Pardon our dust.

Yep, the neon cupcakes are gone. Also, since Ramona is no more (RIP), I felt it was time for a new title.

Here's the quick explanation. A friend of a friend of a friend was dragging a story out until everyone's eyes were sufficiently glazed over. His extremely long-winded point? He found five dollars.

As most of the crap I blog about falls into the same utterly painful category, I feel like this is pretty accurate.

Days 8 & 9

My pretty car provided the perfect setting for my day 8 assignment. Look at all these thingamabobs and doohickeys!

I would just like to tell you how exciting it is to rock out to satellite radio. Every day I get excited about it. Every fucking day. Especially when I listen to the 80s station. And when I flip back and forth between that and the 90s station, it's all over. The other day I almost ran off the road swapping between AC/DC and Billy Idol. Keep in mind that Ramona had no music. Period. Yes, I have a fantastic set of pipes, but one can only be entertained by singing the Milkshake Song to herself for so long...especially when the only lyrics one knows accurately are "la la la la la." And no music meant no car dancing. I'm a seriously good car dancer. If there is ever a "SYTYCCD," I will rock that shit.

And here is my day 9 photo. It's me, headless.

So, uh...

I've been struggling with this post because I knew I would want to write this:

Sorry about the hiatus. I've been getting treatment for depression.

This is a happy blog, with cupcakes in the title, so I won't go into too many icky details. Suffice it to say that this is a real condition, and it blows. I was drowning inside. I slowly stopped functioning. I didn't recognize my own face in the mirror. Horrible, poisonous words spewed out of my mouth. I hurt people I loved and pushed everyone else away. I really mean this…if you need help, get it.

Whew, that's out of the way.

Fast forward to July. Things are looking up. As a matter of fact, they're pretty freakin' sweet.

Life-Sweetness Exhibit A: The progression of my bathroom mirror photos... (I kind of have a thing, all right? Bite me.)

...from this: (I was smiling in both of these, I swear, no joke.)

...to this:

(*Cool points if you can name the movie reference on my t-shirt.)

...and occasionally this:

Life-Sweetness Exhibit B: I can run 2.5 miles without stopping. So what if I get passed by hunched-over old men and ladies pushing strollers of triplets? I look really cute. Observe:

(*Cool points if you can name the TV show reference on my t-shirt.)

Hmmmm.

I did go and buy myself my first pair of for-serious running shoes. They's my magic shews. Pretty much pillows stuffed with muffins and puppies, wrapped in rainbows.

I had the perfect excuse to spend the bucks on them after I ruined my last pair...

(*Cool points for me for wearing a t-shirt that says, "Life is such a beach.")

Just try not to be impressed. Try.

Life-Sweetness Exhibit C: This one is bittersweet. Bwahahaha! Fuck that, Ramona is gone. I bought myself a new ride. I am the proud new mom of this hot little number...

Not only does she have working brakes and a floor that I can't see the road through...she has a moonroof! And...music!!! Sigh...I love her.

So I suppose I'll need to rename the blog at some point. Being a bit of a free spirit, I figured I'd let my new car pick her own name when she's ready. If she picks Malibu Barbie or Chocolate Chip or Rainbow, I'll just have to live with it.

Kiddo and Ramona's World Domination - Phase One: Moving to DC

I assume you've all been on pins and needles waiting for my next post. I implore you to keep in mind that conquering the world is a burdensome task, and it has taken most of my energy over the past month. Although I can't reveal too many details of the plan, I would like to share a little slice of my life in my new home.

Ramona and I are both excited to be a little further north. Mostly for the snow. OK, entirely for the snow. But wouldn't you know...the week I left Dallas, they got smacked with a whopper of a snowstorm. Twice. More proof that my former life was spent plowing down nuns and children in my car. But I did happen to snap a photo of the one time it has snowed here since I moved. It was at least half an inch.

I am currently shacking in the basement of my good friends and their cute kidlets (ages 3 and 5). I have learned more about Hello Kitty, coloring and poop in the last month than I've learned in 30 years. Parents, how the hell do you do it? Slow clap.

It's nice to be close to my homegirls. At some point in the future we will be living together in Miami, prowling the retirement homes for men and going to bingo...and having crazy adventures. I'll change my name to Blanche. Meet Rose and Sophia (Dorothy couldn't make it out).

I left my hipster man back in Dallas. Figured I'd let him miss me for a while. So we've taken to photos and Skype.

Damn hipsters.

He came to visit last weekend, and we had a great time browsing bookstores and drinking coffee. It reminded me how much cooler he is than me.

Meanwhile, I took a picture of this squirrel. Check out his junk.

Then we had some champagne.

Overall, a successful jump into politics world domination. I leave you with this warning.

Kiddo and Ramona's Next Adventure

Here's the big announcement as a QR code:

If you're not tech-savvy, you'll have to read this long, drawn-out post to find out what it says. Or you could just scroll to the bottom. But that would be like digging through the Lucky Charms to find the 3-D sticker, instead of letting it fall into your bowl as nature intended. Is there a child alive who actually waited for that crap? In my house, you had to dig for the prize before one of the other three kids stole it. As a matter of fact, you had to get up early and race to the breakfast table to be the first to open the new cereal box. Wait? Pshaw. No little sister of mine was going to get to the color-changing plastic spoon first. You've already read the end of this blog, haven't you?

Let me tell you a story about a girl trying to find her place in this crazy, mixed-up world.

After high school in Virginia, I found myself in South Carolina. I wish someone had talked me out of this. Yes, I got to wear a hat that said COCKS. Yes, because I was on the swim team, there were plenty of t-shirts about being the 'Cocks and being wet, fast and strong. Yes, I got hazed and lived to tell about it. But I was miserable there. We went on a field trip to the swamp. The swamp.

So I left and came back to Virginia for a spell. I had a good time at JMU. I met some of my bestest besties there, and I went to my first bar - when I turned 21. (Loooooserrrr.) I ordered a Miller Lite and a Coke. And I drank the Coke. But eventually I got bored and decided to move.

I picked Portland, Oregon. I don't know why. I think I saw it on TV and it seemed like a nice place. Plus I was friends with a bunch of dreadlock-sporting, nag champa-burning, Birkenstock-wearing hippies at JMU. I'm positive Oregon came up at some point. I worked for 1-800-Remotes, worked at a pub with frequent trashy girl fights, and occasionally attended art school.

Then I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to be a flight attendant. So I moved to Dallas. I did a lot less flying the first year than drinking beer, flirting with dudes, getting my acrylics (ew, ew, ew) done, and lounging by my apartment pool. That year was like one long vacation. Of course, that was reflected in our pay. It's OK - a friend of mine carried ginormous purses...big enough to sneak beers into bars and popcorn into movie theaters. Hey, you do what you have to do to survive.

Sadly, our Dallas base closed that year. I got sent to the booming metropolis of...Salt Lake City. The mountains are pretty and stuff, but that place gave me the creeps. I don't mean to offend anyone who's a Mormon, but while I'm inspecting a zit in the ladies' or chowing on Sbarro at the mall are not the times to solicit me about becoming a member. Just because I look like a sad, lonely individual with pepperoni on my flannel shirt doesn't mean that I am one. Now if you had thrown in some incentives - say, a discount on my wireless plan, a gym membership - I might have considered it. But I'm a modern consumer, so some crappy little pamphlet is not going to do the trick.

Then I got sent to Atlanta. Let me just get this out of the way: I hate Atlanta. Some people are really down with the A-town, but I find it dirty and hot, and full of traffic and rude people. It didn't help that my job as a flight attendant was becoming more and more draining. I was minutes from pulling a Steven Slater. I decided it was time to get serious and finish my degree, or I might be dealing with pissy, entitled frequent fliers and wearing polyester forevah.

So I moved back to Dallas.

I started J-school. (That just sounds cool, and I'm pretty sure it only counts if you went to like, Columbia or something, but whatever. I totally went to J-school.) After two exhausting years of juggling full-time school, a job and internships...

...I graduated.

I scored an awesome job...

...and was laid off nearly immediately.

Next stop: New Jersey. I mean, duh, right? I love love loved living there. I started out in Newark, which made me pretty hard-core right off the bat, and eventually moved to Hoboken. I became a public transportation convert, a pizza connoisseur, and a lovable asshole. I even perfected my fish-face.

(Good, right?) But as everyone knows, you can take the girl out of Texas...

Seriously, it's like Texas has some kind of Star Trek magnetic sucky tractor beam or something. Wouldn't you know it, I plopped right back down in Dallas in 2009. Damn you Texas, I just can't resist the lure of your delicious greasy state fair food. Mmmm, fried cheesecake...Ggglgllgggg...

So now, sweet readers (all four of you), I'm moving on. I'm going to DC to try my hand at politics. Bwahahaha! Just kidding. I'm pretty sure you have to at least keep up with what's going on in the world to have a chance at election in this country. Oh...wait...

But for real, I'm moving to DC Friday. I'm pretty pumped. I'm not really cool with the fact that if we're ever nuked, I'm going down, but I am super excited about Shmuffins.

P.S. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for Ramona. She passed inspection, barely, but she is not pleased about being dragged on another long trip.

Dashboard Processional

I was proud of Ramona when she sliced and diced the pigeon a couple of months ago. She’s a tough cookie, just like her mom (me, for anyone not fluent in Allison). She don’t take no sass from nobody. But evidently she heard me bragging, and she got a little too big for her britches.

Ramona tangled with a Tundra last week. 

She lost. This is what Ramona looks like, by the way:

This is what Ramona would look like were she human:

She couldn’t possibly look like anyone but Maxine from the Hallmark cards, except she would definitely be chain-smoking Virginia Slims. When I purchased Ramona, she smelled like the inside of a smoking room in a Motel 6 in Tennessee. She is now channeling Frankenstein...with all the replacement parts, not much of her is even a Subaru at this point. What seemed like a good deal in the beginning, I have paid for twice over the span of nine months. L-E-M-O-N. At least she has low miles at 150,000. Oh wait, I forgot. The odometer was rolled back. That’s actually 250,000.

Rick, my mechanic, called me at work Wednesday. We’re on a hug-hello, life-story basis at this point. After two days of trying to get the jammed hood open after Ramona’s brawl, they discovered that the pouring smoke (no big deal, right?) was just a radiator hose that needed replacing...25 bucks. Sweet.

Oh, and also another 400 for the body work so my hood would stay shut. He wouldn't go for my bungee cord idea. Hey, my undercarriage is being held up with dental floss. No lie.

See, I have a history of automotive woes.

Before Ramona was the Bunny Slayer.

Bunny Slayer was affectionately named after she chased down and ran over the biggest rabbit I have ever seen, in the middle of the Arizona desert. She steered directly for Bugs and thunkthunk. I lost all control over her. She had blood lust - what can I say?

Bunny Slayer’s rear windows only stayed up due to the fact that I had opened the door panels and shoved a year’s subscription’s worth of Lucky magazines inside. The windows still slipped down a bit, so I jammed ink pens and sticks into the rubber pieces to help hold them up.

I was towing Bunny Slayer once (I think on one of the Georgia to Texas moves) and didn’t realize I had to tow her with all four wheels off the ground. All these truck drivers kept honking and waving. I gave a few the one-finger wave. “I’m going as fast as I can, assholes!” When I got to Texas, Bunny Slayer was literally hanging off of the tow bed by one chain. Doh. I tried to drive her off, transmission gone.

Then I moved her to New Jersey. I came out of my Newark apartment one day, walked to my (always parallel) parking spot, to find her...not there. Hmmm. I called the police, who told me she had been stolen but was found the night before. Two days of back-and-forth later, turned out my dumb ass parked in front of a driveway and got towed.

Before Bunny Slayer, there was the Blueberry. 

Blueberry was involved in the world’s first and only drive-by rafting. I was driving with a friend in Portland (likely to a bar, luckily not from one) when everything suddenly went orange and BOOM. I pulled off to the right shoulder. My left side mirror was gone and my hood was dented. I looked around and saw a large orange inflatable raft on the left shoulder. A car had pulled off to the left ahead, and someone was running to pick up the raft. I yelled at him to pull to the right shoulder as my friend got his license plate. He collected his lethal weapon raft...and sped off. When I called the police and told them I had been involved in a hit-and-run incident with an inflatable watercraft, they told me to hold before they said there was nothing they could do. I wonder if they were laughing at me when I was on hold...

My first very-own car was Mervo:

Mervo was a late-80s model Ford wagon purchased for $800 from this woman:

My sweet friend Heather told me it wasn’t so bad...that it looked like a cross between a Mercedes and a Volvo. Thus, Mervo. Mervo broke down mucho.

I really think public transportation is the right option for me.