Fun Facts About Vicki

- I can't read lips to save my life

- I don't like black jelly beans

- I have a strange obsession with office supplies

- Okra is my favorite vegetable (although cucumbers are a close second)

- I'm allergic to a specific type of mango

- I enjoy too much being called "ma'am" or "lady" or "miss" when it's completely sincere

- I tend to be a realist, even to the point of cynicism 

- Summer rain is one of my most favorite things

- Pickles are fantastic at any time of day

- I have a hard time writing "happily ever after's" because they are extremely unrealistic to me

- Curiosity almost killed me as a child (this is supposed to make you ask questions for a reason...)

- My favorite words are licentious, lugubrious, nibble, rendezvous, and defenestration
- I can stay awake for an obscene length of time, but don't ever ask me to wake up early
- I don't have many strong opinions. I like to think of myself very neutral and indifferent
- Having chapped lips and no chap stick nearby is one of the worst things
- The word "puberty" bothers me when said aloud
- I tend to play with my earrings when I'm pondering something (this has led to a lot of earring backs going missing)
- I make a lot of my own jewelry
- I have a difficult time saying no, even when my instincts/internal logic are screaming it
- I have written five full-length novels to date, one of which is a Supernatural fanfiction (and one of which is self-published on Amazon - it's not my best, but it's the first one I wrote so it's my baby)
- I don't like talking about myself much (my blog is an exception) so I tend to be quieter or snarky when pushed to converse
- It is a true fact in my mind that everyone will fail me at many points in my life, so I always hope for the best but plan for the worst. That way if I'm let down it's no big deal and if it actually goes as planned, it's more of a bonus than an expectation to be filled
- I have five piercings to date and I don't plan on getting any more
- I am deathly afraid of letting people down. I grew up trying to be perfect; the word "disappointed" is one of the worst I will ever hear when addressed to me
- I lived in Peru for two and a half years
- Born in Michigan (raised for the most part in Virginia)
- For the most part, I despise country music (except for Shania Twain - I grew up listening to her so a lot of sentiment is woven into many of her songs)
- If you bring me Chex Mix, tomato soup, or chocolate, you earn some gold stars
- Even if you remember all of the above facts, you still don't really know me. So ask. Hang out. I've got lots of stories to tell, although I'll keep most of them to myself.

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Random facts. Will update if I think of any more.

V

Needs More Blood

Does the title really require explaining?
Hmm... I suppose it might.
The above pictures outline how I have the ability of getting myself in trouble without meaning to. There are many more blood-dyed accidents than these (i.e., flipping off a bike and skidding to a stop on the asphalt on my face, knuckles, and knees), however these are the only ones I managed to document.
The first picture in particular exhibits a very unexpected turn of events during a vacation at the beach with my best friend a couple years ago. The place we were staying (right on the beach) also had a pool in case we got bored of the sand and surf. So I went up to the pool with my best friend's little sister and we swam around for a while. Well, I love to dive into pools, so taking this opportunity, I did so a few times joyously. However, I began to figure out a cool "twist" I could do to spice up the otherwise average dive. Right at the lip of the pool instead of simply springing forward, I spun my body around in a corkscrew fashion and ended up under the water upside down, smiling up at the sky through the chlorine.
Well, I did it a few more times and then was going to show another friend who appeared and I botched it.
Not on purpose. The pool had it out for me, I know it.
I ran to the lip and pushed off with my feet and my big toe caught between two pieces of broken PVC pipe that make up the edge. Thus, I was missing a chunk of toe when I surfaced.
Yeah.
As for the second picture, it was simple shaving accident. I had been carrying on my merry way in the shower, probably singing along with the music playing, and scraped the razor just the right way to peel off two inches of skin.
At least the first one was kind of cool/interesting. This one was just dumb.

Random blog post of the week. A little window in my life.
Hope you enjoyed. (Also, if you click on the pictures they get bigger!)

Ta
V

Mortal Deficiency

I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m willingly strolling, unarmed, right into the bad part of town. Christ, I don’t even have my switchblade, but that wouldn’t do me any good anyway based off the stories I’ve heard about this place. A more fitting weapon would be a machine gun, loaded to the gills. And even then, survival would be iffy.

At least I’ve got someone with me. He seems to belong to this place, so perhaps I won’t seem like such a stranger to the scum that hangs around here. Although I’ve only just met this guy – he could be playing with me when he said he’s got “something interesting to show me” back home. He definitely could turn a phrase in an enticing way.

This is stupid beyond stupidity. But I’m not stupid. Just desperate.

He glances over his shoulder to check and see if I’m still following.

Yup, this rat is still pressing the pleasure button. And wasting away to nothing in the process.

We stalk up to a very shady hole in the crumbling brick wall and although this should deter anyone in their right mind, I don’t turn and run. My escort bangs on the door twice in rapid succession. The door opens a crack (I almost expected an eye slit to open) and a scraggly, bearded man peers out with malted eyes. The contrast between this and his dirty face is staggering. At first glance he seemed in his forties, but upon further scrutiny, he’s probably only twenty-something. I blink and look down at the ground in thought.

“He’s a virgin and he wants a taste,” the escort greets, smirking as he spoke to the doorman. I want to protest in some way but find I can’t and decide to stay quiet, letting the boy speak for me. He must mean something else, I think.

The doorman blinks and nods his head in understanding, opening the door enough for us to shimmy through. The room is stark and bare for all but a chair and sad looking table. Things are getting sketchier by the minute.

Instead of stopping here, the doorman hobbles over to the far wall and draws back a curtain, revealing a door and opening it. Commotion blasts up the stairwell and I realize this is just a cover for when the cops come knocking.

We are guided down the stairs into a room bustling with people of all shapes and sizes. I hear lots of boisterous laughter and profanity and I’m sure this is the place. The place woven of rumors and full of dreams. Existing and not.

“Set down there and we’ll get you fixed up,” the doorman tells me and I do as he says. The man hobbles away into the mass. My escort sits in the rickety chair next to me and stares at me with an unmistakable sparkle in his eyes.

“Since this is your first time an’ all, I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen,” he begins, his rancid breath bringing tears to my eyes. I don’t flinch back; I regard him as if his words are gold. “So, you get all relaxed like and calm yourself. Do that meditation shit. And we’ll bring you what you’re here for, all dressed up and ready to go.” He smirks at me like he’s sharing with me the best secret he knows. Perhaps it is.

“It’ll only hurt for a second, but after that, all you’ll want is more. That’s usually the case with most guys like you, since you can afford it,” he explains.

The doorman walks back toward me with something in his hand. It manages to shine despite the terrible lighting.

“He ready?” he drawls, looking at me intensely. I nod, answering for myself for once. He kneels beside me and rolls up the sleeve of my blazer as well as the dress shirt underneath. “You businessmen and your suits,” he mumbles as he ties the broken rubber band above the bend in my elbow. Bringing it up to the light, he taps the syringe, ridding it of unwanted air bubbles. “Just a poke and then you’re done.”

The anticipation skyrockets in me and I go into a high before the syringe even breaks my skin. This is it. I’ve found it. This is happening. The drug everyone wants but no one can find.

And now it’s mine.

The needle plunges easily into my vein and the man presses down the plunger until it’s bled dry. A slow smile breaks my face as I stare at the red dot marring the bend of my elbow.

My escort claps a hand on my shoulder and for once I don’t mind the unwarranted contact.

“In a few minutes you’ll feel the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing compares. Think of it this way: imagine the best sex you’ve ever had and multiply that by a thousand,” he tells me. I do what he says.

His words are truth.

But what they don’t tell you is what happens later.

The drug weaves through your veins and makes you feel euphoric for a while, but then it becomes a dependency and you can’t wake up in the morning without taking a shot. The feeling is not worth the after effects.

It sucks the nutrients from the body and feeds off them, leaving nothing behind but disintegrating skin and fragile bones.

Months later, I lay here in my hospital bed, feeling dead already. Not one of the nurses can look me straight in the face and not cringe. It is pitiful and disgusting.

I used to be a successful man. Now I’m nothing but bones and memories of what once was.

The heart monitor at my bedside slows more and more with each passing day as the remainder of the drug in me leeches all I have. The doctors don’t know how long I have to live, although it seems only days away at this point. I wish it would take me already.

I wish I hadn’t been so stupid.

-----

Fiction. Gotta love it.

Ciao~

V

Ponderings (Facebook Exit/Return)

My return to Facebook caused a bit of a stir among my friends, especially after my seemingly solid declaration that I was leaving a few weeks ago. One of the best parts was that no one directly asked me what the reasoning behind this maneuver was upon my reappearance; however, I still feel an explanation is desired.

Some of you may call it weakness - the inability to keep myself away for even a couple weeks. You may continue to believe that if you like and I will be the picture of shame in your head, but that is not the truth. If going someplace withdrawn and unusual to find oneself and sort some things out is not shameful, then neither is this.

The problem with Facebook was that it made me feel too good of myself and not at all in a beneficial way. It was encouragingly smothering me and I had to dig my ego out of the horrible mess I willingly subjected myself to. In retrospect, I realize that this was my way of stepping back; I had been so concentrated on all of the little, unimportant things that I was asphyxiating. Thus, relinquishing my “precious” profile for a couple weeks helped me take a deep breath and see just what needed to be revealed to me.

In the end, there are some people that I just can’t let go of and the simplest way to keep in contact is via Facebook. Mind you, these people don’t even live in this country, so please keep your nose-upturning thoughts to yourselves. Anyhow, I realized that I didn’t need to go all out (deleting my profile) in order to achieve previous happiness, but merely had to weed out the people I didn’t care to follow on the magical blue-and-white website anymore. This has undoubtedly been a breath of fresh air for me, an epiphany I am glad I had. So, lessons were learned, thoughts were pondered, and balance has been reinstated.

Thanks for your time. You may shake your head and laugh at me, but these thoughts never came to me while I was being suffocated. I appreciate your jest, at least.

That being said, I will most likely not be posting a whole lot of anything on Facebook and will rather be doing more here on my blog. This is going to be the only place to come and see recent writings (if you really care about that sort of thing) and perhaps little updates from me. I'm sure every once in a while I will post something on Facebook, but don't count on it. Not that you do, anyway.

Again, thanks for your time.

Til next time,
V

Wisdom Teeth

It was getting to be wisdom teeth pulling season for me and my brother. While in Peru, my mom did a little research and found it was much more affordable to get them yanked in the Spanish country as opposed to the US, which was no surprise and definitely good news to their wallets. I didn’t really care where I got them sucked out of my face, so I went along with it. We found some lovely ladies to do the work for us very quickly. Soon, the work had begun.

Aaron was the first to go in and get started. The way they do it in Peru is by side – i.e. left side top and bottom first, then right side top and bottom. So you had at least one side of your mouth to chew, among other things.

What really made things interesting was the fact that they didn’t put us under with sedation; they used local anesthetic, which meant sticking a needle of numbing solution in the gum just above or below the area they were working on. This also meant being awake for the entire operation.

So they whipped out their tools (some of them oddly reminded me of things I would find in my dad’s toolbox) and got to work. A lot of grinding, scraping, and yanking ensued until I was two teeth less. The operation itself didn’t bother me, as everything went perfectly fine. It was the medicine we were “prescribed” that got me.

In the states, generally you get two bottles of pills: one being of a hard painkiller like Vicodin, and the other being an anti-inflammatory drug. Simple, right? Don’t suck anything through a straw, stick to eating mashed potatoes, pudding, and jello for a few days, don’t do anything extremely hot and you’ll be good.

In Peru it was much different. We were to get two butt shots, one in the morning and the other in the evening, for 3-4 days. That’s right: needles in butts. It had an anti-pain, anti-inflammatory, and another helpful anti-something, but they had lost me at butt shots.

What I expected of these shots did not match up with what they really were, and I mean this in a terrible way. Every morning and night for a couple days I zipped into Chilca with my mom to the local pharmacy where they took me behind the counter and administered the shots as ordered. The needle was longer than your average shot needle, which gave me a bad feeling from the start. The woman giving me the shot would pull down my jeans at the back just a few centimeters, cleanse the area, and jab the thing in like it wasn’t a giant needle. It didn’t just sting – it pricked and burned and felt like barbed wire was being fed through my skin. The other thing that bothered me was that it was a fairly slow shot, the insertion and withdrawal of this needle, so it made everything agonizing.

The first few of these shots left me with a sore lower back, but it no doubt helped the healing process of the new holes in my face so I was trying not to complain. However, one morning when I was going to the pharmacy to get my shot, it wasn’t right. The lady brought me behind the counter with her usual mildly sour expression and cleansed the marked area to be stuck.                                                           

And when she pushed the needle in this time, everything about it was wrong. It didn't just sink in slowly and painfully zap the nerves like normal; it hurt. Every square inch of my skin cried out in discomfort and utter pain, sending an unwelcome, eerie shudder ringing through my body.

She removed the lengthy needle and told me in flat Spanish I could leave. With the first step I took, my head spun and practically lifted from my neck. A lump sat in my stomach before starting to churn.

I told myself I'd be okay, that it's just a temporary side effect because of the shot. My mom pulled out some soles and paid the lady behind the counter, glancing over at me with a curiously concerned look.

"You okay?" she asked, collecting her things and guiding me out of the pharmacy. I nodded and took some silent deep breaths. You'll be okay. Just a side effect.

A weird side effect that's never happened before in the other 6 butt shots I've gotten.
While waiting for a combi, my stomach violently knotted and spun like a washing machine. I couldn't stand up straight. My head got lighter and lighter. White stars floated around in my vision.

"You sure you're okay?" mom asked again, more urgently as she led me to the back of the combi to sit.

"No," I repelled flatly, grinding my teeth and attempting to surmount the pain, attempting to shove it away. It didn't work.

"We'll be back to Hannah's home soon, just hold on. You look white as a sheet of paper," she commented with surprised anxiousness. She placed a hand on my back, which was hunched over with my head between my knees and fists clenched. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bow her head and close her eyes, as if in prayer. I assumed that's what she was doing.

Just a few more minutes, I told myself while the pain increased, seeming to read my thoughts. But then what happens when I get home? The pain won’t go away just by walking through the front door...

Finally the combi stopped at the end of la segunda and my mom helped me out of the van. We walked as hurriedly as we could down the road. My stomach didn't let up and continued knotting and stabbing with pain. White desired to overcome my vision. Mom tried to help me walk as best she could, but there wasn't anything else she could do; her frustration with this was obvious.

The front door came in to view and I muscled past the discomfort, willing myself to go faster. Once through, I raced to the bathroom like a wounded animal. Thankfully using the facilites made the pain subside just a little. As soon as I walked back out, I asked (demanded, really) for some Motrin or the closest pain reliever. Downing it without thought, I retired to my room, put a movie on on my laptop and tried to stop thinking about the knives stabbing my stomach and rear end.

The pain didn't end within the next day or so, though, emotionally or physically. The next evening came and we jumped in the combi to go to Lima and get the stitches out of Aaron's last side. In my head, it didn't make any sense for me to have to get another butt shot, so I was fairly content. No more pain. At least not for a little while, anyway.

I was so achingly wrong.

Sitting out in the modest waiting room with my parents, reading over some of my stories via my phone and otherwise biding my time while Aaron got the stitches removed, I was pretty calm. No worries. But when one of the ladies working on Aaron came out to report to my mom what the deal was with my brother, she glanced over at me and said something in Spanish about needing another shot.

My brother was fine after the removal of the stitches, but I wasn’t.

Fear launched through my entire body without warrant and I started to shake. Just the mention of another butt shot made me want to throw up and sob my heart out simultaneously. Anything, anything was better than that shot.

A fish tank adorned the far wall diagonally from me and I trained my eyes on all the fishies swimming around happily in it, focusing on something other than my overwhelming fear while at the same time attempting so hard not to let it show.

Dad wasn’t fooled one bit.

He asked me what was wrong, if I was okay. In the second I took my eyes off the fish tank and remembered why I was acting strangely, I started to cry. It poured out of me like a waterfall, without my consent or judgment. Dad got into the chair next to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders as I plastered my hands to my face in shame, frustration, and mental pain. The hiccups shuddered through me and I soaked the sleeves of my shirt through within minutes.

So stupid.

My fear had such a fantastic hold on me – I couldn’t shake the thoughts, even, and that was all it took to trigger my panic attack.

No. Not another butt shot. I’d rather die.

And it was the honest truth.

When the lady came out into the waiting room with the needle and cleaning wipe, she turned sympathetic, consoling old eyes on me. There was no accusation or vexation in her chocolate irises. It made me sob harder, partially in thanks and partially in annoyance with the fragility of my ability to fight fear.

Dad tried to make me feel better and gave me a mini pep-talk about how it would be just a couple seconds and this last shot, this gloriously final shot would be over for good. Done. No más.

Too bad the mental repercussions would echo through me for months.

Even still, being the good little girl I am, I nodded, sniffled and followed the woman into the bathroom to have a bit of privacy. She told me a few comforting, empowering words in Spanish, essentially reciting what my father had told me, only in a different language. I nodded again, just to relay that I had understood her – not necessarily that I believed her.

Drawing down the waistband of my jeans just above the leftmost belt loop on the back, she stabbed the needle in as gently as she could manage; I tensed up so hard I could have crushed bricks into dust with my little fingers. More tears squeezed out from under my clamped eyelids. I didn’t think I had any juice left to do such a thing, but that was just another thing I hadn’t expected.

The lady, patient and loving as ever, finished up her duties and smiled at me with finality. Even though I was feeling far from it, I gave her a weak, wobbly smile in return. Grateful.

This all took place shortly before my family and I moved back to the states from our couple year stay in Peru – somewhere in March or April of 2011 my new, gripping fear was born. I can honestly say it was one of the worst days of my life. To be brought down to such a low mental place where merely thinking about it triggered a crippling panic attack. I’d never experienced anything quite like it and I do not wish to in the future ever again.

Gradually the effects of the worst day wore off, but that was only because I didn’t need shots of any kind for a while – lucky me. Then came physical time and getting ready for college, which required some updated immunizations. Joy.

I was nervous. Okay, I was terrified the day I had to get a shot again. I kept telling myself it wasn’t in the butt; it was going to be in the shoulder. These ones never hurt near as much as those butt ones did and I’ve gotten ones like these when I was a lot younger, so I couldn’t wus out. However, my mind was not having any of that. I still tensed up even while the nurse told me to relax. Granted I didn’t go into a full fit of hysterics, but it was a difficult leap over my fear. Thankfully, I made it across.

To this day, the spots above my rear will randomly sting like a needle jabbing me, just to remind me of the traumatizing experience – and believe me, there’s no way I can forget it.

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Ahhh, the true stories of my adventures in Peru. This one is the least loveliest of them all and unfortunately I say that with confidence and pure honesty. That's life, I suppose. It is what it is. I'm just glad the fear has been vanquished in my head. 

Hopefully I'll be posting more, but then again who knows. I feel I've said that before and nothing new changes or happens. Oh well. At least I haven't abandoned the blog completely. 

Ta!

~V