Erin, Colleen, and Echo

Echo is so going to hate me for this..... So, as you can probably tell, I'm the one in the cheerleading outfit and um...Echo is dressed as a princess. Ah... to be 15 again...

Never send a man to do a woman's job...

“Our new toilet paper is ghetto…” he said. “What’s wrong with it?” she responded. “From now on, you just need to buy the toilet paper and don’t tell me how much it costs. “he answered. “Oooooh…honey did you accidently buy ONE-PLY?” she moans. He hangs his head dejectedly. “I thought Scott was a trustworthy brand. The packaging said SOFT on it in big letters.” “It’s alright sweetheart….” She pats his shoulder.”Well, maybe we can use it to toilet paper the neighbor’s house…”

French & Saunders (Tic Tac Sketch)

This is AWESOME!

Hitler cats!

Hitler cats!

Somebody needs to tell these cats, the war is over!

My sister Mary and I do "The Show"

Ah.... good times. I must have been 10 or so....

Erin does Madonna (Badly)

I finally figured out how to blog a video... so my inaugural video will be me, sucking at karaoke! woohoooo! Go 80's Prom!

We got tickets!

Tim and I are going to see Willie Nelson at Red Rocks in September.... I am soooooo excited. I just love Willie. He's my style icon. Also... The very first song my Dad tought me how to play on the guitar was Georgia On My Mind.

Nude ain't lewd...

When I told my father that we were going camping at the hot springs, he said, “ Well, don’t get naked and smoke pot…” I pretended as though I’d never dream of doing anything like that. I mean, I’m not one to get naked AND smoke pot… to me, that seems like some sort of first aid disaster waiting to happen. But then again, if it’s good enough for Matthew McConaughey, then it’s good enough for me. I'm not big on nudity or pot smoking...but I do like a glass of wine while wearing my bathing suit....eh... I'm so boring.

That being said, we drove many miles down to southern Colorado to the “naturist” hot springs. As we drove up, I saw most everyone milling around with clothing on, so I started to think maybe the nekked folks didn’t come out until night time. I was wrong. By the time we made it down to the pool, it was middle aged, pot-bellied nakedness on a rampage. I wasn’t that shocked by it. I mean, I’ve seen tons of naked people in my life, but you never quite get over wanting to see. At first it was funny, but by the time I saw the naked stranger peeing in the Co-ed bathrooms, I was starting to get sick of seeing all the available flesh. If there had been some hot nudity, that might have changed the environment... as it was, it was mostly saggy tits and dangly grandpa doodads. So not sexy....

We found a campsite (which was far away from parking, so we had to lug all of our stuff up this hill…) which we happily shared with about 6,000 gnats. After setting up camp, we decided to check out the hot springs (while wearing out bathing suits). Afterwards, we decided to go check out this famous abandoned mine up a mountain nearby that supposedly had a large number of bats. I didn’t jump right up and go mind you, it took a lot of convincing, but we finally made it up to the top and watched an amazing sunset and saw this HUGE flock of bats heading out. I can’t tell you how cool it was to be up there. The long hike was almost worth it, but by the end, my bad ankle was smarting and I was STARVING.

When we all finally made it back to the campsite, which the gnats had abandoned, only to find our stove wasn’t working. Since there was a fire ban, we made do with Jon & Desha’s Bunsen burner and still managed to turn out a pretty fantastic dinner. Afterwards, we all trekked up to the natural hotsprings for a late night soak and to look at the stars. The sky was completely clear and the stars were so bright… it was pretty surreal and beautiful. It really made me appreciate living in Colorado.

The next morning, I woke up and realized that the gnats were back and with a vengeance. Tim and I had work to do back at the house, so we high tailed it out of there…but not before running into a few naturist strollers out for a nude morning jaunt. I had almost forgotten there was nudity that morning, but my lingering memory is of a guy wearing a fishing vest, hat, and hiking boots.... and nothing else. I guess that must save money on bait...

pictures here...

Camporama!

I have a nice big post almost finished for you guys. Until it's done, I'll give you two key words:

NUDIST

BATCAVE
That sums up the weekend, more details to come as well as numerous inappropriate jokes about genitalia...

Stay tuned....


~e

P.s. This is a picture of me dropping Porter's leash as he ran towards Tim.... Porter is the cutest dog ever. (not my dog, you understand....Charleigh's dog.... but still very cute...) 

Father's Day

Dad...

I always thought you'd be proud of me if I became more like you. Now, I hope you're proud of me because I'm more like me. 

Well...

I am off to go camping again this weekend. We're heading up to the hot springs for a relaxing weekend and I'm sure, more photo ops... ;) See you all when I get back....

~erin

Screech is broke...

Get Dshirts

Um... This is pretty self explanatory.... Apparently, the all nose and hose (his words) nerd from Saved By The Bell is going to lose his house unless you buy a t-shirt.

It's really pretty sad.... They should start a charity for f'ed up ex-child stars. It could be a charity that sends them to rehab and bails them out of jail. Screech and Danny Bonaduce could be the spokespeople....

We came, we saw.....

We camped. This was a FANTASTIC weekend. I had so much fun camping with Joe & Megan and Charleigh and all of our new friends. I can't wait to do it again. I've been itchin' to get back to blog all about it, but I'm too sleepy to write just now. So....

Here are the photos. I'll write more tomorrow.

love,
~e 

dooce

dooce

This is the first time in a while that a blog has made me verklempt. It could be PMS or the fact that I haven't had any caffeine today, but I got all teary at the end of her latest post...

I'm Sensitive...

I’ve been this way my whole life. I don’t know when it started but as long as I can remember, I have always gotten my feelings hurt easily. When I was a child, it was pretty acceptable for me to get upset and run to tell my mother that someone had said something mean to me. When I got a little older, I would just turn beet-red and then cry myself to sleep at night. After I left home and joined the Air Force, I learned that being sensitive just means that you are always having a bad day. So, I used to imagine that everyone was about to make fun of me and then I’d think of something mean first. Immature I know…

The older I got, the more adept I became at being the first one to strike. I got to be wicked really, and it didn’t protect me at all. If anything, it made me more of a target. So, I stopped trying to pick on people and just tried to be more good natured about my own flaws. This is VERY hard for someone with low self esteem. One night, I sat down with a bottle of wine and wrote down everything that was wrong with me physically, mentally, athletically and of course personality-wise. It was torture. I tried to think of all the mean things people had said to me (and I remembered every single one…. Sensitive people are like that.) The list was endless, but I figured that now that I already knew what was wrong with me, I couldn’t be hurt when someone else pointed them out.

Some things you just can’t change. Things you’re born with, (i.e. freckles, a honking-snorty laugh, pasty skin etc) so those things really hurt because you really can’t do that much to change them. But, the more life experience I’ve had, I’ve tried to fix some bad habits and personality flaws that will make me less of a target for teasing. One of my flaws, however, is self-sabotage. On the one hand, I hate being teased, but on the other hand, I like attention. Call me crazy, but I’d rather have someone being mean to me than ignoring me. (Welcome to the root of all my relationship troubles from way back when…) So, while I’ve tried to fix certain things, there have been lots of other irritating habits of mine that have flourished because I just can’t stop.

The biggest one is talking. Too much, too loud, too often. I interrupt, I prattle on and on and usually I don’t even realize I’m being obnoxious until it’s over. I get giddy with attention. When people are listening to me, my heart beat races and I go all warm. I love being in the middle and I love making people laugh be entertained. This is the root of the experience I had the other night.

Tim and I were at a romantic dinner. I had a couple glasses of wine and we were chatting in a fairly intimate room about this book I am reading called, “The Human Story”. It’s about the path humans have taken since we first came into existence and the chapter we were discussing was about the beginning of religion. As I was comparing Siddartha, Muhammed, and Jesus, this couple (two men) sat down at a table very near us. I became aware right away that one of them was listening to Tim and I’s conversation, and for entertainment’s sake, I made some comment about the possibility that Jesus was gay.

Now, before my Mom reads this and sends me a letter about how I’m being blasphemous, let me just say that I was referring to the fact that Siddartha and Muhammed both had wives before they became Holy men and that fact is widely accepted, but the church insists that Jesus was celibate. The church also insists that the priests remain celibate and as everyone knows, there is a huge percentage of celibate priests that are gay. But I digress, anyway, I guess I partially said that to be silly, but also for shock value. I continued talking with Tim about other things I also mentioned a section in the book describing the contribution Paul had to the bible and paraphrased something to Tim about Paul being responsible for a lot of the doctrine in the bible.

Just before we received our dessert, these young men had finished their dinner and one of them came over to the table and proceeded to quote various scriptures of the bible to me and basically asserted that Jesus WAS responsible for all the doctrine in the bible and that I better “Check my facts.” He wasn’t being hostile or aggressive, but I was humiliated. I’m sure everyone in the room heard and saw the interaction and I’m sure EVERYONE saw the uncomfortable shade of pink I was turning. I simply replied, “I know… I’ve been to church too. I was referring to a book that I’m reading…” It took all my self-control not to blurt out, “Why don’t you check YOUR facts you nosey little shit?” and go off on some tangent. I know that arguing religion is as pointless as throwing rocks at the moon and I knew that my big fat mouth had brought this on. I can’t expect everyone to be as entertained by my talking as I am. Well, except for Tim. He seems to get a kick out of it. Well, at least, I thought he did.

I mentioned at dinner tonight how embarrassed I was about that little experience and he commented that the only reason I should feel embarrassed was, if I ,”was talking louder because I WANTED them to hear what I was saying.” Well, yeah, I was. I’m a big mouth who needs attention. SO there you have it. Flaws. I’ve got a lot of them, and apparently the gift of gab, is really more of a curse.

Once upon a time I had plenty of nothing, which was fine with me...

I was thinking today about my old me. The “me” that didn’t give a crap about the world, the “me” that didn’t want the things that the “now-me” does. I remember reciting to myself, “ I will never get married… “ and I believed it. I thought marriage was a one way ticket to a boring life and I didn’t want any part of it. Of course, then I grew up a little and realized that my world wasn’t as small as it felt. I wasn’t as big as I felt. The ignorance that allowed me to be selfish, narcissistic, and just plain self-destructive, started to crumble away and I saw my future stretching out before me. I guess I miss the comfort of ignorance, but it numbed me to the ecstatic happiness that the real world is capable of offering.

The military insulates you from reality in a lot of ways. It almost brainwashes you into staying disconnected from your surroundings. You never know when a friend will move, or die…. You just can’t afford to be that invested. I remember waking up in my apartment here in Denver, back in 2003, and feeling like my life was wasting away. I saw my future alone, in the military, a thankless job with bullshit by the tons and I knew that I had to get out. The world was so big and if I stayed in, it would never be real to me. When I met Tim, I saw a man who was already in that world. He had plans and ideas and he cared about things that were new to me. He was a man that had ideals and principles and he convinced me that we could go down that road together and I could have all the things I thought I never wanted.

Maybe I’m rambling, but I guess it’s just because I see how much my life is changing and it excites me. I wanted to stay young and free forever, but now I realize what a prison that really was. The real freedom is being able to be honest with the world about who you are. I can finally talk about all the things that matter to me. I can make friends and have meaningful relationships with people who are struggling for the same understanding of the world that I am. The shallow, brief connections that the military life offered, really can’t compare to life as it is for me now.

I have such wonderful friends and such a great life. I see on the horizon things that have never been there before. At 27, I’m just starting to feel fulfilled. I can’t wait to have a house, a baby, a real career, to see the world, to climb a 14’er. I mean, what the hell… The world is my oyster. What an amazing feeling!