Operation Pink Herring

Wardrobe Malfunction

In an effort to stay cool in the oppressive Baltimore heat, I've been wearing dresses or skirts to work this week.  Walking a mile in pants when it's 93 degrees and 80% humidity?  Not fun.  Nor particularly pleasant for my coworkers, I imagine.

My attire has been getting lots of notice, since I'm usually a pretty laid-back dresser.  There's been a lot of "Ooh, you look so cute!" and "What a pretty dress!" going on.  I'm trying to take compliments at their face value, instead of thinking, "what, are they saying that I don't look cute every day?  How rude!"  It's part of my Be Less Negative self-improvement campaign, and it was actually working.  I felt pretty darn spiffy wearing my new(ish) Ann Taylor (outlet) dress with my cute new Ann Taylor summer sweater on Wednesday.  That is, until a button popped right off it as I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business.  Harrumphh, since I paid FULL PRICE for that stupid sweater and this was only the second time I'd worn it.

Then, yesterday when I was walking along the busy sidewalk, I stepped right out of my chic ballet flat, tripped, and narrowly avoided falling flat on my face.  People totally laughed at me.  Even worse, my foot touched the city sidewalk with only a flimsy stocking sock in between my skin and the nasty concrete. 

Yeah, I'm not feeling so cute and trendy anymore.  Thank goodness the humidity finally broke, and I can go back to rotating my 4 pairs of Gap pants again.

On the upside, I found a $20 bill in my back pocket this morning.  These jeans just came out of the wash, but the precious greenback is unharmed.  A little crispy, perhaps, but intact and in my wallet.  Happy freaking Friday, internet.

Money diet

Several months ago, I decided it was time to have a Come to Jesus with myself about my spending habits.  Several major expenditures, coupled with a massive vet bill or two (or 11, but who's counting) were killing my credit card balance.  I have never  NOT paid off my credit card in full at the end of the month, but I started to understand how that could be tempting.  I decided that it had to stop RIGHT NOW THIS VERY INSTANT and officially put myself on a budget.  Except, not really, because I feel like having myself on a bona-fide "$50/week for groceries, $50/month for entertainment" type budget would be about as much fun as counting calories, and would probably leave me feeling just as deprived.  Instead, I decided I just needed to keep my overall credit card bill under a certain number.  Considering that a mere three years ago, my credit LIMIT was two thirds of number, it seemed like this would not be hard to achieve.   In fact, I thought I should decrease number, but I decided not to, because I don't like to just meet my goals.  I like to crush them.  I like to win things, especially when the competition is between me, myself and I.  I'm crazy like that.  So I decided to just leave number alone and then amaze myself with my own mad saving skilz. 

I even thought I had the inside advantage on this game, since my credit card bill does not include things like the mortgage or any of our monthly bills. 

In April, my bill was more than double number.

In May, I did slightly better, but still waaaaay over number.

June?  Over again.  By a lot.

Granted, my monthly bill isn't exactly reflective of my actual spending, because some of those charges  were for things like groceries and expeditions to Home Depot, which Joel and I split when we do our monthly accounting.  But, still, most of it was for unnecessary items, many of them from Amazon's "pets" section, SURPRISE!

I wasn't really sure what to do.  Obviously my little budget plan wasn't working.  I had another couple of strategies to replenish my saving account, such as choosing to be paid for a bunch of overtime I worked in the spring (instead of taking extra days off), and putting my entire tax return into my IRA and not even keeping one penny in my checking account.  Sweet baby Jesus, that was hard.  But it was necessary, and slowly the urge to cry when I looked at my bank statements abated.

Then, last week I decided to check on my credit card and see how I was doing.  I am exactly 1/2 way through my billing cycle right now.  And my balance?  $56.93.   

I have no explanations, but damn, it feels good to be a gangster saver.

Oh, and I was also planning to post every day this week, but obviously that didn't happen.  With this pattern, I might accomplish that goal in 3-4 months.   That's how I roll.

I'll take seconds, please

EEK.  I just requested time off for our vacation in August (our REAL vacation, not to be confused with the Fake Vacation I'm taking in two weeks to stay at home by myself).  Dates have been set.  Lake Tahoe, here we come.  Please go ahead and put out those wildfires before we get there.  K, thanks.

Why do I always feel guilty requesting time off?   It's not like I don't have twenty-six days of vacation time saved up.  Still, I feel like a giant slacker whenever I ask for time off.  This is the same slacker feeling that keeps me from calling in sick when I truly feel awful.  Because, you know, I'm better off sitting in my office like a zombie than using the twenty-two sick days I have accrued.  What, I might get the bird flu and need those days!  Plus, I hate calling in sick.   And I also hate requesting vacation time, as it turns out.

Actually taking that vacation time, however, I'm totally fine with.  I am not sure which vacation I'm looking forward to more -- Fake Vacation, where I'll have a week to myself to compulsively clean the house, work on The Wall, finish painting the bedroom, and possibly watch some Law and Order reruns (all of which will be done in sweats, sans bra) or the Real Vacation, where we'll be hiking in Lake Tahoe and seeing ghosts in Virgina City and winning big on the slots in Reno.  It's really a toss up.  I'll let you know which one wins when I get back from Tahoe.

I think I'll do this every summer.  Real Vacations and Fake Vacations are equally important.  From now on, I'm taking one of each, every year.  Yes.  That sounds nice.

In other news, Operation Detox is going extremely well -- let's hope I didn't just jinx it.  Last night I fell asleep before midnight, and I slept straight through until 4:30am.  This is big progress!  Then I went back to sleep until 7am.  Woohoo!

Also, when I went to sleep, Max was in the cat bed.  When I got up at 4:30, Madison was in it.  When I got up at 7am, Henry was in it.  That's right: ALL THREE CATS SLEPT IN THE CAT BED LAST NIGHT. Cat bed was NOT a waste of $17!  Edited to add:  Just to clarify, all three were not in the bed at the same time.  They do not like each other THAT much... yet.  Plus, it's physically impossible, because Max hardly fits in the bed by himself.  Must put Max on diet.

All is right with the universe.

Love and Hate, Copycat weekend edition

Operation Detox is going fairly well.  I have been Lunesta-free for one week, and totally off all sleep aids since Saturday.   I've decided that I need to give my body a break from all sleeping pills, even if it means a return of insomnia for awhile.  I have become completely dependent on the placebo effect of taking something to go to sleep every night, even though Benadryl/Tylenol PM stopped actually working for me ages ago.  I think I need to learn how to fall asleep on my own again, despite the fact that it may take awhile.   I also need to learn how to cope with insomnia when it arrives on my doorstep, since I will most probably be dealing with this affliction for as long as I'm a soldier in the 9-5 army.  I'm working on NOT going into a frustrated panic mode when I can't turn my brain off, and to instead look at it as extra time to read, write in my journal, do yoga, and watch Law and Order reruns.   Getting mad at the cats because they're asleep and I'm not and IT'S NOT FAIR BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE TO GO TO WORK TOMORROW really isn't doing anyone any good, sweetie.  Henry  has to get up early for his 6am chat with the pigeons, so he needs his sleep too.  Move over and let him have the pillow if you're not using it.

Anyway, since this little experiment in willpower (DO. NOT. TOUCH. TYLENOL PM. BOTTLE. DO. NOT. LOOK. AT. CLOCK.  DO. NOT. STRESS. OUT.) had me up until some point past 3am last night, I have given myself permission to abandon paragraphs for the rest of this entry, and also I have decided it's OK to plagarize Janet's trademarked Love/Hate entries.

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Love: Our day on Saturday.  We got up at an extremely respectable hour, drove to West Virgina, and went hiking on on the Appalachian Trail.

Hate: That we got lost, as usual, and didn't hike the trail we intended.

Love: It was still super fun.

Hate: That I screamed bloody murder when we saw a garter snake.  It's a visceral reaction, and I can't help but FREAK THE F OUT whenever I see a snake.   It's really pretty embarrassing, not that there was anyone around to see me shrieking like a fool and running off into the woods.

Love: The sign we saw when we crossed the state border, which read "Welcome to West Virginia: Open for Business".

Love: Getting up at a (slightly less) respectable hour AGAIN on Sunday and going to the movies for a matinee to see Ocean's 13. 

Hate: That I had to pee for the last hour of the movie, but was afraid I'd miss the big ending if I got up to go to the bathroom.

Hate: That it's Monday already.

Love: The coffee shop in my office building, which replaced my lost debit-coffee-card-thingy without my even having to ask.  I said "I lost my card, can I have a new one," gave them my name and handed over a $20 bill to put on the new card.  After I got my coffee, I saw that my balance was $26.65, meaning that the barista looked up my old card and transferred the remaining balance to my new one. 

Hate: That I didn't get any work done on The Wall or painting the remaining bathroom and bedroom this weekend.

Love: That Weds is a holiday next week, giving us a whole day to do house stuff that didn't get done on the weekend.

Hate: That the 4th of July is still over a week away.

Love: That Max was sleeping in his cat bed last night.  He likes to ignore the nice bed I bought him.

Hate: That I was up at 2:30am to see him sleeping in his cat bed.

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If you're lucky and behave like a good little internet, I might even bring the camera in tomorrow and post some pictures.  (Don't worry -- no pictures of Mr. Snake, I ran away too fast to even think of snapping his photo.)

Riddle me this

After downloading and sorting the pictures on the camera this morning, I'm left scratching my head at a few things.

1. For all their insistence that they hate each other, why are these two inseparable? 

(Is this picture unfocused, or have I just not slept in two days?  Or both?)

2. Why does Max act like he is auditioning for Kitty Playgirl all day?  It's obscene.  I'm offended.

3. Why have I not managed to return that stool to the kitchen yet?

4. Why is this necessary:

That is all. 

/cat pictures. 

Wild West, here we come!

After much indecision and a lot of internet research by Joel (on a dial-up internet connection!), I have come to the conclusion that searching for a vacation destination is hard.  Denver or Salt Lake City?  Reno or Iceland?   Each of these places is decidedly not my office, and so each seems equally appealing.  How ever could we choose, especially when I seem to be incapable of remembering to pick up the seven travel books I ordered from the library?

Put them in a hat and pick one.  Literally, that is what we did last night.  And the lucky winner is.... RENO, NEVADA!  Now I'm having a bit of picker's remorse, since it wasn't even in Joel's top two.  Also, Nevada?  Doesn't Nevada kind of suck?  Aren't there snakes there?

However, I am quite excited by the possibility of seeing Old West towns like Carson City.  I love that stuff, don't ask why.  I have no idea.   

Also, I hear Lake Tahoe is kind of cool.  So off we go!

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Speaking of snakes (sort of), who watched the premier of Man vs. Wild's new season?  Can I get a HOLY CRAP?  In this episode, my beloved Bear Grylls:

• Waded through the Everglades for three days
• Made a house in a tree, with a fireplace
• Roasted a turtle for dinner (very sad, but he made a point of saying that he didn't enjoy it)
• Jumped in a sinkhole, then climbed out
• Caught a "baby" alligator with his bare hands

The episode as a whole just reinforced my two already-strong beliefs that (1) Bear Grylls is could totally kick Jack Bauer's ass, and (2) Florida is really hell on earth.

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You know how sometimes you'll get a word or phrase stuck in your head, and you don't even know what it actually means, and then you start wondering where on earth you could have picked up that term?  Was it subliminally messaged into a TV commercial during Rescue Me?  Was it in an ad in a magazine?  Did you read it somewhere?  And then it drives you crazy until you figure out how that  word/phrase got into your brain?

Well, as we were going to bed, I asked Joel, "Who is John Cavendish?"  He had no idea.  I thought long and hard about Mr. Cavendish, wondering where I could have heard his name.  Was it during the duck tour of Philadelphia we took on Saturday?  He certainly sounds  like an historical fellow.  Or was he that surfer I was reading about in Joel's latest issue of Outside Magazine? 

Neither.  According to Google and Wikipedia, I am going insane.

So I ask you, internet, just who IS John Cavendish?  And why is he in my head? 

Much Ado About Bamboo

Last night, around 11:45, I was reading in bed when I heard the distinct sound of something crashing.  It sounded like glass-on-glass or glass-on-tile, but not exactly like glass shattering, and so I was able to convince myself that I should go downstairs and see what the cats were getting into, rather than grabbing the phone and shaking Joel awake at the same time, dialing 9-1 and then keeping my finger poised over the 1-button for maximum speed in alerting the authorities to our impending death.  This was a major improvement over two weeks ago, when I heard a thud on the deck and made Joel get up to investigate while I cowered behind him, only to find that the potential thief/murderer/escaped convict was nothing more than a stray cat trying to take a dump in our lilac bush in peace. 

I discovered that Henry, with his overly excited tail-wagging (yes, Henry plays fetch and wags his tail when excited.  I should stop whining about how I want a dog, since apparently I HAVE ONE ALREADY) had knocked over a bud vase in the window, where one of those "lucky" bamboo shoots they sell at Ikea has been languishing for months.  Much to my delight, it hadn't broken when it hit the floor.  I put it in the sink and went to sleep.  This morning, I decided to take the poor bamboo shoot to work, since this is the 5,867th time it has been knocked off the window sill, and lucky bamboo shoots only have 5,870 lives.  Plus, I just can't throw a perfectly good plant in the trash -- even if Max has chewed on most of its leaves.  No, I'd rather bring it down to my sunless cave-office and let it wilt for a few years first.

As I was nearing one of the busier intersections near my office, I noticed a middle-aged guy hesitating to cross the street.  The walk sign had just changed to a flashing "don't walk", so I hurried up and scurried across the street.  Apparently, feeling embarrassed for being so cautious, the guy shuffled along behind me and narrowly made onto the sidewalk before the light changed. 

This put me in the extremely uncomfortable position of being faced with a stranger who wants to make conversation at 8am.   To make things worse, this guy looked like a real kook, to use Joel's term.  He was wearing white keds with scrunchy socks, jeans that were just a little too short, and a t-shirt that clearly used to be pink, but was faded to orange.  He had unruly white hair tied back by a bandanna, and a HUGE cell phone clipped to his belt.  He didn't seem to be sure of where he was going, and the back of his shirt was soaked with sweat.  In other words: he looked like exactly the kind of Crazy I try to avoid whenever possible. 

"Got a plant, there, huh?", he asked me.  "Um... yes," I replied, trying not to make eye contact as I hurried down the sidewalk.  "What kind of plant is that?", he asked.  "Um... bamboo," I told him.  Now I was sure he was a kook, because even a plant-killer like me knows bamboo when they see it.  "Growing a garden at work?", he asked.  "No, um, my cat was eating it, so I thought I'd bring it to work."  Inside, I was kicking myself for opening up the conversation and wishing I could just walk a little faster without dropping all of my crap.  I looked over at the security guard across the street and wondered if I should just duck into a building and wait until he passed to continue on to my office.  "Ah, saving the plant from the cats.  That's nice.  I'm sure you'll have a forest in no time," he commented.  "Yeah, um, bamboo grows really fast," I said nervously.   "That's for sure," he said.  "Bamboo grows fast.  'Specially in Nam."

I'm not sure why, but that statement just made me so, so sad.  It's pathetic that I've trained myself to be so suspicious of every friendly stranger on the street.  It's sad that I have to be suspicious.  It's sad that a lonely vet is avoided on the streets.  I wonder how much he went through to defend this country. 

Or, maybe he was just crazy.   Who knows.

Uppers and downers

Yesterday I wrote a post that was filled with angst and sadness, wondering if I'm just in a funk, or if I'm suffering from actual depression.  I decided not to publish it because I was afraid I'd regret posting such worries for the world to see.  Also, I didn't want to worry my family.

I keep telling myself that this self-perpetuating cycle will disappear once we've finished all the projects currently in progress.  Once the remaining two rooms are painted and my wall is finished, I won't feel like this any more on the weekends.  We'll have time to do things that are actually fun, instead of just taking breaks in between first and second coats.   I really, really hope that's not a total crock I'm selling myself, because I hate feeling this way, and I hate feeling like it's totally self-inflicted.  Most of all, I hate wasting my weekends being stuck in a funk for no good reason.

I'm happy I didn't publish that whole post, because it's just... depressing.  After getting a really good run in yesterday, followed by a great night's sleep, I feel much better.  I'm not exactly bouncing off the walls, but I don't feel like the world is conspiring against me at the moment.  I do still want to punch the guy at the gym who grumbled that I should "just stay on the machine until midnight! [Hrrrrumph!]" because he thought I was taking too long to cool down, even though I was on one of the designated no time-limit treadmills.  I noticed that he didn't wipe off the bike he was using while he impatiently waited for me to be finished, and I had half a mind to report him to the gym police.  But since my membership expired in March and I have yet to pay for renewal, I decided not to. 

He's still a jerk, though.  And I reserve the right to send him subtle death stares and think mean thoughts about whatever stupid TV show he watches while working out -- or worse yet, if he's one of those haughty workout-purists who prefer to run while staring at a black TV screen.  Freaks.

I think that what I need to clear myself out of this funk completely (besides finishing off all our in-progress home improvement projects, because I know that WILL help) is to focus on something positive.  Like the vacation Joel and I are trying to plan.  We have a vague idea of when we want to go (later this summer) and a wide range of places we're considering (Salt Lake City, Ireland, Tahoe, Las Vegas, Spokane, Iceland, San Diego, Denver...).  I can't decide where I'd like to go most.  I would love to go to Ireland or Iceland, but those are pricey flights.  For some reason, Salt Lake City intrigues me, and I love the sound of Spokane.  Then again, Denver is supposed to be pretty cool.

Getting all riled up

A few days ago, Frema announced to the internet that she'd announced to her HR department that she'd be taking 12 weeks of maternity leave in December.  This has nothing to do with me whatsoever, but the whole issue of FMLA/maternity leave, for some reason, gets me all fired up.

The company that I work for has what is considered a fairly good maternity leave policy.  You can take up to 12 weeks at 40% of your salary and be guaranteed that your job will be there for you when you come back.  I guess that's not a bad deal, right? 

Except for two things:  First, you have to use up all of your vacation and sick days (for which you're paid full salary) before your "maternity" leave can start (at 40% of salary).  The total still can't be more than 12 weeks.  This completely violates the spirit of the FLMA Act.  Vacation is for vacations.  Sick time is for when you're sick.  Forcing a new mother into a situation where she's coming back from maternity leave with 0 time off accrued is just asking for trouble.  Babies get sick.  Babies have doctor appointments.  Mothers get sick.  Mothers have doctors appointments.  How are they expected to deal with that when all their sick and vacation time has been spirited away?

Secondly, in order to qualify for paid maternity leave, you have to have Short Term Disability insurance, which costs $166 a year.   I find this to be nothing short of discrimination.   Men aren't required to have a separate insurance that covers them for prostate cancer, so why should women need to shell out extra money for "pregnancy insurance"?  And while we're at it, since when did pregnancy become a short-term disability?   Since when is having a baby a disease? 

Of course, I should count my blessings, since some companies don't offer any pay while you're on maternity leave.  40% is pretty decent. But I still think the whole situation is completely unfair an discrimination against women. 

Also, I am not pregnant, nor am I planning on becoming pregnant.  Just to be clear.  I'm just ranting on about something that has nothing to do with me at all.  You want to hear what I think about the fact that gay marriage isn't legal in all 50 states?   No?  How about what I think of insurance companies, or the lack of emphasis on preventative medicine in our health system?  Maybe next time. 

In less controversial news, I made lasagna last night for dinner.  It was quite good, which is a bona-fide miracle, considering: I used a recipe for a mushroom, spinach and onion lasagna, which called for mushrooms, spinach and an onion (surprise!), as well as a package of "cholesterol free egg product" and a 14-oz jar of pasta sauce.  Since Joel doesn't like mushrooms or onions, I omitted those two ingredients.  Since I didn't have any spinach, I left that out too.  Instead, I substituted ground beef.  Fair trade, right?

I also just used regular egg.  I used 4 because that seemed like a good number.

Oh, and also, one time (like... 5 years ago?) my aunt told me that you could get away without boiling the lasagna noodles if you just added twice the amount of pasta sauce.  I thought that would be no problem, since I had a big Sam's Club sized jar of pasta sauce that was easily twice the size of a regular normal-person jar (we are not normal people, we have enough food in the house to survive a nuclear holocaust).  The problem?  The recipe said to add 1/2 cup of sauce to the bottom of the pan, and then "the remainder" on top of the last layer of (non-boiled) noodles.  It's very difficult to measure out (and then double) the "remainder" of a non-existent jar.  So I just estimated.  And then added a little extra for good luck.

Lastly, the pan I used was the wrong size, because our medium-sized baking dish died during the catfish disaster of last year.  And I didn't start cooking until 8:30pm. 

And after all that, it turned out to be delicious.  Or maybe I was just hungry, since after the 50 minutes of covered baking, 10 minutes of uncovered baking and 10 minutes of "resting", I was STARVING.

Perhaps my cooking karma is changing.  Maybe next I'll tackle baking!  Maybe not.

Happy weekend, internet.  They seem to be getting further apart, don't they?

Oh, hi. Is that coffee for me?

Laurel was totally head-on right in her comment on the last post -- the second night of insomnia is always the worst, because you're so anxious about ANOTHER whole night without sleep that BANG, you're up all night AGAIN.   At least that's how it is for me (and Laurel), and the second day on no sleep is 100 bazillion times worse than the first day.  Luckily, when I wrote that last entry, I was on night #4 of little-or-no sleep, so last night I actually managed to fall asleep (with the help of some Lunesta and a few alcoholic beverages before bed -- hey, you do what you gotta do).  Since Henry was cuddled in the bed already, pretending to be totally konked out from his hard day of chasing Aflac ducks and rubbing himself up against freshly painted walls, I decided to let him stay in the bedroom.  He rewarded me for this decision by giving me my wakeup call a whole 45 min early -- that's 5:22am -- this morning.

Sadly, I felt so great after just getting 5 hours of sleep that I didn't even care when, in the course of conducting a 5:22am-cat lockout, Madison bit me and swatted at my face.  How cute!  I wonder if I should just stay awake and go to the gym before work?  Oh, wait, the gym doesn't open until seven because only crazy people exercise in the morning.  Back to bed it is, then.

I have two huge meetings today.  Normally, one of these would be enough to worry me for a month, so today will be fun.  Oh, and tomorrow?  I have jury duty.  This will be my fourth call to jury duty in my 8 years of being of legal, jury-serving age.  Am I missing something here?  Is the universe trying to tell me I should have gone to law school? 

Please cross your fingers that I get to spend the entire day watching movies and reading books and sitting, totally bored out of my mind, in the waiting room.  I don't feel like going through the whole this-is-my-civic-duty vs. I-really-really-don't-want-to-be-on-another-jury debate in my own head. 

It's a bad sign when you start thinking about how great that first cup of coffee is going to taste before you actually go to sleep

My insomnia is back, and I am out of ways to kill it.  I'm deeply worried.  I used to take Tylenol PM every night, but then that stopped working and I had to get myself on some prescription drugs.  Now the Lunesta seems to have stopped working, and MAN, I'm a freaking zombie today.  If I hadn't just requested 7 days off of work yesterday, I would have called in sick this morning.  I hate calling in sick, I always feel like a big fat liar and an overreacter, like my boss can tell that I'm not really sick sick, I'm just really, really, really tired sick.  I think that anyone who's ever tried to function on no sleep would agree that being really, really, really, ridiculously good looking tired should totally count as being sick, but still.  It just sounds so lame.  And then I'm faced with either making up a different affliction to claim or sounding like a hypochondriac.  If I go with the "I couldn't sleep last night" reason, I tell myself that my boss is probably wondering why on earth I couldn't sleep, I mean GOD, what's wrong with that girl, she keeps herself awake all night and then calls in acting like she has the avian flu or something!

Right.  I know it's dumb.  But calling in sick kind of ruins the whole concept of a sick day for me.  My office requires that you talk to your actual supervisor.  For reasons that escape me, leaving a message or sending an email is strictly forbidden.  So when I'm up at 4am and I realize that I really shouldn't go to work tomorrow, I can't just call up my boss, leave a message saying I'm "sick" and then turn off the alarm and get some rest -- instead, I have to wake up at the normal time, call in to report my inability to go to work, and then try to go back to sleep.  By this time the cats have realized I'm awake and have started clamoring for their breakfast, begging for belly rubs, pleading with their little-cat eyes for me to throw the toy mouse just once.  For heaven's sake woman, it's past 6am!  Get off your lazy butt and PAY ATTENTION TO US!

So, yeah.  There's also the morning city noise, the cars squealing out of their bad parallel parking jobs, the kids yelling on their way to school, the dogs barking as they take their morning dump in my flower box, and worst of all, that dreadful bright thing in the sky pouring all its awful light in through my windows.  Getting back to sleep doesn't often happen once I'm up.  And so what's the point of calling out sick and wasting a precious day off? 

Hopefully this will pass.  Hopefully I can exercise myself into such a tired state that it will be impossible for my body to NOT fall asleep tonight. 

And hopefully this time I'll remember to check under the bed before I decide to close the cats out of the bedroom for the night.   

Zombie over and out.

Yet another weekend time warp

It's Monday again, and here I am again, wondering how the weekend is already over. AGAIN.

Does this ever end?  Ever?  God, retirement is so far away.  There are just so many things I want to do, and having to go to a job 5 days a week is killing my mojo.  I am trying to plot ways I can make it to the dry cleaner and the chiropractor this week, without sacrificing too many trips to the gym.  I don't think I can do it, and that just seems so... sad.

This weekend was (almost) a total bust as far as painting/wall-working is concerned.  I just couldn't bring myself to get out the painting gear on Friday night (I mean, I had a raging party to go to and then some clubs to hit, so of course I didn't have time to do something like painting my hallways on a Friday night!).  On Saturday I went to watch the IRA in Camden, NJ.  Sadly, Joel and I were probably the most Irish people at the whole event, and Joel proved this by getting a massive sunburn even though we were in the shade all day.  I had to teach him how to exfoliate just so he could try to fade the reverse-raccoon mask left by his sunglasses before his business trip this week.  Like a true Irishman, his sunburn is almost gone, and by next week he'll be back to pale.  I, on the other hand, have truly turned into an old person, such that I put sunscreen all over my body before we even got in the car at 9am.

The race was fun, it was mega-hot out and we were both a sweaty mess by the end, despite the fact that all I did was sit in a lawn chair and read the latest issue of Glamour (that's how you "watch a race," for those of your amateurs out there).  Then we got to drive the two hours home in my non-air conditioned, black vehicle.  Luckily I had some spare napkins in my glove compartment that I used to wipe the pooled sweat off my neck and face and then stuff in my bra to keep the Boob Sweat under control on the ride home.  Classy!  I remember now why I dream of getting a new car every summer.  Guess it's time to bring back The Sweat Towel, which is just that -- a towel I keep in my car to wipe off sweat.  I can't imagine why I haven't been voted Miss Mid-Atlantic yet.

Anyway, all that sun and magazine-reading and driving was very tiring, and I couldn't bring myself to paint when we got home on Saturday night either.  I felt like I was going to pass out a few times when I stood up off the couch. Hmmm, I wonder if going out in the sun all day and subsisting in iced coffee drinks might be sort of not good for you? 

And then it rained all day on Sunday, so I couldn't work on my wall at all.  We did paint one coat of primer on hallway #2.  We had to stop at one section of the wall, which is about 15 feet high and just happens to be over a turn in the stairs, so there is no way to position a ladder under it, which in turn makes it pretty much impossible to paint.   Any suggestions from the engineers/problem solvers out there?  Henry only jumped into the paint pan one time, so at least there's that.

I want a do-over.  I think that Monday should be the official rain-date for Sunday.  Let's start a petition. I don't know how I'm supposed to get anything done when there is water falling from the damned sky all day.  Honestly.

Coffee Genie

Has this ever happened to you?

You're sitting at your desk, wondering how on earth it's not even noon yet and thinking to yourself "Man, I wish I had some coffee right now. That would be awesome. But I really don't feel like walking all the way to the elevator and going up to the coffee shop to get some.  Woe is me!"

And then you remember that an hour ago you already did all the taxing work of getting out of your chair and dragging your mug all the way up to the third floor and all they way back down to your office, but then you were immediately distracted by the phone and you never even took a sip of your delicious hazelnut coffee with skim and splenda.  So it's still sitting there, ready for you to gulp it down!

It's like having a magic genie grant your wish.  And thankfully, it's still hot, thanks to my overpriced insulated Starbucks mug.  Bliss.

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I don't have such big plans for this weekend, since it's only a regular-sized weekend, not a fantastic super-sized holiday weekend.  I'm planning to go up to watch the IRA on Saturday with Joel -- that's Intercollegiate Rowing Association, not Irish Republican Army, by the way, although THAT would sure be interesting, wouldn't it?  Hopefully we'll make it home in time for me to go to discount yoga at 6pm.  We also need to go to the bakery because we're out of hot dog rolls.  Exciting times!

Also, continuing the home improvement frenzy, I plan to spend Sunday working on My Wall and painting Hallway #2.  Joel and I went to a home salvage/recycling warehouse last night to pick up some more supplies, and I am now the proud owner of $86 worth of discounted, off-color, broken, or otherwise unwanted tiles.  Now if only my mom can manage to haggle those blue tiles she saw sitting on the back of a truck last weekend, I might actually finish this thing this century.