There was a vom problem.

I'd love to write more but I'm blogging on work time so I have to be short.


Here's my Christmas in bullet points that will hopefully explain why I haven't blogged about my christmas yet:

• My roommate and I hosted out 5th Annual Holiday Happy Hour. I have a lot of pics and you'll find out in another bullet point why you aren't seeing them
• Had a fantastic flight home and hung out with my little monsters all day--Madisyn can talk now, Kailyn and Amme are obsessed with Gaga and they all LOVE TO DANCE
• Saw my best friend from ages 9 -18 for the first time in almost 10 years. It was like no time had passed at all
• On Christmas Eve I babysat 4 kids ages 8, 5, 18 months and 8 months. The 18 month old (Madisyn) threw up on my computer and the delete and enter keys ceased to function. I managed to not hyperventilate and die on the spot. How could I when pour Madisyn was covered in her own vom and kept saying "sorry Mommy. I sorry Mommy"
• Christmas was fantastic. I have a new stepmom and stepsister and the transition went smoothly. I saw all my family members from both sides and I wore my newly tailored Zac Posen and looked really skinny. It was a good day
• Kailyn and Amme reenacting to the entire bad romance video
• The Doodebug/rape incident (way funnier than it sounds and it deserves its own blog post)
• It was so great to see everyone including my newest cousin Bella (just wait--you will die when you see her and HATE my family for producing one stunning looking kid after the other.
• Finally, after not freaking out and calmly cleaning barf from the upper right hand side of my ibook keyboard, I took it to tekserv as soon as I got back to the city yesterday. At first a very mean girl there told me it would cost a shitload of money to repair. But then I took it to the service guy and he made my world a better place by charging me $121.
• I won't have a comp back until Monday so that's why you won't be hearing from me probably until the new year.

HAPPY END OF 2009!!! The best quote I've heard so far describing this year comes from a friend of a friend's facebook status: "2009 was possessed by demons"

So let's hope no one else dies before January 1st!!

Happy New Year!!!!! Can't wait for 2010--I have a lot in store and you're going to be VERY happy you read my blog and knew me when.

It snowed!!

And last night I walked home in an actual blizzard and it was really fun. I walked from the west village back to the east side along Bleecker Street. The snow was still white and fluffy and glittery and untouched. I was in a new pantsuits but I was prepared with rain boots so I stepped into lots of piled up snowdrifts just for the hell out it. The southern girl in me will always be fascinated and amazed and surprised by snow--especially lots of it.


National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is on now and I'm cuddled on the couch wearing the Lula hoop I just finished knitting. The Christmas tree is lit and the space heater is on and the heat pipe is hissing. My roommate is singing off key carols along to 106.7 in the bathroom. I leave New York on Tuesday for a weeklong trip home and I'm relishing my last winter moments of 2009.

A few thoughts on Gone With The Wind

I just finished watching it in its entirety on Turner Classic Movies. I haven't watched it the whole way through probably since 8th grade. In the south Gone With The Wind is the go-to movie to leave with substitute teachers so I saw it a lot during grades K-8.

Watching it as an adult I see many things that I didn't as a preteen:

• I could have learned so much about game-playing from Scarlett--she really knew what was up
• Rhett could have had a little more compassion at the end right? Yes, Scarlett was a bitch and went to Ashley right in front of him, but cut her some slack--she'd just seen her only child die and her cousin was currently dying in the next room. Couldn't they have slept on it?
• Was Melanie secretly a huge bitch? Did she and Ashley talk so much shit about Scarlett when she wasn't around?
• Ashley is the DEFINITION of Guy You Shouldn't Marry--he is so sketch and Melanie deserved better. She was awesome.
• Can I please get a Rhett Butler up in my life? HE WAS SO GOOD TO SCARLETT.
• I think that Scarlett probably hooked up with Ashley at least once after the story we see ends.
• Always hard for me to watch something in which black people are routinely referred to as darkies and I can't believe I just now noticed that they say it so much during the movie.
• Prissy is the GREATEST HOUSEGIRL EVER

Seeing a movie about the south made me excited for Georgia next week!

Brandy and Christos ON TV!!!!

Today Christos and I were exactly where we always need to be--on TV. We were picked up in an Escalade this morning and we had our own green room. And we got hair and makeup and the guy told me that my eyes that I did myself--looked amazing.

WE WERE ON WENDY WILLIAMS!!!

She is awesome and I am totally in love with her!! And we saw Miss Piggy. Oh and KIM THE ATLANTA HOUSEWIFE performed live. She also said hi to us before because her green room was right next to ours. It's weird to see a person in the flesh who you talk a lot of shit about when you see them on TV. But after meeting her in person--I'm on Team Kim!!!

Oh and here's the clip:




I LOVE BEING ON TV!!!!

Omg the aughts are almost over

And I'm just now realizing what that means. A decade has passed. I didn't really notice the significance of a decade when I was 18. There was all the hoopla over the century change but I didn't really get it.

Now I think I do. 10 years changes a person.

In the fall of 1999 I had just started college and for the first time in my life I was in control of my own life. I could stay out as long as I wanted, I could eat Lucky Charms for lunch, I could walk around in bare feet (we had an "always wear houseshoes" policy in the home of my youth) . I even had my own checking account. My goals then included convincing my parents that they did want to pay for spring break taking as few classes as possible while still qualifying for my Hope scholarship.

Fast forward to 2009. I'm 28 and I've been living in New York for 6 years. Somewhere around 26 I realized that life is very different from what you believe when you are young and dreaming. I noticed recently that I don't write in my journal as much. I got my first diary when I was 7 and I consistently kept a journal until around 25 or 26. My high school journal entries were full of the (well written and heart filled) ravings of a very self-centered and very naive girl. It was all about me--my parents were so unfair to me, why didn't my crush like me back. Looking back I can see that my parents overprotectiveness is what got me through high school--god only knows what would have happened if I'd discovered how much fun partying is at age 14. And my crush? Well he was gay and dealing with his own self image issues that I can't even imagine. And yet there I was being a typical kid and thinking everyone's out to get me. And there was the usual, "When I get my big break I can't wait to get out of this town." and "When I'm famous, they'll see" But that When was still so far away.

But around my mid 20s that When started being my now. I remember playing pretend with my cousins and saying that oh of course by 25 we will be married and have kids. Oh my god, I used to say, I never want to be an old mom. And then somehow I was 25. And kids and a husband were the last thing on my mind.

And now I'm 28 and 30 is breathing down my neck and I'm all at once amazed and afraid because a whole decade has passed and I remember graduating from high school like it happened a few months ago. Yet I know I'm a totally different person than the girl who rang in the year 2000 wearing a hologram patterned dress watching Ten Things I Hate About You with her high school best friends--just pizza and cokes and lots of laughing.

Aging is a crazy thing. I hate that I see those crazy realistic war video games set to punk rock soundtracks and think, "God the stuff the kids today have." Or when I'm talking to Kailyn and she mentions a song she loves on the radio and I've never heard it. She's young and doesn't know how to mask emotions yet so I always hear the slight annoyed sigh in her voice when she explains to me that no it's not the same as Lil Wayne. It's the same tone I get with my grandmother when she asks for the tenth time, "What do you mean the at sign? What's the sign called?"

Also I might add that I started the decade with a Nokia bar phone--one of the ones you could change the faces on--I had a blue one and a silver one. I usually left it in my car glove compartment and when I was giving my number out to guys I would have never thought to give him that number. I'd never sent a text message and my email address was mostly for show.

I'm ending the decade with a Blackberry that's permanently attached to my right hand. I'm constantly checking email and I actually get annoyed when people call me instead of text me. I would never in a million years consider having a landline. (Stop trying to convince me Time Warner I don't want your triple play!)

Funny what 10 years can do to a girl.

An Open Letter To Stephen King

Dear SK

Stephen King you make everything better.

I discovered you in 6th grade. My brother and I would spend a weekend with my Dad's mom every month or so. These weekend trips were part awesome/part sucky. Sucky because my grandmother is a fiend about cleaning so her house is a showplace, and when you are 11 and 7 respectively, that's not what your life is about. But awesome because Dad would give us each $20 for our trouble and $20 to this 6th grader was a fortune. Grandma Jessie's 2 favorite stores are JCPenney and WalMart. JCPenney is resereved for things like Christmas gifts. WalMart was for our weekend trips. The best thing about Grandma Jessie and WalMart is that she didn't pay attention to anything so my brother and I could really spend our $20 on whatever we wanted.

That one winter weekend back in 1992 I spent $5.99 of my $20 on a little book of yours called Carrie.

Since maybe 4th grade I had been obsessed with the darker side of life. I loved scary movies and books and I absolutely loved writing scary stories. In 5th grade my best friend Katie and I teamed up and I wrote the scary stories and she drew the illustrations. One I definitely remember was about a girl who's sister gets sucked into hell and when she comes back out she's possessed and proceeds to kill her whole family. There was a line that read "Teresa looked over the bush" and Katie was like "do you know what a bush is?" And that's how I learned that.

But back to my love affair with you SK.

I bought Carrie and I was done with it by the time my parents picked us up on Sunday. 2 things happened after that. 1) I started spending Tuesdays at the library (that was the only day it was open til 9 instead of 6--my mom didn't get home til 630) 2) I managed to work my way through every Stephen King book there by the time I reached 7th grade.

The summers of 1993-1996 were Stephen King Summers. I discovered The Stand in 7th grade and it became a tradition to read it every June. Sometimes I want to be Fran. Tom Cullen? That's my boy. And deaf Nick? Love affair SK. LOVE AFFAIR. The stories from Night Shift and Skeleton Crew got me through days when I was over my friends, over my family and over school. There's nothing like a story about an actual boogeyman to make a girl feel okay again. When I felt left out and different and I was being teased because my voice was too white, I could open up Salem's Lot and be glad that at least my town wasn't full of homicidal vampires. I left behind Ann M Martin and Judy Blume and fell into the waiting arms of The Tommyknockers and The Dark Half. My family uprooted me to a new town and school but I could always escape to the Overlook Hotel or over to Little Tall Island.

SK you address your readers in your intros as Dear Constant Reader. And that is exactly what I am.

I can honestly say that I've read every book you've ever written with the exception of the Dark Tower series. I'm not into sci-fi but I'm not saying I won't give those a chance. If anyone can make me like sci-fi, it's you SK.

Under The Dome came in the mail yesterday and I'm already 150 pages in. I love you for writing another long book--I saw that it was over 1000 pages and I had to actually tell myself to slow down and not just devour the thing whole. (I get insane about books--I'm sure you understand) I'm already invested in the strange goings on in Chester's Mill and am now secretly kind of afraid of crushing my face into a force field with every step I take. I love your books that have a lot of characters!! The creepy Mr. Leland Gaunt and his store Needful Things still happily haunt my dreams sometimes. My favorite of your newer books is Lisey's Story--I cried throughout the last half and the word "piebald" makes my skin crawl.

So....in short...thank you for writing. Your books are awesome and I will actually fight anyone who says otherwise.




xoxo

Brandy


PS I miss Castle Rock. How about just one more story?

You need this album

I have one thing to say and I never thought I'd say it:

Lady Gaga is actually amazing and you need to have her album.

She is re-releasing her debut album The Fame along with 8 new tracks--this little EP is called The Fame Monster. You guys, she is SO talented and her songs are fun to dance to and also carry a great message for today's youth. I wish there were more artist like Gaga. Yes I hate her weirdness but I'm starting to love it more and more because I love her music and I think that it's awesome that she just does what she wants even if it includes wearing a dress made of Kermit.









Thanks to an AMAZING friend of mine I'm seeing Gaga up close and personal on January 21st at Radio City. Life is good right now. Life is good.