Noillyprat--Shaken, Not Stirred

GoGoGomez

2008-01-10T16:50:00.000-08:00

I have the supidest cat in the world. It is a given that I can not take a bath without him falling into it. When I'm lucky, I am not in it, or I at least get out of the way in time.

Just now, I drew a bath, but was finishing up some other things before I got in. It wasn't 2 minutes before I heard the expected and unmistakable sound of him falling in. He came running out, and started chasing his tail. That was about 5 minutes ago, and he is still running in circles, only pausing every now and then to look sad and confused.

Editing this entry to say that after I posted it, I went and got in the tub. Right as I sat down, someone fell in. Can you guess who? (hint: it wasn't me!)

Take a Walk on the Wild Side

2008-01-09T19:14:00.000-08:00

I started my new job Monday. For the first day, I was required to sit through a new hire orientation all day. I'm now working for a property management company that employs thousands of people, and my orientation class was mostly people who will be on site at various properties we manage: the leasing agents and property managers and maintenance workers. I am an accountant. But still I had to sit through a class that focused mainly on fair housing requirements.

It was very interesting, and now I know the names of each protected class and the dates on which they became protected. But it was really a lot of common sense for anyone that's a nice, normal person. "Oh no shit, I can't refuse to rent to this lady just because she's a 72 year old black jewish lesbian single mother disabled military veteran from Afghanistan and is an active member of the communist party?" Huh.

We also briefly covered harassment in the workplace, with a video and everything. I was able to stick with it through most of it (I guess it never occurred to me that saying "something's not kosher on my Profit and Loss statement" could offend someone, but I suppose I can see it), but when we got to the guy sexually harassing his coworker, they lost me.

It showed a man walk up to a female coworker, presumably at some after hours function (funfact: harassment doesn't have to take place at the office to be harassment). He said that it was pretty funny how, every day when he saw her, she was all professional, manning the x-ray machine, and he was all professional, delivering the.... things he delivered (I don't remember!), and how all he could ever think was that he wished he had x-ray vision because she was so smokin' hot in those scrubs.

Gentlemen! Protip for you: the fact that he worked with her is the least of what's offensive about that come on. Work on your game, boys!

Yesterday I started actual work, and I think it's going to be awesome. A whole office full of 25 accounting nerds. I bet the fun never stops on our side of the building! It's pretty much 25 people, all wearing headphones. Good, I don't like you guys anyway.

Do You Feel Lucky?

2007-12-25T21:20:00.000-08:00

In spite of it all, I do.

Merry Christmas!

Speaking as a Lady

2007-12-22T16:20:00.000-08:00

Who ain't got a man, you know what really irritates me this time of year? All the jewelry commercials reminding me that I ain't got a man buying me any jewelry this year. I think my hatred for these commercials might be rivaled by all the MEN who do have ladies, though.

You know what's awkward? Hanging out at a bar with your male cousin. I'm a big people watcher, and "spot the first date" is a favorite game of mine. So I can't help but feel that in a corner of the bar, there's someone who as pegged us as a first date. Gross.

You know what's sucky? My hot water heater won't even fill a whole bathtub. So if I'm struck with the fancy for a bath, I have to fill it halfway, wait for the water heater to fill back up, and fill it the rest of the way. And NOTHING is worse than getting in, and finding that the water is not as warm as you think it is. So I wait, and tolerate the lukewarm bath, because I'm in til the bitter end.

You know what's nice? I got up this morning, put on my happyfeet sneakers, walked down to Safeway and got myself some breakfast fixins and walked back home. It was about a mile each way, and cold, but boy did it feel good.

You know what makes me want to write? Reading something by a truly astounding author. Do yourself a favor, and read anything by Daniel Handler.

You know what's depressing? Knowing I have to be fabulous in 2 hours and being completely dissatisfied with the clothes in my closet. Wish me luck.

Several Nice Things for the Weekend

2007-12-03T07:54:00.000-08:00

Me:

Casey asked me if I've lost weight (I haven't).
It rained like a crazy motherfucker for about 48 hours.
I found a great "home" bar close to my house. Good prices, casual atmosphere, and best of all, food.
I went out Saturday night and drank one more than my normal limit (I wasn't driving) and had NO hangover Sunday.
I found that one of my favorite coffee shops, which had closed, has reopened in a nicer spot.

Robb:

He got a girlfriend!
All he can talk about is his girlfriend so who knows what else.

Gomez:

When trying to attack a beam of sunlight that I was reflecting on to the wall, he crashed and burned spectacularly, and I laughed at him pretty hard.

7 Things on Thursday

2007-11-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

Stolen shamelessly from another blogger, here are three nice things a day, plus one from my cat.

My hair came out just right.
An older man on the elevator asked me how I was, and told me to have a great day.
Robb did his homework with no argument.

Robb:

They played football with the upperclassmen at lunch.
He outran the water truck (I don't know what this means either).
He got to play Guitar Hero at the library.

Gomez:

Tackled his brother and took him completely unawares. When Leo ran off, Gomez laid down with an incredibly smug look on his face.

I Don't Know Where Transiberia Is

2007-11-29T17:40:00.000-08:00

But I know I want to go.

Saturday night, my mother took us all to see The Transiberian Orchestra. I know absolutely nothing about them. All I know is this video, which I imagine we've all seen:

At this point, I was thinking that it would just be.... an orchestra. We'd go sit and watch a bunch of people in tuxedos play weird music. I was wrong.

My first clue was when I found out it was being held in the college basketball stadium. It was at about this point that I began to fear that my "nice evening out" clothes were going to be overkill. I revised my attire and off we went. At the doors, I noticed signs saying "WARNING: flashing lights and strobes in effect". Ok, so it's going to be a bunch of people in tuxedos playing weird music while lights flash.

Well... yeah. Only not quite like i thought:

It's ROCKSTARS in tuxedos playing weird music! These guys just rocked it right out. The first half kind of dragged, but by my fifth seizure, I was hooked. And I wasn't alone! People all around me were going absolutely crazy. A lady in front of me was dancing and screaming and singing along. At first I thought she was drunk. By the end of the evening, I actually thought she might be slightly off her rocker and felt a little bad. The guys behind me couldn't stop yelling "YEEEEAAAAHHH!!!" People were dancing, singing along, even shouting the guys' names! These guys have groupies!

The first section was a whole long story. It was narrated by a guy who could put Isaak Hayes to shame, smoothest voice I've ever heard:

I wasn't quite following along, and when I compared notes with my family later, all we could agree on was that Santa was drunk in a bar at some point:

(At the show we saw this guy had long white hair)

At the end of the Christmas story, our narrator returned and told us all, "merry Christmas", and blew a kiss out to the audience. As the lights faded to black, I heard the guy behind me say, softly and with feeling, "merry Christmas to you man... merry Christmas to you".

Then they started rocking out for serious. It was an hour or so of guitar solos, blinding flashing lights, all interspersed with Christmas carols. Every one of the guys had long hair, making me wonder if it's a requirement. Every one of them played his solo with the intensity of Jimi Hendrix, even if it WAS "Silent Night" they were playing. You couldn't help but love it. Add in the 4 scantily clad girls singing and dancing, another chick playing an electric violin like a crazy person, and it was just pure gold.

Money Talks

2007-11-19T17:13:00.000-08:00

But it don't sing and dance, and it don't walk.

I LOVE Neil Diamond. I've been listening to him since I was a little girl, and everyone of those songs is a surefire mood elevator for me. Yes, even Heartlights. It could use a little more *BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM*, but still.

Yesterday was a particularly Diamondy day. Not only did I enjoy some of his musical hits, but Saving Silverman was on, the movie that gives him the love he deserves. Now I'm not going to go crazy here and say his performance was as stellar as it was in The Jazz Singer, but it was pretty great and only increased my affection for the man.

In other nostalgia news, I also dug out my cd of The Nutcracker Suite for Robb, who is playing one of the pieces in band. I haven't listened to it for quite a while either, but it was nice to find it still gave me goosebumps. I was all set to come home and watch the masterpiece that is Mikhail Barishnikov dance it, only to be crushed when I rememebered that I only have it on video, and I got rid of my VCR a few months ago. Dammit! I believe the Bolshoi is coming through town though to perform it, so maybe I'll indulge myself. This also means that I'll be blaring the score and jete-ing all over my house next time I have a few minutes alone.

Weeeeee! Who wants to volunteer to take me to the emergency room?

It's Sew Time

2007-11-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

I know I am a terrible blogger. The past few weeks have been pretty rotten. But I think things may be looking up. Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new season of Project Runway.

I will spend this evening getting familiar with every single detail of the contestants, so that I'm completely up to speed. I am fanatical about this show. I wanted everything Jay designed on season 1, was disappointed with Chloe's win on season 2, and wish I could have Jeffrey from season 3 as a house elf.

Expect to hear me exclaim, "I have really got to start sewing again" about 3 million times over the course of this season.

Yay me!

Also in recent news: when I picked up Robb today, some lady driving by me in the parking lot stopped and honked her horn at some pigeons that were in front of her.

That's it. That's all I got.

I am a Law Abiding Citizen

2007-08-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

I've been coloring my own hair for years and years. Problem is, the stuff you can use to do it at home is more damaging, plus I'm more likely to do it incorrectly than a professional, plus they don't last as long meaning I'm doing it far more often than I should be.

For my birthday in June, I treated myself to a professional dye job. He told me to use a certain Paul Mitchell shampoo and conditioner for colored hair. I am a hairdresser's dream, in that I always buy whatever product is suggested to me, so I bought a little starter kit from him.

Now I've finally used every last drop, and need more. Saturday I was at a Cost Cutters getting Robb's haircut (although from now on, he'll be going to my guy too. More on this story later) and noticed they sell Paul Mitchell products. In fact, they have a pack with a huge bottle of my shampoo AND conditioner for $25, which would probably cost me over $40 at my regular salon.

BUT!

I remembered hearing, somewhere, somehow, that Paul Mitchell products not purchased in a Paul Mitchell Salon are not necessarily the same product. So I didn't buy, and waited to go home and look on the Paul Mitchell site. It was too vague and I still wasnt' clear if Cost Cutters was a valid outlet. So, I called. Unfortunately, Paul didn't answer, but a nice lady did. She told me that if there are professional hair people there doing hair, it's an approved outlet and real product.

What a relief!

So Good to His Mama

2007-08-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Today after work, as we left the grocery store, we passed a Payless Shoes. They had a sign up with a picture of these awesome cherry red patent leather high heeled mary janes. Yes yes, I know, it's Payless, but until my budget can accommodate Jimmy Choos and Mahnolos (I'd even be thrilled with a Nine West at this point), I'll take what I can get.

I let out a squeal before I could stop myself. Robbie knows very well my penchant for shoes, and was even able to guess which poster was causing my pain. He patted me on the cheek and said, "you know what? When I'm older, and have a job that pays well, I'm going to take you on a shopping spree for all the shoes you want".

Sweetest thing ever, right?

Then a few minutes down the road he said, "mom, remember how I want to take you for a shopping spree?" When I said I did remember, he laughed nervously and said "nothing over a hundred and fifty bucks, ok?"

Seriously?

2007-07-31T11:51:00.000-07:00

Anyone heard of The Heart Attack Grill?

Today I drove by this place. I guess it's not new, but I hadn't heard of it before today. It's got a sign up, "NOW HIRING HOT NURSES", and sure enough, through the window I saw a bunch of hot nurses serving burgers! The place was filled to the brim with what seemed to be only men. I tried to take a picture, but traffic was moving again and I wasn't able too.

I came straight back here to look it up. The owner walks around in a doctor coat and stethascope, and the only things the serve are burgers (single all the way up through quadruple bypass), french fries fried in lard, soda (but no diet), beer, and cigarettes. There's tons of youtube clibs on their site of various news programs they've been featured on. The funniest one is 20/20, down at the bottom of the page. It has a real nurse complaining that the "sexy nurse" stereotype is contributing directly to people dying, as there is a shortage of nurses due in part to women who would otherwise want to be a nurse deciding not to do so because of this stereotype. That's a head scratcher.

I guess it's no worse than Hooters or Tilted Kilt, but then I can't say I'm a huge fan of those places either.

I understand that boobies are nice for you, but besides the novelty, does it really make lunch better when it's served by a half-naked woman who probably hates you and is milking you (ha!) for a fat tip?

Movies You Can't Resist

2007-07-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

There are some movies that, when they're on tv, I just can't walk away. Even if I own them on dvd, and could watch it any time unedited with no commercials, I still have to sit and watch them when I stumble across them. I think it's just the "yay, looks what's on, what a nice surprise!" factor.

In no particular order, they are:

The Godfather I or II. This is particularly bad, because not only are they both very long, they're even longer with commercials, AND typically if they're playing Part I you can bet Part II is on next.
Dirty Dancing. This one was in heavy rotation last summer, so it's actually finally fallen a bit out of my favor.
The Breakfast Club. I don't think it could ever possibly fall out of favor.
Footloose. Really, this one I just need the last scene, where they dance to Footloose.
Urban Cowboy
Legally Blonde. This is probably my #1 happy movie. Everything about it makes me smiley, every time.
The Shining
Say Anything

Apologies for the low content post, but I've been watching the Godfather for like 8 hours now and I am just trying to figure out why. I'm going to dream I'm a mobster all night, I bet.

Never Mind, I Take it Back

2007-07-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

I did go get a new kitty yesterday. He's the same age as Gomez, just as friendly, you can tell he's going to be huge, plus he's got the funniest chirpy meow I ever heard. But I'm not posting today to tell you about Izzy (seriously, does anyone have a better name idea? He's going to be stuck with Izzy pretty soon).

I got him from a local rescue group. It's not huge, but they have about 10 people who run "foster homes" for animals while they look for new owners. They take them all to PetSmart on the weekends for adoptions, and all in all are pretty succesful. This lady knew I was interested in Izzy though, so she left him at home for me, and I went to her house last night.

It was pretty much your typical Arizona ranch-style home, not in the best of neighborhoods but it was still quiet and neat. I walked into her front room, and felt like I had crossed into an alternate reality where cats were our benevolant overlords. Every wall was lined with giant cat trees and cat condos, except for the wall that had little cat-sized staircases mounted, covering literally the whole wall.

Moving on into the back of the house, her kitchen and dining/living room were pretty much the same, with the exception of a couch and a television to suggest that people actually hung out from time to time. The whole house was tiled, with nary an area rug, which only makes sense when you have 10-20 cats at any given time. I didn't count exactly, but I'm going to guess that she had at least 5 water bowls and even more bowls of food covering half of her kitchen floor.

I sat down on her couch, and was swarmed with cats. I was a little scared.

Anyway, Izzy immediately showed himself to be a good and nice cat, and I was happy to take him. But consider my lesson learned. My house is a people house, with various things for happy cats strewn about. It will never, ever become a cat house, with a small pile of blankets in the corner for me to sleep on.

Three cats is plenty.

I Have Faith

2007-07-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

That I can truly have 20 cats in one home.

I'm getting one step closer this weekend, as I'm hopefully going to get a nice little black Maine Coon kitten to add to our family. His name is currently Izzy according to the owner, but I will take all suggestions for a new name under serious consideration.

I'm hoping this cat lives up to all the common Maine Coon characteristics, and is at least 3 feet long, 25 pounds, and had 6 toes on each front paw. With luck, I will train him to do tricks, like the dishes and sweeping. My other kitten is skinny and always going to be skinny, so my truest heart's desire is to see the little one riding around on the big one.

I'll let you know.

EEEEK!!

2007-07-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've posted, although there have been many stories I meant to write, and just never got around to. Something just happened that I had to share, though.

It's Saturday afternoon, a nice sunny day in my happy bright living room, and I was sitting on my couch, laughing at people on the internet. A showercap and towell were on my head for the hair treatment that had another hour to go, and the kitty Gomez was dozing next to me. Then the invasion began.

A small, furry somethingorother darted across the room, heading from my kitchen to the corner of the living room. The following very quick, but clearly remembered and defined thoughts raced through my head: "Is that a kitten? Did I get a new kitten? Kittens that small can't run that fast". By this time, my real kitten, who is bigger and can run that fast, was on top of the poor little guy, and I was standing on my couch yelling "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD". Literally. The thing is, I am not afraid of mice or other rodents. If you would have described this scene to me, and asked me what I would do, I would never have thought I'd become a cartoon housewife, standing on the couch and dancing while shrieking.

Gomez was having the time of his life, though. He dragged the mouse back to the kitchen, and I recovered myself enough to run around to the other side and shut the door so he couldn't get back into the bedrooms. I came back around just in time to see Gomez let it go, and it just sat there, looking stunned. I grabbed a little plastic box by the couch to catch it, but of course both it and the cat were gone before I could. I chased them back into the kitchen and hit the cat with a broom, and had just enough time to slam the box over the mouse.

After stowing the cat in the bedroom, I slid a cardboard under the box and took the poor thing outside, but not before giving it a stern lecture. I told it, "look, you just got pretty lucky. Please remember that I was nice to you, and do not return. Also please retrieve any friends and family from my home before you go". I will also be honest and say that for about 10 seconds I stood there eye to eye with it and considered keeping it for a new mousie pet. By the eleventh second, I knew that would be one of the more unwise decisions I could make.

I didn't quite know where to take it, so I just let it go in a corner of my patio. My guess is that a neighborhood cat has already eaten it, but what am I supposed to do?

That certainly livened up my Saturday afternoon!

Children Are Precious Gifts

2007-05-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

Except when it's three 11 year old boys, 2 of them aren't yours, and you've had them all in your possession for 30 hours.

Wednesday was the last day of school, so I took Thursday off work and invited two of Robb's friends to spend the night. When I picked them up, one of the moms told me that unless I could keep her son until 8:30 pm the following night, he wouldn't be able to spend the night (because she would have no way to get him to the proper babysitters, otherwise). Even though a big voice in the front of my head shrieked "NOOOOO", I told her that was fine. And of course, I then had to offer to keep the other boy that long as well.

It started out well enough. We stopped at Safeway to get supplies, came home, I made them dinner and then turned them loose. I remember my 11 year old slumber parties, and I remember that that is plenty old enough to let them have their own space, so I took everything I needed and settled into my bedroom to laze around for the night. The kept themselves busy with videogames, movies, and pillowfights, and when I finally ventured out around 2 am, they were all passed out.

Thursday was the tough day, though. They were up playing videogames before I even woke up. I tried to drag out breakfast and make that last, same with lunch. Around 2 I took them to see Spiderman 3, thinking that should kill a good 3 hours. But when we got back, that's when things really started to go downhill. Everybody seemed to come out of the movie cranky (maybe because the movie sucked?), and I still had about two and a half hours to kill before their parents were to show up. They were squabbling a lot, and the pillowfights and wrestling were beginning to get a little too harsh. I still tried to stay out of it, but did have to step in a few times.

There was one nice tension relieving moment, though: all three boys came running into my room, shouting that the toilet was overflowing. I hurried over and turned off the water. When I turned around, one of the boys looked at me and said "I took a really big crap". Great, thanks for not only clogging my toilet with your massive poo, but for telling me that what I'm about to clean up is, in fact, your massive poo.

The rest of the night was mostly me breaking up fights, and finally seperating them all about 30 minutes before pick up time. One of the kids' mom showed up right on time. The father of the other (he of the massive poo) didn't show up until almost 2 hours later, despite numerous phone calls.

I felt pretty bad for Robbie, because it should have been a really fun time. It would have been, too, if it had ended about 5 hours earlier. He was pretty upset by the end of it and is currently never talking to either boy again. One of them is pretty ok in my book, but the massive poo kid, frankly, I would be thrilled if they never played again. I doubt that will happen, though.

Thus ends the Great Sleepover of '07.

Hard Hat Days and Honky Tonk Nights

2007-05-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

High on my list of movies that I'm always happy to catch on cable is Urban Cowboy. Yesterday, I was getting ready to take my "because I can" Saturday afternoon nap, and caught Urban Cowboy right from the start.

It was made in 1980, when I was 6 years old, so it's well within my frame of reference as far as lifestyles go. In fact, my mom has always been a country music freak, so the entire soundtrack takes me back big time, and at that time she was married to a real life good old boy. I was young, yes, but the era is not as foreign to me as say, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

There are so many things I love about this movie, and even more that perplex me. At that time, was it really still ok to smack your woman if she smarted off to you? Was a sullen cowboy who expected a wife to follow his every command really still attractive? Was it really that easy to move in with your cowboy after knowing him for a few days? It just seems weird to me, that in a time period that I have recollection of, attitudes could have been so very different. Maybe it's true, maybe we have come a long way?

All of these questions are overshadowed by the pleasure of watching John Travolta dance, though. I don't know why, but it just really tickles me that he's so good, in so many different kinds of dance. He's just as good two stepping with Debra Winger as he is disco dancing with Karen Gorney, the hand jive with Olivia Newton John, interpretive dance with Cynthia Rhodes, or the twist with Uma Thurman, and I love it.

Also, it reminded me that I've always wanted to ride a mechanical bull. Any takers? There's got to be one somewhere in this town.

Well There's Your Problem

2007-05-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Every girl who wears makeup has (hopefully) stumbled across the perfect lipstick at some point in her life. Sadly, nothing lasts forever and at some point it gets discontinued. My best color has been gone for a couple years. Since then, I've found others, and moved on to lighter shades. I kind of forgot about it, really.

Over the past couple weeks, I've managed to run out of all my lipsticks all at once, so I popped in to Target today to grab a couple new ones. I got one of my standards ("Nature's Blush" by L'Oreal, if you really must know), and looked at some darker wine colors. "Divine Wine" caught my eye, so I grabbed that too. When I got home, of course the first order of business was to try it on. Well it's almost exactly like my old favorite.

That *click* you just heard? That was my whole life falling back into place.

Big Round Butt, Here I Come!

2007-05-07T18:03:00.000-07:00

Since this whole debacle started in late January, I have lost over 20 pounds. Most of this is from purely just not eating. I know this is bad, I know that if I just start packing food away again it's going to hit me like a ton of bricks. But anyway, now that I don't have a pot belly anymore, I was thinking I should get some good form to my bones. I've been doing situps like mad (and by "like mad", I mean for about 3 days in a row, then forgetting for a couple weeks, then doing it again), but what I really want is a nice big round firm butt.

I've never had much of an ass to speak of, and I know this. It's been on my mind lately, but it came to a head Saturday night. My friend Beth was over, waiting for me to pick something to wear. After I finally settled on some jeans, she said, "Holy shit, Jacqui, you have NO ASS!" I agreed that this was true, but she continued, "no, I mean really, not even like you just have a little ass, you have NO ASS".

That's it, that is enough! I vaguely remember an episode of Laverne and Shirley when Shirley got a fake butt to wear under her clothes, but I don't think that's the direction I want to go in. What to do? Even when I was dancing and super toned, I had a small butt. Dancers don't particularly want large asses, and the exercises that you do in ballet and other disciplines simply doesn't do that. I know lunges are a good place to start, but my knees aren't in top shape and give out on me a lot, so that's kind of hard. I do the occasional set of leg lifts here and there, but don't feel like I'm really feeling it where I want it.

But today, I found a new idea: while driving home, I sort of shifted and flexed up and I happened to notice where I felt it. "Hey", I thought to myself, "I'm on to something here". So the rest of the way home, I flexed, and flexed, and flexed. I did stop when a big truck came to a stop next to me, lest they think I was some weirdo getting my jollies in traffic as it was clearly visible that I had some pelvic thrusting action going on. I think this may be a brilliant exercise routine. I did it pretty much nonstop for just under an hour, and (here's something I never anticipated typing here) frankly, my ass is fucking exhausted.

Keep a close watch on my bum for updates.

The Definition of Insanity

2007-05-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

The clever saying goes something like, "Insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results".

So I'm crazy, because I just bought some new plants. Now I admit, sometimes I just forget about my plants, and then they die. But even when I remember them and tend to them lovingly, I just don't seem to have the knack for keeping them happy.

I started off with some things that should be pretty easy to keep up:

Basil

Thyme

Rosemary

Oregano

Grape tomatoes (we had some of these last year, grew the most delicious tomatoes like mad)

Mint

Spearmint

Verbena

Now mint is next to impossible to kill; in fact it will take over the neighborhood if you let it. But I have nice big boxes to let it fill up and make good smells. And it's yummy in my tea. Basil should do pretty well too, and the tomatoes and rosemary as well. The thyme and oregano will likely be my problem children. (*NOTE* I will probably not actually ingest any of these things besides the basil, tomatoes and the mint. Maybe if I start cooking more I'll find the other items are called for, but we'll see. I just got them because they smell so good.) And the flowers I got, verbena, I've had splendid luck with in the past, when I remember to water them.

Everything's already been re-potted and placed where it needs to be, sun-wise. I have a really great patio that should be ideal as far as letting in the right amount of sun without baking the poor things in the July Phoenix sun. I think that if they are still all doing well this time next month, I'll add to the collection. Last year I tried strawberries and cucumbers, (the former was somewhat successful, the latter not at all); maybe I'll give them a go again.

Also, do you know who's pretty?

We Have Liftoff

2007-05-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

Mostly. Got all hooked up with internet, but I am having trouble with the dratted laptop finding the dratted wireless signal. So for now, I am typing on a desk, not my lap. As I prefer to look on the bright side, I am thrilled nonetheless.

I am still surrounded with mountains of boxes. How can I possibly have so much stuff? I keep thinking, "there, that room is all done", then I find 50 more boxes of shit that belong in it. I think I'm never going to move again. Maybe if I stay long enough, my landlord will see fit to simply bequeath me this house. Hey, it could happen.

Other exciting news:

I am going to have a Big Gay Cinco de Mayo starting at a gay sportsbar, then moving on to a gay cowboy bar. Who knew? My mind doesn't know which way to turn. Take one of my favorite kinds of bars (gay) and mix it with my worst kind of bar (cowboy and/or sports) and I just don't know what to think. I'm assured that that drinks will be cheap, and they're both close to my house, so I think it will be a grand time. I'm already in a tizzy over what to wear. One should dress nice for a gay bar, but one should dress casual for a sports bar. One should never dress country, not even for a cowboy bar. The me part of me is fully prepared to go shopping. After all, it's been months since I bought new clothes, and even longer since I bought going out clothes. The new, boring, responsible part of me knows I shouldn't do that. We'll see who wins. I've been awfully good lately. I'm a good shopper, I can get something fantastic for under $30 I bet.

Also, as reported at Casey's, a major tool just got canned from my work. This guy was (is) the biggest douche ever. For a while, I felt bad for him and thought he was just a lame guy who tried too hard. I tried to tell the boys to be nice to him. But no, his dickwaddery could not be denied, and finally even I gave up and recognized him for what he is: a sad, lame 40 year old man married to a 25 year old woman who looks 14, who thinks women are nothing but that thing surrounding a vagina (even the women who would never deign to be with him. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't know that there are any women who would never deign to be with him), who develops man-crushes on nearby alpha-males, rolling over on his back like a dog all the while still convinced he's the pack leader, bullshitting his way through every situation rather than taking the 5 minutes to learn what he's talking about, dropping compliments on everybody and never knowing that everyone can smell his insincerity from miles away, a VP who wears t-shirts and flip-flops to work (for the 5 hours he spends there, anyway) and who wears matching shirts and rides bikes with his girlchild wife while lying to his employees about where he is.

Wow. Ok I'm done. I told Casey I'd give this guy all my negative energy. Good thing he's leaving, this isn't good for me.

I'm off to read some Rob Brezny and find my good energy again. Pronoia, check it out, man.

I'm Weak, So Sue Me

2007-04-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

I bought a coconut cream pie last night. It was delicious. I did make up for it with 40 extra situps and 10 extra pushups, though, so there.

For all my 3 readers (probably only 2, really, I think Kav left the blog behind again? Oh but maybe Chris is out there reading. We'll call it 3), I will supposedly have internet access at home for good this evening, so I will return to bringing you my witty observations and stories. Go ahead, hold your breath.

I will say this for now, though: I am now living in the coolest house ever, and am possibly willing to continue to rent it for the rest of my life, just to live in it.

Inspiration Strikes

2007-04-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't love to go fishing? Well maybe some of you don't. Maybe some of you haven't even heard of it. So let me break it down for you:

"Fishing" is what we call it when you go hunting for fish. The most common method involves putting a hook on the end of a very thin, strong wire (handily known as "fishing line"). One puts something that is appetizing to fish on this hook, lowers the hook into the water and patiently waits for an unsuspecting fish to come looking for a tasty snack.

While of course the good majority of the fish you catch should be edible, even if they're not, hey, fishing's fun! You get to sit on a boat, drink beer and trick fish.

There are other ways to fish, if you choose. You can use a large net, and when lots of fish have swam into it, you can remove your net from the water and HEY! Now you have lots of fish!

You can use a spear, and stab the fish, but I'm guessing this method is hard. I may be smart enough to trick a fish by putting a delicious meal on a hook, but being quicker than a fish and lampooning it sounds beyond me.

Most interesting to me, and likely the most involved, you can use a bird that normally catches fish on it's own, but put a metal ring around its neck and then retrieve the fish from its mouth. I don't even want to think about where I could get a bird like that around here.

I remember one time, fishing with my stepdad, and he made me clean and gut the catfish. Boy, did that suck balls. Another time, we were at the lake, and I was wandering the shore. Little 5 year old me spied a wealth of fish, just hanging out on a string by the water. Grabbing it, excited to take this treasure to my parents, I was chastised by a fairly mean man who apparently had already laid claim to this bounty. Whatever, dude, I don't remember seeing your name on them!

I am lucky enough to live across the street from a canal running through town, where fish can be found. I think that I am going to fashion a spear, and get me some dinner the honest way. No reason I can't keep my eyes open for a bird that likes to catch fish while I'm out there.

Maddening

2007-04-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

Simply maddening.

Name all 50 states in 10 minutes

Before you ask, no, I won't tell you how many I got.

Watch Out!

2007-04-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

For that tree!

I Broke Down

2007-04-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

I bought a cheesecake today.

It made me wish I lived with The Golden Girls, so I could have cheesecake with my sassy gal-pals any time of the day.

Check Your Local Venues

2007-04-01T15:16:00.000-07:00

Turns out I am a pretty good guitar (hero) player. Before today, I'd never even touched a guitar (hero). But in just one afternoon, I taught myself how to play the guitar (hero) and started up a band.

We're called The Hashbrowns, and as you must have guessed by now, I play lead guitar (hero). We only do covers right now, and some of our specialties are Heart Shaped Box, Message in a Bottle, and Mother. We're pretty tight, I know how to use the whammy bar and everything. I'll admit, at first I had a little trouble keeping the red and green buttons straight, but now I'm even ready to try using the blue button.

So, anyway, just let me know if you think you might make it to the show, and I'll put you on the list at the door.

How Delightfully Whimsical!

2007-03-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

On the way home, I pass through downtown Phoenix. After the part that's nothing but hookers, cheap hotels and used car dealerships, there's the nice part, the part I want to live in.

Today, I spied a very well dressed lady walking her dog. It was a beautiful chocolate colored something or other, maybe a boxer or... something. She was very well dressed in a black deep v-necked dress, a perfectly coiffed low ponytail, a very nice wide-brimmed hat. She was probably in her mid to late fifties, but still looked pretty good (except for the fact that she was not wearing a bra, and... well, she should have been). Then I noticed she was wearing thick, scrunched down, raggedy black socks and no shoes. She wasn't carrying a purse, so she wasn't just carrying her shoes, either. I did a double take, thinking maybe she was homeless, but no, I was right about how nice the dress and hat were, as well as her ponytail perfectly curled behind her. Not to mention the fancy sparkly leash on which she had this lovely groomed, healthy looking dog.

Nope, she was just going for a walk in her socks, that's all. That's pretty fucking cool, for some reason.

Hilarity Ensues

2007-03-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I want to strangle my kid. But most times, he's a never ending source of comedy. Tonight brought not just one, but two gut-busters.

Misheard Lyrics, Part the Billionth:

I always thought the lyrics were, "Buddy you're a young man, hard man, shouting in the street, gonna take on the world some day. You got blood on your face, you big disgrace, waving your banner all over the place". Well tonight, my special child was running all over the house, stomping and clapping, singing with all his might, "waving your bladder all over the place".

The Mints that Took the World by Storm:

Many Thursday nights we watch a movie and just chill, to celebrate the impending Friday. He wanted some candy, so I rustled up some Junior Mints. While I was getting a few things done before the movie started, he busied himself reading the literature on the box about the history of the mints. He seemed to be pretty impressed with what he'd read, and came in to fill me in. After clearing up what year they'd started making them (1949), what company made them (Tootsie Roll), and other pertinent information, he started theorizing on the significance of them. "I bet they really changed the world. I mean, I bet they just came out of nowhere and made a candy like no one had ever seen before, and really, I'm sure that all candy was never the same again. I mean, who ever thought of chocolate and mint before Junior Mints came along?" And the thing is, he's probably right.

You Know What I Hate?

2007-03-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

Catching Freebird on the radio, but only catching the end of it.

You know what I like?

Freebird.

Also, I like thunderstorms, but I don't like getting caught in one with no umbrella after I have just taken the time to get all pretty.

PS, whoever "borrowed" my mascara, please return it posthaste, as my lashes are now neither luxuriously thick nor dramatically long. Thanks in advance.

The Hamstercides

2007-03-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

Tootsie is the hamster that I got for Robb on his 9th birthday. She was very big for a hamster, and very personable. We always got along well, and I feel like she really liked me, as much as hamsters can be said to like a person.

Of course all three of my cats have always been fascinated with her, but surprisingly, a little scared of her as well. When I took her out of her cage and let her roam around the floor, they would run away from her. On one memorable occasion, I put her in her little plastic ball to run around, and she started chasing one of my cats. He was eating at his dish, and she took aim, barrelled across the room and crashed into him. After he calmed down and started eating again, she made a big circle around the room, came into place, and once again took aim and made a beeline for him much to my amusement and his dismay.

Another night, while sitting and watching a movie, a movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. There was Tootsie, drinking out of the cats' water bowl. She had apparently chewed a hole in the screen at the top of her cage, pulled herself up and out, tumbled down from the top of the cage which was on top of a dresser, and took herself out for a drink.

Sadly, Tootsie hasn't been doing so well lately. I have known she was getting old and not looking so well, but today she looked like total crap, and finally I saw what I had been afraid of: she had wet tail. Wet tail is the kiss of death in Hamsterland, and when you throw in that she was almost already 3 years old, well, you know this hamster is not meant for this earth any longer.

We watched her for a while, she was really struggling. She has little stairs she has to climb up to get her food and water, and she could barely make it. When she tried to go back down, she sort of just let go and tumbled down to the bottom.

I knew what I had to do, and I talked to Robbie about it and he agreed. But UGH, how to do it? All I could think of was drowning her, but... oh man that would have been awful. My roommate suggested we gas her. He's got all sorts of stuff for his metalwork and welding whatnots, so I put her in a big jar, taped off the top and then he ran some argon into it (I checked, argon is actually a common and preffered method for this sort of thing).

It didn't take long at all, and after she was dead I found a little shoebox for her, wrapped her up in a towell and Robbie and I dug a hole for her in the backyard. He had a mini breakdown (during which he told me he was going to keep living with me forever so he could make sure I wouldn't die, holy shit, not a dry eye in the house at that one), but we got it done, and now he seems to have already forgotten.

I haven't though, I loved my little Tootsie. Sad me :(

Tonight's Math Problem

2007-03-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

Me, home alone

+

Me, watching an episode of Six Feet Under in which David is taken around and assaulted by a crazy person for no apparrent reason.

+

My front door open (albeit with the security door locked)

+

My back door open (with only the flimsy screen that doesn't even lock)

+

Some guy running across my front lawn all the sudden

=

Me freaked right the fuck out and not gonna sleep tonight.

You'll Never Take Me Alive, Coppers!

2007-02-27T07:15:00.000-08:00

This morning during my daily "lie in bed and listen to the minutes tick past thinking about how I'm going to be late to work again today" wakeup, I heard 2 big thuds. Was that the door? Eh, just ignore it, it will go away. Then again. And again. Finally I got up, and looked out the front window to see a police car in front of my house. Maybe I should get that? I opened the door to see two police officers. One was a very young, very handsome black man with a huge smile on his face, the other was an older surly white man who may have been attempting to channel Elliot Stabler (it wasn't working).

"Good morning, miss, sorry to wake you. Do you know anyone by the name of John Doe?"

Here was my big chance. I'm an avid watcher of detective shows, and I relentlessly mock all the suspects who fold under interrogation. "Just stick to your story, you idiot!". Now I do NOT in fact know anyone by the name of John Doe, but still, this was my moment to shine.

"Nooooooooo, I don't?" Fuck. I just sounded so guilty.

"Ok miss, here's a picture, do you know this man?"

I looked carefully. "No?"

"Ok, thank you. Do you live here alone?"

"No, I live here with my son and a friend?" Why are all my answers coming out like questions?

"How long have you lived here?"

"Since August?" Jesus Christ, it's a cold hard fact I moved into this house in August, and I even sound like I'm lying about that.

"Ok miss, thanks for your time, sorry again to wake you."

With a mumbled "thank you" and "sorry", I closed the door.

Well, if I ever wondered if I could cut it as a criminal, I think I just found my answer.

Spare Some Change?

2007-02-26T17:51:00.002-08:00

There are a lot of hard things about being a single parent. Many of these things are chronicled in various Lifetime Movies, such as money problems, no emotional support, no one to hand the kid off to when you just can't take any more. But nobody ever thinks about the little things. For example:

Last night at 9:30, with the kid supposedly in bed and me in my jammies watching some Sex and the City in bed, ready to crash out for the night, he came wandering into my room with a mouth full of toilet paper. The tooth that had been wiggling for weeks had finally come out. He may be a little old, but still, kids get money when they loose a tooth, no questions asked.

So here it is, after bed time, the house all quiet and turned off, a tooth I owe money for, and me with no cash. What do I do? Do I shove a bunch of coins under his pillow? Do I write him a check or I.O.U.? Maybe some cigarettes.

I got lucky and found a stray dollar, which I know is a little low for the going rate nowdays, but it had to suffice. I'd better take inventory of his teeth and make a stash of emergency dollars, I guess.

Where are the Small Children Fanning Me?

2007-02-25T19:42:00.000-08:00

Saturday afternoon manicure/pedicures are fast becoming a ritual. I have a few different places I go, depending on how long I have, how much money I want to spend, or how busy each place is when I want to go. Yesterday, my normal quick in and out choice had over an hour wait, so I moved on to my second choice which is closer to my house and does a better job, but usually takes too long.

The owner is a vietnamese woman who is very friendly, and she employs several sullen and bored hispanic teenage girls. When I walked in, it was completely empty so as usual, the owner jumped all over me. She ushered me into a pedicure chair, shouted at all the girls, and turned on the massage feature of the chair.

The thing about treating myself to a mani/pedi is that I want to turn off and relax for an hour or so. For me, this does not involve being battered by a chair and fawned over by a lady who asks me over and over again, "are you happy?" As soon as she turned her back, I turned off the massage chair, and sat back to start reading as the lucky girl started to work on my feet. But today was apparently going to be different. The owner yelled at one of the other girls to massage my arm, and over my protests she turned the massage chair back on and a very unhappy girl started rubbing lotion on my left arm. While I was still trying to tell her "no, thank you", two other girls joined, one on my other arm and the other on my other foot.

Fine. Maybe I should just try to enjoy this, I thought. I tried to relax into the chair, which was "rubbing" me with such force that my whole body was moving up and down, each limb being attented to by a gum chomping, irritated looking girl. I recognize that I am paying for this, so this feeling that I'm a lazy queen being serviced by ladies in waiting is unfounded. Even so, I found it difficult to let go, and a little weird to lie there staring at the ceiling with all limbs akimbo and the chair rocking me til I felt seasick.

Lucky for me, they keep a movie playing most of the time, so I decided to focus on that. It was The Punisher, which I haven't seen, but certainly seems an odd choice for a day of relaxation and beautification. At least it was something to look at, so I made it through the rest of the experience relatively intact, and with matching toesies and fingers. As I paid, I really struggled with how much to tip. Four girls worked on me, but that's very uncommon and I certainly didn't ask for it. In the end, I tipped more than normal, but still felt that it wasn't enough and that now they hate me.

I'd like to say that I left feeling super relaxed, but in truth, I left in a little pain. Today it's even worse, I have a couple of bruises from the chair rubbing over my bony shoulders, and in some spots, my muscles are quite sore and hurt to the touch.

The things I do to look pretty for you boys...

Sometimes You Just Have to Nerd it Up

2007-02-24T18:21:00.000-08:00

Oh sure, I could be out dancing, eating, seeing a movie, drinking, or any number of things. But how am I spending my Saturday evening? Drinking wine and watching a show about solar flares. It's pretty fucking cool.

Later, losers.

Beating Negroes like Hotcakes

2007-02-20T19:25:00.000-08:00

I think that may be the funniest line I have ever heard a comedian utter.

The World According to Me

2007-02-18T19:48:00.000-08:00

Here's some of my bests:

Best book you should read: (Actually, here are 4).

Lolita by Nabakov.
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.
Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx.
Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice.

Best beer to drink: Chimay

Best place to get your nails done: that place by my house.

Best music to listen to on a warm night on your patio with a bottle of wine: Hotel Costes, Volume 9.

Best song to make you smile and remind you that the universe is in order: Cannonball by Damien Rice.

Best cheap wine: Searidge from Safeway. That shit is good, and it's $3!!!

Best horoscope: Freewill Astrology.

Best show to watch: Ugly Betty. It's crazy good, consider me in love.

Best guy to teach you how to talk to women: Jeff Buckley

Best way to wake up: A happy "good morning, starshine" from your favorite little boy.

Best bar to go to at 3 pm on a Saturday afternoon: Chez Nous. Ask anyone.

Best bar that is blue: The Blue Bar.

Best girl to know: Michelle my belle.

Best place to be drinking a beer right now: Right here, on my back porch that is just teeming with contentedness.

Thirty Helens agree!!!

Lovely and Amazing!

2007-02-18T18:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had quite possibly the best Saturday ever.

I woke up at a leisurely 9ish am, and had my Saturday morning ritual, namely, sourdough toast, Grape Nut Flakes, blueberry juice in front of the TV watching my tivoed What Not to Wear. Once that was over, I wasn't quite willing to leave the cozy confines of my blanketed couch, so I moved on to Lost. The short little fall season was outrageously disappointing, but they are back in fine form. Enough with the poignant shots of Kate torn between Jack and Sawyer, already! Jack is a whiny bitch and Sawyer's a sexy motherfucker, so go to it! Plus, this episode was entirely about Desmond, and what's not to love about 40 minutes of dreamy scottish brogue? I followed up all this excitement with an uneventful but entirely delightful couple of hours during which I took a bath, sat outside in the beautiful Arizona day, and performed an informal dance recital in my living room.

Feeling it was time to actually leave the house, I treated myself to a manicure, and it was a good one. Sometimes you get a really blah manicure and a bad paint job, but this lady was on top of her game. I then took the next logical step in my perfect day... I went to Target. If there's anything that beats a trip to Target, I couldn't begin to guess what it might be. The only small mar in my day was that I need new sunglasses, and they didn't have any I liked, but still I left with new jeans, new top, and new shoes. *dreamy*. On my way home, I stopped at Sonic for a vanilla coke and some tots. I ate this nutritious meal while catching up on Ugly Betty.

Now for the best part: I made some popcorn on the stove, grabbed a six-pack and some Junior Mints at the store, and went to the drive-in. I LOVE the drive in, but haven't been in at least a year, and have never gone by myself. But it was great! I just kicked back, drank my drink, ate my popcorn (and Junior Mints!) and enjoyed the silence. I saw Hannibal Rising, which was actually an incredibly shitty movie, but who gives a crap? Not me. I didn't stay for the second movie (Blood and Chocolate) because I was getting tired and didn't want to fall asleep at the drive in all by myself. I came home happy as could be, though, and passed right out on my couch.

Best. Day. Ever.

Let's Go!!

2007-02-15T10:46:00.000-08:00

Robbie Williams is here, in my very state.

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/celeb/articles/0214robbie-CR.html

You got no love, then you're with the wrong man
It's time to move your body
If you can't get a girl but your best friend can
It's time to move your body.

Sheer brilliance.

A Little Bit of Jacqui for You

2007-02-13T07:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I really wrote about anything personal on here, so I thought I'd take today's post to tell you a little bit about me.

I'm a black belt in karate, and working for the city I have to discipline my body. I know that it's demanding to defeat those evil machines, but I know I can beat them. Those evil-natured robots are programmed to destroy us. I've got to be strong to fight them, so I'm taking lots of vitamins. I know that it would be tragic if those evil robots win.

I'm a pretty good friend, too. I will NEVER let those robots eat you.

Anyway, that's all for now, but I feel a little closer to you now, and I hope you feel the same.

Kisses,

Jacqui

Well There's Your Problem!

2007-02-11T20:42:00.000-08:00

Tonight I was lucky enough to catch Say Anything on tv. If there's a better romantic hero than John Cusack, I don't know who it is. And I know there's no better romantic quote than this:

"What I really want to do with my life - what I want to do for a living - is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it. "

And with that, I started thinking of how many love movies I've seen that have really ruined real life for me and countless other women. For example:

"I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it."

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you"

"If I should die this very moment, I wouldn't fear. For I've never known completeness like being here, wrapped in the warmth of you, loving every breath of you. Why live life from dream to dream?"

"It's only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found. I am only here tonight because of you. You are all I am. You are all my reasons."

And the all time killer:

"My angel, my all, my other self,
Why this deep sorrow where necessity speaks - can our love endure except through sacrifices, through not demanding everything from one another; can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine? My heart is full of many things to say to you - Ah! -- there are moments when I feel that speech is nothing after all -- cheer up -- remain my true, only treasure, my all as I am yours; the gods must send us the rest: that which shall be best for us. Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us -I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. ever thine ever mine ever ours."

Bonus! First to identify them all can be my valentine.

I'm Trying

2007-02-08T08:45:00.000-08:00

I knowI'm a big pussy for starting up the blog again and already stopping, so here I go. It feels a little weird to be posting mundane shit when my whole life is up in the air, I guess.

But.

I may be buying a house as early as this weekend. The thought makes me go crazy, my very own house all for me, by me. Here are some things I am excited about:

My own pink sheets on my own girl bed in my own girl room, sheets and blanket perfectly tucked in so that I may lay flat as a pancake under them.
Waking up on Saturday mornings and watching 90210 in bed.
Spending Saturday afternoons with all the windows open, music loud while I do whatever I want.
An awesome back patio covered in fauna (that I will kill the first week, probably) and cool shit.
A roman tub that I will take leisurely soaks in late at night after the kid's in bed.
Stairs.
Going out to meet friends for Saturday lunches/movies, what-have-yous and coming home to my same house, just like I left it.

Now, to be fair, here are some things I'm scared shitless about:

Having a stiff neck and no one to rub it.
Being bored on a Saturday afternoon and no one to talk to.
Being too tired to make dinner and no one to take over.
Needing to fix something that I don't know how to fix.
Bugs.
Waking up on a Saturday morning and nobody to eat breakfast with.
Running out of wine in the bath tub and no one to refill me.
Being a sad bitter lonely old lady living in Kav's retirement home.

These Changes

2007-02-04T18:22:00.000-08:00

Ain't changing me, the bold hearted girl I used to be.

Quotes to keep me moving:

Feel no shame for what you are.

I finally decided my future lies beyond the yellow brick road.

She runs up into the light, surprised. Her arms are open; her mind's eye is.

I am milk.

There is no wrong, there is no right. The circle only has one side.

How about remembering your divinity?

I'm beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found.

Dress yourself in black, listen to The Cure.

Ain't nothing gonna break my stride.

Express yourself!

No need to bother now... let it out, let it all begin.

My mind's the same place as it's always been.

Well, those quotes plus astonishing amounts of wine.

Kinky Foodplay!

2007-01-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

Tonight at the Cold Stone Creamery, I noticed several of their posters on the walls. All of them featured a dreamy looking broad with ice cream held up against her face, and the caption, "Sweet Creamy Indulgence".

Surely I'm not the only person who finds this a little dirty?

Spotted at the SuperCuts

2007-01-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

The boy was getting pretty shaggy, and wanted to look like this:

So I took him to get it done.

While we were waiting, we sat down next to two boys in their early teens, maybe 14. They were fun to listen to, talking about this and that girl, who had the worst haircut, what they would do to their hair if they could, all sorts of important boy stuff. Very cute and fun to listen to. The subject briefly turned to Clay Aiken and his sexuality, Lance Bass and his coming out, and then one of them put on his headphones and started flipping through tracks on the cd player. When he found what he wanted he sat back in his seat, contentedly staring at the ceiling. I could hear the tinny music coming out of his headphones ... that can't be right? No.... nooooooo way... holy shit. IT IS!!

"Whoooooooooooooooa I wanna dance with somebody! I wanna feel the HEAT with somebody. Yeah I wanna dance with somebody, with somebody who loves me".

Wow.

Next, one of the ladies getting a trim was done and came over to pay. She had been droning on in the background the whole time, but now I started listening. In a horrid, nasal, monotone, she was going on about her photography as she paid. She took her money out of a tote with Lady and the Tramp airbrushed onto the side, telling the poor guy over and over that her photography was really improving. She continued to talk all the way out her door, with me, my son, the two boys and the hairdresser staring after her, mouths agape.

She was barely out the door, when a boy in his late teens wearing his pants around his knees and a cocked visor came out of the Subway next door, yelling behind him, "don't ruin my night then, you stupid bitch". A young girl came storming out after him screaming. As he turned back towards her the boys next to me started yelling for someone to shut the propped open door and the hair guy came sprinting over to close it.

I turned to the boys, who were looking at me sheepishly. One of them told me "I just didn't want to have to break that up, but I would if it got any worse". Somewhat against my will, a wave of maternal instinct washed over me and I smiled at them and told them it would be better if they stayed inside. By this time though, the loving couple outside had made up and were walking back into Subway with their arms around each other.

Next came in an oversized yet still good looking hispanic man. Goodlooking except for the quarter sized patch of straggly, inch long, sparse hairs sprouting from his chin. And his wife, butt ugly but with probably the prettiest hair I've ever seen, thick and shiny and curly. She began speaking in his general direction and his eyes glazed over in a way that spoke volumes about the years and comfort they had between them.

Now it was Robb's turn to get cut, and as I got up to go, the boys told me in unison, "have a nice night ma'am". I really wanted to hate them for that, but I couldn't. Who ever said the younger generations are going to shit? I don't believe it.

A swank new haircut and some awesome people watching? It was a great night.

Love Notes from the 5th Grade

2007-01-28T17:14:00.000-08:00

My 11 year old son is quite prone to falling madly in love at the drop of a hat. In the spirit of a true tortured artist, he writes poetry for each new girl. I usually rescue them from the trash, and have been keeping them all for a later date (his wedding, maybe). But I decided that to deprive the world of this poetry would be a crime, so here is

Anna's Poem

For as long as I can remember, I've been looking for someone like you.

Someone nice not mean.

Someone generous not selfish.

When I first laid my eyes on you

I felt nice inside

So I bid you adieu

I shall see you in the future

Nice & generous Anna

How to Never, Ever Get Laid

2007-01-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

Last November, my friend Joe was in town for business and I took him to a bar in Scottsdale. For those of you that may not know, Scottsdale is pretty much Barbietown. The bar I took him to is especially beloved by the most annoying, fake blonde, fake tan, identical girls and the most annoying, baseball cap and flipflip wearing fratboys you can imagine. Joe is one of the crassest people I know, and then there's me, who is anything but a blonde barbie. Scene set.

We were sitting outside pounding back drinks and enjoying some delightful chips and salsa, and of course halfway through my first drink I had to pee. I made my way inside, and when I came out of the bathroom there was a guy standing and waiting for me. He was about my height, dark blonde with a goatee, navy blue cableknit sweater and pleated khakis. All in all think of Chandler Bing circa 2000. He came towards me and said, "Hi, my name is Dave... I know this is really forward but is that guy out there your boyfriend?" I told him no, but that I did have a boyfriend at home. He said, "Oh, ok, well thanks for your time, and you should know that you're really beautiful".

Ok, great, thanks, always nice to hear that, right? I rejoined Joe and forgot about it. But owing to my marble-sized bladder, I was back at the bathroom in no time, only to find Dave waiting for me again. "I'm sorry... I know you have a boyfriend, but couldn't we go out to lunch sometime? There's no harm in lunch, right? No strings, I'd just like to get to know you". I said, "thank you, but I'd better get back out to my friend".

After that, I just decided to hold off on the bathroom trips, but jackass Joe had to go next. He predicted that I'd get jumped by Dave the second he left our table, and sure enough, Dave pounced almost as soon as Joe turned his back. This time he was prepared with a note.

Joe was nice enough to come back quickly, and proceeded to stare daggers at him until he finally left our table. We left shortly after that, and needless to say, I never called Dave for dinner. Sometimes I wonder, though.... do you think maybe he printed up like 20 of those notes every night before he went out?

The Language of Mommy

2007-01-22T20:46:00.000-08:00

If I came up to you and said, "Hey, remember that movie from your friend that we really liked with that lady on a train and there was a mean dog and she used to be in the middle of that gameshow with two guys?" I bet you would not remember that movie.

But that's exactly what my son said to me tonight. Because I know my son, and I know how he thinks, I was able to have the following thought process occur:

Gameshow? Two guys? Lady in the middle? Ah, Whoopie Goldberg on Hollywood Squares. Hmmm... movie from a friend? Ah, Oscar gave me Neverwhere and Whoopie isn't in it but that lady does look like her and there's no train but they do go in a subway car, and there's no mean dog but there is a charging bull.

I said "Neverwhere?" and he nodded, satisfied, and went to finish brushing his teeth.

Sometimes little things remind me that (for now, at least) nobody knows my baby like I do, that that I'm not always half bad at this mothering business.

Ouchies

2007-01-20T17:02:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you learn hard lessons in unexpected places.

Today, I learned that a woman over a certain age (lets say... 27) should never, ever, look at herself in a magnifying mirror under flourescent lighting.

Vanity is a weird thing. I used to be such a mouse, I thought I was hideous. Finally, at some point in my early twenties I found out this wasn't true, went to the other extreme, and fell in love with myself. I know now that I wasn't as great as I thought, but after a whole life of feeling homely I really just ran with the vanity. I had a few shining years where I felt beautiful and sexy all the time. Of course, it ended too soon and the wrinkles came and the pores clogged and the skin got less firm and even the pounds started showing up in weird places.

So other than avoiding flourescent lighting like the plague, what's a girl to do? Sometimes I think I will end up that sad movie cliché (is it Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane that I'm thinking of? Ooh, or Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream)... you know the one where an old hag goes crazy, and spends the rest of her life caking on makeup, smearing lipstick all over her mouth, looking into a mirror and seeing herself as the most beautiful girl in the land. To make it really good I guess I should also prattle on to myself about all the gentleman that will be courting me at the ball tonight. Maybe someone will hire a nurse who will sit quietly in the corner to make sure I don't harm myself, and she will be kind enough to chat and agree with me, until it's time to feed me my "vitamins" and put me to bed.

That actually sounds pretty fun. Maybe I'll start tomorrow.

The Shoe Theory

2007-01-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

Because this has never been published before, and Michelle and I always meant to. Finally, at long last, we bring you the Shoe Theory:

Like shoes, you will have several men in your life. It's important to put some thought into their selection, as other people will notice them! Following are just a few of the styles you may find.

The Slippers: That wonderfully comfy pair that you can't bring yourself to get rid of, although you'd die if anyone else saw them!

The Super Hot Strappy Sandals: Can you even believe how beautiful? Christ, they hurt though. So regretfully, you put them away, knowing that even as goodlooking as they are, you just can't continue to subject yourself to them. Unfortunately, chances are good you'll come across them in the back of your closet one night when you're desperate, try them again and then remember why you got rid of them the first time.

The Cowboy Boots: Oh come on, every girl needs to pony up at least once in her life with a good old pair of shitkickers!

The Flipflops: Sometimes you just need to slip into something easy.

Jellies: Oh my God, can you believe you ever wore those??

The What's the Problems?: They look good. They're pretty comfortable. You always get compliments on them. But somehow, no matter how hard you try, they just don't go with anything you have.

Payless Shoes: For those occassions when you know you'll just need them the one time.

Designer Shoes: They cost you a lot. They're hip and trendy. They make you look great. But they take forever to break in, and by the time you do, they're so last fall.

The Classic: They're also expensive, and take a while to break in, but you're willing to invest the time and money because you know that once you do you'll have them for life. Only problem is, they're impossible to come by.

The Green Shoes: Where did you get those amazing shoes?? I am so jealous!!

The Perfect Pair of Black Shoes that Look Great, Go with Everything AND Feel Good: All you can do is hope you don't wear them out too fast.

Sad and Melancholy to Infinity

2007-01-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

Is that how it goes?

Something that used to be my favorite:

-Get the kid to sleep (8 pm)
-Pick some mellow, yet moving music (8:03 pm)
-Make some coffee (8:30 pm)
-Chug a cup (8:34 pm)
-Clean like a crazy-ass motherfucker (8:35 pm)
-Get distracted by the imaginary audience watching my twirls across the living room (8:45 pm)
-Start showing off with some killer pirohuettes (8:53 pm)
-Fall down due to the fact that I never could do a proper pirohuette (8:54 pm)
-Lie on the floor, staring at the ceiling, daydreaming and enjoying the music (8:55 pm)
-Fall asleep (12:00 am)
-Wake up and stumble to bed (5:00 am)

Last night I was again the Prima Ballerina of my living room. Which is still a mess.

Mansandal Matt

2006-12-19T18:25:00.000-08:00

I promised this story as payment, and I hear Casey has been known to break a person's leg when they don't pay up, so for you, poopsie, I write.

In the summer of 2003 I found myself newly (heartbrokenly) single, and rather than act like a sensible person and properly mourn, I went looking for new companionship with a vengeance. Since there's nothing as quick and easy as shopping online, I started with a dating website. I poured through profile after profile, looking for someone interesting and handsome enough to replace the hottest man I had ever been with.

After some good laughs at quite a few profiles (say, too bad there's no service to help people make a good dating profile, Casey. Look into it, willya?), I found Matt. Matt looked nice enough looking; he was no Abercrombie model like my ex, but pretty is as pretty does and his profile seemed decent enough. I ignored the fact that he was from Bisbee (notorious hippie town), and the fact that he worked at Trader Joe's (notorious hippie store), and all of the other red flags to a girl like me such as "Phish", "hiking", and I wrote to him. Almost immediately he answered, and after a couple emails I suggested meeting. I always advise meeting as soon as possible, rather than a long drawn out email exchange during which you have plenty of time to build up a completely inaccurate picture of whomever you're talking to, making disappointment all the more likely. And...um.... I also knew I'd be talking to the ex soon and really wanted to be able to say I had a date coming up.

So off I go to meet Matt at the Barrio Cafe, a wonderful date place in downtown Tucson. I walked in to find him waiting at the bar, looking nothing like his picture, and rather shorter than advertised. He gestured awkwardly at a poor sick little rose sitting in front or him, and said "it's for you". I was determined to have a good time, so I thanked him very much and sat down, pulling the rose in front of me. I proceeded to chatter like a maniac all night to make up for his silence, and when we were done with dinner I left thinking "he can't possibly have enjoyed that either". I realized halfway home that I hadn't even bothered to look at his shoes (remember fellas: nothing will get you laid quicker than a great pair of shoes), but I figured that even that most important of signs didn't matter at this point.

But I'd had a drink or two too many over dinner, and when I got home to find no message, no email, no NOTHING from the ex, I just sat there and cried and smoked and drank some more. When I woke up the next morning and ran to check my email first thing, there was still nothing from the ex, but there was a note from Matt saying he had a good time and would like to see me again.

Suddenly this, combined with the rose (after all, who else had brought me flowers lately?) cast him in a more favorable light. Soon I knew, just knew, that this was going to be just what I needed. I was imagining us happy together, his little daughter the perfect new sibling for my son, aqnd Matt himself just exactly the quiet, steady rock I needed to calm me and my constant frenzies down. (***NOTE***I never said I wasn't crazy).

We agreed to meet the next day to see a movie. As I walked up, all sorts of things were screaming wrong. The muted look of anticipation on his face hidden behind his gold rimmed glasses from 1991, the faded navy turtleneck tucked into the pleated olive dockers with a brown belt and OH MY FUCKING GOD ARE THOSE NAVY BLUE MOTHERFUCKING SOCKS YOU'RE WEARING WITH YOUR MOTHERFUCKING BIRKENSTOCKS??????

Yes, yes they were.

It all hit me right then, so hard that I don't know how I even kept walking. This wasn't right, this was not what I wanted, I was nowhere near ready to move on and even when I was, this guy was not the guy for me to do it with and to use him would be horrid. It was bad enough that I was here, though, having let the poor man think I was interested, and I wasn't about to be any meaner about it. Luckily, in a movie there is no conversation to be had, and when he suggested ice cream around the corner I accepted, planning to be polite but disinterested. I did just that, making only the most mundane of conversation, answering his questions with the shortest possible answer and not asking any questions of my own, and when we parted ways I made a noncommital noise at his suggestion that we do it again, and walked quickly to my car without looking back.

The next morning there was an email from him, which I didn't answer for 3 days, and when I did I only said "I liked the movie, thanks again". After that I didn't hear from him for a while, and I felt guilty but relieved. Then a couple of weeks later, he emailed asking "Can I take you out to dinner sometime?", to which I responded "sorry, but I don't think I'll be able to". I felt like that was pretty clearly an "I don't want to".

Silence.

A couple of days later, he wrote, "Well why don't you let me know when you're free, then", which I didn't answer at all.

A couple more days go by, and he sent, "When can we go to dinner?". Again, I answered, "I'm sorry, I can't".

Silence for days and days, until I get one last email saying, "I really wish you could be a grownup about this and just tell me you're not interested in me. I don't appreciate this game playing and just need you to tell me if you're not interested in hanging out with me. If you're not, we could still be friends".

Ok, now I think that anyone with any people skills would have realized after the first "no" that I wasn't digging it. And at the very least I REALLY don't think I was game playing, I mean I kept saying "no". I never said "maybe later" or "now's not a good time" or any of that crap, I just said "sorry, no". And lastly, what the fuck, "even if you're not interested in hanging out with me, we could still be friends"?

So I answered simply "I'm not interested in hanging out with you", he answered "Thank you for being adult", and that is the story of Mattenstock.

Run Away Train, Never Comin' Back

2005-07-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, my 9 year old son Robb, my boyfriend Eli and I got into a small debate over a couple of words. Robb had it in his head that the monitor was the computer, and the tower was called a monitor. We looked online, showed him pictures to convince him which was which, and being the ultra sore loser that he is, he slammed into his room. I went into the living room to fold some clothes, and next thing I know, he's standing there next to me with his backpack and his all purpose stick.

"I think I ought to run away now", he told me. "If you want, you can call 911 after I leave, and they can probably find me and bring me back".

"You really want to run away? Where are you going to go, are you walking?"

He told me that he was going to ride his razor scooter down to Tucson (we're in Phoenix, his dad lives in Tucson about 120 miles away). I told him that he had to do what he thought was best, so he went out back to get his scooter. I watched him meander around the back porch, and then when I saw him heading back towards the door I turned back to folding the clothes, trying to look unconcerned. He came in and stood by the door for a couple of minutes until I noticed him and said "you're still here? Do you need some stuff to take with you?" He said that he thought maybe it would be better to ride his bike, and I agreed. He shuffled back out and stood looking at his bike for a few minutes.

Finally he got on and went out the side gate, and I figured it was time to see who could bluff who the best. I went out the front door to head him off, and said "wait, you really think you just want to go right now? Why are you leaving, just because we said you were wrong?".

He told me "I think I just need to get away for a while. Don't worry, I'll come back."

I told him that I really didn't think that this was the best way to get to Tucson, and that if he thought he could wait til Friday, I'd give him a ride (I was already supposed to take him down Friday anyway). He said no, he just needed an adventure, and he was ready to take all the risks he had to in order to make this trip. "Look, I'll be careful, and I know where I'm going. Well actually I don't know where I'm going, can you draw me a map?" I told him I could, but that it was going to be a really long trip, and maybe he'd be better off waiting til the morning to get a fresh start. He wanted to know how long it would take, and Eli yelled out the door that it would take at least 4 days on a bike. That was enough to convince him to come inside and do a little more logistics planning before he left.

He came inside, and Eli asked him if he had some water. When he said no, Eli told him that he needed at least a gallon a day. We have a big 5 gallon jug of water, and Robb's face just fell when we showed him how much 4 gallons was. I reminded him that he'd also need somewhere to sleep, and Eli offered his sleeping bag. It's a good one, big and puffy, and I told Robbie I could roll it up and tie it to his backpack. At this point he understood that we were talking about sleeping on the desert floor, and asked if I could spot him $50 for a hotel room. I told him they won't rent a room to a person under 18, plus they ask for a credit card, so he was stuck with camping out. Eli took that opportunity to ask, "you have a snakebite kit, right?", and I asked Eli if that would work for scorpions and spiderbites too. I don't know the last time I saw Robbie's eyes get so big.

This was really worrying him, and he started wondering if maybe he couldn't just ride all the way to Casa Grande (halfway point) without stopping for sleep, and once he was there he could go to a Circle K to call his dad to come pick him up. Why it didn't occur to him that he could go to the Circle K down the block from our house, I don't know. He pretty quickly determined that that was too far to ride without sleeping, so he turned to the internet for advice on how to avoid snakes and the like, but with little luck.

I reminded him that my offer was still good for the ride on Friday, and that he might just keep that in mind as a backup plan, but he was still pretty determined. He thought maybe he could hitchhike instead, and get there quicker. So naturally I had to warn him about kidnappers, and people that might run him off the road. Eli stepped in to let him know that if the police saw him they'd pick him up because he was just a kid, and that he might be better off to stay away from the freeway, which would add a couple days to the trip. We left him with that to mull over (during which time Eli suggested we go rent "The Hitcher" to show him).

After about half an hour, Eli went in and sat him down, man to man, and offered to let him borrow his knife so that he could defend himself, or in case a snake bit him he could cut out the poisoned flesh. This proved to be too much, and Robbie decided to take me up on my offer of a ride after all. I told him I'd be happy to, and that night before bed I gave him an extra big hug and said I was glad he was staying, because I would miss him too much and be too worried about him.

The best part was this morning, when I looked in his backpack. He had packed 2 pairs of sunglasses, his marbles, a bunch of tennis balls, some yen and euros that Eli brought him last year, a camera, his binoculars and his deoderant.

Yikes

2005-06-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize how long it had been...

I've been on excellent (mostly) behavior at work, which used to be where I wrote all of my blog postings. And at home, there's just been so much to do that I haven't had the time to sit down and write anything. The moving itself may be done, but there's always so many little things to do, like organize, clean, paint, bla bla bla. Oh yes, and enjoy our new domestic bliss instead of staring at a computer monitor.

Anyway, it seems a lot of people are drifting right now. Joe has a new home at Rooster Teeth, and Broken Lizard seems to be on a downswing. Well, at least with the interesting people. There's always plenty of dumbasses available for posting.

Work is going great. I really like it here more and more, and I think I will accept the fact that at some point, I'm going to need a secure job for life, and make it this one. I'll keep going to school, because it's not like getting a degree is a bad thing. Which reminds me, I need to register.

Robb, my little jetsetter, has been all over the place, and I miss him. I'm very much a creature of habit, and I'm having a hard enough time adjusting to new house, new job, new roomie, and having Robb not home is hard. Just 3 more weeks though, and it'll be back to normal. School starts August 13, is that insane? When I was little, it started the day after Labor Day. Of course they get out a lot earlier in May, but still it seems so early. I can't wait though, I want nice normal time.

As far as the new roomie, it has been surprisingly easy to slip into living together. I guess I thought it would be really weird or hard, because for the past year we've seen each other on weekends only, and now it's every day. But no, it's been good. I think the main issue is cleanliness and the state of the house, and he's being amazingly patient with me while I get my shit together and get it all put away.

Before anyone says so, I know this post is tripe. But at least now you know where I've been, and I've broken the seal so that tomorrow it will be easier to bring you the fascinating insights to which you have become accustomed.

Don't Call it a Comeback

2005-05-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

Here I am, alive and well, and somewhat unpacked.

We left Tuesday, shortly after Robb got out of school for the last day. About 15 minutes out of Tucson, Eli called to tell me that he was stuck in Sedona for work. They were up last week installing a vagina shaped fireplace (commissioned by a crazy lady), and it still wasn't done, so they went back Monday, and weren't able to come back until Thursday. So Robb and I spent the first 2 nights in our new home by ourselves, while Eli was a slave to the Vagireplace. Vaginaplace. Labiaplace. I don't know what to call it. I was pissed, but what are you going to do? Wasn't his fault.

I started the job today. I figured it was unseemly to be busy on a message board on my very first day, so I abstained. Being the last day of the month, the whole accounting department (including my boss) was all aflutter, and pretty much all I could do was try to stay out of the way.

I perused the Policies and Procedures manual, and made a disappointing discovery. While they are somewhat lax on email and internet usage (sort of just a "don't let it be a problem" kind of policy), they are death on instant messengers. DEATH. This puts a major crimp in my plans. I actually don't waste a lot of time on IM; it's the websites that take up so much of my time, so I was thinking I would give up the daytime surfing, but continue to enjoy the yahoo. I sort of look at it like my IM buddies are coworkers, there for a quick shooting of the breeze, but rarely any long in depth conversations. I'm not happy about this at all. At a later point, I may look at using the web based clients but for now I'll behave. I sat watching the woman ahead and to my left browse ebay for quite a while, so I'm not too worried about the boards as long as I get my stuff done.

As far as the actual job goes, seems like it'll be nice. It's a shit office, a big blank room with no windows, and 4 rows of 2 desks. There are 3 other people in that office currently, and at least I have the desk in the back corner. I can't stand having people behind me, it gives me the willies. I have to have a wall at my back. I also got a list of what my job duties will be. The specifics may as well have been in Greek, but I saw enough words I knew (reconcilliation, disbursements, journal, you know, all the comfort words) to make me feel good about it. I also like that while there are plenty of "as needed" type things I'll have to to, it is a lot more structured than my last job. There are quite a few things that need done every day, and they're fairly rote. I have to say, I don't like it or work well when it's a different scenario every day. I enjoy the routine.

Turns out that lawyers have crazy messy offices.

I walked to work and home again; it was lovely. It took just under 7 minutes from my front door to the reception desk at the firm. The weather has been surprisingly tolerable here, so it wasn't even too hot.

We're finally all hooked up with cable internet connection, and I got my laptop working too, so I guess I'm part of the night crew for now. I hope you're not talking about me when I'm not around.

All My Bags are Packed

2005-05-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

I'm ready to go...

Today is my last day here at work. Tomorrow is the last day of school for the boy, and as soon as the final bell rings, we're on our way!

I'm completely pressed for time right now, and I'll be without internet access until Saturday. So wish me luck, and by the next time I see you, I'll be shacking up, living in sin, hanging out with my live in lover.

Shocking!

The Star Wars Saga -- Concluded

2005-05-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

A few details that didn't seem pertinent in yesterday's post, but that are now important to the conclusion of this story:

When the ex called and said he had tickets for an 8:30 show, I said, "can't you get tickets for an earlier one?"

He told me, "No, I tried, they're just all sold out, there's just nothing left".

Also, I asked if he still wanted to pick Robbie up from school. He said yes, and that he would bring him home at 7:00.

So at 7:00, Robbie showed up on my (ok well Grandma's) doorstep, grinning ear to ear. They did see the movie. They went directly to the theatre after school, and walked right up to the window, and bought 2 tickets. Robb said they didn't have to wait in line at all, at any point in the process. He said the theatre wasn't even all that full.

Once again, my ex has lied to me for some undiscernable reason. Whatever, Robbie couldn't be more excited, and I'm so happy that he got to see it and that he wasn't disappointed.

Days 3 and 4 at Grandma's and the Piece of Shit I Married

2005-05-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got the roast beef sandwich for lunch. I noticed something, though. Each day after eating my sandwich, I get crazy sleepy. Like I think I'm just going to pass out here in my chair sleepy. The kind where you seriously would be asleep within moments of closing your eyes. The first 2 days, I put it down to turkey making me sleepy. But yesterday it was roast beef and it happened again! So what's going on? The answer, obviously, is that Grandma is drugging me. Why, I don't know, but there can be no other explanation. Maybe I've been looking a little tired and she thought I could stand to add a naptime to my day.

Last night we went to the Outback for dinner. I'm usually death on chain restaurants, but they really do have an amazing filet mignon. And salad, and baked potato, and bread. There's a Cold Stone Creamery right around the corner, so I had to take Robbie there after dinner. They have a flavor called Birthday Cake, and it is out of this world. It really tastes just like white cake. He prefers his with Gummi Bears, me, I always get it with sprinkles, to add to the cakey goodness.

This morning she asked if I wanted a lunch, and as I was running late I said no thanks. I also didn't want another narcoleptic fit. But now it's 12:52 and I'm starving, and sorry I said no.

Today is Star Wars day. Robb has been counting down to this for well over a month. He got a new Darth Vader shirt to wear today, and it's just all he's been talking about. Never mind that I've heard from several people that this is not a good movie for a 9 year old. He's seen all the other ones, and his father and he are gaga for it. I decided to just not bother to fight, as usually when I say he can't see a movie, his dad takes him anyway and tells him not to tell me. Then he has a conscience fit and tells me anyway. At this point, I've decided that I can at least spare the kid this conscience crisis, since they'll see it no matter what I say. Then it was on a school night, and I'm not too cool with that, but I was assured he would pick Robb right up from school, they'd see an afternoon show, and he'd be home in time for bed. Then all the sudden it was a 7:00 show, and he won't be home til close to 10. I'm definitely not cool with that, but feel like I don't want to shatter the kid's day, so fine, it's just once, and school's almost over anyway.

But now.... the ex called me a while ago to say that "his friend" picked up the wrong tickets, and bought them for an 8:30 show (we'll just ignore the fact that this is bullshit, and I know what happened is that he waited too long, and that was the only show that wasn't sold out, and he thinks that since it's so late in the game, I'll be forced to say ok). This is too much, that is too late, and I said no. So he said "ok" and hung up on me.

I had to know if he still was going to pick Robb up from school though, so I called back (he was at work). The phone was picked up, and clunked down on the counter. I could hear the music playing over the store's speakers. He's pulled this crap before, several times. I called back over and over, and in the end, I won and he answered.

It really is no fucking wonder my own son can't speak a single respectfull word to me. Look at this shit his beloved hero of a father is teaching him. I shudder to think what he'll tell Robb today about me saying no. I feel horrible for him, he's been waiting forever. But no matter what I do, his dad manages to twist it and make me the mean witch. I could go his route, and spoil Robbie, letting him have anything whenever and wherever he wants it, so that he'd love to be with me all the time too. But I figure, that doesn't do anything good for Robb in the long run, so fine, I'll be the bitch. At least in the end, I will be able to sleep at night and know that I tried to be an actual parent.

Fucker.

Oh, and in real men news, last night Eli called me with a question while he was at a bar with all the work guys. I was being funny, and said "do you love me? tell me you love me", because you know, that old gag, where the guy won't say it in front of other guys. So he just said "I love you, duh". Gosh I like him. Robbie really does too, I think it will be really good for Robbie to spend time with Eli doing guy stuff and not having to worry about who's mad at whom.

Day Two with Grandma

2005-05-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

At my house, I jump out of bed at the last possible second, throw some food in front of the kid, then run around frantically trying to get ready. At grandma's house, I get up at 6, and we all eat breakfast at the table, then I leisurely beautify myself. Eli would like us to do this at our new house too, but we'll see about that.

Anyway, this morning I came to the table in my pajamas. I had on pink Spongebob jammy pants, and a lime green tanktop. It's pretty thin, and I guess when the nips are out, they're out. So over my english muffin and coffee, my grandma asked me if I was cold. I'm going to have to live with the fact that my grandmother just commented on my erect nipples.

She made me lunch again, turkey sandwich again. We had roast beef last night, and that sure sounded good, but Grandma taught me it's not polite to ask for something you weren't offered, so I didn't. Turkey's yum too, I just haven't had a good roast beef sandwich in forever. Even when I make it at home, it's not the same as hers. I think we're leftovering tonight, though, so I'll have it then.

Maybe I'll just keep living with Grandma forever, this is nice.

Thar She Blows

2005-05-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, this will likely be a long one, as I have a week's worth of garbage to spew.

Friday I spent the entire day interviewing. I got up about 5 am to leave my house by 6:30, and had nonstop interviews from 9 to 4:30. I grabbed an Arby's sandwich and ate it driving in the car between 2 of them. One of them went swimmingly, one was useless, and the others were all with placement/temp agencies, and I'm not sure how they'll pan out. The one that went very well is a law firm, all of 5 minutes to walk to from my house. She's currently checking my references, and then I think I may be in business. If it all works out, I won't even miss a beat as far as paychecks go, which is great as I planned very poorly for this move, and didn't save up much.

We also moved all my stuff out of my apartment this weekend. That was fucking killer, I had no idea I had so much stuff. We drove down early Saturday with Shmee's truck and a trailer from his work, and had them jam packed by Saturday afternoon. At that point, it didn't seem like I had all that much left, and I told him I could finish the rest by myself. Luckily, he insisted on coming back. We ended up spending all day Sunday packing and cleaning, and filled my car and his truck with stuff, and still didn't get done. I just have to go finish cleaning tonight, and then I will be out for good.

So now I'm staying with my grandma for the rest of my time here. I love it, I don't hardly even have to be a grownup. She even packed me a lunch this morning! Thanks grandma!

Ok so that wasn't that long.

C'est La Vie

2005-05-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

(C'est la vie)... that's just the way it goes. (that's right). Thanks, 80's guy.

I went to lunch with John yesterday, and he said thanks, but no thanks. It went really well, and he seemed genuinely sorry to see me go, but he said he just didn't think it would work out that way. Fair enough, at least I tried. He offered to get in touch with a couple contacts for me, which I thought was very nice.

I also spoke to a placement agency, and she said they're just inundated with companies looking for accounting personell, so right now they're looking to be my best bet. I have an appointment to go up next Friday and take all sorts of tests and interview and stuff, so that they can start trying to place me.

I didn't post earlier today, because while I was getting ready for work this morning, I thought of something really profound that I wanted to post about. But by the time I got to work, I couldn't remember. I still don't, so I give up.

Instead, here's random news. I have a new penpal in England. I didn't write to him yet, because I thought I should get some nice letter stationary first. I'm very excited to get actual letters in my mailbox. That's the nicest feeling, to see it and get excited, then impatiently open it.

I'm also moving most of my stuff up this weekend, and I haven't packed hardly anything.

The web page for Robbie's new school has a notice up that there is "new science material" being proposed for the schools, and it is open to review. I strongly doubt that they go through this every time the choose a new textbook, which leaves me with a despairing suspicion that they might be dropping some intelligent design shit in there. I don't think I can get them to not introduce it, but I will not let my kid sit in on it. If they won't agree to send him to the library or something while that section is being taught, I will keep him home. If I wanted to teach him that, I'd send him to church.

I'm sorry for the lack of anything interesting, I'll try to do better tomorrow. I have a lot more free time now, school's done, and I'm not stressed about work anymore.

The Butterflies, They Tickle My Tummy

2005-05-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

The time has finally come.

Friday at about 4:00, my boss came to my desk and asked if I could have lunch with him Tuesday. He said he'd like to discuss how things are going, how I am doing, and talk about a compensation increase. While this is great news and made me feel good coming out of the blue, I also know that I'm leaving town for good in 3 weeks.

I have gone back and forth a million times on submitting a proposal to keep my position and work from home in Phoenix. Last decision was "screw it, they'll say no, I'm just going to quit". I had actually planned on giving my notice next Monday, but this sort of changed my mind back again. So tomorrow we're going for lunch, and I will give him my modest little proposal and try to convince him that he should not let me leave the company. I'd really appreciate it if you could all send good energy my way.

Oh, and I'll blow him if I have to.

Stars, I Don't Understand You.

2005-04-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

I've recently rediscovered my love of Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezny. He's a frous-frous hippy artfart, and I love him. Whether you quite believe in astrology or not, his horoscopes and writings always make me happy and make me feel nicer and more peaceful.

This week's horoscope is a little confusing to me, though, so I'm turning to you guys for help. Please put your interpretation in my comments. I will then proceed to do the exact opposite of what you all suggest, as you're a bunch of assholes. My heart is so full of love for you guys! I'm open to you, and to the universe.

I won't protest if you resort to some outrageous showmanship to boost your cause, Cancerian. I won't judge you too harshly if you try to walk the fine line between creative storytelling and over-the-top BS. Just make sure that you're always motivated more by fun and idealism than by self-aggrandizedment. It's time to use all your tricks and call on all the favors you're owed as you sell your self without selling your soul.

Any thoughts? I'm thinking this is good advice to apply to my job hunt.

Hey You, I Know You

2005-04-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Mad props to whoever can finish my title properly.

This weekend marks the end of the semester for me. I took Psychology 101 this time around, and I now feel qualified to fix all your heads. But as I must adhere to the credo "Physician, heal thyself", I'll talk about me first.

It turns out that I probably have a lack of norepinephrine, and GABA. This would account for my loonytoonyness. I've been taking SAM-e, but after reading this, I think I may stop. I'm not positive if I'm noticing much of a difference anyway. I've been a little less crazy and sad, but that may be due to monthly cycling.

I am a depressive character (if you click no other link in this post, click that one. It's me to a T). I seem to be orally fixated, possibly due to lack of a father attachment. I am surprised to find that I am a defined pessimist, because when things go wrong, I attribute them to forces beyond my control, I expect them to happen again, and I think they reflect my whole life. I do not have an internal locus of control. I do not possess a strong sense of self-efficacy.

The good part about reading all of this, is that I am reading about early development issues, and it's given me some new ways to deal with Robb when he's being difficult, and some new ways for me to deal with myself when he's being difficult. I don't want to raise no crazy!

Then again, who can say what will happen? Eli had a loony childhood, and he's the nicest, most confident, stable person I've ever met. How he puts up with me, I'll never know, but I certainly needed someone like that.

Monday is the last day to turn everything in (and get the 10 extra credit points that I so desperately need). I'm right on the edge between an A and a B, so it'll be nailbiting time until I finish that last test.

I'd ask you all to wish me luck, but as I'm working on my locus of control, I'll just say it's up to me and leave it at that.

There's Thirty, and Then There's Thirty

2005-04-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

The Full House reruns on Nick at Night are back in first season. Tonight's episode is Danny's thirtieth birthday.

I am thirty years old.

Danny will always look older to me, because when I first watched this I was 13, seeing this ancient thirty year old guy. But now I'm looking at him at my age, and he still seems like an old fart. I even had my kid at the same age that he had his first, but I don't think I look like that. I hope.

So here's to me, not looking thirty. I hope.

OOOOOOH MY GOD!

2005-04-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

I just realized, that in no time at all, I'll be living with the Mister! I've been on and on about the house, but what about the fact that I'll get to look at this sweet little face every day?

Here's him doing "sexy":

I love me some Shmee.

Safeway Guy, You Don't Know Me!

2005-04-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

I just ran up to the grocery store to grab a couple things (blank videotape, thank you card, and some soda). The 2 liters were on sale 4 for $5.00, so I grabbed 4. At the checkout stand, the 20somethingish cashier (who knows me, I've been shopping there for almost 4 years) says, "movie night?".

It seemed easier to say "yeah", than to say "No, not exactly. See, my friend is in town, so we're going to go have dinner with another friend, then we're going to come home and have a HOT! GAY! SEX! marathon with Queer as Folk. Only thing is, we're finally going to be caught up to the episodes Showtime is running tonight, so I'm going to tape those episodes for my viewing pleasure tomorrow. And tomorrow night, if you know what I mean" *wink*

Anyway, since he now thinks I'll be sitting home alone tonight drowning my sorrows in 8 liters of Coke, he says, "Oh no, you can't do that, it's Saturday, it's drinking night!"

At this point, I'm totally in a lie, and rather than just say "I know", I said, "well I was out last night". This is true. My boss invited me to join him, a client, and two other employees for dinner. I had two vodka and sodas, and was up til almost 11pm, if you can believe it.

Then the Safeway guy told me, "Yeah, I go out everynight, but I suppose someday I'll have to stop, too".

Safeway guy thinks I'm old.

To cheer me up, here's Gale Harold:

To cheer me up even more, here's Gale Harold making out with another guy:

O Cruel Mother Nature, What Hast Thou Done?

2005-04-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

This is my third spring at my townhome. I really love my house, and will be sad to leave it. Other than my parents' old house, this is the only one that I've ever felt so good in. I'm comforted by the fact that our new house makes me feel just as nice.

One of the things I like about it is that it's quiet, and I can open my doors and hear all the birds. I really adore birds and the little noises they make, from chirpy sparrows to a nice dove coo. For the past 2 springs, I've had a pretty loud bird make her house right outside the sliding glass door in my bedroom. She would start up pretty early, maybe around 5, and it never bothered me. When she came back last spring, I was very happy. Eli told me what it was, but I forget. I want to say a nightingale, or maybe a wren.

Anyway, she's not here this year, and I'm a little sad.

Speaking of dead birds, my cat Emo is a killing machine. One of the reasons I stopped letting him outside was that he brought a bird back every time, without fail. I also found out that there were coyotes closer than I thought, but one too many times of cleaning up a bird strewn across my living room was a big reason he became an indoor cat. So now I have a security screen door on my front door. For some reason it's hung a little high, so that there's about a 2 inch gap at the bottom. Last weekend, I was in the kitchen, and heard a *slam* on the screen, and a horrid squawking. I ran out just in time to see Emo run into my room with a sparrow in his mouth. He had managed to sneak a paw under the gap, and get a bird. As angry as I was, I have to say, that takes talent.

I haven't decided yet if I'll let him out at the new house. Nomi, the baby girl, has never been outside at all, so I just don't know. They're my babies!

One last side note. Someone at Something Awful was kind enough to fix my martini glasses. He swears he's not a stalker, but time will tell, eh? To him I say "Goony goon goon, goon you goony much. Lolz 5 golden manbabies Good Sir".

HOLP!

2005-03-30T20:56:00.000-08:00

Anyone know how to transparent the background of an image? Namely, how to get the white square around my martini glasses to disappear?

I Wish I Was a Johnny Depp Fucker

2005-03-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

Anfer's post got me thinking. Well, it got me thinking about something I already thought about, anyway.

I have a lot of nostalgia for the summer of 2003, during which I dated a lot. In April 2003 I was dumped hardcore by Darin when he moved to LA after about 7 months of dating. I was a total wreck for a few months, and spent a lot of time alone. For the time between leaving Robb's dad and Darin (about 7 years) I absolutely couldn't stand to be in my house alone. But after we broke up, for the first time ever, when Robbie was at his dad's, I didn't go out boozing it up and picking up. I loved my Saturdays alone, and often would just turn the phone off, start drinking around 12, and just rattle around my house doing whatever.

In July or so, I started dating again (although, to be fair, I was only interested in making Darin realize he couldn't live without me). He visited in September, and finally got through to me that he was never going to want to be with me again. It was sort of like I got slapped awake, and my dating activities increased even more.

I wasn't sleeping around, but it was the "first date" rush that I was after. I was meeting a lot of people from friendster, and having a lot of what boiled down to blind dates. And it was always so fun, to spend the week or so while you were chatting, building up all sorts of fantasies, then finally planning to meet them. There was nothing better than the actual date night, when I would make a drink, put on music, and just take all the time in the world to get ready. Then I'd meet them, and with a couple notable exceptions (oh you know who you are...) be disappointed and move on.

I met Eli on match.com. My friend Gwen was on, and I was looking at boys for her to write when I saw his profile. He was oh-so-cute, and I paid for a membership just so I could write to him. We wrote for a week, talked on the phone once, then made plans for the next weekend. That was my best getting ready night ever. I was so excited, and I just knew this was going to be it. Turns out it was, but that's not my point.

My point is, I kinda miss dating. Eli says I can go on dates, I just can't sleep with them. I suppose it wouldn't be as fun though, because there would be no thoughts of "oh my gosh, could this be it?". Because I definitely don't want a new boyfriend. I just want to have date nights. Also, when we move in together in May, it might be a little weird when guys pick me up for dinner.

Me, I'm the opposite. I don't care if Eli sleeps with someone (as long as I know beforehand), but I don't want him dating and falling in love with someone else.

Anfer? Face? Any thoughts?

Edit about 6 hours later to pussy out and clarify that I DO NOT want anybody but Shmee. So in case you're reading this, don't hit me again, Daddy.

Don't Believe My Lies

2005-03-29T07:42:00.001-08:00

Call me Leonard Cohen.

Do you ever think maybe you were on crack and didn't know it?

My habit every morning is to create my to-do list for the day. I start with a fresh paper, and write everything I need to get done. I look at yesterday's list, and write any leftovers on today's page. I know that means I'm re-writing things a lot, but I prefer it that way because it gives me a nice neat clean sheet every day, and I can file away yesterday's, so that I can tell you what I planned to do and what I did on any given day.

This morning, as I try to transfer my list over, I'm having trouble. One of the unfinished items from yesterday is "fix pictures". I have no idea what this refers to. It's my handwriting, for sure, but I can't even begin to imagine what I was talking about. We don't have any pictures. We're an office, I do office stuff, I type things and file things and mail things to customers. We have some shitty pictures on the walls, but they don't need fixing.

Seriously, fix pictures, what the fuck?

Home Alone Part Cuarenta y Ocho

2005-03-26T11:26:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I find myself enjoying a quiet, empty house. Robb is at his dad's until Monday (no school), and Eli is doing camping/male bonding/beer crushing type things. Well, actually, he was GOING to do that, but his friend bailed, and so he just stayed home. Seeing as how that had been the reason he wasn't coming down this weekend, I got kind of pissed and threw a size 6 Bitch Fit. I told him to not come today, either. This was partly out of general pissiness, partly that I didn't want a consolation prize, and partly that I didn't feel like shaving.

Last night was nice. I came home from work, made some dinner, and got comfortable on the couch. I watched some TV, took a bath, and painted my toe and finger nails, all in time to snuggle in to watch Full House and Three's Company. Around 9, I felt a little lame, and considered getting dressed up and going downtown for a drink or two, but once I started mentally reviewing what clothes I had to wear, and what I'd do with my hair, I realized that was way too much, and called that idea a goner.

So this morning I woke up nice and refreshed. I've already watched Blue Crush, and in much the same way that Kirsten Dunst inspires my tummy in Bring it On, Kate Bosworth inspires my ass.

That's the best picture I could find, and I felt I had spent enough time google image searching for "kate bosworth butt". But trust me, she's tight, and some great thighs, too.

I have cleaned my bathroom, and spent about 30 minutes cleaning my face and plucking my eyebrows. Now I'm not sure what to do.

I Can Smell Your Scent

2005-03-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

If I were to say to you, "I can smell your cunt", you'd probably know what I was talking about, right? You'd mime throwing some semen on me, and we'd laugh. Or maybe you'd really throw some semen on me, and you'd laugh but I wouldn't.

I love AMC and TCM for playing good old movies. AMC plays more recent "classics", and has commercials, but it's still good. But the main difference is that TCM plays the movies in their original entirety with no commercials, while somehow AMC is considered regular network and is bound by some censoring crap. So last night, when Silence of the Lambs was on AMC, it got quite a workup.

Miggs told her "I can smell your scent", and just yelled at her when she ran past him. When Lecter asked her why they called him Buffalo Bill, she just said "It started out as a bad joke down at the police station", but neglected to inform Hannibal that it was because he skins his humps.

I fell asleep pretty soon after that, because I just KNEW that I was not going to get to see him tucking, and the best line in cinema history, "Fuck me... I'd fuck me" was sure to be cut out.

Abs of Marshmellow

2005-03-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

Why can't I have this tummy?

I've started working out again, and boy do I need it. I'm riding Marcy (my exercise bike) for a good hour a night, and just started doing some ab-specifice yoga a couple nights ago. I don't think I'll ever have such nice curves as Kirsten, though. I'm just not built that way. I can get a nice tight flat tummy, but my hips aren't that wide. Eli says I can build buttmuscle which will result in a better curvature there, so I'll try that too, I guess.

All my years of not being careful have come crashing down on me at once. I've never watched what I was eating, I've never taken my makeup off before bed (let alone moisturized), I smoked and almost never drank water. So all the sudden my pores are clogged, and I have crow's feet as well as frown lines, a soft belly and bum. My desire to rejuvinate myself is beginning to border on obsessive. I'm spending close to an hour a night washing, toning, and moisturizing my face and neck, as well as 2 coats of lotion to the rest of the body, including special foot creme and cuticle creme. I'm also forcing water down my throat like I'm planning to wander the desert for 40 days and nights. I haven't been smoking, and the only thought getting me through the cravings is "It will make your skin look bad".

So when will I have Kirsten's tummy? I want some results, and I want them now.

Humpjobs Ahoy!

2005-03-22T13:35:00.000-08:00

Visit Chimpotle for a great new contest!

In the Words of

2005-03-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

My darling Michael Hutchence, there's just Not Enough Time.

I have so many things I'd like to write about, and I just don't have time to sit down and properly organize my thoughts.

So I'll just bring you some useless drivel instead.

First off, Joe, that IS supposed to be a shoe making my little lists, but you're right, and now all I can see is someone on all fours with striped stockings. I just wanted something to make my blog look a wee bit distinct, and didn't take the time to really look for something interesting. Why don't you buy me something with all your newfound wealth?

Second, for those of you concerned that I have real life friends posting in here, don't worry. It's my brother and sister-in-law, so they have to like me. I don't have any other friends, so that's out of the way. As long as you all stay losers like me and are available for me to chat with at any given point of the day, who needs real life friends, huh?

Third, Eli thinks we need to compost in our backyard, so I guess that nasty little one bathroom problem is out of the way now, isn't it?

My job is also shifting rapidly. John (CEO here in Tucson), Tony C (my boss, in PA), Pat (John's brother, operations guy that I work fairly closely with here) and Tony G (controller here) were just all on a weekly status conference call. It's just down the hall, so I could hear it all. The whole call, every question that John asked, I was the one with the answer, and I felt good that I really have my hand in everything here and that I know everything going on. I did NOT feel good though, to hear the people actually on the call stumbling through the answers. I suppose as a person lower on the totem pole, my job is to keep my higher-ups well informed, so perhaps I have failed in this regard and will work on changing how the information flows around here. But also, I wonder if they even know that I had all those answers? I'm starting to think I'm more valuable here than I knew, but that does me no good if they don't know that.

So my goal for the next 3 weeks is to be a SUPAH STAH and show them, so that when I present them with my proposal to work from home in Phoenix, they will cry and thank me for not leaving them. Any serious tips on how to write a better proposal with heavy sway will be appreciated.

My Silence is Deafening

2005-03-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

As I told my friend David the other day, even slacking has become too taxing for me. A million times I've thought "Oh, I should write about that in my blog", and the effort to type in blogger.com just seemed exhausting.

But Kav has threatened me with banishment from Chimpo's list of links, so here I write.

This little bit of typing has sure worn me out, so I'll just give you pictures of my new house. Eli signed on it the other day, he's moving in April 1, and I'll be up with the kid on May 24th, after school is out.

I don't have any pictures of the inside right now, but it's amazing inside. The pictures don't do the backyard justice, either. It's a great house, and I can't wait to move in. It was built in 1936, but has been redone inside so it looks nice. Tons of windows, lots of storage space, perfect layout. I think I'm in loooove.

My Cardboard Ring

2005-02-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

Those of you who may watch Sex and the City will know what I'm talking about, but I'll give a quick rundown just in case.

In Season 4 (I believe), Charlotte and Trey were trying to have a baby. They were having a lot of trouble, and taking all sorts of hormones plus getting on every waiting list imaginable for an adoption. They were arguing quite a bit over it and finally in an effort to bring some levity to the situation, Trey brought Charlotte a cardboard cutout of a baby. He tried to explain that it was a joke, to help them lighten up and relax, but she understandably freaked out. She kicked him out, and that was the beginning of their divorce.

Well I have been nagging Eli a bit lately about getting some jooooolry. We're still not getting married, but hey... I want a ring, and we can just be engaged forever. In his attempt to bring levity to our situation, he used his photomanipulation skills to send me this:

(I cut my face out because it was a horrid picture).

Now I'm not nearly as offended as Charlotte was, in fact I think it's pretty funny. It's just that I can't help but see the similarities. The real ring I was wearing is a pearl ring, and I wear it on my middle finger. He moved it and made it a diamond. In an odd turn of events, 2 days after he made that picture, I lost the pearl out of the ring.

Last night we went ahead and had a big argument about Valentine's day. In the end, neither one of us felt like continuing to be upset about it, so we just agreed to disagree and made nice. So I guess we do have our own special Valentine's Day tradition after all: February 14th will be our special day to yell at each other.

Valentine's Day, Oh Poop.

2005-02-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

My beloved doesn't do Valentine's day, so no flowers or bling for me. Whatever, jerky.

On a less bitter note, yesterday was a hard day for me. At 2:00 in the afternoon, I decided to see if there was anything to stare at on TV. Would you believe that Dirty Dancing, The Breakfast Club and Can't Buy Me Love were all on, all starting at the same time? That was one of the most difficult choices I've ever made, let me tell you. I own The Breakfast Club, and I've seen Dirty Dancing more than Can't Buy Me Love, so I had to go with the latter. It was filmed right here in Tucson, too. Ok, and Patrick Dempsey got so outrageously hot in recent years that even his old nerdy look does it for me now. Directly after that, I was treated to Sixteen Candles and then Footloose.

What the hell is going on here? All the sudden, it's all the movies that I can't walk away from, all over cable. Then a striking thought occurred to me. Do you remember when you were a kid, and there were all these shitty old movies on that your parents watched, and you hated? Well, it seems that I am officially old enough that it's now my movies on TV on Sunday afternoons.

What does all this mean? Well, it means that I watched a bunch of movies that I've already seen a million times instead of studying.

Robbie's friends Brian and Ivan invited him to go see a movie yesterday, and while I had reservations, I said yes. The movie they were going to is The Boogeyman. I hadn't even heard of it, but I was able to use my deductive reasoning to figure out that it was probably scary. Their mom said it was PG-13, though, and he assured me he could handle it, so I said ok. If I would have looked on IMDB first, I might have stuck to my guns a little harder. We had to leave the hall light on for him to sleep, and he woke me up just about every hour saying he was scared.

I was not amused.

And speaking of not being amused and not getting bling from the Mister, tomorrow I'll tell you about my cardboard baby.

Photographic Evidence

2005-02-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

That I was in a wedding. Click for bigger!

Vowing:

The brand spankin' new Mr. and Mrs. Hill:

Gwen, Ian, and me. I spent the evening endlessly amused by his wit which was made even better by a British accent.

Those Hills were dancing machines!

And here's Fluffy, because he's cute:

Shout outs to paintedover.com for free image hosting.

Yeah, MAKE Him Cram it Up His Ass!

2005-02-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

The boy has his little friends in our complex that he plays with. Brian and Ivan live directly next door to us. They're 11 and 13, respectively, although Brian towers over all the other kids, including his older brother Ivan. Brian has sent Robb home crying a couple times, but more often than not, he's very protective of Robbie and takes care of him very nicely. Stefan is the other kid in the group. He's 7, and lives down at the end of our section. His parents came here from Bosnia, and they have very thick accents although he does not. Stefan's got a mean streak, which I now attribute to his father. When Stefan gets mad, he doesn't just get pissy, he gets mean. He's pretty tough, for a little guy. He once managed to get Robbie on the ground, and swung his razor scooter at his head. Robb managed to roll away, and I still shudder to think of the damage that could have done.

Now that you have the necessary backup, on to the immensely humorous events that took place this weekend.

Saturday, Robb went over to Stefan's to play, as Brian and Ivan were not home. He came back home pretty shortly thereafter, because they had a fight. Turns out there is some girl visiting over there who's around 11 or 12. She was playing video games while Stefan and Robbie played. After repeatedly asking them to keep it down and no response, she turned and clocked Robb, knocking his head into the (brick) wall. He didn't say anything, he just got up and came home. After I got him calmed down, he decided to go back. When he got there, Stefan began taunting him, calling him a shithead and peepeehead. Where were his parents while he was standing at the front door calling my kid a shithead? Dunno.

So Robb came home and told Eli and I all about it. We were talking to him about how it's no big deal, Stefan's a little shit anyway, so who cares what he says? I'm not sure who said it first, or why, but someone suggested to just tell Stefan to cram it up his ass. We thought that was funny, and I said "you know what, you can tell him that, that's fine with me".

Oops.

Sunday, he went out to play. They were playing outside, all of the boys. Eli and I were sitting at my breakfast nook, which is right under a nice huge window in the front of the house. I looked up in time to see Robbie run by and stop, then Stefan and a girl running up to join. "How nice", I thought. Then they descended on him. Robbie sort of threw them both off in a nice dramatic "RRAAAAAWR" kind of move, and whirled around and punched the girl really hard on the back of her shoulder as she was moving away. I jumped up and ran to the door, and by the time I got out there Brian and Ivan were seperating them. Robb and Brian came in to tell me the story.

Apparently, when Stefan and the girl came out to join all the boys, they immediately started giving Robb shit. He held his tongue for a few moments, then finally lost it and yelled (you guessed it) "SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!". It quickly dissolved into "why don't you make me shove it up my ass", and "why don't you make me make you shove it up your ass", ad infinitum. Eventually the girl got tired of it and hit Robbie, at which point he ran towards our house (he later told me this was so I could witness her hitting him, so that I wouldn't be mad at him). I sort of felt like I should be mad about the incident, but.... I just wasn't. I don't think he did anything wrong. The 2 kids were being shitty, he said what we told him to say, and when they hit him he hit back. Brian and Ivan both confirmed his story, and that's good enough for me.

(Stick with me, I'm almost done).

The boys reported back that Stefan and Bitch had gone back into his house, so Robb decided to go back out to play. In an extremely unbright move, the 3 of them decided to take their dog for a walk... right by Stefan's house. When they walked by, the door flew open, and Stefan's dad yelled at Robb to come here. Robb did, and the guy started yelling at him for hitting a little kid and a girl for no reason. Robb tried to explain, and the guy yelled "There's no excuse for that! Get the fuck out of here!" and slammed the door in his face. As they walked away (Robb in hysterics), the mom yelled out of the window "You had no reason to hit Stefan!"

I was super pissed, and since I had Eli with me, I felt brave enough to go face the dad and tell him he's an asshole and that his darlings were trying to beat the shit out of mine. But I decided it wasn't going to do any good, he wasn't going to listen to me, and if Stefan was going to continue to grow up being a shit and lying about it, oh well, not my problem.

So, Robb is never allowed in that house again, even if (when) he and Stefan make amends. Bosnian jerks.

All right All right!

2005-01-31T20:09:00.000-08:00

I promised Chad that I would update tonight. So.

I could tell you many stories about my busy, fullfilling existence, but we all know I've just been lazy. I did have a lot going on at work, plus busy the past week getting ready for my friend Michelle's wedding, but still, I just slacked.

The wedding was last Saturday, and it went off pretty ok, for as bad as it started. We started off early Saturday morning, but I woke up with the beginnings of a major headache. It was so bad by the time we left the hotel that I thought I was going to hurl on the way to the salon. I didn't, although when I saw what this chick did to my hair, I felt even more sick. I asked for a really specific style, I even showed her a picture. I don't know what the hell she did to my hair though. Michelle said I looked like Wynona Ryder in Beetlejuice, which I think was overly kind. It was awful, I don't know how this woman even told herself that I looked stylish in any way whatsoever. But we were in a hurry, and I'm horrible about speaking up, so we just paid (I even tipped her!) and left.

Then we headed over to get makeup done, where they made Michelle look like a clown. We did speak up about that one, and had them redo her. My head felt about 8 times its normal size by that point, but I was still holding up. My makeup came out pretty ok, and so did the other 2 bridesmaids.

By that time, we had to get dressed and get ready, and get pictures taken. It was freezing, it was around 60, and quite windy. I was wearing a strapless top. I thought I was dying. During the ceremony, I couldn't even pay attention to what was going on, because I was too busy trying not to shiver, and to not make funny cold faces.

But once that was done, it was all good. I got to put my big fuzzy jacket on, and got a glass of wine, and start having a good time. I was at the head table, but we had other friends there so Shmee had people to play with. The groom's men were British friends of the groom, and were hilarious. I didn't write down my toast, and of course forgot everything I planned to say as the time came near. Once I started, I remembered most of it though. Then dancing time, which was great.

So that, Chadley, was the wedding. I'll have pictures soon, hopefully. Shmee took quite a few, plus I'm sure I'll get some copies of the professional ones.

And as a last side note, I am typing this post from my bed. Oscar fixed my laptop, and even wirelessed me up, so I can do this anywhere, and I love it. I am looking for any excuse to use this thing any random place that I can. Meaning I will be back to posting more constantly. I'll also try to be more interesting in future posts.

Allrighty then.

I'm Still Alive

2004-12-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

Were you scared?

It has been stupid busy for me the past few weeks, and when I did get a few free minutes, all I wanted to do was sleep and pretend the real world wasn't going on.

To quickly recap:

I finished up my semester at the last possible minute, taking 3 tests, writing one major paper and 6 minor ones in just under 2 weeks. Maybe that's not bad, I don't remember school from way back when. But when you add in full time work, Robb and the side job, I thought I was going to go crazy. I did it though, and pulled out with a B in Western Civilization, and an A in Anthopology (exploring non-Western Cultures). I was very very pleased with that. I haven't picked a class for next semester yet, but I need to do that. Just waiting for payday so I can pay for the classes and books. I think I may have to take only one class this time, because of money and also time. I really want to spend the next few months building up my mark business, and also try to get a few more bookkeeping clients. When I move to Phoenix, I want to be able to go to school full time and work from home part time.

I also almost got fired at work. Very long, painful, ridiculous story made short, I overheard (what I thought was) my firing being planned. Then I found out this woman here, whom I had thought a friend, was throwing me under the bus. Seemingly out of the blue she had "had enough" and got very angry, not speaking to me for almost 2 weeks. Then I found out she was quitting, but I wasn't supposed to know. Tom the Salesguy told me that she had been badmouthing me almost since I had started here. I went to make peace with her, at the request of my boss, and she told me that Tom the Salesguy was the one throwing me under the bus. I can only believe that they're both throwing all their shit on me. So she is gone, and yesterday my boss told me that she was so very incensed and frustrated with me that he couldn't understand it, and she was unable to articulate it. He said that he usually finds when someone is so upset but unable to say why, it's typically unfounded. That's reassuring, and now I feel confident that if I stay very on top of my game, and watch out for anyone laying blame on me for things I didn't do (got that Tom the Salesguy? I'm watching you!) I will be ok.

Then there was the bridal shower I threw for my best friend Michelle. It was fun and I was very excited and happy to do it, but the timing was really hard, what with everything else going on. It came off smashingly, though, and she was happy, so that's all that counts. I love hostessing!

Hmmm, reading over all that, it doesn't seem like I should have felt so overwhelmed. But I was. It's pretty much over now, if I can make it through the next couple days. I still have 3 scarves to knit for gifts, too. Oh, and hopefully Shmee and I won't kill each other over Christmas. He doesn't "do" Christmas, and we are at each other's throats about it. Well I'm at his throat, anyway. More on that later.

Merry Exmas!

Have Mercy!

2004-12-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

Lately I have a bit of an unhealthy fixation on crappy old sitcoms. I don't watch any new ones (in fact, except for all 3 Law and Orders, I don't watch any new TV at all), but I can't get enough of the old ones on Nick at Night. Three's Company remains the front runner, closely followed by Full House and Who's the Boss. They're playing the latest episodes of Who's the Boss now, though, and I don't like them when Angela and Tony are dating. Three's Company is on first season (before Larry and Mr. Furley, and when Janet was still pretty), and Full House is right about in the middle, which brings me to my point.

Was John Stamos always this hot? I was prime teenybopper teen idol age when that show was on, but I guess he never moved me back then. Now, however, Full House is practically porn to me.

Don't worry, I only fap to Bob Saget now and then (did you know he is god?), and NEVER to Dave Coulier (I don't need sloppy seconds, yes Alannis, I'm looking at you).

Honor, Friendship, Fisting

2004-12-01T07:57:00.000-08:00

It's Karate, Kid the Musical - Honor, Friendship, Fisting

After my post a few weeks ago about the Karate Kid, I felt obliged to include this new development. It's times like this I wish I lived in New York. If they have this musical, imagine what else I'm missing!

Wig in a Box

2004-11-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is one of my favorite movies. In addition to appealing to the immense faghag in me, it's glamorous with great music. But it's also an amazing story, beautifully told and very moving.

For those of you that may not know of it, it began as an off Broadway musical, and hit the big screen in 2001. It's the story of Hedwig, who began life as Hansel and had a botched sex change operation (Angry Inch, get it?). Then her husband leaves her, then her lover leaves her, steals all the songs they wrote together and becomes famous pop star Tommy Gnosis. We get to follow Hedwig and her band as they follow Tommy around. While he plays huge venues, Hedwig and the Angry Inch play over salad bars and dinner buffets.

It's a very funny movie, and moving too. I've seen it a million times and I still often tear up at the end, and always get goose bumps during "The Origin of Love". I have the soundtrack and listen to it often. If you haven't gotten my point yet, my point is go see this movie.

Hedwig is well on it's way to cult status. It even has midnight showings a la Rocky Horror in quite a few places across the country. Tucson's The Loft is one of them, and last Saturday, John Cameron Mitchell, writer director and star of Hedwig was here to join us for it. When I heard about it I almost peed all over myself. I was a little nervous, because I love this movie so very much, that it would have been a huge disappointment if he should turn out to be a jerk.

Luckily, he was not a jerk. I didn't get to meet him, but he spoke for quite a while before the movie played, and he was great. Very funny, witty, gracious and kind. I love him even more now. I'm positively starstruck, and I didn't even get within 20 feet of him. But I'm still mooning around over it and listening to the soundtrack over and over again, singing as loud as I can.

And that was my big exciting weekend. Oh, and those of you looking for a Christmas present for me, here.

Fried Grease Ahoy, Matey!

2004-11-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a hankerin' for some Long John Silver's. It's gross, but every now and then (maybe a few times a year) I crave it like crazy. I asked Robb if it was ok with him, and he said sure. I said, "Do you know what it is, do you remember?".

He said "Sure, it's where we get the Dog Puffs." Um, what? So he tried again. "Puppy Puffs?" By this point I'm laughing hysterically, so he gives it all he's got. "DOG PUPPIES!!"

Of course he was talking about HushPuppies. I told him the name, and for the rest of the night, every now and then he would say "Wait, Puff Dogs?"

Come to think of it, I don't think my craving got cured last night. I need some more.

So I'm Not the Only Dumbass Here?

2004-11-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

We recently submitted a bid to a City Procurement Office (not our city). It was a total rush job, I don't know who dropped the ball; all I know is that it was given to me at 8:30 am and I was told it had to be delivered (about a 2 hour drive) by 3 that afternoon, meaning to be really super safe, I needed to get it done and find a courier to give it to by 11:30, tops.

The Operations Manager and the Controller actually put most of it together, and I just compiled it and made all the pretty copies and got it out the door. I was flipping through my copy today, though, and noticed an amusing mistake. They asked for the resume of the Key Person (the Ops Manager), and I guess he sort of had a half done version completed that we threw in.

Under Skills (I wish it said Skillz), it reads:

-Management of factory resources as tool for sales force (not sure what this means).

The resume actually had on it "not sure what this means".

Under his name and phone number, it reads "e-mail address here".

I don't think we'll win this bid.

Santa Baby

2004-11-08T09:03:00.000-08:00

Here is Robb's letter to Santa (my comments are in italics):

Dear Santa,

May I please have a scooter so I don't have to ask Brian and Ivan to use Ivan's scooter all the time and can I have a cartoon (just to remind you) poster of Star Wars(he underlined "cartoon", and I think he maybe felt that was a little harsh, hence the "just to remind you") . A play toy for Emo and Nomi (the cats) but two so they don't fight and Pente so Eli can take the other Pente (Eli brought the board game over months ago and left it) and more Yu-gi-oh cards and can you make Armie stuff, kids news, a night light. This is the last one, all the cartoon Star Wars books. I thank you so much for all the time you wasted for all the kids. Soooooooooo much.

That child amuses me to no end. He's 9, and I am a little surprised he's still hanging on to Santa. He was showing Eli the letter, and quickly justified himself, saying that he believes in Santa more than anyone, and he believes in his heart that Santa is real. So he knows that other kids his age are doubting, but he's hanging on. I think this may be the last year, so I'll try to make it a really good one.

My Sweet Sweet Honeybun

2004-11-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

For those of you that may not know, Shmee lives about 1 1/2 hours away from me. We spend the weekends together, which is nice, but of course the distance still puts a bit of a strain on the relationship at times (ok, it puts a bit of a strain on me, anyway). We usually get in a good phone conversation every evening, so I still feel like we're sufficiently in touch, and it's ok.

Tuesday night, we talked for about an hour, just about whatever or nothing. At the end of the phone call, though, he said "Hey, are you wearing a purple shirt?". I wasn't, it was mauve, but I know that for boys, there is pink and there is purple, but there is no mauve. So I said yes, and immediately got very excited that we had perhaps reached a point of psychic connection. He followed up with "and you're wearing blue jeans?". At this point, I started to look around. My living room is in the back of the townhome, with a big sliding glass door that goes out into my back patio that has a tall wooden fence around it, and at the front of the house is the kitchen, but I wasn't in that line of sight. But when he asked if I had just finished a coke, I knew he was somewhere, and finally spied that sneaky boy peeking in a split in the back fence.

So I got a great surprise midweek visit that made me super happy. We ended up watching the election results unfold in stunned silence, but that's ok. We also watched Gothika, which I thought was pretty good, but... something... seemed wrong with it. I recommend it, even though Halle Berry bugs. She's sinfully hot, but I just am not crazy about her.

And that, my friends, is the end of my story about my fabulous darling boyfriend.

I Will Find That Old Lady, and Make Her Sorry.

2004-11-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, but it's been a crazy shitstorm of a week. I feel like all I've done is work, study, work my part time gig, knit and sleep.

For those of you that don't remember, I am now selling mark, which you can go here to purchase, then type in my phone number at the end of your order. Email me here for my phone number.

Anyway, mark has cute little catalogs that are called magalogs (magazine+catalog). I ordered several million of them to distribute, and immediately ran out to put one on the bulletin board by the mailboxes. The next afternoon, it was gone. We keep a garbage pail by the mailboxes so as to conveniently dispose of your junk mail, and I thought I should make sure no one just threw it away. Happily, it was almost empty, and my magalog was nowhere to be seen, so I put up another one. When that was gone the next day, I did find it in the trash. I took it back out and put it back up. Over the past 2 weeks, I have repeated this process every day. It's not always in the trash, so it's safe to assume that at least a couple of them have been taken home by an interested person, but most of the time it is in the trash.

For some reason I am taking this completely personally. I know we have a no solicitation rule, and I would never dream of putting them on doors. But I completely fail to see the problem with the community bulletin board. For several weeks, there was a flyer from one of the tenants advertising her gopher services, and for the past week there has been a card up from one of the tenants selling a medicine cabinet. I'm really not sure why those are ok, yet mine is not. I've gone out of my way to make it clear I'm a tenant that lives there by writing "COME SEE ME IN UNIT 9" across the front. I think tonight when I put it up, I will put a note saying "WHY IS THIS" (arrow pointing to the medicine cabinet card) "OK, AND THIS" (arrow pointing to my magalog) "NOT?".

My complex is filled mainly with older people. There are 2 other families with kids (Robb's friends), and the college kids next door, but as far as I can tell the majority of the tenants are quite a bit older, so I know I'm never going to sell a ton of this product there. I also know that sometimes older people who don't have a lot to do grasp on to the "rules" and will act as the police of the homeowner's association. However, as stated, I really don't understand what rule I'm breaking. I'm currently trying to weigh my desire to triumph against the time, cost and aggrevation this is causing me. It's making me way too upset.

I wish I knew who it was, so I could ask what the problem is. Shmee suggests setting up surveillance, and I'm about ready to try that.

They're hurting my feelings :-(

On the brighter side, I ordered a shitload of makeup for myself, so I would know how it went on, and also always be able to say "Why, I'm wearing mark, and I'm just the girl to get you some", in case I'm ever asked what lipstick I'm wearing. Turns out that it really is good makeup. So even if I never sell any, I've got good new makeup at a discount.

WHAT?!?!?!

2004-10-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

How can this place even exist?? Don't tell me that the owners were unaware of what their name implied...

A Back Door Bead & Yarn Co
6174 E Speedway Blvd
TUCSON, AZ 85712 - 5127
(520) 745-9080

An Old Joke Made Better

2004-10-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

A penguin is driving through the desert when his car breaks down. Luckily for him he sees a gas station; he hikes through the stifling heat and the dusty desert air for what seems like hours until he gets there. He arrives, desperately out of his element in this dry, hot environment, and gasping for breath he asks for a mechanic.

"Well, it just so happens we repair cars here, too" said the guy at the gas station. "Let me have a look at your car. And Jesus, you're a penguin, aren't you?"

"Of course I am," gasped the penguin, knowing that if there were a merciful God in Heaven above he'd be swimming in the cold ocean right now instead of being crammed into some stupid, meaningless joke which will be told so many times that eventually it will lose all humor value so that the person being told the joke will laugh nervously at the joke-teller like they've just raped the joke-hearer's grandmother anally with a shovel and say "haha yeah, it's just ice cream."

"Then you must be incredibly hot, what with not being in Antarctica. You should get inside, grab some ice cream from the freezer. Cool down, little man."

The penguin briefly considered correcting the mechanic, pointing out that he wasn't one of the species of penguin which lives in Antarctica, but he quickly realized the futility in such an action and decided against it. People don't ever really listen anyway; once they've made up their minds there's no way of opening them back up. Besides, correcting people just pisses them off, and the penguin could definitely see himself getting stuck out here in the middle of the desert with an angry mechanic who, knowing his luck, probably had a thing for anally raping penguins.

Instead he went in to get the ice cream. As he ate it he realized that he didn't really need ice cream, that he was already in possession of a little penguin gut. His weight, as his mother might say, was becoming something of a problem. He cried a little as he realized what a pathetic, fat fuck he was, and he cried even harder when he remembered his mother getting eaten by that killer whale just a few months prior. He'd never even had a chance to say goodbye to her, and now she was being gradually squirted out of some whale's asshole like yesterday's halibut, and it was technically all his fault. Maybe if he'd visited her more, maybe he could have kept her away from the whale's feeding grounds. If only...

As he sobbed harder his belly jiggled, and this made him cry even harder because he was coming to realize that no woman penguin could ever truly love a lardass like himself and that he'd most likely die alone, trapped between some killer whale's jaws and praying for a quick, painful death which would never come. He knew his death would be slow, painful, and miserable. It was what he deserved, after all. He'd basically killed his mother; why would he deserve better?

He sloppily finished the ice cream and, wiping the tears from his eyes with a flipper, he sauntered out to the mechanic to check out the progress on the car.

"How's it looking?" the penguin asked, sniffling.

"Well, it looks like you blew a seal," the mechanic said, turning around to face the penguin and his ice cream-covered mouth.

"Oh, the car blew a seal," the penguin said. "That's not too bad."

"No, it looks like you crammed a seal's penis into your mouth and sucked it until the seal ejaculated into your mouth, at which point he pulled out and shot his load all over your lips.

"Fuck you," the penguin said, fresh tears welling up in his eyes. "Who the fuck do you think you are to judge me just because I loved Stan? He loved me, too."

"Yeah, like any penguin would ever be able to love you and that fat ass of yours," said the mechanic, turning back to the car. "Your car will be ready in an hour, you sick little fat fuck."

"Oh God," sobbed the penguin, running back into the station to kill his fresh pain with more ice cream.

El Nino de Karate

2004-10-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

Last night the Karate Kid was on. I absolutely loved that movie when I was younger, so I thought Robb might like it. We snuggled up on the couch to watch it over a frozen pizza. It was as endearing as ever, and of course Robbie loved it. He is currently practicing all the moves (you know... "Paint the fence. Sand the floor. Wax on wax off. Paint the house", and most especially the crane move) and really liked the stressing of the credo "fight for defensive purposes only".

As I watched it though, I began to wonder about a bunch of things that never caught my attention way back when. For example, when Daniel meets his friend as they're moving into the apartment complex, he tells the guy they moved there because his mom got a good job. A few scenes later, he goes to visit his mom at work and she is a waitress. Not knocking the waitressing profession, just wondering how good a job waiting tables would have to be to induce one to move across country.

Also, the whole wax on wax off thing? I realize the point was to train him for karate, but didn't Mr. Miyagi want the cars clean, too? If you watch Daniel waxing on and off, he waxes on one area, and waxes off an area that has no wax. Sheesh.

Time sequencing was really weird too. It was most noticeable when Danial and Alli had a date on Saturday night. The next morning Daniel rides over to Mr. Miyagi's house and has a day of wax on wax off. At the end of the day, Mr. M. says come back tomorrow morning. Daniel does, and has a day of sand the deck. Next day he paints the fence, and day after that he paints the house. Then he's back at school. Did he seriously just take 3 days off to fix up Mr. Miyagi's house?

But who am I kidding, I still loved it and always will. I think tomorrow night I'll go rent part 2 for Robbs. Don't worry though, I won't subject him to part 3.

Other titles that were considered for this entry:

Mercy is for the Weak
Take a Worm for a Walk Week
Man Who Catch Fly With Chopsticks Can Do Anything

Have You Met mark?

2004-10-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

In my relentless pursuit of not owing my soul to the company store, I keep looking for different things I can do to sustain my family without being a 9-5 slave for the rest of my life. I started school this semester, with the ultimate goal of being a teacher, and I really would like to be able to go full time instead of taking the next 10 years to finish up. To this end, I have been exploring other options for generating income. I'm currently doing the books part time for a friend of mine with a small business, and after the holidays I plan to do some networking to try and get a couple other similar sized clients. I've also been wracking my brain for other odd job type things that one can do.

Enter mark. mark (no capital M, if you please) is a new line from Avon. It's aimed at a younger crowd (younger than me, really), and it caught my eye. So at lunch time today, I met the Avon lady and officially signed up. I am now your mark Independent Sales Representative, happy to serve your needs.

It doesn't have a large product line like Avon, but what it does have is very cute and girly, and very low priced, too. Exactly the kind of stuff I like to buy, as I loooove to buy new makeup, lotion, jewelry and bathtubby things, which is why I decided that I wasn't too old to sell it (I'm not old, right? RIGHT?)

So this is my sales pitch to those of you in internetland. Which means Carrot, I guess (although Diji, I noticed a delightful shade of lip gloss for you, and Chimpo, the GardenBlu perfume has you written all over it. Kav, I think I see some shimmery face powder looking at you!). If you visit meetmark.com and see anything you like, email me and I will give you my phone # to put in as your rep on the site, so you get nice things from me, and I get a customer.

Oh, and any of you that may be dying for Avon, my ma sells that, just go here.

I Prefer OtterPops

2004-10-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

I don't quite know how to preface this, so here, just click.

Isn't That Just Darling?

2004-10-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

After our lovely weekend in Reno, we flew back into Phoenix to drop Shmee off, then Robb and I hopped in to our car to drive back home to Tucson. It's about an hour and a half drive, which isn't bad. It's just short enough that right about that point where you are suddenly tired to death of driving, you're just about there.

Robb of course got immediately absorbed in his Gameboy SP, so I was left to my own devices. I sang, I dozed, I had a couple shots. At one point, I looked to my right, and there was an SUV with a little girl frantically waving at me. When she saw she had my attention, she held up a sign that said "Honk for the Kid". I honked, and the whole family erupted in cheers.

It got me thinking, though, about all the things I did to amuse myself as a kid when we used to make that drive a lot. I of course didn't have a gameboy back in the stone ages, so had to make the best of what I had. I couldn't read, because I tend to get motion sick very easy, and even today reading in a car will make me sick almost immediately. I often would take my walkman, and as I love to sing, I would sing along softly (I thought). Of course, it turns out that everybody else along for the ride was smirking and winking at each other and trying not to laugh. I didn't say I was good at singing, just that I loved it. I also used to draw a lot. It seems that cows were a particular passion of mine; I used to draw them quite a bit. Always a side view, with the head turned towards the viewer. Sometimes with a few strands of grass out the side of her mouth, sometimes with horns, and almost always with spots.

But what the little girl with her sign really reminded me of was the time I took a piece of my drawing paper and made a sign that said "PLEASE HELP ME THEY'RE TAKING ME AWAY" and held it up for every car that passed. Finally, my grandmother asked what I was doing. I think my poor Grandad's head almost exploded.

I didn't get to draw anymore on that trip.

Your Roving Correspondent

2004-10-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

Here today, coming to you live from Reno, NV where it's green, cool, and lovely.

Shmee, the boy and I are here visiting the folks. They live right underneath Mt. Rose, over which is Lake Tahoe, so yesterday we piled in the car and went for a drive to see the lake. It's absolutely beautiful up there. Shmee took some great pictures that I'll post when I get home. We continued on into the California side and around to Truckee,which is a nice touristy artsy little town right by Donner Pass.

We walked around a bit, and found a sweet shop where you get to watch the guy in the window make fudge. I'm not sure if the guy enjoyed his job, but I'm pretty sure he didn't like doing it in front of an audience. Apparently it's quite hard work. It's all poured onto this big greased metal table, and he had to keep it moving while it sets. He was breathing pretty hard, and I can only hope he wasn't sweating too much into the fudge.

Today, my parents are taking Robb to Circus Circus to win ungodly amounts of stuffed animals, and Eli and I are going to go walking around downtown Reno. I really like it down there, it's very pretty and quaint, and the Truckee River runs right through it. I wouldn't mind living up here at all, in a nice little apartment house overlooking the river.

I'll let you know tomorrow if I move here or get married in the casino.