Dreams are weird.

Dreams are weird.

I've always had weird and crazy dreams. I remember a lot of them too. I even remember some from when I was a young child. Sometimes I have a hard time waking up from my dreams. Sometimes they are so vivid, I wake up and get confused about where I am because 5 minutes ago I was somewhere else. It's pretty awesome, unless it's a bad dream and then it's far from awesome. Once I woke up thinking I had a child, when it wasn't in the house I went all "DINGO STOLE MY BABY!" for a solid 5 minutes. I should probably have my dreams analyzed, but I'm scared to do that because I'm pretty sure I'd be committed. Here is a Highlight Reel:

Christmas Morning - 1985 - My Mom has to wake me up to open presents. I'm 5 years old. I shouldn't have to be woken up. I should be up, jumping up and down to screaming to open the Popple that was wrapped under the tree that I totally saw my brother wrapping for me a few days before. When my Mom wakes me up (I remember this, clear as day) I look at her and ask "Where is Pizza? And Pepperoni?" she looks at me and says "You want pizza? It's Christmas morning! You can have some Froot Loops after we open presents." Exasperated I say "NO MOM! Pizza and Pepperoni are my bears." She proceeds to tell me that I don't have bears named Pizza and Pepperoni. I explain to her that I have 2 big stuffed bears named Pizza and Pepperoni, one was dark brown and one was light brown, and as I'm telling her, I realize that it was a dream and then I begin to cry hysterically because I really wanted the bears from my dream. They talked to me and were my friends. I still feel heartbroken when I think about this.

In my mid-20s I had a recurring dream that I lost body parts. At the time, I worked with a girl that only had 1 arm. So I totally blame her. She was born that way, but in my dream, unlike Lady Gaga and the girl I worked with, I was not. The body parts I lost would just fall off and while they were sometimes different, it was almost always my ear. In the dream I was riding on a bike, fleeing from my coworker with 1 arm while she ran after me exclaiming "Hey, you dropped your ear! Come back! They can give you a prosthetic!" It felt like hours would pass as I frantically rode my bike, trying to get away from her. It was terrifying. I haven't had this dream in some time but occasionally I will catch a glimpse of my ear and get chills

I have been broken up with exactly once in my life. I mean, really dumped. Like, out of the blue, what just happened, my heart will NOT go on Celine Dion I don't care what you say, don't sleep, don't eat, complete misery dumped. It happened over 11 years ago, was one of my shortest relationships ever (read: 4 months) and that son of a bitch still haunts my dreams. He was a total loser. Even so, when I dream about him I almost always end up waking up with my heart racing like it's going to explode from my chest and I'm completely covered in sweat. Not in a good way either. In a terrified, please dear baby jesus get me out of this dream right now, kind of way. And usually, I just see his face and he says "Hey".

Clearly, I have a major issue with rejection. But it's ok because my friend Casey tells me that all the cool kids do.I had one of these last night, it's what brought all this on. You can thank that asshole for this blog post.

I also randomly dream of Whales. Like, I'll be at a picnic, in the desert. BOOM, there's a whale. I'll be at my desk at work. BOOM, there's a whale. I'll be in a museum. BOOM there's a painting of a whale. This is a fairly new development and has been happening for about the past year. Whales. What the...

All of this only goes to show that the inside of head is a lot like the movie Jumanji. One crazy confusing movie staring Robin Williams.

What do you dream about? I truly want to know. Maybe it will make me feel less crazy?

Southern Speak: A field guide

I reside in the South, not the DEEP south, but certainly deep enough.I have for the majority of my 33 years however I have lived above the Mason Dixon line a time or two (literally two) and as such my accent tends to lean more toward whoever I'm speaking with at the time. Predominately though my accent is slightly southern. Probably more southern than I care to admit. I use "y'all" on a regular basis and I even use some of the phrases that I will outline for you in this guide...however, usually in jest.

Here in the south, things are done at their own pace and in their own way. It's hard to understand for someone who doesn't live here. Hell, it's hard for me to understand sometimes. What got me thinking about this topic is my friend Ashley who lives in Alaska, she has lived in the south herself, so she generally gets it, but she randomly asked on Twitter "I don't understand the south. Why do you need a homemade wreath for every month??" I responded to her the best way I knew: "Oh bless your heart...because that's just how it's done Sugar. We don't question these things." Then I had the idea to create a guide for my Yankee friends who aren't as familiar with Southern Speak so they would know the appropriate usage of some phrases familiar to those of us below the Mason Dixon as they may come in handy. Let's get started.

"Mih-Cud-Do" - pronounced exactly like it's spelled, a lazy conjunction (like most southern words) of Might Could Do. You see, in the south, when we want to tell someone how to do something, we aren't always very direct. So, we tell them, what they Might Could Do, if they were so inclined. Example: "What you Mih-Cud-Do is cook that bacon in lard, ya reckon?"

"Ya Reckon?" - a question, meaning: do you concur? Example: See above

"God Willing and The Creek Don't Rise." - One of my favorites, even as a non-God fearing person. This is a phrase that is meant to imply hope that a certain outcome will end in a positive result through God's will and good fortune in a difficult situation. Example: "God willing and the creek don't rise that woman admitting she wasn't God fearing won't get her stoned to death."

"Since God Was a Boy" - This one, I use frequently. It's used to explain a large passing of time. Example: "I haven't seen a Drag Show since God was a boy!" Sidenote: I got this one from Steel Magnolias, which is my favorite movie of all time.

"Over Yonder" - This one I grew up with a lot in the mountains of NC. It was tough for me as I am terribly challenged directionally. It's a direction in which you must travel or where something is located, it's a direction much like "over there" but in the country that could be 15 miles away. Example: "I know I left my sunglasses over yonder but I can't find 'em nowhere."

"Bless Your/Her/His Heart" - I saved this one for last, it's probably the most commonly used Southern Speak and the most widely known. The beautiful thing about it, is how versatile it is. It can be used to imply sympathy, gratefulness or a kind form of disapproval and even exasperation. It's genius. As such, I have multiple examples for it's usage:

"Bless his pea pickin' little heart, he never saw that coming. The bull threw him in no time."

"Bless her heart, she dresses like such a tramp though I know her Mama raised her better. It's no wonder she got pregnant."

"Bless your heart, you read this whole blog post. Thank you."

Any other southerners out there have any tried and true Southern Speaks they use on the regular? What about you Yankees? I'm friends with a few Bostonians that have more than a few.

Basically, I'm the white Oprah Winfrey

Let me preface this blog post by stating clearly that I will not be giving you a car, or a house, or a book club, or an expsenive gift bag from the Oscars...although I would totally love to be able to run around shouting:

"YOU GET A CAR! YOU GET A CAR! YOU GET A CAR!" and laugh manically.

While on vacation I stayed with my friend who is a professional Myers Briggs Test Giver for a living...

Ok, maybe she does more than that, but let's just say a very small part of her job is giving people bubble tests and then calculating how they communicate and what their main personality traits are. I find this fascinating because I do not understand myself at all so I jumped at the chance to have her tell me.

She administered the test to me while I was drinking beer, but I'd only had 2 so I doubt it effected the outcome very much as I have a very high beer tolerance. That too, has been tested. Apparently I was thinking too much about my answers, so after a quick correction to just "Go with my gut" I began filling in bubble dots like it was my job.

She took out her handy dandy scorecard and rated me while I slammed back another beer stood around nervously. She then handed me my results, I was an E.N.F.J. I know what you're thinking and it's likely the exact same thing I thought when given this discovery of a lifetime.

What the fuck does that mean?

She pulled up some stuff for me to read and even showed me a badass Powerpoint presentation with flying dragons and ninjas (ok, so I may be exaggerating but it was very informative) but to be honest, at this point I was up to 4 beers and nothing really sunk in. BUT, since I got home, I've began to research what being an E.N.F.J. means. According to Truity.com this is a quick breakdown:

Do you see that? I am a fucking humanitarian. It says so. Right there. In print.

It also says, that we are very rare, accounting for only 3% of the population. I'm an extrovert but can get easily exhausted if I don't stop to take time for myself. I enjoy close, supportive connections with others (and my bras, although this doesn't say that it's very true) and I tend to be a bit of an empath and hurt when others close to me are hurting. I am sensitive to feedback positive and negative (stroke my ego a little, you'll see) and I strive to leave the world slightly better than I found it. I am also a sucker for a to-do list.

Everything I've read has been pretty spot-on. I find it interesting that it's made me more aware during my interactions with others because I've never really given a shit before.

Famous ENFJs include Oprah Winfrey, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Mead, Ralph Nader, Abraham Maslow, Dr. Phil McGraw, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

So, basically, based upon my cheery general demeanor, predisposition to stress eat and love of entertaining I conclude that I am the white, broke Oprah Winfrey.

Interested in what your Personality Type is? You can take the test at Truity.com: Free Personality Test. However, it will not be nearly as awesome as taking the bubble dot test at my friend Heather's house in her kitchen while drinking beer.

Netflix is ruining my life or preparing me for my future

Sorry it's been awhile since my last post, you see, I've been on vacation. It's this wonderful time where I like to unplug from the internet world and play in in the real one. It was wonderful, thank you for asking! I went up to Virginia to visit some friends and further fell in love with the Hampton Roads area. I also drank a lot, ate a lot and had lots of fun. However, that is not the point of this entry today.

Netflix is ruining my life. Seriously. I used to be a productive person. I used to do crafts, write, read, leave my house on my days off...all great things. Then, I got Netflix.

It began simple enough, I watched Season 1 of Wilfred, it didn't take long since it's only a 30 minute show. Only 20 something without commercials.

Then I didn't watch for awhile, then I got hooked on Revenge and Scandal. I couldn't stop watching. MUST SEE ALL EPISODES OF EVERYTHING!

Life began to revolve around how many episodes I could get in a night. I had to know what happened next. To the point that I began to lose interest in shows that had the audacity to make me wait an entire week for an episode. How dare they! Orange is the New Black would never do that to me.

When I finished Bomb Girls, I said I was done for awhile. I was going to take a break. I needed to take a break. But I'm weak. Last night I was bored, there was nothing on TV...instead of opening a book like I should have done, I grabbed my Wii remote, opened up Netflix and dove into the first 6 episodes of The Fosters.

I just couldn't help it. I'm ashamed. I have no control.

I'm Tonyne and I'm a Netflix addict. While I'm ashamed of my addiction to binge watching TV dramas I feel as if I have learned some useful things. I am fully confident that my schnauzers understand me in ways no one else does, that in jail I could not only survive but actually do well making toiletries for other inmates and when I got out I could go live in the Hamptons and revenge something with epic flair. I could then spin myself out of trouble while wearing fantastic clothes and if that didn't work I could build a bomb to blow up everyone that didn't go along with my carefully crated spin. Then, I could live happily ever after with my lesbian wife that I probably meet during my stint in prison while raising our 12 foster children.

So, what are you watching these days? What should I place next in my Netflix List?

My favorite things: Bathroom Edition

I get really excited over stuff. Like "OH MY GOD! I LOVE THAT!" Excited. I like to think I don't get excited over stupid shit and I definitely don't call stupid shit my favorite things. So I figured I would share some of my favorite things with whoever reads this. This is the first edition of "My Favorite Things".

I picked this St. Ives Lotion up last week on a whim. I don't normally buy lotion but when I do, it's always on a whim. Or...it's when I'm out of lotion. I'm pretty sure this time was a whim. Point is, I bought it. It smelled nice. I began using this lotion and now I am full on addicted. It feels amazing, keeps my skin feeling hydrated all day and it smells so, so good. It's also affordable, I think I paid less than $4 for the bottle.

This is how I kept my jewelry. For years. I ran late for work at least twice a month because I had to untangle a necklace before I could wear it. I went on a deep cleaning spree before hosting a party last week and because of how my brain works I was certain the people coming to the party would judge me if they walked into my bathroom and saw my jewelry in such a mess. So I had an idea.

I grabbed some tiny cup hooks I just happened to have (I'm not entirely sure why, I don't hang tiny cups or any cups) and screwed them into the wall. I was able to do this by hand and I had this nifty worthless wall space to use right next to my mirror. It's super convenient and I happen to think it looks kind of cool. The party was a success...I think this might be why.

I once stole a condiment cup from Outback Steakhouse. There, I said it. If I go to jail please make sure the Tiny Germans are taken care of. They like to sleep in bed with you and snuggle, they also like carrots and playing fetch...

You know the Blooming Onion deal and how it comes with that awesome dipping sauce? Well, as hard as it is to believe, after several beers one night I still had Blooming Onion and the dipping sauce left. So, I put the whole cup in my To Go box. I'm not proud. And while I am not recommending you steal from Outback, I have to say, that there condiment cup is THE BEST Bobby Pin holder in all the land. I had Bobby Pins EVERYWHERE, I would leave them loose on the counter or in on my jewelry dish or loose in the basket where I store my hairbrushes. This sits neatly on the counter and I can always find my Bobby Pins, which I use A LOT.

Ok, so, that's it...those are My Favorite Things for my Bathroom. What are some of YOUR favorite bathroom things?

The Leftover Not Really Quiche Recipe

I may have invented this recipe, I'm not sure. This is how I make "Leftover Not Really Quiche"

Tonyne's Leftover Not Really Quiche Recipe

1/3 cup Bisquick Heart Smart Mix
1 egg white (reserve yolk, waste not want not!)
1 Tbsp water
dash of garlic powder, salt and pepper
4 eggs + reserved egg yolk
2-3 cups of whatever leftover veggies and/or cooked meats are in your fridge (I used tomato, onion, green beans and kielbasa)
dash of salt and pepper
1/4-1/2 cup of shredded cheese

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees, spray a small'ish baking dish with non-stick spray. Chop up all leftover veggies and meat into bite sized pieces. Set aside.

2. In a small bowl combine Bisquick, egg white, water, garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Pour into prepared baking dish. Set aside. Scramble eggs and egg yolk together in a medium bowl. Set aside.

3. Saute leftover veggies and meat in a small skillet until heated through. Slowly add veggies/meat to eggs mixing the whole time. Gently pour egg, veggie mixture over Bisquick in the baking dish. This part looks sketchy, but trust me and the process and I promise it will be ok.

4. Top with cheese and bake in oven for 20-25 minutes until eggs are cooked through and the bottom crust is golden brown.

This is a super quick way to use up leftovers and it reheats great! I usually get 4 breakfasts for myself out of this. You could use almost anything you have in the fridge.

I got the recipe for the crust part off the back of an expired box of HeartSmart Bisquick, it was originally for an Italian Pizza Bake and that looked really good too, but I needed breakfast.

Don't mind me, that's just how my brain works...

My brain doesn't work like most brains.

For example, I'll wonder what giraffes eat, so I Google it. Then I see, "What do giraffes symbolize?" and I click there instead because surely that is infinitely more interesting than what they eat. Apparently, they symbolize the ability to see

into the future. Then I begin to think, is the fact that I'm curious about giraffes and what they eat mean that I can see in the future? If so, does that mean I will see how I die, or how my friends are going to die? I can't handle that. I don't want to know. Why do I have to know that?

This is how my brain works.

It effects my decision making ability because I'm always thinking 12 different implausible hypotheticals that might happen and I need time to weigh all of them before I can decide the best course of action.

Because of this in a moment of crisis, I am not the right person to go to. You should see what happens when my gas light comes on in my car. I start breathing heavy, and calculating the miles it would take to walk to the gas station, and then I realize I don't have a gas can and I'll have to buy one and what if they don't have one. Bam, mini panic attack. I can't breathe right, my heart is pounding, I start to get really hot, it's awful. Some friends were in the car with me recently when this happened, I explained to them that this is how my brain functions all of the time. They are amazed I make it out of the house with clothes on each day.

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of the many stories I could tell you about the times my brain has gotten me into trouble this way. There was the time I accidentally set my Mom on fire while we were ear wicking (Google it) and couldn't figure out what was the most effective way to put the fire out so I stood there just saying "Oh, um, Oh, uh...". Until my sister realized what was happening and yelled at me to pour the glass of water I had in my hand on the fire that had slowly begun it's crawl from my Mom's slipper to her pants leg.

Then there was the time my friend went into a porta-potty toward the end of a night out and all of a sudden some guys rolled the porta-potty away, with her in it, but there was a cop eyeballing me because I was holding a cup of beer and I was afraid I would get arrested if I ran after her, so I didn't. I stood there and held my beer, yelling hopefully loud enough for the guys to hear me but not loud enough that the cop would think I was too drunk and arrest me. Because they would arrest me and I would go to jail. I didn't know how to make a shiv at that point in my life, so I was worried about the outcome.

I call these my "Thought Trains" and occasionally I change the words to "Love Train" and sing about them, but only when I'm alone. My most recent Thought Train has been the scariest of all for me. I'm currently separated, soon to be divorced and I'm 33. I want a child (just 1, I'm not sure I could handle 2 with all this going on inside my head everyday) very badly. So I think about doing it on my own, do I go the old fashioned way or adopt? I formulate plans in my head for both, I then wonder if I can buy a baby on Craigslist. Before I can begin the research, I think about how hard raising a kid on my own would be, I don't make a lot of money and kids are freakishly expensive. I really like to sleep too, and they are up all night having tiny baby parties.

I'd have to work 2 jobs to afford diapers, then I'd have to work a 3rd job to afford the childcare I'd need for the other 2 jobs. Then I wouldn't have time to dedicate to teaching them to be an awesome human because I don't want to have a brat for a child. And if my kid is uncool or likes Justin Beiber, I'm just not sure how I would handle that disappointment as a parent.

Basically, inside my head there is a whole lot of crazy. I live on the ledge and I'm constantly pulling myself off of it. Or at least that's what it feels like sometimes. I do my best to keep it in check but occasionally it slips up and 15 minutes of time can just pass by in a blur. If you are ever talking to me and I space out, I'm probably hearing everything you are saying, I'm just thinking about the hypotheticals. One day when I know how to save your unborn pony from a zombie attack at 20,000 feet, because I had already thought of that, you'll thank me for it. Well, as long as I have thought of that hypothetical.

A little something

When I got the idea to start Misadventures and Balderdash, I wanted a place where I could share everything. Hence the name. Funny stories, recipes, pictures, miscellaneous stuff I was writing. This is a snip it of something I've been working on, it's the beginning of the story of me.

This story begins with a little girl who liked to tell stories.

“They did what?” Ms. Kincaid exclaimed as I sat across from her in the library of my elementary school at our table which was reserved for my weekly speech therapy session. My grandmother insisted upon speech therapy for me because I spoke so quickly my words sometimes ran together and I said “nakin” instead of “napkin”.

“They threw me off the roof and cooked me in the barbeque pit.” I wouldn’t back down from the story. I needed her to believe that my family had intended to cook me alive the night before and feed me to the cows that lived on the few acres of land we leased out to a local farmer. Where I got these ideas when I was merely in kindergarten, I have no idea. I guess you could say I was an eccentric 5 year old. Later Ms. Kincaid would tell my Mom that I should be on stage one day because I could tell stories with such conviction.

“Tonyne, you shouldn’t lie” Through a quiet laugh she said to me “but I have to ask, why did they throw you off the roof and cook you in the barbeque pit?”

I was always fascinated with Ms. Kincaid, she was a short heavy set woman, likely 35 years old at the time and single. There was a story that on Halloween she would fly from the roof of the local IGA in our small town of Poultney, Vermont. When I think back on her now I realize she was likely just a single woman with cats that just wanted to live her life but people made up rumors that she was a witch because that’s what people in small towns do when people live lives unlike their own.

“I don’t know, they just did.” I replied. The story of what happened the night before was significantly less glamorous than being cooked alive in a barbeque pit. My Dad, who was dying of brain cancer, had a horrible seizure which left him with a horrible migraine. A short while later I was playing too loudly with my Legos, throwing him to a fit of rage in which he threw the bucket containing the Legos down the hall narrowly missing my head.

I started to cry, quietly. My brother Ritch, 17 years old at the time, picked me up and took me into his room to listen to music. He was always my protector in times like these. My Mom was so stressed out being the only one working, taking care of us and my father who was getting worse by the week that she had little patience left. So that left me with Ritch and his friends. I was the coolest kid in kindergarten and quite possibly the only one who knew every word to “Just a Gigolo” by David Lee Roth.

“They just threw me off the roof, down into the barbeque pit and cooked me. They were going to feed me to the cows for dinner!” Yeah, that was the easier story to tell.

During this time in my life I told lots of stories. There was the time I was spending the night with my grandparents who lived up the road from us. I called my parents on the telephone to report that my grandfather had spanked me.

Let me be clear, my grandfather wouldn’t have spanked me in a million years. My grandmother? Absolutely, but not my grandfather.

“What did you do to make Grandpa spank you?” My Mom asked me through the receiver of the rotary phone. She knew I must have done something next to terrible if he spanked me.

“I don’t know what I did, he just spanked me.” I said into the phone. Apparently the questioning continued and even my Dad tried to coax the information out of me. At some point, as the story of my own story goes, I put the phone down and walked away. My parents were concerned at this point since I had been so convincing. They drove down the road to my grandparents house.

“What are you doing here?” My Grandpa asked them when they walked in the front door.

“Dad, Tonyne said you spanked her. What did she do?” My Dad asked.

“What? I did no such thing!” Wiping his brow with the bandana that was always in his pocket, my grandfather looked at me quizzically followed by my parents.

“I was just kidding.” I smiled before running into the front room to continue playing with my toys.

To this day, I don’t know why I told stories. Maybe I’ve always had a story to tell, or perhaps it was a harsh reality for a 5 year old to face so I made things up to cope, whatever the reason, I’m glad that I was told the story of how I used to tell stories, so that I can write this story now; the story of me.

There it is, just a little something I've been working on. I'd love to know what you think.

I may be part of a mafia or at least a gang

I live in a development that is mostly inhabited by retired Yankees. There are regularly scheduled Canasta nights, pot-lucks, movie nights and even Zumba Gold at our local clubhouse. I know you're jealous and wondering how I have time to write this blog when there is such fun to be had, but I digress. A few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon I decided to go to my neighborhood pool. I was laying in my chair when they descended. 5-6 older women in modest bathing suits with pool noodles. They were all talking, very friendly with each other and although the entire pool deck was available they set up shop right next to me. It was a little awkward so to break the tension, I introduced myself:

"Hi ladies, I feel like I should introduce myself. I've only lived here a year and I haven't met many people yet. My name is Tonyne."

It took them about 10 minutes to get my name and even though they were able to pronounce it once, they ended up calling me Tony anyway. I really hit it off with this one woman named Nancy, she sounded exactly like Big Ang from Mob Wives. Imagine Maxine, from the Hallmark cards, and then imagine she sounds like this:



And just like Big Ang she loved to talk. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with her though because she was hysterical. I think my favorite part was when she spoke about how the phone starts ringing every time there is an ambulance spotted in the neighborhood.

"We're old, this is what happens, we die. This is not news." she said

She also enjoyed introducing me to every other person that came to the pool that day, "Hey, come meet Tony, she bought the modular, you know the one on the corner, the nice one, that was foreclosed? She bought it." This is how homes are known in my neighborhood by the deal you got on them.

We began talking about movies and pharmaceuticals. The conversation seemed to ebb and flow from one topic to the next, the sun was getting to me at this point. I know at some point I offered to loan her my copy of The Hunger Games and since she lives a few houses down from me, I told her I would put it in her mailbox on my way to work in the morning. As I leave the pool area, I hear her talking to the others "What a nice girl, she's going to put it in my mailbox, it's done. It's nice to get some young ones into the fold."

The next morning I placed the DVD in her mailbox I wasn't quite sure if I my action signaled a pharmaceutical pick up or a possible hit on the grumpy old man 3 blocks away. Then when getting my into my car, I noticed Nancy give me a nod from her screened-in front porch, holding her coffee and wearing giant sunglasses, I knew it was my induction into the Old Lady Yankee Mafia in my neighborhood.

I can't wait until I get my pool noodle.