"Do NOT Touch" and a Classy Lady

I don't know whether it's "Do not touch" signs or my curiosity with the idea that one piece of glass can feel totally different than all the other pieces of glass I've touched in my life, but I have this inordinate desire to TOUCH EVERYTHING IN SIGHT ALL THE TIME EVERDAY.

I walk into a shop filled with porcelain dolls *shudder* and suddenly everything in sight is a new world of textures and temperatures that I don't understand and will never understand until I undoubtedly lay a finger on every single thing on display.

I walk through the bulk spices section of Winco or Costco and suddenly I have to know what every type of grain or powder feels like and I just want to jam my hands into those plastic bins and mash everything around.

There's just some kind of craze that takes over my mind and I go from being a civil, germ-conscious, contributing member of society to a crazy-eyed toddler on a foreign planet full of things that need to be petted and stroked. (The same feeling overcomes me when I see "Fragile" signs.) This side of me flared up when I visited the county fair in August.

I love fairs. My dad invited me to go to the fair with him to look at all the 4H displays and photographs and barn animals. This was an overload for my senses.

First, you stick me in a big warehouse room full of rednecks and booths and my mind starts racing and my fingers start twitching. SO. MUCH. TO. BE. TOUCHED. We passed dozens of quilts and photo albums and mini dioramas of vegetation and flower arrangements and frosted cakes. These were all surrounded by "Do NOT touch" signs. "Do not touch" signs translate into "Touch more sneakily after looking over your shoulder to make sure nobody is watching" signs to Arielle and that is exactly what I did.

I couldn't control myself. How was I ever going to know if the blue denim quilt felt anything like the bleach denim quilt? How would I ever have known that rose petals and daisy petals feel remarkably similar? And for goodness sakes, how would I ever know what old, stale, hard cake frosting feels like?! (I actually feel really bad for touching food items, but I knew they weren't going to be eaten, some were growing mold.)

Let it be known that I made it out of the fair on my own without having to be kicked out. I even went and looked at all the cows and sheep and chickens and I kind of glanced at the pigs but didn't take the time to go look at them because they sort of freak me out. They're so pink and, well, naked. It's like I'm looking at weird naked alien people. (This is the same reason I don't like leather couches. They're like big, squishy, naked people that you sit on.)

Here are the conclusions I've come to:

a. I can't look at animals without imitating the sounds they make.

b. I can't look at animals without imitating the movements they make. (Chickens, for example.)

c. Every single chicken in the fair can make me laugh hysterically. Chickens are FUNNY.

d. Goats and sheep are sneaky little hungry devils that will trick you into standing near them so they can reach their heads through the bars and start eating your pants. And to think that I thought that sheep was just nuzzling!

Is it love? Or just my pants?

Lyrics and a Classy Lady

(Yes, I honestly used to make CD's like this with only one song over and over.)

Let it be known that Gotta Get Thru This by Daniel Bedingfield was the theme song of my 12th year of life. I listened to it for a solid 365 days. You'd think I'd bother to learn the actual lyrics over the course of a year, but I definitely didn't do that at all. Listen to this 8-second portion of the song:

Actual lyrics:

"Gimme 'til tomorrow and I'll be ok."

Arielle lyrics:

"Gimme just a model and a piece of cake."

In my defense, I can think of few situations that couldn't be bettered by a model and a piece of cake.

Disasters and a Classy Lady

Being a film major, everyone I come in contact with expects me to have this wildly, eccentric and obscure taste in movies. Like, I'm supposed to only be interested in foreign films and sniff my nose in disgust at anything made post-60's. But the truth is that the only reason I watched Casablanca for the first time was because I was being graded on it. (I loved it immensely, along with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Rear Window, and High Noon. Citizen Kane? Not so much.)

I. LOVE. DISASTER. MOVIES.

I'm not even very picky as to the quality of the disaster. All I really require are structures being destroyed, mass hysteria, and lots of "how will they ever make it?!" moments. Unfortunately, I am prone to paranoia.

Perhaps I like disaster movies because I believe they are possible to some extent and I find this thrilling. I get some sort of satisfaction from being scared out of my brains.

Do I use the plots behind these movies to prepare myself if I am ever in a similar situation? NO. Instead, I sit in front of the screen and rot. I nervously jiggle my leg and chew on my lip and jump and squeal and cover my eyes. I guess I'm counting on all the apocalyptic scenes I see on the screen not happening in real life, but the truth is that if anything comes along, I'll be useless.

I can only hope that if I'm ever in a movie-type disaster in real life, I will take after the stereotyped "comedic relief" character. You know, the guy that always has something funny to say and never dies? Whenever he comes on the screen, you feel temporarily safe because the directors wouldn't dare kill off someone so carefree and goofy.

That's me.

When the end of the world comes, I'll be the one cracking jokes.

Gum and a Classy Lady

I was driving to a job interview. I was skipping (driving) along my merry way and was very pleased with the parking job I did in the parking lot of the business. "Kudos," thinks Arielle.

One thing you have to know about me is that I carry gum everywhere. I don't carry a purse or lipgloss or a phone or I.D. I carry gum. I was chewing a piece in the car, but didn't want to have it slopping around in my mouth during the interview, so I pulled a Violet Beauregarde and stuck my gum to the steering wheel. (I wasn't about to stick it behind my ear, I have class!)

Here was my thought process:

- I don't have much gum at home, so this piece is precious.

- I'll want gum right after my interview.

- I may as well have this gum!

- If you brush away the visible dust from the steering wheel, the germs won't exist.

- Gum hardens so it'll be easy to pick off the wheel.

I went in for the job interview where at one point, instead of saying, "Sorry, I was just controlling my nerves." I said, "Sorry, I was just controlling my nerds."

(Me, controlling my nerds)

I then returned to the car and to my lovely piece of gum. YEAH ONLY GUESS WHAT? Gum gets melty in the hot sun, as it would turn out. So I plucked it up from the steering wheel, expecting it to easily lift. Instead, it stretched with half still stuck to the wheel, and the other half now stuck to my pointer finger and thumb. In a moment of slight disgust and panic, I used the pointer finger and thumb of my left hand to remove the tacky mess from my right hand. That did not exactly work at all. Now the gum was spread from my left pointer finger to my left thumb to my right thumb to my right pointer finger to the steering wheel.

It was at this point that I attempted to gnaw my way through the gum. This resulted in a gummy mustache. I can only imagine what people in the parking lot thought of me, this hunched over, sticky mess of a lady, stuck in a web of gum.

The story ended with me successfully getting a majority of the gum in my mouth (yuck, I know), and rolling the rest of the gum from my fingers and chin and the steering wheel and then wiping it on my pants. I then drove home while bobbing my head to the radio and pretending I know how to rap.

Professional woman.

By the way, I got the job.

Catitude and a Classy Lady

The cat has been irritable with me today. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I've called her Dashadude or Dashacrap all day instead of her actual name, which is Dash Away. It probably also has nothing to do with the fact that I make kissy noises at her for about 35 hours in a 24-hour day.

And I'm sure it has nothing to do me accidentally smacking her across the room like a baseball with my satchel. (I swear, it was an honest accident. I don't belong in one of those "Animal Cruelty" campaigns with Sarah McLachlan's voice sailing on under the stock footage of sad puppies with goopy eyes and kittens with bald spots.)

I had just returned home from a job interview. I was swinging my bag back and forth like a baby carrier when suddenly instead of air, my bag hit something lumpy and massy. I looked down to see the cat hobbling around with her feet all tangled up and her claws stuck in the carpet. How does somebody even apologize for that?!

I don't know if she's forgiven me, but she certainly got her revenge only moments later. I was in my room when she came up behind me and batted me across the ankle with her claw-ridden paw. I looked down and she was giving me the "COME AT ME BRO" face.

Needless to say, I'm not messing with her. She's a BEAST.

Update: Dashadude has yet to fully forgive me. Frequently, I'll follow her down the hall to fill up her water dish or something. We get to her food area, where I see that her food and water dish are full. It's at this point that Dashacat will act confused, meow for awhile, and then bite my ankle. That foxy lady is flirting with the saying of not biting the hand that feeds you...

Saucy Burgers and a Classy Lady

Whenever I go to Jack in the Box, I get extra sauce on my burger because sauce makes everything goopier and juicier and just FIRE BREATHING BETTER IN GENERAL. There is one extreme downside to saucy burgers though. Saucy is basically a synonym for messy.

Rooms make excellent everythings. My room is living room, a gym, a kitchen, a dining room, and sometimes even a bedroom. This particular evening, I was using my bed as a dining room. I was sitting cross-legged with my computer across the bed from me playing some really upscale movie like "The Breakfast Club" or something.

I took one especially juicy bite of the burger and about half a cup of sauce spilled out onto my cross legs.

"Huh," Arielle thought. "Eureka!"

Let is be known that I am a very positive person. Where you see a glass half-empty, I see a glass half-full of chocolate milk and there's glittery stickers on the outside of it and the coaster has a picture of Josh Groban on one side and a picture of Cillian Murphy on the other (yes, that's a good thing), and "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds is playing somewhere off in the distance. So when the average Joe spills a pile of sauce on his leg, he's furrows his brow, groans, wipes it off, and forgets about it. NOT ME.

I saw an ingenious way of adding bonus flavor to my fries! The sauce was eventually cleaned up, but no napkins were involved. I dipped my french fries in the sauce on my leg.

And that was the day my legs were like unto a dipping sauce container. So classy.

(My sister takes creative license with the pictures. In her words (kind of), "Kittens and swords are AwEsOmE!")

Apple Pie and a Classy Lady

There a few basic foods that will never under any circumstance make good travel snacks. My dad found this out the hard way when he gave bananas and strawberries to my brother and sister for an extended car trip when they were still young. "Fruit! That's nutrition!" He thought triumphantly.

It turns out that fruit squishes and is fun to stick between the seats of cars. WHO EVEN KNEW.

Well guess what? Apple pie has now officially joined the ranks of "Foods That Should Never Be Consumed in a Car When You Are Planning On Remaining in that Car for At Least 7 Hours."

I had to eat with my hands, there were no spoons or chopsticks. Don't even ask why I had apple pie in a car, because that was also coincidentally my fault. Being the classy woman I am, I was feeling overly ambitious in my ability to eat sticky, syrupy fruit while in a moving vehicle with no wet wipes or paper towels. Just me and the pie.

It turns out that pie crust is not quite as durable as a plate. It also turns out that apple filling loves to be everywhere but in your mouth. Have you ever spoon fed a baby? I really became one with my inner-baby.

Apple pie is something not to be eaten in the car unless you have extensive lady-like and classy demeanor like me.