A-W-E-S-O-M-E, awesome, awesome, TO-TALLY!

This morning I had to sift through a sea of High School cheerleaders attending spirit camp just to make my way to the building. The memories came rushing back. The skirts, the chants, the fighting and bickering. Every summer from middle school through high school I spent yelling and jumping - filled with school spirit and nasty camp food.

I was a cheerleader and everything that went with it.

Friday night football games were the highlight of my week. Dancing and shouting under the lights for those TIGERS. Then afterward we'd have a potluck with the team and I'd drive off to party in my 1990 blue ford probe listening to "Friday Night 80's" on the radio. Every time I hear Raspberry Baret, I can almost taste the Marlboro lights and boons farm. I was a straight A, honor student - but on Friday nights, in my purple skirt, I was every stereotypical thing a cheerleader should be. Am I proud of this? No. But I am invigorated by the memories of my youth (and thankful that my behavior had limited influence on my life and brain cells). Very few of my college memories involve partying, I guess you could say I got it out of my system early. Have boobs, will party. This is the reason my husband swears if we ever have a daughter, she can do ANYTHING EXCEPT CHEER.

I give him the 'ol "I cheered and I turned out just fine!"

He says my case is extraordinary.

I tend to agree with him.

Piano it is then.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO TEAM!

Would you rather have a husband or a lifetime supply of ice cream?

This post is a part of 20SB’s Looking Back Blog Carnival, and Ben & Jerry’s is awarding free ice cream to lucky bloggers and readers! (man, do I heart ice cream!)
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I started this blog as a way to document the wedding planning process (ie. how much it sucked) and to vent about my partner being a medical student. Granted, I thought blogging was SOUP-ER stupid until I read my friend Jennie's nonsensical mess that is her brain splatting randomness onto the internet. But inevitably, I was jealous and figured I needed in on the action. This is my corner.

I have come to adore my blog and have found it provides a creative and organized outlet for my thoughts. I've also met some totally cool chicks/dudes and one girl who thinks she's a mermaid.

This is the perfect time to look back. Next weekend fireworks will fly honoring one year of wedded BLISS for husband and I. ONE YEAR PEOPLE! I cannot wait to pull that ratty cake up out of the freezer and dig in to it's expired goodness in honor of our love.

By looking back at my blog, I realized that I have always been looking forward. Husband and I have made it through some pretty tough times with this whole medical school thing, and even though residency looms in our future, for now, we spend our weekends enjoying each other. Throughout this blog I find myself looking forward to the amazing life that my husband and I share together. And it all began when he got down on one knee two years ago today and fumbled through the most adorable proposal I could ever have imagined.
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February 11, 2008

I was totally robbed of the intrinsically relaxing sigh that comes from within when you finally reach the week-end. Actually the term weekend now generates a cognitive dissonance that I've never had before. It used to give me that warm melty feeling of sleeping in or lying on the couch or possibly going to dinner and a movie with my fiance(FI) and then staying up until 230am talking and laughing in bed.

It now feels like just another two days. Two days in which FI will be locked in the basement of a stale library shoving information in his brain at an inhumane pace, only stopping to eat meals - which usually need to be prepared by me at a certain time - then off again to basement hell. I on the other hand have the opportunity to get up at 8am on Saturday and teach cycling at the gym. After my sweat session I will go home, shower, and either sit around wishing I was hanging out with FI, beg one of my friends who also don’t have a life to hang out with me or I can run all of the errands we don’t have time to do during the week. Not fun stuff either, mundane stuff like pick up the dry cleaning, depositing checks in the ATM or ordering flower girl charms. My most unfavorite of such aforementioned crap-tasks has been returning stuff left over from the blessed 12/25 without a receipt. I then proceed to read the Internets for three hours and go to bed. Sunrise on Sunday finds me driving downtown to teach Hebrew to little nosepickers.

Now that the backside of the work week is a total enigma, I must escape to my happy dreams where we are married, FI is finally a doctor, our kids are of legal drinking age and after spending Monday thru Friday on a beach in the Caribbean, we are off to Vegas for the weekend. TGIF.. no, let's try TGI2032
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My husband is my very best prize, and we'll fill our weekends with kisses and ice cream whether I win a blogging contest or not.

The life you could have lived

My name is Tam, and I’m a Facebook addict. I willingly admit this and endure all of the repercussions (my husband’s constant teasing). This weekend during a stellar Facebook stalking session… I saw a picture of THE EX. He’s not on Facebook (trust me I’ve checked) but as I was clicking through some pictures of a wedding. BOOM. A stupid picture of HIS FACE and his WIFE/GIRLFRIEND (there was a glass covering up his left hand so I couldn’t see a ring). There he was hanging out with the same cohort of jocks and ditsy girls that I chugged Natural Light and Boons Farm with in high school – only now they’re weathered and frumpy and have half a dozen snot-nosed kids at home. Next to him sat a guy I knew since the third grade, who dreamed of going to Duke and becoming a doctor, but married his high school sweet heart at 19 and attended community college instead.

Flashback: THE EX was the most popular guy in school – football running back with tanned skin, muscles ga-lore and touted as the most decorated wrestler in the state. I was the cheerleader, honor society, lead in the school play, red head who rarely mentioned her AP classes and secretly applied to pre-med programs. He got a full ride to state university and I went away to a liberal arts (“aggie”) college on a vocal music scholarship. He cheated on me with a college cheerleader and stopped returning my phone calls. I was devastated, and begged, and offered to do all of his term papers, but nothing worked. This was not a shining moment for me. For the next four years, I swore off men relationships, secretly waiting for him to realize his colossal mistake and come crawling back to me.

Getting dumped flat on my ass by that boy was one of the best things that has ever happened in my entire life.

Looking at that untagged Facebook photo, his face was rounder and his black hair was thinning. His eyes looked beady and bored. His lady was a completely AVERAGE looking blond, a little on the homely side probably drinking water so she could drive them home. There he sat at a table of his high school cronies, who sell either insurance or beer for a living. Not a bad job, but they don’t have school loans, political insight or stories of world travels. I’d venture to guess none of them volunteer or donate to charity. Am I a snob? Probably. Am I stuck living in the SAME town, with the SAME friends, shagging the SAME two pump chump I met in the tenth grade? No. But I could have been.

[From Smitten]…basically, if I were going to name the application, I'd call it the…narcissism app. In eras past, when WOmen have lain in bed wondering what alternate lives they may have had, they were relegated to imagining those BOYfriends of yore, conjuring images of them in their heads, looking all lithe and tan and pretty and whatnot. Only now you just have to type in HIS name and suddenly you can see pictures of her with a terrifying-looking three year-old and her very unfortunate bob haircut HIM with gelled hair and a stodgy girlfriend probably still reminiscing about high school rushing yard records.

My husband went to Duke and is becoming a doctor. I never dreamed of him. I own a house, have traveled abroad and work as a respected researcher in a field that I love. I never dreamed of that either. I actually used to dream of the life those people are living.

I got more than I dreamed of.

Thank you Facebook, for reminding me.

Prom Rebels and Beef Butts

My Alma mater has made national news twice so far this year. The first was in March when the Oiler basketball team cinched the NCAA Division II men's basketball title. I don’t give a toot about basketball (unless Duke makes it past the sweet sixteen). But it would be nice for people to say, “The basketball champs?” as opposed to saying “Is that an aggi school up north?” Because for the record, Yes. Yes, I palpated cows and was the only girl to show up without coveralls and lube. And, yes, I needed a stool to position my ENTIRE ARM inside the cow’s b-hole while wearing a fashionable plastic sleeve and screaming “It’s cutting off my circulation!” or “There's poo on my neck!" ...HOWEVER when people call it an “aggi school” it hurts a little. It somehow diminishes my experience - aggricultural or otherwise.

This week, Findlay, OH again made national news when a high schooler was suspended from his Christian school for accompanying his girlfriend to her prom. Apparently, his Baptist institution prohibits dancing, handholding and listening to rock 'n' roll (only that genre? Really? Because I can think of a lot worse). The principal apparently blames it on the little sluts that are inherently produced by the public school system. In a statement, principal, Tim England, wrote,

"When the school committee ... set up the policy regarding dancing, I am confident that they had the principle of fleeing lustful situations in mind ... should a Christian place themselves at an event where young ladies will have low-cut dresses and be dancing in them."

Great, now everyone’s forgotten about the basketball and they think the town is home to an “aggi” university and a crazy Christian high school that made national news for not letting some hormonal kid get raging drunk off watered down vodka disguised in an empty shampoo bottle before grinding the night away to illicit rap music with his scantily clad date before shagging her in the back alley of a trailer park while using a sandwich baggie as a make-shift condom. Prom is awesome people! Get on board!

Besides, the biggest store in the carpeted mall is K-Mart, the campus is dry, and with a town like that – Prom is hardly the only excuse to sin (not that I would know). Go Oilers!

My Favorite Things - 80's Edition

Yesterday had me all nastalgic and stuff so I thought today I'd present a special edition:

My favorite things 1988-1992

layered neon slouch Socks

Slap bracelets

Lee Press On Nails

Banana clips

Skip it

high bangs

Penny hockey

Trapper Keepers

tight rolled stonewash jeans

Pogo Ball

Scratch and Sniff stickers

Troll dolls

chapstick in metal tins

my new breast buds

(and oh god did I ever love my cassett tapes!!)

Tiffany (Tiffany) - I wanted to be her *so* bad

Debbie Gibson (Out of the Blue)

Ace of Base (The Sign)

NKOTB (Step By Step/ Hangin' Tough)

Also, I found this site and laughed OUT LOUD at the obsurd names of my toys. I also felt incredibly spoiled because I had every one of these toys (except the Teddy Ruxpin because my mom said it was a piece of shit and would probably break before I got it home.)
Popples?
Wuzzles?
Pound Puppy?
Smooshies?
Fluppy dog?
My Child doll? (her felt face always got so dirty!)
Also that Roller Racer thing smashed the crap out of your fingers if you weren't careful. Ouch!

My boss was recently telling me that her teenage daughter is begging for a Ouiji board and she can't find one anywhere. Her daughter asked what it was like to play with one and if she ever played, "light as a feather, stiff as a board." Um, I DID!!

Silver Spoons and Webster were good too, but not as good as these

Sometimes I think back to the shows that I used to watch when I was little. I was recently reading Fergie's Wikipedia page because I wanted to find out more about her struggle with methamphetamine. No luck on the meth details, but it did say she got her start on Kids Incorporated. [warm gushy memories flooding back] I loved that show.

Kids Incorporated


Star Search
Every week I would brainstorm the song that I would sing, when I was picked for the show.


Punky Brewster
In kindergarten, I had glow-in-the-dark Punky shoes, all the cool kids wanted to lay by me at nap time to see them glow. I wish I still had them. Punky was my hero and this is the episode where I decided I would never take drugs. Thinking back, the girls in the clip look nothing like drug users. Nothing.


By second grade, I was totally boy crazy and obsessed with The Monkees. My friend had a Monkee's themed birthday party and I remember dancing around in her finished basement to her new tape seething with jealousy. I contemplated punching her in the face and making off with the tape. I wasn't a very good friend.


Glamour and glitter, fashion and fame... JEM! Truly Truly Truly Outrageous! I watched this every day after school while eating a piece of bread topped with one melty kraft single and a dill pickle. Every.Day.


and on the big screen...

The Hugga Bunch Movie
Don't ask. (But I wish I owned this movie.)


Flowers in the Attic
I watched this at a sleepover. I had to have my mom pick me up early (per usual, I never spent the night places) and wouldn't eat powdered sugar for two years. I actually bought this movie a few years ago, just to remind myself not to poison my kids if I ever have any.


**I decided I want some of these shows on DVD so my kids can watch them too. I found the complete box set of Punky Brewster and Fraggle Rock on Amazon... MEGA EXPENSIVE! I also found some Strawberry Shortcake DVDs. My kid (that remains only a figment of my imagination) is going to be totally up on 80's TV and not those gay Wiggles/Tellitubbies.