Erin The Great

As I was wandering aimlessly about town yesterday, I was trying to figure out where the best place to go and get supplies for a costume I’m currently putting together. After thinking of all the costume places I could go to, I realized that I could just go to my local thrift store, where I could carefully piece together what I had in mind. I walked into the DI knowing full well that I wasn’t going to leave disappointed (as thrift stores usually don’t). The usual stench of old clothes and Body Odor smacked me in the face as I B-lined for the jeans section, as I was looking for ANYTHING in an acid wash. I looked and looked and then I found them… pants that would only be in style in the great state of Oregon. They were perfect. With bells at the bottom and tether to lace up the front I knew these were pants that would match the other half of my semi-hippie influenced wardrobe.

It doesn’t matter what you go to a thrift store to find because you will always leave with about seven other things that catch your eye as you look through decade’s worth of discards. I seriously wonder about the sanity of the people who tend to get rid of such treasures like polyester leisure suits and golf pants. I know what you’re thinking, what the heck is this girl thinking? Well I’ll tell you. I’ve been an avid thrift store shopper since I was old enough to realize that my style and the current styles don’t usually co-inside. Luckily I’m from Oregon so you can pretty much get away with wearing what ever you want. I remember going to school in a shirt made out of towel material, a pair of floodwater golf pants and gray and maroon suspenders. I could see the look on my mother’s face as she tried to hide her laughter as I walked out the door. This wasn’t the first time she’d suppressed her laughter and it sure wasn’t going to be the last. I had a pair of very blue corduroy pants that I would wear with the ugliest maroon velour track jacket (which I still have) you’ve ever seen. The best thing about finding such gems at the local thrift stores is that you run absolutely no risk of anyone turning up in the same outfit. How great is that? You can express yourself and the only embarrassment you run is getting caught in such rags…. Did I say rags? I mean treasures beyond your wildest dreams… there that’s better.

Call me crazy but some of the best times I’ve had where being a teenager and wearing whatever I wanted (which usually involved polyester) without any real damage to my self-esteem. Those were the days!

Domestic Goddesses beware!! There has been an infiltration of poser wannabes that have hit down on our turf. We’ve had our mad skills for years! We learned from our mothers, aunts and Grandmothers to cook, clean and sew, while these impostors are going to college to be as cool as us!

This is ridiculous! You go to college to learn an actual major like History, Pre-Med, English, Child Education… stuff like that. You don’t go to college to learn crap you should have learned in Home EC back in High School! You don’t come to BYU and enroll in the MFHD (Marriage, Family, & Human Development) major and think that it’s going to have some profound impact on your life! It seems more often then not, these girls are only going to college to appease their parents and end up just floating through college until some poor sap comes along, puts a ring on their finger and gives them their MRS degree.

It’s like these girls have seen one to many episodes of The ‘Donna Reid Show’ or ‘Leave it to Beaver’. These girls didn’t here through their whole lives, ‘Put your shoulders back’ and ‘Sit up straight young lady’. It’s cool that you want to be like us, but take classes that will learn you these skills, don’t dedicate your whole major to it. That is just stupid!

I have seen too many girls brag about how their in the MFHD major to some ‘NASA employee’ looking Mormon boy that comes along and eats it all up, meanwhile while actual Domestic Goddesses such as myself, look on this poor and pathetic sight and just sigh, shake our heads and laugh to ourselves that we didn’t need to flaunt out talents as a desperate act to catch a man. Our men will just be pleasantly surprised that they caught one of us unknowingly as they find out later that yes, we can cook! Booyah!

Eat your hearts out Posers! In my stolen Apron and everything!!

I was reading a fellow blogger today. She had posted something about making herself cute when she was a little girl so that someone would see her and adopt her from her large family. I thought this was hysterical, not only because I had felt like that when I was younger, but also because I’m the oldest so there was no way I was going to give up my territory for some little runt that happened to come after me. I was the golden child and I wanted it to stay that way!

I tried for months and months when ‘the boy’ was born to have my mom take him back. ‘No! Take him back’ I would scream. This would usually happen after ‘the boy’ would come and knock over my blocks. Such an event would send my 2-year-old self into an all-star hissy fit. After it was abundantly clear that this constant pain in my butt wasn’t going anywhere, I began to devise other plans. Plans that happened with the mind set of ‘well if it’s here, it might as well be useful’. My brother turned very quickly into a doll I could dress up and whose hair I could put clips in. Yes, he was the perfect doll until he decided that he wasn’t having it anymore. I had to devise a new plan. I’ll sell him! Yes, that should do the trick! I tried to pawn him off on the neighbors and other family members, but that didn’t work either. He was there to stay no matter how I felt about the matter.

It’s funny. I’ll be talking to friends and they’ll be talking about how they grew up best friends with their siblings… this was not the case in the Jarvis house. We’re friends NOW, but growing up was very interesting. There was some serious sibling rivalry going on there. He was the baby so basically he got spoiled, and a lot of the attention. He was smarter and funnier…at least I had sarcasm. Being the experiment child (as older children usually are) I didn’t understand why there was a crack down on the shenanigans coming from me. I guess flooding the school bathroom in the third grade didn’t exactly help my case, but still! After I started getting in trouble for playing poker and winning lunch money (Thank you dad and Mr. Grassman for teaching us young and impressionable children how to play poker on our 3rd grade field trip to the zoo…) as well as various other acts of destruction, the boy decided to use this to his advantage by starting fights and then yelling something along the lines of ‘Erin stop’…. Guess who got in trouble?

Both of us were criminal masterminds, my brother being much more so (Friggin little genius). Luckily I was also quite the little Con Artist, so when we did get along, it was amazing what we could get done and the things we could accomplish. My poor mother… I think she deserves more then a mansion in heaven. For years our number was on the school’s speed dial as well as us being banned from houses for being ‘bad examples’ whatever! Your children were just as bad as we were! We were just better at not getting caught… tee hee hee.

All the sibling rivalry aside, I must admit that with my ever-growing jealousy of his ability to pull better pranks then me as well as being able to TP full blown mansions in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t until after I graduated High School when my jealousy turned into full-blown admiration. It was right after he climbed the roof of our school and painted the bell tower a brilliant plaid. That moment on, I realized that it was pointless. I’ve pulled some good pranks in my time and have done some seriously stupid stunts but it didn’t matter anymore. We both had way to many ‘black mail’ stories for our own good. I think the reason for that was we would always try to ‘one up’ the other and through that we’ve managed to accomplish some great things. So Jake, here’s to you buddy! Thank you for giving me endless fodder for my blog and novel as well as help developing my sarcasm and wit… There had to be something I was better at. Thank you mom for not sending him back when I pleaded with you… and for not getting mad when I told him that you found him under a rock and took pity.

Top 5 Worst TV Spin-Offs

1. Diagnosis Murder (Murder She Wrote)
2. The Ropers (Three’s Company)
3. Saved By The Bell The New Class (Saved By The Bell)
4. That 80’s Show (That 70’s Show)
5. Joey (Friends)

*Talk about wanting to capitalize off the genius of a great show. Very rarely do Spin-offs make it as big as their predecessors…Here’s what happens when they do…

Top 5 Best TV Spin-Offs

1. The Facts of Life (Diff’rent Strokes)
2. Private Practice (Grey’s Anatomy)
3. Boston Legal (The Practice)
4. Frasier (Cheers)
5. The Simpsons (That’s right! It first appeared as a space filler for the Tracy Ullman Show)

* Then there’s the ‘What the heck were they thinking’ section. When Horrible shows that should never have hit the airwaves in the first place… As if the first round wasn’t enough torture, they sent us these wonderful gems!

Top 5 Crappy TV Shows that should NEVER have had Spin-Offs

1. Laguna Beach (The Hills)
2. Xena Warrior Princess (Hercules)
3. Bay Watch Nights (Bay Watch)
4. Time Of Your Life (Party Of Five)
5. Young Americans (Dawson’s Creek)

I have now completed my day of accomplishing absolutely nothing… I’ve got to be honest it feels really good. I’m basking in the delight now, because I know within just the span of about a day, my anal-retentive need for clean and organization is going to hit down. For right now, I’ll stay lying on my living room floor in the giant space of sun coming through my window… right now I’m on my own personal beach listening to great tunes and waiting for my Dr. Pepper to cool to a perfect chilled temperature. What could be better?

It’s a far cry from a couple of weeks ago when I thought my head was going to explode. I’m liking this a whole lot better.

By the grace of heaven and the best boss on the planet, I now have the next 5 days off!! This is the best thing to happen since the Jr. Bacon Cheese Burger hit the Wendy’s dollar menu.

Here I sit without a care in the world. Even though I want to clean, organize and do the mountain of laundry that I’ve put off for a while, the only thing I want to do is sit here with my iPod and just let my brain ooze. It’s one of those good iPod mix days… You the days when every song that comes on is a song you want to listen to, in fact Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Holding Out For a Hero’ just came on. The reason I’m even bringing this up is for the lyrics. Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where’s the street wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?

Seriously where have all the men gone? After the whole ‘Metro’ movement, and with the rising population of Emo-men, I’m beginning to wonder when the men are going to come back? It’s like after our ‘Women’s Liberation’, we’ve apparently felt it necessary to be our own protectors, which is a good thing don’t get me wrong but I think it may have caused some gender confusion over the years. I’m afraid that I’m going to marry someone that will cower in a corner when there is an intruder in the house, and it’s going to be MY right-hook that’s going to save us instead of his. I hope this is only a current nightmare and not how my life is going to turn out. After the last string of guys I’ve dated it’s becoming more of a reality and to be perfectly honest I’m a little worried. I guess it’s my fault but there have been several I’ve dated that have had to pull ME away from ESPN… Something about a man that doesn’t like sports just isn’t right! I know I’ve basically been ‘One of the guys’ my whole life but apparently it hasn’t occurred to some of these individuals that I would for once like to be the damsel in distress? I guess not!

It’s sad to think that out of all 50 states in the US, there are only 2 states I can think of that if a guy says he’s from there, you don’t even question their manliness because you know it’s not an issue. Thank you Texas and Montana for keeping your men actual MEN! Other then the two exceptions, you really have to search to find them. Give me a Clint Eastwood over a Pete Wentz any day!

I saw a cat in my courtyard yesterday. Ordinarily I wouldn’t think anything of this except that this morning I left my apartment and there was another cat sleeping my ‘Mini garden’ right outside my door. I know what most off you are thinking… Is she crazy? There is nothing wrong with seeing cats. WRONG! As not many of you might know, my birthday is next week.

Let me tell you a little bit about Provo Utah. In Provo, if you’re not married or at least dating someone by the age of 19 or 20, everyone looks at you like you should be wearing a ‘recall’ stamp on your forehead… You’re not married yet? What’s wrong with you? Don’t get me wrong, I have several friends that this has worked out well for, and I’m extremely happy for them and they are some of the lucky ones, but for the love of Pete!

For me it started at the age of 21 when I moved here from Oregon. In Oregon if you get married before you’re the age of 30 people start to question your sanity. I never feel old and decrepit when I’m back home, but the second I step foot back into Utah Valley, I get the ‘Eye’. Haven’t you been able to nail down a man yet? Ok rude, first off and second, No, but I do have a butt you can kiss if you’re interested.

In light of this constant annoyance, and with the Universe so clearly mocking me, I hold fast as I turn the ripe old age of 26. I’m beginning to think that for my birthday this year, the Universe has offered up a whopper of a practical joke by sending me cats to usher in the next phase of my life in Provo. Thank-so-much! Like I already don’t feel the years waning with the constant reminder that most of the people I know are either engaged, married or having kids. Thank you Provo for making me feel so great and secure about turning yet another year older, single in Provo… Awesome! To this I give a middle finger salute and a bow because I’m in no hurry to rush into anything that could potentially leave me stranded, hopeless and divorced because I was to eager to fit in with the status quo. Happy Birthday to Me!

I wanted to write yesterday on the wonderment that is my mother, but I just couldn’t get my post right. To tell everyone how ridiculously cool my mother is would take more space then you’re willing to read. So I’ll try to paraphrase.

It all started 25 years, 11 months, and 18 days ago when my mother Laura delivered a screaming baby girl into the world at 2 am after 18 hours of hard labor. I was a pain in the butt even then and for that fact alone she deserves to have Root beer on tap in her mansion in heaven (the mansion she deserved for bringing up my brother… I’m only responsible for the big a$$ swimming pool in back ).

Through the years my mother has taught me a lot. She doesn’t think she has, but aside from me teaching myself how to tie my shoes at the age of 2, everything else I’ve learned from my mother. She taught me that hostess doughnuts and a package of double stuff Oreos could mend any tragic situation. She taught me that you should never be embarrassed about knowing every word to every ABBA song ever written because when depression hits, those are the songs that get you through the roughest parts of it. She taught me to have a sense of humor even in the grimmest of situations. She made sure I grew up well rounded thus enabling me to have a story on just about everything. Even though my dad doesn’t know, she also taught me how to TP a house perfectly by using the ‘spiral’ technique so that the toilet paper sticks to the roof better and doesn’t break off as easily as the roll comes floating to the ground.

My mother is one of the most wise and caring women I’ve ever known. She was there during the teenage years when I was usually up to no good. Being a strong support when my world would occasionally come crashing down. She’s my constant through the good times and the bad. When she had cancer, it was her that helped us all continue to have a sense of humor through that remarkably tragic time. She is the glue that holds my family together and through her strength, wit, humor, unconditional love and shining example, I will always be indebted to her for all I’ve learned and the profound impact she’s had on my life. To mother… I salute you! Not many women could have raised the kids you did and still have enough sanity after the teenage years to brag about it. I know the few short paragraphs I’ve written can’t even come close to describing the brilliance of you, but I did my best. Woman! I love you!

There you are… you pull up to a grocery store; you get out of your car. You ignore the panhandlers and the liberals trying to get you to sign some petition to ban something that you have no interest in. (ok, maybe that last one was an ‘Oregon’ exclusive) You walk in with a few items on your mind and as you wander around the store you find yourself wondering where in all of the great space of heaven are these objects even located? Most of the times you can find what you are looking for by thinking ok I need cereal, that’s got to be in the cereal isle. I’m looking for fruit ok produce section. What happens when you’re looking for a miscellaneous object like Marshmallows? Where would you categorize that? Baked goods? The junk food isle? All of a sudden your world comes crashing down as you realize that the store seems to have been arranged by a drunken lunatic! Where the heck are the marshmallows?

Such an occurrence happened to me yesterday when I went to the store with a few friends to get some items for a barbeque today. The stuff I needed was easy… soy and teriyaki sauce, hello ethnic foods isle! For my friend unfortunately it was not so quick and painless. First we entered a think tank… where could they be? As we searched though our options, our options being in the junk food isle or in the baked goods isle, we thought hey, how about by the peanut butter and jelly? It’s in neither of the other two isles it’s got to be there! We searched but no avail! After our embarrassing display of confusion and the inability to find marshmallows we started up and down ever isle. For all we knew, the drunken lunatic who organized the store probably stuck them by all the automotive stuff. After looking and looking we finally found them! To our ironic surprise we found them sitting in the ‘canned vegetables and condiments’ isle… What the? Yeah, because clearly nothing says marshmallows like canned tomatoes and mayo!

Where did the time go?? On Tuesday I sat down to read the book ‘Twilight’ and before I knew it, I’d read all three books. Now it’s Saturday and here I sit absolutely mystified as to where my week went. Not that the week of seclusion wasn’t nice, because it was but more rather now my standards have absolutely shot through the roof as far as men I’m now willing to date.

For any female that has read these books, should have a massive crush on the beautiful, romantic and down right chivalrous Edward Cullen. I was absolutely fascinated by the writing and the story as I read on and on and on…. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I haven’t exactly showered in a few days… don’t you dare judge me! I was so entranced with the stories that I would get upset with anyone who tried calling, texting or who would just show up at my door! (Don’t worry Ashton you’re exempt). I even went so far as to yell at anyone who dared to knock on my front door. Sorry to those of you that I yelled at to ‘leave me the hell alone’. If you’ve read the books, you’d understand and you would have granted me the serenity and peace as I became permanently ingrained in the story.

I know what you ‘unbelievers’ are thinking. You people who refuse to read the books because ‘everyone else is doing it’… well to those people I say pull your head out of your butt and read the friggin book already and while you’re at it, stop judging the people who have no problem disappearing for 4 straight days to read the ‘Genius’ of Stephanie Meyers.

To all you faithful readers I say booyah! Don’t fret ladies! Edward Cullen may not exist but I do know that men like that do! (Not specifically vampires) but wonderful, sweet, chivalrous and downright amazing men do exist! I’ve known as well as currently know many, and have even had the pleasure to have dated a few of them. Love like that IS real and I defy anyone who tells me other wise… poor fools… sell it somewhere else because I’m not buying your weird brand of romantic atheism.