my cell phoneless world

After crying for a good half hour about the quite unfortunate status of my half eaten cell phone, I started to realize that maybe life with out a cell phone -especially a Blackberry- was not half bad. Aside from not having contact with the world at my pudgy little fingertips - believe it or not - I have still been able to communicate, live,and breathe.

A Few Thoughts on How Life Without a Cellular Device Can be a Good Thing

• The lack of near constant ringing to alert me of calls/texts/BBMs/emails etc. has allowed me to have uninterrupted, elaborate thoughts and conversations with myself.
• The thought of going against the grain of society and being a minority has opened my eyes to the many groups that are ridiculed daily for being different. ("OMG, Kacey. I can't believe you don't have a phone right now. You really need to activate one asap. You are so stupid for not having a phone.") I will not be peer pressured into getting a phone, I will only do it for ME. 
• I have been working towards mastering the English language, and not having a cell phone has taught me to spell words correctly and use proper sentences. 
• The risk of losing or damaging an expensive piece of equipment: 0. 
• The world does not need to know / should not want to know where I am and what I am doing every. single. second. of. the. day. Leave me alone, creepers.
• I used the house phone!

Oh, and I guess I get more work done at work not checking it every 5 seconds... So back to work.

life according to kipu - mom and dad go to atlantis

Dear Mom and Dad,

Guys. I miss you SO much. I can’t believe you left me for a whole week to play at Atlantis. And on top of leaving me for a whole week, you left me with AK for a whole week. She was SO miserable Sunday morning because she was hung-over. All she wanted to do was lay on the couch and watch movies, but don’t worry guys, I made sure to leap up on the couch and walk up and down her whole body every time she started to nod off. I wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or passing out, so I was just playing it safe.

When Grammy came home from her bridal shower, we put a football game on. I had a great time hanging out with Grammy, Grampy, and AK, but I don’t think Grammy enjoyed the game one little bit. She was swearing and cursing at the TV. And then Grampy left in the middle to shower because he was “disgusted”. I napped for a hot minute with AK during the game until I saw someone walking outside and I barked super loud and woke AK up. She moaned and groaned. Hehehe.

Then AK started packing her stuff up (a suitcase, laundry basket, tote bag, and work bag). Is she moving in? Gosh I hope not. I just could not handle having one more person to torment and bite and bark at, although doing so to AK is my absolute favorite. We hopped in the purple machine and headed home! I was a good girl in the car and even rested my tired little head on AK’s arm while she drove home.

When we got home, it took AK 3 trips to bring in all her shit. Really, AK, really? It was around dinner time when we got home, and AK was into feeding my right away. She sorted 4 loads of laundry to be done before she even thought about me. 4 loads?! So silly. Its amazing she had any clothes left. I was so mad at her for making me wait for dinner, I am a princess afterall, so I chewed up two knee-highs. They tasted a little funny because AK wore them on her feet (side note: is something wrong with her feet? They are so ugly I want to eat them off). But I guess if I can eat up my own vomit, the knee-highs weren’t so bad. It was more making a point and not actually eating. Like I was a little hungry, but not to the point of eating knee-highs to satisfy my tummy.

She finally fed me after throwing in a load of laundry. Then, she had the nerve of not giving me her undivided attention, as she chose to start cooking her dinner. Doesn’t she know I need to be the center of everyone’s lives at every moment in the day? She was using so much cheese and she was stupid enough to leave the cheese in my leaping reach on the counter and I took some cheese and baggies for a ride around the house. Zoom zoom! I was leaving little cheese bits here and there in case the Mouse on the Motorcycle comes for a visit! I am so nice to my friends.  AK got so frustrated with chasing me around in circles that she moved the kitchen table and the foosball table against the wall so I couldn’t run around them and play games.

After AK made her dinner, we sat on the couch and watched a movie. AK was also doing laundry at this time and you would think that she would have learned I need her to be on me at all times, but she didn’t. So when she was changing her loads, I grabbed her Blackberry (OMG it tasted JUST like yours mom!) and took off the back cover, removed the battery, bit right through it, and AK was screaming and running after me like the hyenas in the Lion King. I dropped it. She was scary. I saw her tossing the battery between her hands like a hot potato. Then, it was like magic! The battery starting smoking out the holes I put in it! AK called Grampy crying and upset and he told her to throw it in the sink. AK was really sad and it was at this point when I finally realized that maybe it was not okay for me to eat her Blackberry. We have blueberries in the freezer, I could have just had those.  AK sat at your computer while Grammy calmed her down and told her “No worries, you have an upgrade available.” See guys, no worries! Its not a big deal after all. After unsuccessfully trying to find an emergency credit card that you apparently did not leave, AK got her own card out and ordered a new phone. (buying a new battery was just as expensive as getting a new phone, so she did that).

While she was on the computer I made sure to give her the saddest eyes I could ever give her. She almost felt bad for me, and I ruined her social outlet! I decided to law low for the rest of the evening and give AK some space. I cuddled her in bed to let her know I still loved her and it would be okay to love me back, even though I made her so so sad.

When I got up in the morning,  I was back on my game. I refused to eat my breakfast and AK made me go outside two times in the freezing sleet that was coming down. REALLY, AK? Two times? If I didn’t go the first time, what makes you think I would go 20 minutes later? In fact, the second time I was so mad AK made me go outside that I made sure to sniff around the leaves extra long because I knew it annoyed AK and she was cold too. When we got back inside, she made me go upstairs while she did her hair. I wanted to stay down and watch the news, but she said no way José. I princess pranced all the way up the stairs and as soon as AK started straightening her hair, I slid out the bathroom and squatted to do poops right there. It was like magic! One minute I did not have to go, but the exact second AK pissed me off, I was able to go right on the white rug. It was really fun watching her gag and make funny disgust faces while she cleaned.

AK quit straightening her hair and packed us up to leave for school. She got her bag ready and grabbed my lunchbox. We exited through the garage and because AK is stupid and did not put her car in the garage, she carried me to the car because she didn’t want dirty wet footprints all over her interior. She is so silly. If you are puppy sitting, you have to expect that! Didn’t you tell her that, guys? We pulled up to Bed & Biscuit and basically ran inside-- we were so happy (I just wanted to play and AK was thrilled to get some time away from me). AK left B&B skipping in the rain. Do you guys do that too? Gleefully skip away after dropping me off?

I hope not. I miss you guys. Feel better. Play in the lazy river!

Love,

Kipu

PS- AK found your secret stash of pop-rocks. She was happy.

PS2- Because I ate AK’s phone, we can’t have pictures today. She is not happy about that.

seasoned.

Today Danny and I were at McLean Hospital in Belmont for a presentation on how to use one of the software systems we already know how to use. Silly for Partners to send us all the way there for that, but I did find my new favorite coffee at the Starbucks on the way there (if it is even possible to be obsessed after only one venti).

 

This was my first run-in with the Clover. O.M.G. The smokin' hot, rich, flavorful Brazil coffee that started my morning (and my GI tract) and surprised my taste buds with its fabulousness was BANGIN'. I am on the hunt to find a sbux closer to home with a Clover so I can love every morning of my life and start it off right.

Anyways, back to the word of the day. While sitting and people watching at this presentation, Danny wrote the following observation on his information packet and flashed it my way: "we are so young and amazing. they are so old and seasoned." Danny and I might be the youngest team at Partners and we are basically taking on the highest compliance/audit risk area in research and all of the MDs and PhDs at literally the top hospitals/research facilities in the nation have to answer to us. They don't necessarily love being told what to do by two post-teeny-boppers, but they do. We are kind of a big deal. Comply or die. Or lose all your federal funding and be fined millions of dollars. 

On the flip side to being seasoned is what all of us would be considered, fresh.  Fresh because we are new to the scene, attractive, and bringing revolutionary new ideas to everything that we do.  We are accomplished, but not yet stagnant.  We are forever evolving as individuals. and always inspiring new trends and influencing the world around us.

Word of the day? Seasoned. We will use this phrase in an attempt to not call our old colleagues: out-of-date, boring, aged, senile, archaic, decrepit, antiquated, dilapidated or antiques. We must be professional and proper up in hurrrr.

Shout out to: DANIEL DAVIS for his seasoned entry. (check out his fly blog)

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seasoned

1. Aged or Processed.

2. Covered in spices to the desired taste.

3. You fucked up your brain so much on drugs that you can’t do any of the old things that you used to be able to do and/or to have perntamently fucked yourself up to the point where you don’t have any idea whats going on anymore.
_______________________________________

Daniel uses the word in many sentences for your reading pleasure:

This word would even be suitable for the…

• Youth in the Ghetto:  Shaniqua be givin that good brain, like she dropped out of college, that bitch is seasoned.
• Gorilla Juice Heads:  T-SHIRT TIME!!!! Here’s the situation men. We looking for only the freshest bitches tonight. NO SEASONED GRENADES!!!
• Southerners:  Grandma is so seasoned in the kitchen, she is always fixin up the best fried chicken for the church cookouts.
• Smarty Pants/Nerds: “I heard some hoodlums say that my, ‘kicks were fresh to death’ this afternoon.  I can’t even begin imagine what that means.”  ”Oh Steven, you are just to seasoned to understand todays youth.”
• Aristocratic: “William is such a seasoned pheasant hunter, I would let him pluck my feathers any day.” “Oh Elizabeth, don’t get fresh! You are so naughty!”
• Surfers: “Dude, let’s get seasoned!”  ”Hey man, I’m hella seasoned!”
• Valley Girls: “Her dress is so seasoned.” “Like what does that mean?” “It is last season.  Duh!” “You really should go back to school…”

AND INTRODUCING….

• Antoine Dodson: Hide your kids, hide your wife, there are seasoned rapists everywhere out here!

_______________________________________

Can you have a visual? Sure. This is the kind of seasoned we need more of:

a night on the town with foxy

Thursday nights are ALWAYS an adventure with Gram. Auntie Deb comes down to take her to dinner and grocery shopping (for the heavy shit she should not be picking up on her own). Last night Ali came down too. We tried talking Gram into going to a restaurant, but she loves herself either 1) one slice of cheese pizza from Papa Ginos or 2) a McDouble from McD's. You don't try to monkey with Foxy's routine.

So we made a GTD and chose to hit up Papa's for some pizza.

 Then we zippered Gram into her jacket, put on her rain bonnet, and headed to... 

The market! We walked behind Gram and apologized to all the people she cut off, ran her cart over, or gave dirty looks to. Per usual.

*Note: Gram is not a bitter old woman. She is probably the funniest and nicest relative we have, but she is just fierce in the market with her cart. Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT stand between her and her vanilla sugar wafers.

imbibe.

"We hang out with doctors all day. We need to stay smart. Like, we need a good vocab."

DD

In an effort to stay smart and enhance my vocab so I can hang with the PhD's and MD's that we have to deal with constantly at work, my diva coworker DD and myself are going to start a "word of the day." These words will be mature phrases for the childish things partake in every day.

 Today's word:

im·bibe/imˈbīb/Verb

1. Drink (alcohol).

2. Absorb or assimilate (ideas or knowledge): "propaganda you imbibed in your youth".

Can you have it in a sentence? Sure!

DD: yo me and mad bitches were imbibing last night. i drank me too much wine and lost my mittens!
KB: Some of my college friends are coming to town this weekend and we plan to imbibe some fine adult beverages.

Can you get a visual? Absolutely.

oh oh, its magic...

...you know!

Ah the wonder of a GREAT haircut. There is almost nothing that makes me as happy as getting my hair cut. Chopping off that extra, dead, unnecessary half inch just puts a big smile on my face. What puts an even bigger smile on my face? The five minute shampoo/conditioner scalp massage. I swear the girl who shampooed me yesterday must have thought I was a wacko-- I smiled and giggled the whole time and I'm sure I let out an "ahh" or "ohh" or two. I have a habit of massaging Nate's scalp or playing with his hair and I was not sure where I got that from until yesterday when I put two and two together and realized how into my shampoo I was.

I love going to my hairdresser K at  James Joseph Studio in Medford. We used to slave over gallons and gallons of "ban-ee-jah" (vanilla) and "room pasa" (rum raisin) ice cream at the forever classy Findeisen's Ice Cream. K knows whats up. Its fun to get your hair cut by someone you know, but don't really know. K and I were 4 years apart in high school, but knew a lot of the same people. We like to chat about who got pregnant, who is dating who, and any other gossip we can wrap our brains around. The City known as the Town of Methuen is smaller than we think... Anywho, K starts our day off with "What are we doing today?" I give her -the look- and say "the usual. Make me hot." And she knows exactly what to do and gets to work with her magical scissors and razor and secret goop.

You know you have a good hairdresser when she is able to take you from this:

I ran out of conditioner two months ago.

By doing this:

Wonder Woman at hard at work

 And you leave the salon looking like this:

oh HEYYYYY girl

Whats my hair plan for the long run? Cut a half inch off every couple of months and get it long enough to donate to Locks of Love. I donated hair in high school and I want to do it again. The world needs more gingers roaming around!

life is good :)

ohmylanta.

Last week I joked about my little kiddies and pretending to be preggers with a basketball in their belly. Apparently this is something I cannot take lightly because I just found this online.

GAH.

When you are ten your biggest worry should be that your parents won't let you stay up past 8:30 to watch the Wizards of Waverly Place or that you don't want to eat green beans for dinner or that the maybe 20 minutes of homework you have is too much. At ten I was not even anatomically mature enough to bear a child, let alone have one of my own. I probably wasn't even old enough to babysit by myself!

This was a picture of me and my friends when we were about 11/12. We apparently loved dogs, Winnie the Pooh pajamas, Hanson, stuffed animals, and making gingerbread houses. In no way were we even a tiny bit ready to even THINK about sex let alone have a baby. Pretty sure we hadn't had the "sex" health class yet either so for all we knew, you could have had a baby by kissing.

The poor young woman child in Spain who had a baby at 10 years old (10 FREAKIN YEARS OLD) lost so much at such a young age. How could she possibly grasp such adult concepts like intimacy and sex? There is no possible way. These are supposed to be things that you experience when you can can understand them. And I am still trying to understand them at 24. And the father is a minor as well? How is this okay? Just because you are physically an adult does not mean you are mentally one. We need to stop saying girls become women and boys become men just because one day you got a visit from Aunt Flo or your balls dropped. She cannot possibly be fully developed. I seriously just started growing tatas like last year.

I don't care what country you hail from or if it is the norm for 10 year olds to be sexually active-- its INSANE. I don't care if I am not respecting someone else's culture. Call me an ignorant bigot. But hey, right back atcha if you believe its acceptable for a 10 year old to rear a child when the only thing they are capable of rearing is an American Girl-caliber doll. And at 10, I didn't even care enough to take good care of that. My American Girl dolls are sitting in my basement cold, naked, and alone. Gawd, I'm still not ready for a child.

I just can't come to terms with it . . .

h-ay-double L-oh-double U-double E-N

What happened to the good ole days when you and your friends dressed up like astronauts and flew around the school in a homemade spaceship twirling noise makers from the dollar store and winning first prize in the costume contest at school?

Don't get me wrong... I also partook in the whole omg-i-need-to-be-as-undressed-and-whorey-as-possible costume business. But to an extent. See?

Bondsy and I were Team Gang Bang our junior year-- whatever that really meant. We put together a random outfit and handcuffed ourselves together. We looked good. And covered.

This was my favorite costume almost to date. Magic 8 Ball. Dressed in black under armor, black tights, and black shorts with an "8" on the back and the fortune teller on the front. If a guy approached me, and was cute, he got the "Give me your number" side, but if he was a sketchy creeper (like the majority of the men at UConn) he got the "Don't count on it."

Where am I now? Well, I am kinda over that silly phase. I made a quick last minute costume this year with: a pair of scrubs, a loofah, a toothbrush, a face scrub, and sponges. I was a scrub. And in honor of my night and my theme song in college: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av7m_Pgt1S8 . Spent Halloween night with the roommates sippin on some Pumpkinhead with a cinnamon/sugar rim watching the Pats and then a movie (NOT a scary movie, even though t'was the season)-- waiting for the trick-or-treaters that never came. It was so relaxing and good to spend some time with the roommies. SO glad my dad got all the candy that I love and can't resist. THANKS BIG RICH.

Hope ya'll had some fun. Life is good.

what is in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

What is in my name? Only 5 letters. K-A-C-E-Y. I know there are only a million other ways to spell "kay-see"... But it bothers me to no end when people spell my name wrong. I just got a response to a work email (with my name spelled correctly 1. in my salutation: Thanks, Kacey; 2. in my signature: Kacey Barker; 3. in my email address name.) addressed to "Casey". That is not even close for one second. I occasionally get addressed as "Kasey" here and there as well. But there is really no excuse if you are writing on my Facebook wall and my name is on the screen you are writing on or on an email where my name is already spelled correctly multiple times. Hey, typos happen, I get that. But spelling "KACEY" as "CASEY" is not a typo. Its a careless, rude, annoying mistake.

Maybe I am more aware of how people spell their names because my name is always spelled wrong, but nowadays names are starting to have the strangest spellings. We need to take that into consideration from here on in. Who is with me?