500 Miles....Or Maybe 200ish

This year has been the year of the How I Met Your Mother obsession. In this tv show the main character Ted is telling his children about, you guessed it, how he met their mother. Except it mostly consists of many seasons of their humorous adventures along the way. Katie and I and a bunch of our friends all started watching it and have devoured 8 seasons since around March.

In the show a cassette tape gets stuck in one of the character’s car and he ends up having the same song play over and over again for years, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers.

We decided it would be funny to take a road trip and only listen to that song the entire way. We drove to Kansas City with Carolyn and Emily and we did listen to the song the entire way, but as is usually the case, expectations and reality did not match up.

Well, actually, the beginning of the trip went like I thought it would. We sang along and had a great time.

 

Expectation - Hour 1 - Me having a meltdown and trying to turn the music off.

Reality - Hour 1 - Us calmly snacking, and still enjoying the music.

Expectation - Hour 2 - Me tied up with duct tape so I couldn't turn off the music.

Reality - Hour 2 - The music has only gotten mildly annoying and no one has had a meltdown.

Expectation - Hour 3 - Katie, Emily and Carolyn are hating the music and freaking out.

Reality - Hour 3 - We started liking the music again and sang our way into Kansas City.

 - Kara

Kohrs Kamp 2.0

This past weekend was a mess of spontaneous awesome. A few days earlier, we made a mishmash plan with our friends Carolyn and Emily from Kansas.

It’s my opinion that the best of plans only take about five minutes and are just early enough to make the plan happen but not too early to let much planning happen. This was no exception.

The first night consisted of extensive goofy chatting, including a delightful episode of life interpretation.

Afterward, we proceeded to gather snacks to start the TV watching.

Unfortunately, in the past 2 months, I have developed a habit of spontaneously falling asleep at about midnight, if I’m even up that late. So when we started the TV portion of the trip, this happened.

Oddly enough, I continued to adjust the sound as needed in my sleep. I’m kind of a sound-Nazi, but that’s a story for another time.

Day 2 was filled with even more delight. Once we actually pull ourselves together, we headed out for donuts and shopping. Emily got an apple fritter that was bigger than her face.

It was amazing.

Later, we quickly returned home where this happened, condensed into about 15 minutes as we prepared to head to Kansas to return our friends to their family, in exchange for a hefty ransom.

And then something incredible began. But to find out what, you’ll have to return on Friday for Kara’s epic continuation of the epic tale.

- Katie

Hermon

Hi, I'm Kara and I have something to admit. I'm a hypocrite. Last week I wrote at length about how much I hate spiders and the various ways I would like go kill them. Then this week I had an interesting encounter. It went something like this.

Once upon a time, Kara went into her bathroom and saw a spider. It was sitting next to the shower where the wall meets the ceiling. He wasn't very big so she decided he wasn’t worth her time. After encounters with two wolf spiders, a clear spider that spitefully hid in her room and one so big it could probably take down a mouse, this spider didn’t seem worth wasting spider killing credits on so she just left it. 

- Kara

Halloween Fail

Halloween is coming up, which gets me thinking about obvious things. The most obvious thing being costumes.

My first costume that I can remember was a scarecrow and it was awesome. Another time, I was Galadriel from Lord of the Rings, which was also super cool, I had the big sleeves and everything.

The great thing about dressing up is that it’s an acceptable way to make terrible choices.

For example...

When I was about 10, I had an fantastic idea. I was obsessed with the TV show Kim Possible, about a bold redhead who fights crime. I actually had the entire Naked Mole Rap memorized.So, I decided to dress up as Kim for Halloween.

Now, this costume would be easy enough, green cargo pants, a black t-shirt, gloves, etc. But there was one problem.

I’m not a redhead.

Most people seem to use the spray-on hair color for Halloween, but I wasn't about to do this halfway. I decided to full on dye my hair red. After all, the box claimed that it would come out in 6 washes.

6 washes, my foot. More like 6 months. Most of my interactions with people for quite a while went something like this.

Lesson = Learned.

- Katie

Fear and the Feral Woman

 When I was very young, my brother told me that there were wolverines living in Nebraska. He had an informational animal card with a picture of a wolverine and a map showing the areas they inhabited. It included Nebraska. Before this I had heard a story about how incredibly fierce and dangerous they were so I was already prepared to fear them. 

Now I made the logical leap that native to Nebraska meant my backyard, and I began to watch for them. I was afraid to venture very far outside and when I did I would imagine that I saw one and run for the house. The once fun backyard became the terrifying hunting ground of the ruthless wolverine.

I’m not sure how long this fear lasted, in fact  I can’t remember the last time I walked outside expecting to be devoured by bloodthirsty wolverines. That’s one thing I like about Omaha. There aren't a lot of scary or dangerous creatures living here, not including the zoo. However, there still is one creepy and terrifying beast living here, often living in our very homes. The spider.

    Just mentioning it is making my skin crawl. I do not like spiders. Stupid gross maniacal little monsters. I dislike them so much that when I took creative writing I wrote a poem about them which I will not be sharing here. Why do I dislike them so much? Because they’re awful. They’ve attacked me in the bathroom, in the shower, in bed, while I’m eating, while I’m reading, and while I’m watching tv. 

They have exiled me from different parts of the house for weeks on end. I spent the last two nights on the couch because I’m afraid of the spider I saw in my room. This how our interactions usually go.

    I’ve heard many times that if I’d just kill them I wouldn't have to worry about them any more. In theory that's great. But I have some issues with the current methods of spider disposal.

  I do have some ideas of how this could be improved.

    But for now I’m left to fear spiders and flee, unless there is some brave benevolent person available to dispatch them.

-Kara

Feral Fish

Back in the day, when Kara and I shared a room, we also shared a fishbowl. That is to say, our fish did. This is the story of their lives from eight year old me’s perspective.

Once upon a time, there were two fish who were happily married. Their names were Mary and Joseph.

Now Joseph was a sickly fish and sadly, he died a few months later. 

Mary then went through two or three roommates, who all died mysteriously.

I loved Mary very much and she went on to live for ten years, at least, as I remember, living happily with her little plant friend. Eventually, she passed away at a ripe old age.

5-8 years later, I learned the truth about what really happened.

In reality, Joseph wasn’t sickly at all. Turns out it was Mary who would eat all of the food, leading to the deaths of every fish Kara owned.

Over time, Mary grew in size but ironically died of starvation when I forgot about her for a few days and she was disposed of by my mother. It was three weeks before I noticed she was gone. I was later told that this all happened in about two years, not ten.

It’s amazing what you learn as an adult. Just watch, next I’m going to learn that it wasn’t all the same fish either.

Wait. It was, wasn’t it?

- Katie

Packing

We have been going on a lot of trips lately which means repeatedly going through the ordeal of packing. In light of this I decided to write a blog about how Katie and I pack very differently. 

This is what Katie's packing looks like.

...she has a complete packing list.

...she has a diagram of how to fit her luggage into the suitcase.

...she has a meltdown because she's not ready yet.

....she's fully packed and ready to go.

Then there's how I pack.

...I reluctantly get out a suitcase.

And five minutes later, I have my first meltdown.

And then I get really distracted. For several hours.

Which is followed by another meltdown. 

At some point, someone usually bails me out. 

...I'm flying around the house like a crazy person.

I'm finally packed. Sort of.

-Kara