Country for Old Men, my jaw dropped because the concept of a silencer for a double barrel shotgun, quite frankly, had never occurred to me. After seeing that, I strongly considered changing my post-apocalyptic arsenal. But alas, I'm too committed to my game plan.

I've invented in my mind the most magnificent hunting bow on the planet, which I refer to as THE RED HORSEMAN.

It is my excalibur.

Among the four horsemen of the apocalypse, I find the red particularly frightening. "Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword."

Or in my case, this bow. Or at least this bow if it were red.



However, it's just not enough to have a formidable weapon with a wondrous name. You have to think about ammunition, and that's why there's THE QUIVER OF PLENTY.



Picture this: you have one of the quivers above, and ooooh nooooooo! You are befallen by attackers, and ooooooh noooooo! You're about to run out of arrows! To most, this would be a problem. However, while my quiver looks like the regular quiver above, what it contains looks more like this.



You might be all, "A hunting bow? Why would she pick a hunting bow? How is that a sustainable weapon?"

I'll tell you how. It's this ridiculous Quiver of Plenty concept I've cultivated. It's a quiver that never runs out.

It NEVER runs OUT.

Dude, don't ask me why it doesn't run out. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm the chosen one. Maybe because it's magical. No one knows the reason. All you need to know is that I have it and it's mine. And also, that no one else can wield either of them except me.

And if you try to steal it from me? You better believe it'll fry your hand off. Because it loves me!

In my mind I have this vision of the bow and quiver/arrows, laying in some forgotten about tomb below the surface of earth. Somehow in whatever madness the apocalypse has caused, in a state of terror I run down some tunnel and find a hidden entrance to a deeper tunnel, to a DEEPER tunnel.


(state of terror face)

Haphazardly I stumble into a majestic chamber, and that's where I find my weapons. And suddenly I'm decked out in garb befitting of someone about to OWN this particularly horrific period of time.

I can't divulge to you the rest of my plan, because if I do you'll all be scrambling to find me when the apocalypse is at hand. Just know that it's exceptional and that I will be filming it so that my story will become legend!

LEGEND......



(legend face)

Gross Miscalculations of a Callow Youth

I had a very interesting childhood. I think most people do, but mine was exceptionally interesting - and by interesting I mean freakish. Having the mother that I did made normalcy during adolescence difficult if not entirely impossible. Before things with her went awry, my mom was cool. But even then she was still hands down one of the weirdest people I've ever met.

Being weird gets cooler as you get older. There's definitely a correlation, but I'll spare you from seeing a graph I've drawn. So - while her weirdness was cool and totally worked for her, said weirdness rubbed off on me and made me stick out like a sore thumb until high school. I was doomed to popularity fail, and here's why:

First, I went to Cheley Camps in Colorado for 2 summers when I was younger. It made me obsessed with hiking and being an outdoorsman. When I went back to school in the fall, I wasn't ready to give it up. I decided I wanted to wear my hiking boots and military-grade hiking pack to school, and to my mother this was totally acceptable.

Everyone else's reaction - who is this weirdo nature girl? I bet she has granola filling up her pockets and never shaves her legs. Why would she wear a backpack that big? And did she seriously get her initials monogrammed on it?

Yes, folks, she did. It was slightly smaller, and I must stress the slightly, than this.



Second, I was forced to take art classes. They were fun, and naturally my art was monumental and that which legend is made of. But I liked it so much that I decided I wanted to take clay with me to school and play with it during classes. So I would reach into my enormous backpack and pull out an industrial size bag of clay and start molding things. At this point, you should be seriously concerned. Below? An unfired clay blob.

Yep. This is really what I was carrying around in my pack.




Third, my mother's ideas have always been, well, a little irregular at best. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, she could definitely make you look at things from a different perspective. But she'd take something seemingly normal, and then throw a strange idea at it to see if it would stick. A Picasso of ideas, if you will. This particular trait was especially disadvantageous to me during my years at Stephen F. Austin middle school, home of the Bears.

Example, mom decides it's a great idea for me to run for student council.

I absolutely do not want to do it.

Oh yeah? Well too bad, Mary Catherine. I'm told I'm doing it - because it will be a great thing to put on my application to colleges, she says. Yes, this will be the start of a very long and promising political career. My silent form of rebellion was to not write a speech, which we were required to do in order to run. So naturally, my mom writes a speech and forces it upon me. And in continuance of my rebellion, I refuse to even look at it until I get to the podium to speak.

My opponent's speech sounded something like this....
"Hello, I'm Susie Suzerton and I would like you to elect me to student council. I'm a straight A student, I play sports, and I'm involved in everything ever. Thank you."



Yay! Good job Susie, what a perfectly normal thing to say! Way to completely avoid any sort of ridicule from your peers!

Then, with my face flaming red-hot in embarrassment, I suddenly realize that now it's time for me to get up and speak. Then it hits me: Hey! I don't have to get up and speak, I can just sit here and ignore the fact that my mom wants me to run.

Then, my ingenious train of thought was interrupted.

"MARY STERLING!!" the teacher calls out with shocking ferocity. Why do you hate me, fate? I would later find out that my mom actually called Mrs. Whatshername and told her to make sure she called me - thereby ensuring that her brilliant speech would be read. I slowly, painfully, reach into my giant hiking pack and pull up a wadded piece of paper containing the speech my mother has written me.

It probably looked brown and disgusting, having been stored in such close proximity to my clay. I get up, mumble a fake cough into my hand, and begin to read.

"My name is Mary, and I am an Austin Bear. I think it's really neat that I'm attending Stephen F. Austin middle school, because in my former life I was a bear, just like I'm an Austin Bear now. So I know what bears like, and if you vote for me I'll make sure that all of your ideas and concerns are fairly and equally represented. My mom also went to Austin, so if you vote for me, you should know that I have a proud family history of attending this school, and I will continue to uphold the values of our predecessors."

I stared at the piece of paper in awe, desperately trying not to faint. Slowly, I realized the damage was done - and if I acted quickly, I might be able get to my seat before losing consciousness.



(me + bear = ONE)

I then waded through a sea of snorts and giggles back to my seat. I scarcely even remembered what I had spoken, but I knew it was awful.

Terrible, even life-ending. I was shaking in my LL Bean wrinkle-resistant double L chino shorts.

The aftermath of this ridiculous garbage was that everyone, in what I'm sure was an entirely Christian school, thought I believed in reincarnation - even though I went to an Episcopal church every Sunday. I had to squash rumors of this for years, even through high school.

At last, we come to the final reason of popularity fail: strange pets.

My mom worked at the Discovery Center when I was younger, and it was awesome. I was allowed to glimpse sneak peaks at the dinosaur exhibits before they even opened, see planetarium shows by myself, and explore the broad reaches of many exciting scientific mediums after-hours. No waiting! The Discovery Center is located next to a park where there was a pond, and where there's a pond, there are of course ducks. I had several ducks over the years - but my first two were Sophie and Atticus.

They were amazing until they unexpectedly flew away when they grew up. Bastards. I fed them, cared for them, put them in a wading pool out back and used to watch them swim for hours. I quickly learned I could not play with them IN the little pool, because, well, ducks are messy, messy creatures - and have absolutely no regard for when or where they release their bowels. I did, however, love to relocate them to my bath tub - but of course would adhere to the no co-habitation rule. Many people came over to play with my ducks, dog, cats, and the host of other creatures I played mom to.



Naturally, I had to adopt every creature I came across - being the outdoorsman I was. This meant that in addition to all of the normal pets one can own, I also had a bat, lizards, cottontail bunnies, horned toads, about 40 turtles and at one point - a raccoon. I thought I was way cool for having a veritable zoo of animals, but this too came back to bite me later.

I distinctly remember being in French class my Sophomore year of high school, where thankfully I had recovered from some of my nerdiness because my friends from private school had finally been forced into the public school system - and they were accustomed to my unusual habits.

Chris Morton, a guy I'd been in school with since kindergarten, sat down in his usual seat next to me in the back. He had taken his part in the non-appreciation of my weirdness, but by the time high school rolled around we got along well. As was our routine habit, I offered him my juniper breeze spray from bath and body works so that he could cover the odor of his usual lunchtime activities. Out of no where, he asks me a random question about the past.

Chris: Hey Mary, is it true that you used to bathe with your ducks?
Me: WHAT?! Where did you hear that??
Chris: I dunno, everyone.
Me: Dude, no. NO. Jesus, no wonder everyone thinks I'm so weird.
Chris: I didn't think so, I was just asking.
Me: Hey thanks!
Chris: Do you have any chips?


This is a representation of what I'm sure everyone thought. Me and my duck, about to take a bath.

Chris, thank you. I owe you a high five which I fully intend to deliver in the hereafter. You were awesome.

At this point in life I've totally accepted and am quite fond of all levels of my strangeness. And if you're reading this, guess what? You are too, so just sit back and enjoy the majestic filth that is my blog.

The Myth. The Legend. The Dead 70 Year Old Squirrel.

Let's say you live in Amarillo, Texas, and one day kismet happens to introduce itself to you - you might end up at the O'Brien/Moore cabin at the Palo Duro Club. And if you DO end up at the O'Brien/Moore cabin at the Palo Duro Club, I encourage you to seek out a very old, small, and what some may call creepy....member of the family. His name? Senor Cheeps. Yes, Senor. I can't do the accent thingy over the N, but you should pronounce it as if it were there.



Now, he's so allusive that I don't happen to have a picture on me. But guess what? There's a lot of taxidermied squirrels out there. Cheeps is especially interesting though, because he happens to be a surly plump fellow, who I would personally like to put at the end of the bed while you're sleeping.

I would just looove to see your face when you wake up and find a taxidermied squirrel staring back at you.



He just has that certain sheen in his totally fake plastic eye that makes you want to say "good show, old man." OOOH! Or maybe "clever girl" like the Australian gentleman in Jurassic Park who says that to a velociraptor right before it samples his face. Totally tragic, by the way. That guy was by FAR the best character in the film.

Yes, I'm going to torture you with random pictures of taxidermied squirrels that I find on the internet throughout this blog post.

There are many, many interesting things in that cabin, but no certain thing has quite piqued my interest like Senor Cheeps. As girls, my friends and I discovered this relic and decided to take pictures with/of it in various places. First, however, we had to come up with a name.



Alison and I were obsessed with a Monty Python computer game at the time, where it suggested that the Black Knight from their Holy Grail movie had a pet budgie, named Senor Cheeps. The name was so odd, that it became a regular tag-along subject in our conversations - and when an opportunity to name something presented itself, we could think of nothing else.



On days during the summer where we were too sun burned to actually be in the sun in any way, we would go to random places in Canyon, Texas, with Cheeps in hand to take pictures. The best thing in the world was trying to get people to hold him.

Because seriously, some rand-o comes up to you and asks you to hold a dead squirrel? What would you say? You'll be surprised to know - every single person said yes. Even a group of nuns.

Yep. We accosted - and successfully photographed - a group of nuns holding a dead squirrel. God, I've got to find those pictures. That'll be a follow up post of yet another thing lurking in my storage unit.

In closing, how creep-tastic is this?? That's right, they're earrings.



Somewhere in the thick of the bumblescumb lay country, some interesting specimen of humanity is really enjoying those....

How to Effectively Argue with Your Significant Other

I'm a very mature person. I'm sure you can tell. So naturally, I have very mature adult conversations, in which one person tells the other how they genuinely feel and the other acknowledges said feelings and respectfully interjects their own, possibly differing opinion, for further discussion.

Let's see an example, shall we?

Kevin: My friend Chris used to eat fried bologna sandwiches. It was gross. Who wants to eat fried chicken butts???

Me: Sick Kevin, don't say that.

Kevin: What?? Chicken butts? Sorry. What do you want me to say....chicken bottoms????

Me: Kev....GAH...pfff, why do you TALK?

Kevin: Blahblahbalhahjalsdjlkfjlajdl;jal;sjd;laj

Then I get out my phone and take a picture of Kevin and proceed to draw this and send it to him.



He does the same and draws a mustache on me, and captions something like...."I'm a wench"

I laugh, a regal laugh, as if this is above me and that MY drawing was better....and although I already feel like this.....



I would like to maintain the appearance that I embody this



/smug
//still regal
///not at all bothered by this ridiculous diatribe

He carries on. And finally I'm like, "HEY! Why do you tell me things like that? MUST you make me think about bologna? I hate the IDEA of bologna. Why on earth would you talk to me about eating it fried and in sandwich form???"

Then pulls this face. (I did you the courtesy of captioning it)



Which makes me all



/red anger lines
//scrunch mouth
///crazy curly hair
////suddenly no make up

Kevin realizes this can quickly spiral out of control. So he zips the lip. Because who wants to get in a full-on verbal apocalypse as a result of a tiff over fried bologna sandwiches?? Well, he for sure shouldn't. Because I would clearly win!

So we sit. In silence. And I do this.





Muahahahhahahahhahha!! See? I winnnnnn!!

Squid Files and Squidophiles

I love Squid. So much, it is worthy of capitalization. Let me tell you a story:

When Lainey and I were the respective ages of 9 (me) and 7 (Lainey), we happened upon a Gary Larson (The Far Side) cartoon entitled "the boss' kid," where a kid had his face pressed up to a workers window, clearly being an annoying filth monster. Lainey and I decided this was boring, and thought "the boss' Squid" would be much more amusing.

We talked about it for hours. We even made up a hand gesture.

What you do, is put the back of the hand to your mouth. And guess what?! It looks remarkably like a Squid, the most Squid-like one can get without actually making a costume. See??



Thus the love of Squid begins. For years I think that this ridiculous love affair is only something Lainey and I can secretly talk about in the cone of silence. But one day, 19 years later, I'm sitting at work reading something about the Colossal Squid on National Geographic's website, and I say something like this (I'm sure it was a little more tame, but not much)

"The Colossal Squid is a majestic celestial being of the cosmos..."

.....suddenly, a voice pierces the silence of the most ridiculous comment ever made.

"I. Love. Squidzzzzz!!!!!" - says my coworker Cori. NO WAY!!!!!! Someone ELSE? Seemingly NORMAL? Also shares the love of the Squid???

Then, we suddenly were on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean in super hero suits like....the Mighty Morphen Power Rangers. I was the yellow one. And we tapped rings together like in Captain Planet!!! And a giant squid came up in hologram form and gave us instructions on how to further the mission of squiddom.

Jay kay, we just talked about Squids.

You'd think a Squid-related conversation could only go on so long, but I'm pretty sure Cori and I droned on about their majesty for at least an hour. She's even knitted squid hats for a friend's baby! And they're freaking awesome, I might add.

Look people, you may be shaking your head with your mouth hanging open at this point, but you know what? If you don't like Squid, you're a loser. Yep, I said it! Here's why - they are a mystery of the deep.

A MYSTERY!!! Of the DEEP!!!

What we know of just how giant these guys get is from what washes up on shore. Because they're that mysterious. And anything THAT mysterious is cool.

Also, we know what little we know from suction cup imprints found on sperm whales, who dive up to 4,000 feet - where my mind assumes they have EPIC battles with the most giant of Squid. Like, King Kong v. Aquadrillicus. I'm not sure if you've seen that, but if you haven't you must - it haunted my dreams as a child. And I was super sad because Aquadrillicus lost. I mean, clearly he loses because they fight on land. If they duked it out in the water, you better believe King Kong would go DOWN! That's how they do it you see, they suction cup your FACE and drag you down to Davy Jones' locker!! AND EEECHU!


I feel much the same, however slightly lesser, about the octopus.
octopus <-------------------------doesn't deserve capitalization.
I have SEEN (on you tube) an octopus attack a shark and eat it. It was awesome.

1. Because I hate sharks. <-----A constantly moving mouth with razor teeth, that has no purpose but to eat. You. Just google the SS Indianapolis.

2. Because the octopus just kind of sits on top of the shark and digests it in a way that I will never understand.

Also, octopuses (it's not octopi, SAD!) like shiny things. They collect them and hide them. Just like me!!! I see shiny jewelry, it could be cheap, it could be Harry Winston. Either way, I'm stopping to look at it.

There are people out there who feel about the octopus as I feel about the Squid - and they totally have a website.

www.tonmo.com

Okay, enough of this. You get the point.



post script - is Squid the plural of Squid?? Hmm.

Sane, rational and perfectly normal things by: Peanut Gallery

I found a piece of paper in my storage unit, not long ago, that I filled out when I was in kindergarten. It's on my mind today - making me ponder my priorities. Also, making me think I was considerably cooler (by today's standards) then, than I am...well, today. Remember, I'm like...five.

List -

Name: Mary Catherine

Favorite food: Sushi

Favorite toys: Robots

Favorite color: Orange

What do you want to be when you grow up? Artist

So lets recap, my life that I envisioned myself having now when I was little -

Priorities: Sushi and robots and orange things.

Occupation: Artist.

Not too shabby, little Mary! I think about myself making my orange robot/sushi art, and it sounds like a thrilling lifestyle.

Second item found in storage unit:

Drawings made by me, and captioned by my mother (as narrated by me). Age? 3. I didn't take a picture, so I'll just have to describe it to you.

There are two strange looking creatures (who are apparently supposed to be human girls) that are behind bars.

Mom's caption: "Two girls in prison, wrongfully accused, they are sad."

Next picture, the two girls are still looking sad, and there's now another girl in the picture.

Mom's caption: "Another prisoner sets them free."

All three girls with happy faces are now standing next to each other.

Mom's caption: "Now they are friends."

Any of you who were like, "what's the deal with this Mary girl? Why is she so weird?" Well apparently I've been this way since childhood. And if you have spent any time with my parents at all, I never had a chance. So by the time age 4 hit and I became best friends with Lainey and Alison - well, then I was thereby doomed to weirdness. So until I have some Navy news, I think maybe I'll just do blog posts of random things I find in my storage unit. Enjoy...


post script,

Strongly considering opening art gallery called Orange Robot Sushi