blood is thicker than water, but peanut butter is thicker than blood

Since I emotionally don't have the tools to deal with the fact that the sky is snowing its balls off right now, ON MARCH 30TH, I'm taking a walk down the sunny side of memory lane, where the temperature mostly stays above 65 degrees and I don't have to deal with minor annoyances like wind-shield wipers and wearing socks.


I've mentioned my love of summer camp before and I think it's safe to say that it effectively made me into a geeky, 'girl power,' tie-dye loving freak. Amazingly, I still have a successful social life and due to my extreme awkwardness, vastly competitive nature, and fairly strict social upbringing, I'm sometimes told I come off as intimidating and unapproachable, which couldn't be further from my own actual perception of things, but hey-o, I don't hate it.


My sister, nearly three years younger than I, is similarly blessed with these qualities. Minus the tye-die loving freak part, that's all mine. Although, just to be clear I'll have you know that I actually work the power-suit and pumps look and I like to keep drum-circle Sara limited to certain area of my life, if you know what I mean.




When I was a senior in high school, my sister, Beth, was a freshman. PSH, more like FRESH MEAT. Bahaha.  Okay that wasn't funny. Anyway, we were both on the Cross Country team. Except, I was like, a senior, and like, totally varsity, and she was significantly lower on the totem pole, because duh, FROSH. It's kind of a tough thing to build up your image or popularity level or status or whatever bizarre pissing contest it is in high school and beyond for three years and then have a family member who actually knows you and the fact that you cry during the fucking movie previews and also uses the bathroom after you at home where all the number twos go down. It's an intrusion. Or, it can  feel like one.

There's no mystery.


 It was high school, it was cross country, in Indiana. This wasn't exactly Laguna Beach or 90210 or Gossip Girl. Again, cross country. Not a headline sport. But whatever, I had the team of girl and guy runners and we all sat around together on Friday nights and ate carrot sticks and watched Forrest Gump or Sandlot if we were in season, while the rest of our fellow student body was robotripping or getting busted for throwing corn husks at semis from the overpass.  It was vaguely cult-like, as most sports with semi-talented athletes are.


And boy, did we have some hot ticket events of which to look forward. One particularly exciting highlight was TEAM CAMP. Team camp was when we stayed IN THE DORMS of a college campus twenty miles away from our hometown for three nights and basically gorged ourselves on each other... and running three times a day. And sometimes swimming. And playing ultimate frisbee. And having ping-pong and basketball tournaments in which everyone, even the most uncoordinated, were required to participate. ALSO, the talent show.

Oh, the talent show.

Senior year summer team camp talent show, it was the 'cool' thing to be in as many skits as possible, or maybe that was just me. I'm not sure on that, I just know I was in several talent show acts, but that was maybe just because of my compulsion to win and so I felt being in as many of the acts as possible would up my chances.  The senior ladies coreographed a dance WITH PROPS and MATCHING OUTFITS to the tune of Video Killed the Radio Star. Style, bitches. Also particularly memorable is the skit I'm about to share with you and the reason for this post.

It's called Peanut Butter and Jelly.

And if I may say so myself, it was a crowd favorite. Even if we were scammed out of the highest honors.


Right, so Peanut Butter and Jelly.



The premise of this skit is to act completely stoic the entire time. It's to be treated with a sense of gravity and artsy pretentiousness to the crowd, who is hopefully losing their shit and laughing their asses off. One person is Peanut Butter and the other is Jelly. Essentially, you just go back and forth smearing the ingredient you're assigned on the other person, naming the part as you do it, taking turns until you're both miserable, sticky, messes. We used entire over-sized jars of each on one another, and if we're being honest, I wouln't have hated having two a piece.

My Sister and I attended the same summer camp, albeit at different points in the summer, as children. We'd both witnessed said skit, and been amazed by it as wee lasses. So, in an effort to be less of a bitch to my little sister, the newbie on the team trying to gain some notoriety,  I decided good old Beth and I should perform this together. It's kind of the perfect skit for sisters to do, because nobody knows how to be malicious like closely-aged sisters know how to be malicious to one another.



Our version when something like this:

Me: (Smearing peanut butter on Beth's pig-tailed locks) Peanut Butter hair gel!

Beth: (Playfully ringing my neck with jelly) Grape Jelly necklace!

Me: Peanut butter tube socks!!

Beth: Grape Jelly Sleeves!!

Me: Peanut butter lip gloss!!.

Beth: Grape Jelly blush!!

Me: Peanut butter eyeshadow!!

Beth: Grape Jelly underwear!!!!!


Grape jelly underwear. ON STAGE. It was totally on after that. I'm not kidding, we had an all-out war. The camp counselors we'd seen perform this skit as children were friends, so they hugged it out at the end. A third counselor had run out and rapidly threw a loaf of bread, slice, by slice on them and proclaimed 'Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich!!!!!!!' And they bowed it out and it was met by overwhelming applause, by the fourteen and under crowd.


We were NOT met by overwhelming applause right away. We were sisters, and shit was getting serious, seriously out of hand.  The other high-school aged members of the team had NO idea how to react. Perhaps it was weridly erotic for the male members and we didn't really think it through. My coach nearly LOST. HIS. SHIT. about the mess we made, us failing to realize just how fucking sticky everything was to become around us. Plus, we started getting legitimately pissed at each other and my friend Jessica ended up akwardly running out with the loaf of bread and kind of breaking up our shoving and condiment flinging as she doused us with bread.


In the end, we gave each other the one-stage hug, but like, the kind where you squeeze so hard that you're actually trying to hurt the other person without making it super obvious.



Crickets.



AND THEN, WAIT FOR IT.


The ROAR of applause. Weird, confused, oh-shit-what-just-went-down, 'that was fucking awesome,' applause.


God, do I love the sound of applause.


In the end, our coach was seriously furious about the skit and how we weren't *exactly* forthcoming with details prior to performance (um, we knew he was going to say no, and it's obviously better to beg for forgiveness.) and purposely didn't include us in the applause level judging to determine a winner. AND we had to scrub a nasty dorm common-area for a unreasonably long time. However, the clean-up did allow us time to make ammends and bond over the fact that we just made total fools did the most badass skit ever, together.



Beth and I already knew we were the real winners. You know, sisterly bonding and blood being thicker than water and stuff.


I think there may actually be some pictures of this circulating around still, so I'll see what I can do in the means of evidence. Oh, shit.


Xo Sare

civic duty.

Yesterday evening I called 911 for the first time not as a prank call.




Milestone, anyone?




Manfriend and I had just finished a sodium-riddled meal at Panda Express and I was flying solo over to my parents' house. My parents are leaving for OMGZ SPRING BREAK 2k11!! this morning, which means they're going to hang out with all the other people they see in our hometown on the daily, just in the sunny climate of southern Florida. Part of me is actually surpirsed every year when I don't hear on the news that Florida has begun to sink into the gulf/ocean from the shear number of Midwestern spring-breakers that migrate there like bats out of hell for a week.



So since Mama and Papa D are going to be gone for a week, I am on dog duty this weekend. They could have taken little Brutus with them had they driven, but I had a pleasure of actually doing the drive once, and I can say with confidence that it will not be driven by a member of this family ever again. We're plane people, family vacations should be and are arranged utilizing flight.


Despite the fact that I have my own home to throw ragers soirees in at my own discretion, my pulse quickens at the thought of my parents leaving me home alone,  finding someone to buy us alcohol and getting sloppily intoxicated, then inviting a bunch of boys over and blowing the speaker system and having a bonfire in the backyard.... and then I remember I'm almost 25 years old and I can buy my own alcohol and drink it virtually wherever I please and I can have friends over to my own house and I have Manfriend, so I need to just cut it the fuck out. However, none of that truth really negates the fact that Mama and Papa D's house was made to party in. It's more of a party house than a let's-give-four-children-a-proper-raisin' house. I mean, I'm obviously not in a position to judge, but I think the house secretly really enjoys when I ultilize all of its entertainment related wiles.

 Anyway, I'm rolling over to my parents house so I can get instructions on how to care for the pup, and I'm kind of zoning out because I'm listening to Arcade Fire and also sort of embarrassingly screaming the lyrics and I look over to my left and by god, there is smoke billowing out of every window of a house that I'm passing. And then I think maybe I'm hallucinating, so I slowwwww down and turn off the music for a sec to make sure it's really happening, which it definitely is, and I then decide it would be best if I call for back-up and continue on my merry way.




I immediately call my father since I'm all sorts of nervous about calliing 911, because who does that? Who fucking calls 911 anymore? I'm never the first one to know about anything, I never have any reason to use the emergency network. Anyway, I call my dad because I'm a pathetic child and he confirms that based on the amount of smoke, fact that 'everyone has already left for spring break*," and the notable lack of any sort of crowd of gapers, I should indeed dial the fateful numbers. 

*Just to be clear, when my father stated that everyone had already left for spring break, he actually did mean the whole town, not just everyone we know. It's that kind of place. I'm so thrilled to be back here after six years away!!!! Another part of my soul just died.

 So I proceed to dial 911 and reach the operator while I'm driving away.


I'm quickly informed by a woman who is probably used to telling hysterical people to calm down that I've reached the wrong county. What that fuck? 911 doesn't have an area code.  So anyway, I'm actually not freaking out, which is pretty uncharacteristic of me, so I ask her to send me to the correct county and I get:


"Ma'am? Ma'am!??! Calm down. You just need to wait a second and I'm going to send you over there. Ma'am?"



First of all, bitch, don't call me ma'am. Second, you're the one who needs to calm down, you should be fucking thanking me for fulfilling my civic duty and actually being as cool as a cucumber about it, because trust me, you could be getting panicky Sara right now, and that's a lot more goddamndifficult to deal with.


Anyway, I call and report the potential fire and the new operator is a man that actually doesn't sound lazy and annoying, so I get a sense of, what should I call it? Pride. I get a sense of pride out of the encounter.


Soon after I hang up with the operator I reach my parents' street and guess who's waiting to turn from the direction I just came? My own father. What a busybody! So I roll down my window and I'm all "I just called and reported it, the operator guy said they're going to send someone out to check on it."


Of course, my father, the man who has never met a stranger, who is president of the high school booster club and whose son (my own brother) was captain of the high school football team this year, feels the duty, as one of the pillars of the community to 'go check things out.' Whatever.


I end up hopping into his car and we drive over to the scene of the smoke.



And you know what? It was fucking gone. There was no more smoke. Every damn window and door of the house was open to air everything out though, so I guess everyone really hasn't left for SB2K11! yet. My clever father jeered at me, "Looks like someone was just burning dinner. he he he."


Bullshit, the amount of smoke being expelled from the house was WAY more than a burning dinner, the place looked like it was cooking from the inside out. And that is coming from someone who has burned more than her fair amount of dinner. This girl does not call 911 for nothing. Buttttt... I kind of did feel like an asshat and encouraged my father to drive away quickly in case the emergency squads were on their way and going to be pissed about being called for a false alarm. I'm totally never dialling 911 again, there's always someone else around to call anyway.


So, I guess psyching myself up to call the authorities for a real (fake) emergency isn't really legitimate civic duty, but I think it does show that I'm a compassionate and caring human being, despite my general misanthropic tendencies.



I think my father was disappointed by the lack of drama. I'll take it as a good sign that I was actually relieved.



OMGZ party at my parents' this weekend!!!



Xo Sare