The Taconic Tales or "Things That Could Only Happen to Me"

Alright, so this one is for you, Grandpa, the one who just laughed at me at 2:45am after I barged into your house & woke you up with tales of things that could only happen to me and who just shrugged and said, "Write it down."

So last night (Saturday), I had to travel up to Poughkeepsie for Sara & TJ's engagement meet-up at Mahoney's. I left in a good mood after an enjoyable recording of MetroBuzz. Although I was weary of making the trip up and back within the same night (I'm dog sitting again for my aunt), I was still really excited. So there I am, on the Taconic Parkway still near the Bronx/Westchester border, but on the Westchester side. Suddenly, I'm half-blind. My contact is no longer in my eye! I have really bad eye sight. Like, I'm a barely contact prescription away from legally blind. So this is not good. I find a spot to pull over. There's no shoulder on that part of the Taconic, so I pull over in the triangle shaped area between the parkway & an exit ramp. I've found my contact on my scarf, but it must have fallen out because my eyes were dry because it was rolled up and I couldn't unroll with. I tried, but it would have ripped.

I was too far along my way to turn around but not close enough to Poughkeepsie to justify driving further. I would have had to drive with one eye closed the rest of the way in the dark and then the 2.5 hours home much, much later that night. I ended up pouring water from a re-filled water bottle onto it to try to moisturize it so I could try to put it in my eye. I got it to resume regular contact lense shape, but my elbow hit my water bottle (I was too blind & anxious to get my contact into my eye that I had not put the cap back on it) and naturally, it spills directly on my iPod. Fabulous! It wasn't working on the way there, but it must have dried out while I was at the bar because thankfully, it was working again (knock on wood) for my drive home.

Sara & TJ's party was awesome. I had a kick ass time. So I was in a great mood again at 12:45am when I left to embark on my 2.5 hour drive back to my aunt's house, where I am dog sitting again this weekend. Well, my cell phone was dying. It was dying when I got to the party, but I had taken it into the bathroom with me and charged it for a few minutes here and there while I was at the party, just to buy me a little time on the way home with a working phone. I also needed gas, but was hoping that I'd have enough to make it to Queens or Long Island before having to stop. About 30 minutes into my drive, the gas light goes on (damn driving to Riverhead for work with all the stop & go traffic every day). The stretch of the Taconic I was on was unfortunately where the exits led to other highways or across the Hudson River or into Connecticut or whatever.

10 miles pass since the light goes on, it's almost 1:30am & I turn my phone on to call my dad to see if he knows anything in the area. He doesn't. I get off at the next exit, but there's nothing. Like, nothing. I keep driving & see a guy at a stop light. I flash my brights at him several times & wave my arms out the window. He directs me to "Go straight, bear left when you get to a stop sign & you'll run into a Mobile station." I head off in the direction he says, call my dad back and go, "I have no idea where I am or where this gas station is, but if you don't hear from me again soon, it's because my phone is dead & I may run out of gas so you may have to call the auto club or something. I'm by a Children's Hospital called---" Yup - that's when my phone died for good.

I found the gas station & started on my way back. Found the parkway really quickly but I'm still really friggin exhausted at this point because, well, it's late. Naturally, I'm not paying attention quickly enough and I end up going NORTH towards Albany instead of south towards New York City. The exits aren't close between (I love how Rt. 95 once you get into Delaware has it's exits corresponding with miles), so I drive a few more minutes to the Pleasantville exit and turn around to go south. Can we all guess what happens next? If you answered, "You missed the correct exit ramp & ended up accidentially traveling on the service road next to the parkway which then started to lead away from the parkway but were luckily blindly following a State Trooper who turns out was heading towards a different parkway that connected with the parkway you needed" then you guessed correctly!

So now I'm finally back on the Taconic Parkway going south. No cell phone & a half hour behind schedule. It's around 2am at this point and I'm still about 2 hours from home. My parents have no idea what's happening to me & I'm exhausted. I sped back to the Throgs Neck Bridge as quickly as I would dare to (with my luck or my level of tired, I wasn't going to push it). I made a beeline for my grandparents' house to try to use their telephone to call my parents & Jay to tell them I was okay. I should note that I was somewhat afraid that my uncle would wake up to the sound of someone coming into the house at 2:45am & come downstairs with his gun drawn on me (he's a cop). But I figured I'd take my chances and I had to pee anyway so whatever.

So that's basically where this story ends. My grandpa woke up while I was on the phone with my parents. I explained to him everything that had happened to me the entire night whining, "Why does this stuff always happen to ME? Who has a problem on the way there AND the way back?!" He just laughed at me and shook his head and said, "Write it all down." And that's what I did! My grandpa is so cool. I ended up getting back around 3:50am. I went to bed somewhere around 4:30 by the time I let the dog out and got changed and woke Jay & my parents up to tell them I finally made it home. A lovely little story about there and back again.

Colleen Vs. the Tuna Can

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT SCROLL DOWN SLOWLY IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THE SIGHT (OR PICTURES) OF BLOOD, OPEN WOUNDS, OR STITCHES! Skip way ahead.

Okay, so I got an early start in 2009 with all the action. Sunday, January 4 started off as a normal day. Woke a sick Jay up at 7:30am after having gone to bed at 2:30am (Chargers game at a sports bar for Bobby's birthday then the last 2 episodes of Season 1 of Chuck did us in). Realized at like 9:30am that we didn't have to get up at 7:30am because I miscalculated what time we had to leave for the airport. Oops. We could have had a full extra hour to sleep. We were dog sitting for the weekend at my aunt's house, so we headed to my parents house for the worst bagels I've ever eaten, both in and out of NY combined.

Side note: On the drive over there, I learned that I bought the wrong version of The Sims for my Macbook. I wanted the one that went with the Livin' Large expansion pack - which I had just bought as well - but I bought The Sims 2. I don't know, I thought that The Sims 2 was the one that went with everything. I'm an idiot.

Anyway, after the crap bagels, I drove Jay to MacArthur Airport in Islip and sent him on his way. Went back to my aunt's house to clean up and basically wash everything that Jay had coughed on before going back home. My aunt also go very sick on her trip, so my grandparents were stopping by her house to leave food, etc for her. They head out the door at 2:15pm. I was waiting for the sheets to come out of the dryer and then I was going to go home. My mom wanted me back home between 3-3:30pm because as Italians, we eat dinner at like 3:30pm on Sundays.

So it's 2:15pm and Grandma & Grandpa say goodbye. I decide I don't to wait to eat dinner because I am hungry NOW. I get one of those single servings of tuna fish cans, that you peel it back to open and put it on crackers and eat. That'll hold me over. Yeah. I'm sitting on the couch, watching Supernatural on my laptop & Skype chatting with Jay, who is at the Baltimore Airport for his layover. Please note that Jay's new Blackberry had some sort of software issue that day and was not working at all. I go to peel back the tuna can and instead of peeling up evenly, it rolls up together (as in instead of an even horizontal motion, it rolls up vertically) and completely into my middle finger on my right hand. I looked down and saw immediately that it was not going to be okay. I ran to the front door and was SO lucky that my grandparents hadn't left yet. They were fixing something outside the house but had already started the car. My finger is a gushing blood like a fountain & I've got the plastic carton the can & crackers came in under it to catch the blood. By the time my grandpa got to the door 30 seconds later, there was A LOT of blood in there. I just called out from the door across the lawn, "Umm I cut my finger and it's bad."

My grandpa can't hear me and goes, "Huh?!" So I do the only thing I could do and hold it up, blood streaming and all. We go wash it out and it's evident that the bleeding is NOT going to stop and that it's really freaking deep. My grandparents place calls to my parents to tell them that someone has to come over to take me to the ER for stitches. Now at this point, I had left a very sick Jay on the computer for a good 5 minutes, probably wondering what's going on. So my grandpa types him the funniest message: "this is lou. colleen has to go to er. bye."

Yeah, I could only imagine what I'd do if I had gotten that message and had no clue what had happened and had no phone at all. So after we get my finger wrapped up, I called thru Skype to fill him in. My mom arrived and we went to the ER.

That's basically it. We were there for about 3 hours and some guy kept puking in the room across the hall from me so it smelled terrible. I didn't really cry at all BUT I did lose my cool when the doctor was pulling it apart and touching it to see if I had cut a tendon or not. And I started to shake from nerves and sweat when he put the anesthesia all around it because I could feel it going through my veins and it's just such an unnatural feeling in general. Something cold running through your veins and all. It took a good 3 or 4 minutes before it was numb. My dad had come down when he heard what was happening and he stayed in there with me because my mom's not so good with blood at all. It felt silly having both your parents with you in the ER to get stitches in your finger at 24 years old, but neither wanted to leave and I felt loved. I ended up watching him do the stitches.

Okay, so here's the gross part. I have pictures from my camera phone that I took while we were in the ER and then pictures of what it looks like now, 4 days later. I just took the badages off for the first time to change them right before I took them. I went big, huh? Gotta go big or go home. Thank goodness that I only cut my finger!

All stitched up:

Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully this is the only time I'll have to post open wounds on here ever again (knock on wood).

Merry Christmas 2008 From Colleen, Jay, & the Fam

After a bit of a delay and then some lost luggage (it got delivered finally, not even 5 minutes ago), Jay finally arrived here for Christmas! We've been doing a lot of eating, drinking, and being merry. I was showing my family what my Macbook can do and we decided to do some "Merry Christmas" messages. So without further adieu, here are some holiday wishes from us:

P.S. Sorry about the bad lighting!

My First California Christmas Experience

California last weekend with Jay's family ROCKED. Seriously, I had such an awesome time. We flew in on Saturday morning, with our connecting Southwest flights meeting up in Vegas and then flying to Burbank (I had no delays getting in to Las Vegas but Jay did; we then had a bit of a delay leaving Vegas because of snow in Utah I think, but it was way better being delayed with someone!)

Anyways, here's some pictures from that weekend, with captions. There's also a video in here of Jay playing guitar off-the-cuff in the kitchen while no one was paying attention. I noticed he was and grabbed my camera to pretend to take a picture and recorded some of it before he realized what I was doing & we had to go eat or whatever it was. Enjoy some of our lame pictures from our very fun Christmas #1!

Video First:



Now the photo album:

We drink when we are delayed in airports, no matter what time of day it is.

The start of the (literally) 24-hour long game of Risk that Jay & his family played!

Taking a break to text/look at pictures. We're so technologically dependent.

Naturally, we had to take a picture of the game before we went to bed that night to make sure no one cheated over night! Jay is green.

My first time ever playing Wii bowling.

All tuckered out from my 10 minutes of Wii Bowling (plus it was like 9pm NY time...)

We played in Claire's Accessories during a quick mall-trip on Sunday, 12/14. Sylar - I mean Jay - wants glasses for some reason...

I found the pickle hidden in the Christmas tree & went to claim my prize! (Okay, maaaaaybe I had a tad bit of help from Aunt Mary & Uncle Brett...)

All set for take-off from Burbank to JFK and wearing my headband because it hurt my head when I tried to sleep :)

God, we LOVE JetBlue...

Today, My Grandparents Have Been Married 53 Years

...And they're still happy & gallavanting through Hungary, Germany, Austria & The Netherlands right now. Word.

You know that you're tired when you put Neutrogena Facial Wash in your hair thinking that it's shampoo despite that fact that you've already washed your hair moments before.

Cruise to St. Thomas, St. Maartin, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico tomorrow! Be gone June 5 - June 14.

Parking Tickets Also Suck

Things That I Will NOT Miss About Astoria:

1. Parking tickets.
2. Moving my car on Tuesday & Wednesdays nights (or early Wednesday & Thursday mornings)
3. No air conditioning
4. Paying rent

The list of things I'll miss is way bigger, but my zillion-dollar parking ticket from yesterday morning was really fucking fantastic, let me tell you.

Did I mention that Jay & I started up a site called John Mayer Did What as a joke? I was really good at keeping up with it for a while there, then it got lost in the shuffle of all the insanity of the last month. I'm going to try to do it on a regular basis again. I'm only mentioning it now because the last few (I thought) have been funny (if it's your humor, because it's way dumb humor) and the one that I did today was in honor of the Lost season finale. I want to see how fast a dumb site like that can spread, so let's spread the love...or something...

I'm going to see Billy Joel later at Mohegan Sun with my sisters. I'm not going to get home til like 2am, then I refuse to not watch the Lost finale right away. I'm going to be incredibly cranky tomorrow between not sleeping at all and knowing that I'm in the crunch time for packing. Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it...

Katelyn's 21 & Invincible

So my sister Katelyn turned 21 on March 7 so Eddie and I joined her & some of her friends at a bar last night to celebrate. Nothing too exciting happened, so normally this wouldn't really warrant a post. However, I feel the need to document that Katelyn celebrated her first few days of legal United States drinking the right way. And she did me proud. Kate's not really much of a drinker but her friends made sure that she did it up in style. She did tequila & Irish Car Bombs like a mother-f'ing champ. I was proud. Anyway, that said & suspiciously alcoholic-sounding harpings aside, I'm going to shut up now & be vain by posting pictures. Eddie & I basically were ourselves the entire night and decided to have a photo shoot in the middle of the bar, simply because there was a camera, so why not? I'm sparing everyone from all but a few. Though if you ask really nicely, I'll post the 2 pictures up in which I was pretending to be Mariah Carey & Britney Spears. They're disturbingly accurate portrayals, in my opinion.

Katelyn Rose, the birthday girl. The tolkein "let's make crazy faces for the camera!" picture...

...followed by the "let's smile so people REALLY don't think we're weird" one.
Eddie's so silly.

Grandma Woke Up a Democrat

Soooo Grandma's surgery went well. She's still in a lot of pain but she was prescribed Vicodin, so hopefully that'll help her every 4 hours for the next few weeks. It's SO funny to me to think about how at the end of last school year I took Vicodin a few times for shits & giggles and when I was the one who had to walk 4 blocks yesterday afternoon in la ciuadad to fill her prescription, I started laughing. To this day, I have no idea why I thought it was ever a good idea - or at least a fun idea - to take it. Oh well. I blame Randy for "peer pressuring" me into it (even though we never did it together) and Brian for being a supplier! Anyhow, yeah, it's just another testament to how I went crazy at the end of school because I was having so many strange emotions about the whole thing. Oh well, I'm over *that* phase. Not over being weirded out/completely freaked out by not being at Marist/being unsure about the future, but over doing that shit. Ah, well...

Just to tell a quick story that's a testimony to why I love my grandma so much: My Uncle Lou went to get the car, my grandpa went to find him, my aunt was doing whatever she was doing and I was with my grandma, her physical therapist & her nurse. We were waiting to get her into the car home & it was freezing outside. Grandma was still relatively groggy from the anithesea & in pain from surgery. We're waiting outside for my uncle to be able to get the car right in front. Grandma's in her wheelchair. Aunt Anne had put her scarf around her neck & laid her coat in front of her to cover her from the cold. Does Grandma notice the cold? No. She turns to her nurse & asks, "Would you like to wear my coat til my son gets here? It's very cold outside & you're not wearing anything, you must be cold. Take my coat."

I had to turn away upon hearing this because I almost burst into tears. That's what I want to be like. So selfless that when I'm in obvious pain & about to be discharged from the hospital to worry whether or not the woman who's pushing my wheelchair is cold.

My grandma rocks.

P.S. She also woke up a Democrat. For anyone who knows my extremely conservative, Catholic, Republican family, this is strange. But regardless, in the car on the way home from NYC, Grandma says, "I like that Barack Obama guy. I'd vote for him if he ran for President. I'd vote for him over any of these jackass Republican candidates. Except Hillary. I'd vote for anyone over here. But if it's not her next election, I'm voting Democrat."

All we need now is my dad to vote Democrat & I think hell will freeze over.