Dad (to Grams): Here you go, I picked up up those bananas you wanted. The manager said that due to the earthquake in Chile these are the only shipment they could get in.

Grams: Thank you!

Dad: Oh wait I forgot something. (Goes to his car, comes back in with real bananas). Here you go, I was just kidding about those other bananas. (Leaves laughing).

Grams: I knew he was just trying to prank me.

Me (rolling in the floor in laughter): Grams! You had no idea! You believed him! Don’t even try to say you didn’t.

Grams: Oh I knew – once he said they were from Chile. We don’t get our bananas from Chile, we get them from Mexico.

Me: Sure, sure.

Grams: I wonder if they taste different?

Kevin: (Grabs one, snarfs it down). Nope. Just like normal bananas.

Grams: Not normal bananas. Those are Aubrey-sized bananas.

NOW THAT I’VE EMBARRASSED GRANDMA B, (Sorry Grandma.

Grandma? Grandma! Are you still here?

Rach?

Jackie?

Anybody?)

I figured I’d post something embarrassing about myself. Kevin already stated it on his Facebook when he updated his status as, “Just found out my girlfriend can touch her nose with her tongue.”

Kind of like this:

Except even more gross because I’m a human and not a dog.

I can’t help it. My tongue is so big that when I stick it out, it reaches the bottom of my chin. It can do the roll and the wave, and because of it’s size  I probably snore at night and would be a great backup for that guy from Kiss. Add to the fact that I’m already a walking freak show – I’m extremely double jointed in the arms, fingers and thumbs and I can fit my entire fist in my mouth – and you can pretty much call me to any birthday party if you’re looking for cheap entertainment.

The problem is, most people don’t ask to see these things.

I volunteer them.

I realized this probably wasn’t the best thing to walk around advertising when Aspen looked at me from her car seat and made the accompanying “mmmmph!” noise as she stuck her tongue out and tried to lick her tiny nose.

I only made it worse when I poked mine out and stuck it up my left nostril.

I know. I know.

I’m gross.

But you know you kinda wanna see it now.

A PACKAGE WAS WAITING FOR ME ON MY PORCH TODAY WHEN I GOT HOME.

But I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t Ramen.

There were three little jars.

And a note.

It reads:

Aub –

Aftermath of an elk abortion : ) One is an antelope. Read on the lids.

Don’t want them back.

Best Gram

You read that right. In the jars, preserved and floating around in alcohol were three tiny animal babies. I know I blog about Grams a lot – the one that I live with. But my dad’s mom should also get some recognition. The conversations I have with her are hilarious and always worthy of their own separate posts. We butter each other up and tell each other that we’re the best and we’re each others’ favorites. (Which we pretty much are).

But the conversation we had last Saturday takes the cake. It was one of those rare moments when I wasn’t with Kevin – which means I was a lost puppy and wandered over to my moms house for comfort.

And to eat her food.

Which in turn makes Machelle mad and makes both Mom and Dad tell her how I’m a guest in their house and can eat all the Doritos I want.

And I do.

So I’m sitting there stuffing my face and gloating in Machelle’s general direction when “Grandma B” shows up. And I don’t know what got us talking about it, but she brought up the fact that she put in for a Moose tag this season.

“I didn’t know you hunt!!” I blabbed.

“Oh of course I hunt, I even have a baby elk that I preserved in alcohol from one of the first elks I shot.”

“Grandma, that’s gross. That’s blog worthy!! I’m going to come to your house and photograph it and post it on my blog. “

But she trumped me. “I’ll give it to you! I’ll leave it on your porch. So if you ever see a little freaky, dead thing in a jar on your steps just know it’s from me. Treasure it – I’ve spent many years freaking people out with that.”

And I can see why.

They have ribs.

They have creepy caved-in heads. And the top of this jar said it was from ‘89 – which means it’s been dead for as long as I’ve been alive.

And this baby elk has hooves and a mouth.

But the oddest of the bunch has to be the antelope.

It was just so developed. from the split hooves to the lungs, ribs, eyes right to the tiny little tail. Now before you think my Grandma B is some heartless baby mammal killer, you should know she had a permit to kill these animals, which means that the babies would have died regardless of if she’d have kept them or not. And you should also know that they used the meat for steaks and it didn’t go to waste.

But they’re still creepy.

After I took some photos I ran the box upstairs and showed Grams. Her reaction was along the lines of, “what the hell!?” and “there’s the garbage outside”.

But I’m not throwing them out. They are a family heirloom that will be scaring kids for generations to come.

Thank you Grandma B.

PS I claim your buffalo head you have hanging on your wall.

Just kidding.

I don’t think I could sleep with that in my house.

WE STAYED IN VEGAS ON THE WAY DOWN TO SAN DIEGO. Well, since we’re in Utah, a more accurate description would be, “we stayed in Vegas on the way over“ but who cares about being politically correct? I was too busy trying to figure out how to get the display on the radio to stop changing colors like a bad disco light. Took us a good half hour but we finally fixed it to just stay on one color.

Sue stayed at the hotel and had a nice hot bath while Kevin and I wandered the Strip for a few hours. Mind you, we’re both too young to gamble, drink or rent strippers (just kidding, but I do have a good story to tell about that later) so we basically just laughed at all the drunks walking around holding empty bottles of Jack Daniels people watch. We’d only been dating for a month at the time so we were both still pretty shy. Which means I didn’t beg him to go to Mandalay Bay to look at the fishies like I wanted. However, I did beg him to go to the MGM – possibly a mile walk from our hotel – so we could see the lions.

AND WE DIDN’T SEE THEM. Shoulda stuck to the fishies.

He took his camera out since I was too shy/nervous/scared to take mine so I left it at the hotel. Some scenery and photos he took:

We went in a mall and found pretty ceilings, a pretty tree

And Paul Blart!

Then we took some photos of us and wandered around for a bit. This could just be the worst, greasiest photo of us ever. Well, of me anyway.

This one is not so bad. Matter of fact, I kind of like it.

Eventually we find the M&M World Store and peruse the shelves. Kevin makes me hug this M&M who, “looks like he’s saying, ‘Mmmm chocolate’ after sniffing his finger”.

I did not make that up.

Then he decides we need some chocolate and Peanut Butter M&M’s sound quite good, so we go straight to the back to this gem.

That sweet, sweet wall of candy that would fulfill even Willy Wonka’s every dream.

And apparently I look like the devil.

Don’t mind me.

Kevin grabs a bag and fills it chock full of Peanut Butter M&M’s. I mean, STUFFED TO THE TOP THEY ARE POURING OUT EVERYWHERE type of full.

“Erm you might want to ditch some. That’s a bit much.” I advised. And rightfully so. Here is where the funniest part of the night happens. He dumps half of them out and takes them to the cashier. She weighs them and without missing a beat demands $10 for them.

TEN DOLLARS FOR A BAG OF NORMAL M&M’S.

100 DIMES.

1,000 PENNIES.

You get my drift. Kevin looks at her in confusion, looks at me and then looks down at his wallet and I lost it. I had to go walk around the corner, put my head beneath my knees and try not to cry from laughing so hard. I don’t think I’ll ever see anything funnier in my life. “I spent a lot of money on these, treasure them,” he whispers to me as I snatch the bag away from him. Now everytime we see M&M’s we laugh like idiots.

On the way back to our room we saw a fifty-ish year old man making fun of the “card flippers”. You know the type. The type that lean across you and try to hand your man a card with a photo-shopped girl and a 1-800 phone number at the top that says, “call me, will arrive in less than 20 minutes”. One of the card flippers went a bit too far when he said, “Hey! You need a woman!” to Kevin, who replied, “I’ve already got one, thanks.”

We were almost to the doors of our hotel when we hear him yell above the dingy crowd, “Why have only one? You need TWO women in your bed tonight!!”

Oh Vegas. How you never cease to amuse me.

ASHLEY AND I ATTENDED A CLASS TOGETHER LAST THURSDAY. We got lost and wandered the high school campus where it was hosted for about twenty minutes, nineteen of which Ashley spent threatening to go into early labor if we didn’t find the room and stop wandering around. But being the shy gals we are we are we didn’t want to ask anyone where it was at. Can you blame us?  The only guy we saw was riding a massive floor buffer right behind us like a creeper.

Eventually we walked past a classroom where two ladies were talking and Ashley pushed me in their direction. “You go ask them, I can’t be social like our mother”. Did you know our mother is social? Well she is. And we envy her for it.

“Hey excuse me, where is the community educa—” from the corner of my eye I see Ashley diving out of the door frame in a fit of laughter. “—-tion building?”I chuckled my way through the rest of my sentence. The ladies pointed us in the direction of the front of the building, and what do you know, it’s the room we walked right past three times already.

Our class?

It was a coupon clipping class. Go ahead and laugh. I’ll wait.

Niel and Kevin sure found it funny. “It’ll probably be hosted by some old lady”, “what’re you going to learn, how to use scissors and cut paper?”, and “someone will forget the scissors and the whole thing will be called off. ” were only half of the phrases we heard from the pair of them. But we had no shame. We are girls. We craft. It’s what we do.

Frankly I didn’t know what to think of the class when we walked in. I don’t use coupons. Hell, like I need any excuse to spend even more money, but Ashley invited me so I went, skeptical and all. It turned out to be a pretty interesting class (beside Ashley mouth-breathing on me the entire time through her cold). The coupon lady told us that last year alone, she’d saved over $1,000 at one store. I didn’t believe her, but that’s probably because my other sisiter someone I know shops at discount stores and brags about how much she “saves”, while ignoring how much she spends.

I’d say don’t repeat that to her but we’re not talking anyway.

Where were we, coups? Oh yes. Coups. The lady teaching us said she lives on a budget of $300 a month which includes food and cleaning supplies. She never buys a box of cereal for more than $.50, and she only buys brand name. She taught us how to get Goldfish crackers for $.18, and razors, deodorant, and other samples for free. Now I can proudly claim to know the best time to buy condiments (hint: it’s right about now, look for the good coups because they only come around this time of year). I know that dish washing fluid goes on a really good sale about two times a year, that the beer isle has the best coupons (and you don’t have to buy beer with it) and I learned the biggest trick of the trade: Get a coupon, wait until the item goes on sale and THEN buy that item. Double wammy if you have a few coupons that you can combine, or “stack” to use on that item. Yes it’s possible for the store to wind up owing you – they credit however much they owe you towards your entire purchase.

But.

But.

This was not the highlight of my night. No, not even close. The highlight of my night was about half way through when Ashley burst out chuckling next to me. “What?” I hissed. “I can’t. I can’t,” she chocked through silent sobs of laughter. A minute later I get a text from her that states,

“The lady next to you has a MOLE on her head”.

I thought she meant a beauty spot on her upper lip or a witches wart by her nose. But oh, contrair! I found out I was wrong when Ashley elbowed me in the ribs and told me to look to my left, and staring me right in the face was this ladies raised, hair-sprouting, ugly, bumpy mole smack in the middle of where her hair parted in the back of her head.

Our attempt at silent laughter was ruined when Ashley stopped me from taking a photo of it on my phone. Coupon lady? I’m sorry for disrupting your class. Maybe I should have paid more attention to find that lady a coupon for some Compound W Wart Remover.

*I know this post sounds mean. I do. I just thought it was funny to have one of those high-school-I-can’t-stop-laughing moments. Mole lady, if you read this, I still think Rosco the Mole Rat wins the ugly award.*

I HAVE A QUESTION.

Is it too late to blog about Christmas? I mean, it’s been almost a month, but I have a video to share with you.

Yes it’s of my niece, and the times that it’s not her, it’s of my dog. The one video I did of me turned out so weird that I can’t bear to watch it – it’s like hearing myself on a tape recording, or watching videos of me when I was five. Just awkward.

Scratch that last part about the videos of me when I was five. We actually don’t have ANY videos of me when I was growing up.

I was a neglected child.

*start pity music*

Anyway, Aspen is a non-neglected child and she got just what she asked for for Christmas – a barbie car. Her reasoning? “Bennie ate my Barbie car, I need a new one!” The video below is her reaction when she opened the present.

Ash, I hope you don’t mind me posting it. I did so because your Blogger account was being lame and I’m a nerd that lives in a basement and still plays WoW cool and have my own lame website that my mom doesn’t even read domain.

I SKIPPED MADE ME LAUGH MONDAY BECAUSE I HAD NOTHING FUNNY.

Whoa boy, was I ever wrong on that account. I had something absolutely hilarious happen to me tonight, and that is how I almost set the kitchen on fire. I almost set the KITCHEN on FIRE.

Kevin and I have a favorite food called Chicken Roll ups. It’s chicken mixed with cream cheese and butter, wrapped in croissants and rolled in breadcrumbs. Pure deliciousness. Well, I decided to be Little Miss Helpful – a recipe for trouble all on it’s own – and preheat the pan he was going to use to cook the chicken, so I poured in some vegetable oil and cranked the heat up to high. But I forgot to turn the heat down before I moved on to the next task, MULTITASKING FOR THE WIN, and the next second I turn around to find the entire back side of my kitchen covered in smoke that was rising from the burning fluid. So naturally, I did what any freak of nature would do and I grabbed the pan and turn off the burner.

What was left of the oil instantly turned into flames.

At this point, it was safe to say it was a two foot high, spitting, hissing fire, in a pan that was half a foot away from me. I yelled “Babe!” which is a much better alternative to the unladylike words that easily could have slipped out instead, and I rushed the pan to the sink.

Mistake number one: leaving a pan of vegetable oil on a hot stove. Mistake number two: Putting the pan – which was now on fire, under a constant stream of cold water.

Yea.

Don’t do that.

Wanna know why?

Because you wind up with a flame that goes from a measly two foot flicker to a four foot roaring fireball straight up to the ceiling…while you’re still holding it. And you can say it, I’ve said it plenty of times. I’m surprised those ugly, 1970’s curtains didn’t catch on fire in the process.

I was pretty much lost for what to do at this point. Stop, drop and roll don’t really work unless YOU are on fire.

“Take it outside,” Kevin opened the door and covered his face with his arm as I walked past, awkwardly holding the pan out at arms length. I stood for a good two minutes like that, arm outstretched trying to figure out how to get this pan to stop hissing at me. I finally guessed the cold pavement would be my best bet, so I dumped the remaining fluid in the middle of the driveway and fell to my knees by it.

“Are you okay?” Kevin asked from the bottom of the stairs. I shook my head no and realized I was shaking all over. The odd noise I could hear was coming from me. It was somewhere between a laugh and a half-sob. He wrapped me in a hug and then coaxed me back inside to survey the damage. The entire downstairs was coated with a thick, nasty smoke that burned our eyes and noses. We used blankets to attempt to air it out. It’s one of those smells I’m sure will stick around for weeks. “We’re lucky it didn’t spread…Gram’s has oxygen tanks! Boom! But in the end, nothing can replace a life. I’m just glad we’re all okay.”

I was busy at this point taking photos of the damage and also of this warning label.

“But you got to admit…” he added a few minutes later as we both flapped blankets in the middle of the kitchen, “this’ll make for an awesome Twitter post!”

Postnote: I may have ruined our appetites and scared us a bit, but thankfully in my own defense I didn’t ruin dinner.

I just made him cook it.

Post-Postnote:

I have a confession to make, Internet. On Christmas Eve I came home to realize I’d left my hair straightener on all day, only two inches away from the wall. It left a burn mark on the counter (MOM I’M SORRY AND I GOT THE MARK OFF *thank you Magic Erasers*).

This all goes to prove that I shouldn’t be allowed to use electronics of any type, specifically those that generate heat.

Send help.

THE AUBREYMO.COM BLOG TURNS ONE TODAY!!! This means a select few of you on the internet have stuck around for 365 days of whining, rants, blabs and roughly 3,562 pet photos. A select few of you have even read all 152 posts.

You deserve a medal.

But instead I’ll give you this, a “best of” list for AubreyMo. Let’s start right out at the very start:

1) The Beginning

How I Wrangled The Christmas Spirit – The awesome first blog post, where I talked about how a Christmas tree fell off my car. Let’s just say this year I’m glad I went with a fake tree. Isn’t it enough that the lights already shocked me?

2) The Top Rated

Finding the Truth – We’ll talk about this one later.

How to Write an Apology Letter… – This is a post my dear friend Kamie wrote on my blog a while back. I need to post on her site as well…if I can ever think of something awesome to write.

Winds of Change – Um. Me. Running in a field like a freak with my dog. No different than any other day I guess.

3) Posts where I mention creeps, and I’m not talking about me.

Finding the Truth – By far the most popular one, this is where some punk kid ran up and asked if I knew where to find the truth. It also includes the Pants of Awesomeness. I guess I can finally post a photo of them now.

You Wanna Go? – This thug is serious about his money. Don’t mess.

Mid-Hall Melodies – The time at college a guy with a guitar chased me down the hall and sang me a song about getting stoned. You know those memories you’ll never forget? I’m sure some day I’ll be 80 and reminiscing on this one.

4) Embarrassing posts (in which I may or may not include the word ‘Twilight’)

Vanity Vain – My hair starts out bad and I document making it worse. Yes, there were Cruella De Vil references.

Twilight, You Are My Life Now – Twilight…

Becoming Bella – I look like Bella, and apparently I pissed off someone who doesn’t. I could delete the comments but knowing that I hurt their immature feelings makes me laugh. NO, YOU GROW UP COMMENTER.

As I said before, I know exactly who they are.

New Moon Official Trailer – This concludes the Twilight obsession. Remind me to tell you about the time Kevin went to see New Moon with us. It was a hoot.

Ms. Chipmunk Cheeks – Remember this photo?

It’s right after I got out of oral surgery and was fat faced for a week. It has to be the most embarrassing photo I’ve ever posted of me, other than this:

or this:

But the photo with the most views isn’t even of me, so we’re good.

This concludes the flashback of my life. Let’s just forget the whole thing happened, shall we?

IT’S BEEN 15 DAYS WITHOUT A SINGLE POST from me. Can you guess why?

• I was walking the strip in Vegas
• I was swimming in the ocean California
• I was busy riding rides at Universal Studios
• I was at my parents house on Thanksgiving enjoying the family company
• I am lazy.

Actually, all of the above are true. I went on vacation and took a blogging hiatus, but I didn’t tell a single soul. Because if I told somebody, then I was really taking a break and then I’d really feel guilty.

It’s an Aubrey thing, guilt.

I’m working on it.

I’ll be posting about my amazing vacation and various other things shortly, but in the mean time, I’ve been noticing a lot of conversations come across differently than they should. Miscommunication errors, if you will, and they are absolutely hilarious. One such example happened last Friday night when Kevin took me on a date to Temple Square. It was the first night they turned on the Christmas lights and the grounds were flooded with people. We made our way slowly around the Temple and noticed a single, solitary building to the north that hadn’t been lit up. It was odd really, to be standing surrounded by thousands of stranded lights on every tree and have a dark building right smack in the middle. He took a photo and texted it to his sister to see if she could tell us what the building was. We kept walking and ran into a Missionary that informed us the building was the changing and entry room for the attendees when they arrive.

“Have you been through the Temple?” he kindly inquired. I love Missionaries, they are always so friendly.

“Nope,” was our simple reply.

“Oh. Ya’ll married?” bless him, he was a conversationalist.

Another double “nope”.

“Well, do you want to be?” the old man chuckled. I blushed and pushed my hands deeper into the pockets of Kevin’s borrowed jacket, biting my lip to allow him to answer. Yes. . .let him answer, this’ll be interesting.

“. . .Possibly?” Was his reply. He gave me a questioning look and I just smiled.

I can live with possibly.

We talked with the Missionary for a few more minutes (and accidentally insulted his love of the Utes team . . .oops) and began trying to work our way through the crowd back to his car. I’d completely forgotten that he’d texted his sister until his phone started buzzing.

Where are you? Lindsay asked.

At the Salt Lake City Temple, he replied.

Why are you there? We began to realize that texting her saying that we were at the SLC Temple could have been misleading. It’s a popular engagement spot after all, what else would anyone think?

Before he could even respond Lindsay calls and asks, “Did you go to Jared?!”. I’m standing on the other side of Kevin, the side his phone isn’t on and I’m laughing because he repeats what she says.

“Jared? Who — oh! Jared, no no no, we didn’t go to Jared.” By this point I’m dying of laughter and can’t stay out of their conversation.

“Tell her we went to Shane Co.!” I rattled off between my laughing fits.

“We went to Shopko, got her something nice!”

Shopko.

Shopko.

Let me spell that out for you. S-H-O-P-K-O. I literally would have been rolling around on the ground if not for the fear of being stompled by the crowd.

“Yea because Shopko is cheaper than Wal-Mart!” I was done, that was the last I heard of their conversation before I died of laughter.

*If you are wondering what the crap the title of this blog post is, go here. It is Latin for “it does not follow”. Meaning that while we occasionally visit the Temple, we are not engaged…yet.*

THE LOOK ON GRAMS’ FACE WHEN I WALKED IN was hilarious all on its own. Her hand, which was in the process of putting an ice cube to her mouth, hung forgotten and her mouth gaped as she stared at my jeans. Being born in 1929 and growing up through the tail-end of the depression, I’m sure she’s seen ratty jeans before, but she wasn’t quite sure why someone would wear them by choice.

“My heavens child, you need new pants! Surely you can afford some. Those things have got to go,” she admonished me before we’d even said hello.

And I’ll confess, I may have lied a little. I told a half-truth.

“They’re just comfortable Grandma, that’s why I keep them”.

These pants?

Yea. They’re brand new.