Operation Pink Herring

Tap Tap

Is this thing on? Hello? 

I want to get back into blogging. I've been saying that for the past, oh, four years? I'm pregnant and sick and exhausted so this seems like a really good time to actually do it, right? Right. This post may be on the front page for the next two years. 

So... hi! I'm pregnant. Again. Kids 1.0 and 2.0 currently look like this: 

It is still a massive pain in the ass to login to Flickr, I see, so good to see that some things don't change. 

I currently look like this: 

Except even more pregnant because that is from two weeks ago. Another thing that has not changed is that I continue to defy the laws of physics by looking nine months pregnant at a mere 23 weeks (when this picture was taken) but will surely continue to grow for the next many, many weeks. Pregnancy is very magical. I am thrilled we will be getting our third girl (!!!) but am very, very over being pregnant. Being pregnant is terrible. There are robots who do surgery and cars that drive themselves now, where is my robot surrogate. Thanks for nothing, Obama. 

I just got busted eating mini boxes of Nerds by my large child, who hasn't napped in two years, so time to peace out. Are we still saying that? I'm pretty sure not. I also got my car inspected this morning with two tiny heart barrettes in my hair that I had no idea were in there, while wearing ill-fitting purple sweatpants, and I haven't slept a full night in approximately five years, so I don't care. I need to go hide and eat more Nerds now and contemplate how I keep gaining so much pregnancy weight. 

We need to come up with a stronger term than Pregnancy Brain

Part One: Last Week

I place a fairly large Amazon order to fill in some of the last things we really, definitely need for the baby. More cloth diapers, more diaper covers, a wet bag to hold dirty diapers, the special laundry detergent you use to wash cloth diapers. Most of it revolves around diapers. But there are other things too!  Many things! Many things that babies need! I hit "place order" and feel very accomplished. Now we'll have all the absolute essentials covered and Free Super Save Shipping to boot. I ship the order to Joel's office, since we can't receive large packages at our house and I don't feel like carrying a big fat Amazon box 3/4 mile home from my office. Look at me, thinking ahead! Actually learning my lesson after having our crib shipped to my office!

Part Two: Wednesday night

Joel asks what the status of the Amazon order is, as it has not yet arrived at his office. I look in my email and forward him the tracking information saying that the order has shipped in two parts, one via UPS and the other via US Postal Service. Oh, and upon further inspection it seems the Postal Sevice portion has already been delivered! Woohoo, baby stuff!

Part Three: Wednesday night, two minutes later

"You used my new office address, right?" Joel asks. As in, not the old one that his company moved out of many months ago, whose address no longer technically exists?

Part Four: Wednesday night, two minutes and five seconds later

Um... oops?

Part Five: Thursday morning

Joel checks his office to see if by some miracle the packages have arrived there. After all, they did set up address forwarding with the post office and they get a shitload of UPS packages and the driver knows about their office move. Maybe they made it despite the wrong address! SHUT UP, MAYBE.

Yeah, no.

Realizing that the Postal Service package is most likely a completely lost cause, I dedicate myself to saving the UPS package. I check online: out for delivery. OK, so it's not too late! Surely UPS can call the driver and tell him oopsie, actually DON'T bring that non-existent old address, bring it to the new address!  It's not far from the old one! In fact, Joel insists that since they get so many UPS deliveries the guy might actually just recognize the old address and know that it's really supposed to go to the new one. SHUT UP, HE MIGHT.

Yeah, no. Again.

The UPS phone rep insists they can't do anything until an actual delivery attempt is made. If the driver is unable to deliver the package, then I can call and change the address. UPS suggests I call Amazon and try to change the address with them.

Part Six: Later Thursday morning

To avoid the shame of having my entire office overhear me try to navigate my way out of this bungled mess, I log into Amazon's chat help. A nice Amazon lady asks how she can help me. I explain the situation and beg her to change the delivery address. Sorry, but she can't change the address once an order has shipped. She can't even put a note in the system or do anything to somehow alert the UPS guy that some dumbass used an outdated, now nonexistent shipping address. I am about to cry. Joel's old office is now just an abandoned space. The city is doing a ton of construction right outside it. Our baby stuff is either going to be run over by a bucket loader or stolen by hooligans. 

However, the Amazon lady continues, she can issue a refund for the entire order. Then I can re-order all the items and use the correct shipping address. Would that be OK?

Um, yes, I guess that would be "OK", if by "OK", you mean extremely generous considering this entire problem is 100% my dumbass fault. She does that. Refunds the entire order. I... really don't know what to say.

Part Seven: Thursday, lunchtime

I get in the car and drive to the site where Joel's office used to be on the off chance that the Postal Service package is still lying on the sidewalk or was somehow delivered to the company next door. There is, predictably, no parking downtown. I illegally park in the area reserved for the construction workers. As I walk by their cars, I notice that they ALL have an official-looking permit displayed on their windshield. This is so fucking stupid, I think to myself. Some nice lady from Amazon.com is not going to swoop in and save your ass when you get the car towed. But I'm already halfway to the entrance of the other office, and I'm expecting this whole thing to be a bust anyway. Joel has warned me that neither the security guard nor the loading dock staff at this building are particularly friendly or helpful. But at least I do have a strategy in place: 1) explain the situation, admit it is my fault and beg forgiveness, 2) look at pregnant as possible, and 3) cry, if necessary. But still, I am fairly certain I'll be back out in thirty seconds after they shut me down, and the car will be OK for thirty seconds. I hope.

I tell my sob story to the security guard. I am a silly, very pregnant person who forgot to update her Amazon shipping address and has he perchance seen a package -- he interrupts me to say that yes, a package from UPS just came this morning and he took it back to the loading dock. Do I know where that is? No, no I don't. He escorts me back peresonally and introduces me to the loading dock lady, who isn't very friendly but points to a pile of packages. And right on top, there it is! The UPS package!  Unharmed! I pick it up and give it a kiss.

Now, there was another package delivered yesterday by the regular postal service, I explain. Do you know where that might be? Oh, says the loading dock lady. That's going to be a problem. That'll be in the mail room. You have to go up there and look for it. I... don't know where that is, I stammer. She rolls her eyes and picks up the phone. I think she's completely dismissed me, but then she hangs up the phone and tells me if I go back out to the front, the security guy will take me up to the mail room.

THANK YOU, I say. I will go right up there in just one second, I just need to stash this in my car [and make sure my car isn't being towed, which by this point I'm freaking out about just a little bit because it's been much longer than thirty seconds and oh god, I saw a city ticket lady one street over on the way in, what the hell was I thinking parking there]. I run (RUN, which I have not done in several months) out to the back entrance of the building, clutching my precious UPS box. The car is still there. The car doesn't have a ticket. I get in and move it into the parking garage, berating myself for not just parking there in the first place. I hate, hate, hate paying for parking (especially because we used to have a free pass to this exact garage, you know, back when Joel used to actually have an office here), but I reason that if all this idiot mistake ends up costing me is $7 for parking (rather than, you know, THE COST OF OUR ENTIRE AMAZON ORDER), I can count myself insanely lucky. I park in the garage and hustle back up to the front door, preparing my saddest, most pathetic pregnant lady face to tell my story to the mail room employees.  Except I never even get to the mail room, because in the time it took me to move the car it seems that Mr. Security Guard has gone to the mail room for me, retrieved the package, and has it waiting for me at the front door. THANK YOU, I tell him. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I go back to the parking garage, again feeling slightly irritated that I will now have paid $7 to park in the garage for less than five minutes, but WHATEVER. I should consider myself fortunate! Both packages found! Amazon was willing to refund my money! I fixed my bonehead mistake! THIS IS A GOOD DAY. I insert my credit card into the machine at the garage entrance, pay my $7, and take my little ticket back. As I get in the car I look at the clock and see that not only did I succeed in retrieving both packages and not getting the car towed, but I'm going to make it back to work in less than an hour.

Part Eight

I pull up to the garage exit and go to insert my paid ticket, except... it's not in my hand. Or in my purse. Or in the car console. Or... anywhere. I illegally back up so I'm not blocking the exit lane and start to go through my purse methodically. I cannot have lost this ticket between the machine downstairs and my car. It's just not possible! I didn't go anywhere, stop for anything, put anything down. It HAS to be in here somewhere.

It's not.

I take everything out of my wallet. I take every paper out of my purse. I look in the glove compartment, under the seat. I get out and look in the trunk, thinking maybe I dropped it when I put the second package back there. No. Ticket.

Part Nine

I hang my head in shame and go into the parking office next to the exit. I lost my ticket, I tell the lady working there. Somehow, between paying the machine and walking to my car I lost my ticket. I just paid. Just now. Two minutes ago. But I can't find my ticket. I paid with a credit card, is there anyway she can look it up? I furiously look away from the sign declaring "Lost Tickets Pay Maximum Daily Fee - No Exceptions".

She holds out her hand for my credit card and walks back to her computer. She scrolls through many screens. I stand there for at least five minutes. She obviously cannot find it. I resign myself to paying the $22 maximum fee, on top of the $7 I already paid, reasoning that it's still cheaper than getting the car towed. Or having to pay for an entire lost Amazon order. Things could be a whole lot worse.

OK, I see you, she says suddenly, handing back my credit card. Just pull up to the gate here and I'll let you through. Thank you, I tell her. Thank you so, so, so much.

Part Ten

We are not going to talk about how I had to park in the scary annex garage when I got back to work because there were no spaces in the regular garage, and then I spent fifteen minutes trying to find my damn way out of there. No, we're not going to discuss how the exit door had a sign that said "Push Hard - Door Will Open" but I pushed as hard as I could and the damn door did NOT open, so I had to go back up the stairs, back to the car, and walk all the way through the annex garage and the regular garage to get back out to the street.

Epilogue

We're also not going to talk about how I after work, I 1) forgot my purse in my office, and 2) was stopped by a kind lady on my way out of the bathroom who told me that my skirt was a little bit caught in my bag. Which was her nice way of saying "your skirt is tucked into your underwear."

And this is why you can't trust doctors

Joel and I were invited to a fourth of July BBQ this Saturday. Fun, right? Sure, unless you're me. And you don't really like doing stuff. Or talking to people. 

Also, this BBQ is just us and two other couples from my work. I like them both very much, but I don't really like hanging out with work people on the weekends. Because that means I have to wear real clothes and act like a normal person. And I have social anxiety that I normally treat by drinking several alcoholic beverages except I can't drink. Thanks for nothing, baby.

I was sorely tempted to say "sorry, can't make it!" and revel in our long weekend with no plans, no obligations, nowhere to be. But then I realized, hmmm, perhaps this is why I don't have any friends in this city. And I remembered how I got a severe case of The Sads about halfway through Memorial Day weekend when I realized we had done absolutely nothing (this is ridiculous, because I love doing nothing. I never claimed to be rational, and also LAY OFF ME I'M PREGNANT).

I'd be embarassed to tell you how much time I spent thinking about whether we should go to this stupid BBQ or not. Finally, I clicked "respond" on the invitation email, said "We'd love to come! See you there!" and clicked "send" before I had time to think about it. There! We're going! It will be fun! I'll make Pioneer Woman's pesto cream pasta and everything will be great!

And then this morning I got slapped with these fun accessories.

Apparently this is what happens if you have astronomically high cholesterol and mention to your doctor that you've been having intermittent chest pain and heart palpitations. Sure, no problem, I'll wear a heart monitor for 48 hours, I said at yesterday's 29-week appointment.  In my head I was envisioning something like the heart rate monitor that Joel uses when working out, a discreet little band that goes around your chest and is easily hidden by a shirt. Instead, I got electrodes from my ribs to my neck, a mess of wires, a sweet little battery pack that you wear around like a shoulder bag, and orders not to shower until Sunday at 11am. It's classy AND sexy and I'm currently praying that we get out of work early for the holiday so I can go home and hide in the house until Sunday morning.

OH WAIT EXCEPT I HAVE TO GO TO A FUCKING BARBEQUE AND MAKE SMALL TALK WHILE LOOKING LIKE WALL-E'S FATTER COUSIN.

SOBER.

This baby owes me so hard.

 

25 weeks

In the very beginning, people kept telling me to "enjoy the pregnancy!" because "it'll be over in a flash!" and at the time I wanted to kill them. For one thing, I do not like being ordered to "enjoy it while it lasts!" because this somehow implies that I wasn't already enjoying it, and I was plenty overjoyed thankyouverymuch. And secondly, I felt like general ass for the first couple of months and it wasn't particularly enjoyable. So shove your cheerful orders right down your nauseous, barftastic throat and see how you "enjoy it!", assholes.

Anyway, the point is I now feel like the pregnancy is truly flying by. Don't get me wrong, I also feel like I have been pregnant my entire life. It's been less than six months since I first stood in the bathroom trying to convince Joel that that was in fact, a second line, I was sure of it because I had been I had compared it to the previous five days' tests (what?). I can hardly remember what it was like to wear normal clothes and drink coffee every day. Someone asked me how far along I was on Monday and I had a panicked moment where I couldn't remember. Twenty-three weeks? Twenty-four? Twenty-five, I blurted out, because I have taken to slightly exaggerating just how far along I am with strangers in hopes of preempting any comments about how I'm just so HUGE for [insert number of weeks here]. (It's working, because no one has insisted that I'm having twins or called me a hippopotamus in weeks.) And then when I got home and looked at the calendar I realized, holy shit. I actually AM at twenty-five weeks. It's just like the time I accidentally lied to the doctor about my age because I couldn't do the math in my head fast enough, so I just guessed. The more things change, huh? 

I half want things to slow down so I can enjoy and record and cherish and all that. Feeling the baby kick and move all the time. Looking undeniably pregnant, but not so huge that I'm desperately uncomfortable and can't get around. Experiencing all the stereotypical pregnancy symptoms without wanting to throw myself off a bridge just to escape the nausea. These are probably the best weeks, I know.

But still, I'm half ready for this pregnancy to be over. I wouldn't mind having control of my own body back. I am a little tired of having to work my morning schedule around baby-induced, ahem, gastrointestinal issues. (Which present themselves at exactly the moment I need to leave for work every. single. day. So I can either 1) be late to work because I was... tied up in the bathroom, 2) try to make it to work and deal with the issue there [no thank you] or 3) wait until the next day. Because apparently that's how it works. It's 8:15am or nothing, THANKS BABY.) I'd like to be able to sleep on my stomach again. Just for one, blissful night. I'd like to not have to get up six time (SIX TIMES) a night to pee. And I would really, really, REALLY like to have one of the cool, refreshing mojito-type drink concoctions I've been making for Joel with fresh mint from the garden and leftover ginger ale from the morning sickness days. Or, at the very least, I'd take one of those green apple Smirnoff Ices we have in the leftover in the fridge from when some friends were visiting back in March. They just look so... cool. Refreshing. Delicious. Have I mentioned that it is hotter than hell? No, really, we are setting records and shit here on the East Coast for hottest May ever in the history of the universe, and guys: I am scared. People warned me, "it's going to be a long, hot summer!" and I dismissed them, because 1) not much I can do about it now, guys, and at least I won't have to buy a maternity coat SO THERE and 2) I am pretty used to the Baltimore heat. I know it's not pleasant, but I can deal with it. I'd rather be hot than cold any day.

That's what I said, anyway. Now I think I'd like to move to Antarctica. We walked the seven minutes over to the garden plot over the weekend and I felt just like I used to feel after running ten miles in the ridiculous heat. Like I was never going to be cool again. I asked Joel to spray me with the hose in the garden (normally I would murder him; I hate water, I hate swimming, and I don't even like showering). When we got home I had to run my feet under cold water in the bathtub. While fantasizing about buying a kiddie pool, filling it with ice cubes, and spending the rest of my life submerged in it up to my neck. This was all in MAY. I am not really sure how I am going to survive July, let alone August.

But most of all, more than the heat and the peeing every ten minutes and the not-so-gentle kicks in the gut, I am ready to be done with the emotional pregnancy roller coaster. I mean, this week I feel great. That's nice. Last week was not to nice, not when I was sobbing in the bathroom because I felt like a terrible mother already. You see, we still have yet to purchase a single baby item and I had absolutely no idea where to start or any sort of urge to find out. I'd read about other people making grand plans for paint colors and cute art for the walls of the nursery or spending hours researching car seats and crib mattresses and I just could not make myself care. About any of it. Why didn't I want to do this stuff? Why didn't I want to go buy baby clothes and pre-wash them and fold them perfectly in the dresser (which we don't have) next to the baby's (non-existent) crib? Why, instead of feeling all starry-eyed and lovey when the baby kicked me (hard) (right in the guts), did I find myself resenting the baby and wishing I could just have a break for five goddamn minutes to eat my food without having it kicked back up my esophagus? If I already couldn't handle the stress of a non-complicated, relatively easy pregnancy, how in the hell was I going to handle a crying, pooping, demanding newborn? I diagnosed myself with some kind of pre-partum depression and then I cried for three days straight anytime someone mentioned the word "baby".

And then, suddenly, I started to feel better. I realized it was going to be OK. Janet reminded me how crazy people got about wedding stuff, too. I remembered how people were shocked that I had no idea what our bouquets were going to look like until they showed up on the day of the wedding. And the look of horror when I admitted that we weren't having favors. Not even a donating to charity in lieu of favors or anything like that. I just didn't care about them, so we weren't having them. And I was fine with that. It didn't mean I didn't care about our wedding. And having no desire to read 800 crib reviews on Amazon doesn't mean I don't care about the baby. That makes sense now, but it didn't last week.

Helping a lot to pull me out of the funk is that fact that we are now officially registered for baby gifts. See! Something has been done! (Never mind that someone at work asked me if we had our nursery all set up and I stammered something about it not being quite finished yet. And by that I meant, our "nursery" is still our living room. But at least it's painted a nice, gender-neutral shade of green, so we've got a head start there!) We spent two hours, armed with a scanner gun and Amalah's registry checklist, in the baby section of Target on Saturday. And then we treated ourselves to Chick-Fil-A as a reward, amen.  Joel finished our Amazon registry on Monday night. I nearly cried again (happy tears! the good ones!) looking at all the stuff he'd put on there on Tuesday morning. Stuff that he'd picked out for our child. Just thinking of him picking out a Cat in the Hat hooded towel for our baby to use is so amazingly wonderful that it feels like... too much. My heart feels like bursting. And those are the happy hormones talking, I know. I like them much, much more than the mean, sad hormones. But I think I am ready to have all these hormones go back to my baseline level of crazy.

(Jesus, even I'm starting to think it's twins.)

Pregnancy Brain

I have a friend who is a doctor. If you don't have one of these, I highly suggest that you go out and get yourself one; they're quite handy when you want to know why people get antibiotics for pinkeye when pinkeye is a virus (answer: for no real reason) or whether it's really that bad to do hot yoga while you're pregnant (answer: maybe). My friend was visiting this past weekend and I took the opportunity to pepper her with every pregnancy question I've been too embarrassed or forgetful to ask my OB. Like, why am I suddenly so much dumber than I used to be? Is the baby sucking up all my brain cells? Does that mean it's going to be the smartest baby in the history of babies?

Answer: I don't know, no, and no. Pregnancy Brain is not a medically recognized phenomenon, it turns out.

Huh. In that case, all those 2/3 vodka 1/3 diet snapple cocktails I drank in college have finally caught up with me, because friends: I am no longer smart. I vaguely remember that I used to be sort of intelligent. Sometimes. Capable of handling everyday tasks, at least. But lately... not so much. No much at all.

For instance, I took two checks to the actual bank the other day. Normally I just deposit checks in the ATM, but one of my checks was actually a money order and it looked a little suspect (remind me to tell you the backstory on the money order, which involves the Jetta that I cannot escape, even though I sold it two years ago) and I wanted to make sure it got deposited OK. I worried the whole way to the bank over that stupid money order. It had a little spot on the front for a signature, but the dude who sent it to me hadn't signed it. And are money orders even legit? They sure do not look it and I swear to God, if this thing is a fake and I have to deal with one more iota of bullshit over this car that I do not even own any more -- oops, I almost just walked right past the bank. 

I walked up to the teller window and sent my checks in the little tube to the magical teller room, crossing my fingers that I'd just get a receipt back and be on my merry way. Instead, the teller appeared on the little video monitor and asked me to pick up the phone. That's never good.

Turns out, no, the money order was not valid until the dude signed it.

Turns out that I had also forgotten to sign the back the money order. And the back of the other, regular check.

Turns out that I had ALSO forgotten a deposit slip. Because apparently this is my first time ever using a bank.

I encounter tasks like this on a daily basis now; tasks that used to be very simple but now seem impossible to figure out. I'll try to dial a phone number at work and I'll have to type it in ten or eleven times before I get the digits in the right order. I have completely lost the ability to tell time on a non-digital device. Joel gave me a refresher on the three steps to starting up the scooter, but if there were $1000 on the line I could not tell you what those steps are right now. I continually try to unlock the front door with the car's key fob. We just got a check in the mail for our state tax refund with a little note that said, hey, so we tried to direct deposit your refund like you asked but you wrote down your account numbers wrong, dumbass. Spellcheck has become my very best friend, although I am still not sure I 100% believe it about "unvolatile" not being a word. I am pretty sure I ruined the hat I've been knitting since January because I was supposed to be counting and decreasing stitches and... yeah, that was more complicated that I anticipated. 

This pregnancy brain feeling is distinctly different from the kind of insomnia fog I know well. I'm not tired or distracted, I just can't figure shit out. Even when I try really really hard, I can feel the cogs in my brain trying to turn and make sense of things and they just. can't. do. it. I think this must be what it feels like to be stupid.  

I'm supposed to fly to San Francisco tomorrow (YAY!) and on top of worrying about the top of the plane ripping off mid-flight, I'm wondering if I should maybe ask Southwest to give me Unaccompanied Minor passes to wear around my neck. That way the flight attendants could make sure I don't try to leave behind my luggage or miss my connection or, you know, get lost on the way from the gate to the plane.  

But at least I didn't mention Twilight

One of my coworkers rides the Baltimore metro to work in the mornings. The Baltimore metro is a whole post in itself, but to make a long story short: there is only one line. It goes from a random suburb into downtown, so only people who need to travel along its non-sensical route can make use of it. Largely it is populated by crazy and/or homeless people who ride it around aimlessly. My coworker often regales us with stories of the insanity she witnesses on her 10-minute ride to work.

This morning she told us she'd seen a painfully young mother dragging her two-year-old down the metro stairs, shouting "Come on Muggles! We've got to catch the Hogwarts Express so we can do some magic!"

There was some discussion of how this was a cute way to get her child to hurry for the train. And it is! Except... it doesn't make sense. And I really tried to keep my mouth shut, but I couldn't. 

"Heh, I wonder if her kid is going to hate that nickname when he gets older and reads Harry Potter for himself." [Blank stares] "'Muggle' is kind of an insult." [More blank stares] "Because... muggles can't do magic?"

"No, that's not true," another woman replied. "Hermione was a muggle and she did magic."

Oh, dear.

"Well, actually, Hermione was muggle-born." I clarified. "Her parents are muggles but she is a witch. That's why purists like Draco made fun of her. Her parents can't do magic. Because they're muggles. And muggles can't do magic."

"Oh."

And now I can never come to work again.

Taking Charge of Your Insanity

So, about that Oscar the Grouch post that's been decorating the top of this page for the past way too long: I was feeling mighty grumpy that day, as the title suggested. The day after I wrote it, I went around kicking random household items for being so goddamn IN MY WAY all the time. I came close to crying about thirteen times the week, including the moment that I found out there was no new episode of The Ultimate Fighter and when I realized we had no iced tea mix. And then (gentlemen folk avert your eyes) I got my period. Collective palm to the forehead, if you please.

After nearly thirty years (hear me saying the number out loud?) of being a lady-type person you'd think I would be able to recognize some good old fashioned PMS, yes?  But now that we're here in TMI territory, let me tell you something else: I kind of sort of went off the pill in May.

Before you start clapping your hands and throwing pacifiers at me, please know this: we are not "trying." Yet. But, at some point in the soonish (but not TOO soon) future, we would like to maybe think about doing that, so I figured I'd stop taking the pill just to see what would happen. Plus, my prescription ran out three weeks before my annual lady appointment and I didn't feel like calling the office ahead of time to request a special advance refill, so there was that. 

I had credited the pill with keeping me to a handy and convenient 28-day cycle and preventing babies, and not much else. And then I stopped taking it, and you guys... it's been bad. Thanks to your comments on this post I have procured and almost finished reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility, so I understand that my body is a scientific marvel of feminine power, blah blah blah. But tell that to everyone who has to interact with me when I'm riding the hormonal roller coaster, because hoo boy. I turn into this caricature sitcom version of a PMS-fueled bizzotch and even I don't want to be around myself. I have to stifle tears over everything from SPCA commercials to perfectly benign emails. The cat yowling when I get home is enough to set me into a three-day rage over how nobody appreciates anything I do. I watch Bobby Flay's Thanksgiving Throwdown Special and suddenly have an insatiable urge to eat an entire pan of roasted brussel sprouts, despite the fact that I've never before had brussel sprouts or pancetta in my life. After about five days of feeling like a bona fide crazy person I'll start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, please dear baby Jesus, my homicidal mood swings might mean I'm about to get my period.

And then, yup. DURR. Well, who'd have thunk it?

I'm not really sure what the point of this whole story was, but one thing has become pretty clear: when we do decide it's time for babies, I am going to be one fun pregnant person.

The grumpy cyclist

An acquaintance came into my office yesterday and told me all about this shuttle I could take home instead of riding my bike.  I would just need to walk a block over to the shuttle stop, wait outside for the shuttle to arrive, and then I could ride it to the stop that is only a block and a half from my house.  The shuttle comes every half hour, she told me, and it's great!  And then you wouldn't have to ride your bike in the dark!

 

Well, thanks. Except instead of walking a block, waiting up to half an hour, and then walking another block and a half, I think I'll stick with the bike, which I have to wait zero minutes for and takes me directly to my doorstep in less than ten minutes.   

 

I know that people mean well, but this kind of "suggestion" really annoys me.  This same lady is also extremely concerned that I have been riding my bike about 5 miles to a class after work once a week.  The ride kind of sucks because it's uphill on the way there, but it takes only about 15 minutes more than it would take me to drive and park, plus it means I don't have to feel guilty for not going to the gym that day. And better yet, I don't have to deal with parking when I get home at 9:30pm.  Yes, it's dark, but I have a super nerdy red flashing light on my helmet, another light on the front of my bike, and I am careful.  

 

Last night I did decide to drive to the class because: 1) I'd gotten about three hours of sleep the night before thanks to a raging case of insomnia and the idea of moving my legs made me want to vomit, and 2) it was pouring rain.  I made it home a little faster in the car, but then I had to drive around for 25 minutes looking for a parking space. Finally I gave up and parked the car in the no-man's-land ghetto and had to walk five blocks home.  I don't think trekking through the ghetto alone at 10pm and leaving my car there overnight is any safer than riding my bike home in the dark.  

 

She means well, I know that.  She insisted on driving me to this class two weeks ago when she ran into me in the parking lot after work, even though I politely protested and reminded her that if she dropped me off, I'd be left with no way home and I would really be fine on my bike.  No, no, she wouldn't hear of it.  In the time it took to cram my bike into her trunk, I could have been three-fourths of the way there and she could have been home.

 

Before I had my bike, a girl at my old job used to be horrified that I walked to work.  "Don't you have a car?" she asked incredulously. Yes, I do. However, parking costs $120 a month here. I live less than a mile away, I like getting the exercise, I like not paying for gas, and I like not killing the planet. I am more than capable of walking, I told her (politely).  Every time it would snow or rain, she'd say "You walked in THIS?" when I arrived. Yes, I walked today.  I've been walking since before you worked here, and I'm still alive.  Occasionally, if it was really, really pouring, I'd drive.  But honestly, when you have to walk to wherever your car is parked, and then walk again from the parking lot to the office, driving really isn't saving much time in the rain.  "But what about when it SNOWS?" she asked.  Well, in the time it would take me to shovel out my car and navigate the unplowed city streets, I probably could have walked in.  And then after work, I'd have to shovel out another parking space, if I was lucky enough to find one, to put my car back in.  So...I'm fine, thanks.

 

 

I am really not sure why this sort of concern bothers me so much.  I hope and assume that it comes from a place of caring, but it feels an awful lot like judgement; like their way is the right way and my way is the wrong way and I should change to make them feel better.  Instead of making me feel happy that they care enough to be concerned about me, it makes me feel rage-y because you know what?  You're not the boss of me.

******************

Five minutes after I published this post, Joel sent me a link to this article which illustrates reason number five (right behind exercise, saving money, saving the planet, and saving time) I prefer biking or walking over driving around this city: $252 parking ticket!!1!  NO THANK YOU.

 

So much to say

My mom asked me a few weeks ago if I'd lost interest in my blog. The short answer is, no! I haven't! Not at all! 

The longer answer is... long. And I don't know if it matters. For one thing, I don't really have time to write at work any more, which is where I previously did most (all) of my blogging. "I just don't have time" isn't really a valid excuse, though, because I have plenty of time after work. I just have a hard time convincing myself to start up the computer at home when there's laundry to be done and a Tivo cache that isn't going to watch itself. I've long been a believer in guilt-free blogging, so I try very hard not to let myself feel bad about letting the space between posts slip from days to weeks. But I miss it. And the longer I go, the more overwhelmed I feel when I do get the urge to write something. Where to start, when a month has gone by? I don't delude myself into thinking that anyone is really dying to know what they've been missing (hint: not much), I just sort of lose my place and then wander away to eat another of the cookies I made this weekend. They're pretty goddamn delicious, if I do say so myself.

Anyway! The point is, I haven't lost interest. It's just the ebb and flow of internet life, with an extra side of ebb. To try to snap myself out of it, I'm going to let go of my perfectionist tendencies, which dictate that things I write should ideally have a beginning, middle, and end, and you know, make sense. Poppycock, right? Being less hard on myself has only been a goal of mine for the past two decades, so I'm sure it will be no problem at all.

The point of that point is, I do miss you interent.

Hey, want to see a picture I took?

The end.

See, this is working better already.

The most wonderful time of the year

Reasons number seventy-eight you should not have two margaritas on an empty stomach while surrounded by coworkers:

"Isn't is marvelous," I swooned.  To my boss.  She'd just asked what we all thought of Fall TV. 

But I'm not ashamed!  I'm in love, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it.  Last night Joel asked what my favorite new fall show was, and WELL, SINCE YOU ASKED.

There's The Event.  I'm digging it so far, even though it is treading a little too close to Lost's territory, what with the disappearing magic plane in the very first episode. They've got some aliens in there to change things up -- at least I'm pretty sure that chick from ER is an alien -- and a little government conspiracy to boot.  I'll give it a try, even though I was extremely disappointed by the casting of Luke Danes as a terrorist.  It turns out he wasn't a terrorist after all, he was acting under duress!  And now he's dead, so he can go back to being Luke Danes. 

Besides, Luke Danes being made to wear an awful pilot outfit instead of his eternal flannel shirt is the least of my problems as far as character defamation (har, get it?) goes this TV season. Let's talk about Hawaii 5-0, shall we?

Now, I am too young to have ever seen the original show, so I don't care at all if they ruin its "legacy" or whatever.  But again with the ripping off of the Lost -- here's Jin! And he's speaking English!  I realize that he was just pretending not to speak English in Lost -- that's what actors do, after all, they act -- but hearing someone who will always be Jin to me speak perfect English is extremely disconcerting.  It's too soon. Take a vacation for a year or twenty, Jin.  Or just never work again.  The latter is my preference.  That also goes for Mohinder, and I don't care if he was actually faking the British accent in Heroes and the new American accent in Covert Affairs is real.  No. Just... no.

However, this is my biggest issue: Boomer.  When you've been immortalized as Cylon Number Eight, you should just retire from acting. I don't want to see you playing some police academy newbie.  I am actually enjoying Hawaii 5-0 enough, but are there no other actors in the world?  Besides Jin and Boomer, we've got Mick St. John from the short-lived and admittedly terrible vamp series, Moonlight, playing the lead.  I'm actually OK with that, because his acting was so godawful in Moonlight that I never fully identified him as his character.

What else, what else... I'm OK with that Dark Blue show, as long as we're assuming that there is room in this world for yet another law enforcement drama.  NCIS LA continues to make me angry with its ridiculous plot lines and complete refusal to put LL Cool J in anything other than a solid-colored, tight-fitting long sleeved shirt.  The Vampire Diaries makes my life complete, but why do all the good shows have to be on Thursday night?  I mean, we've got Vamp Diaries, Nikita (LOVE), Jersey Shore and Project Runway on the same night?  And then on Wednesdays I'm forced to watch yet another drama-filled season of Ultimate Fighter because there is nothing else on?  Is this really necessary, TV schedulers of the world?

Supernatural continues to kick ass, proving that beloved characters CAN continue their careers when they are written off a long-running show like Gilmore Girls, provided that 1) there is a suitable gap between roles, and 2) they can actually, you know, ACT.  

Smallville is finally, FINALLY, coming to an end -- but not before introducing an army of Lex Luthor clones.  Yawn. This show, it kills me. WHEN IS HE GOING TO FLY, GODDAMNIT?  We've been waiting ten years.  It is time.

Am I missing anything wonderful this fall TV season?  It truly is marvelous, isn't it?

 

Scott Pilgrim Versus the Old Notebook

Over the long weekend I spent several hours organizing our home filing cabinet. Lately I have been feeling like our house is a total disaster, but I didn’t really feel like cleaning. So instead I organized the filing cabinet while watching Tivoed episodes of my new favorite show –- it’s called Man, Woman, Wild and it has completely replaced that lying liar Bear Grylls in my heart -- and then I felt better about my messy house. Don’t question the method, it works.

In the back of the filing cabinet I came across a stash of old notebooks. Now, here’s a confession: although I am a huge fan of home organization, getting rid of clutter, and taking trashbags of junk to Goodwill, I have trouble letting go of notebooks and day planners. I get a sort of archaeologist thrill flipping through my old pen-and-paper calendars, trying to remember what “6pm Black&White” on May 17, 2002 meant and reminiscing about the days before I used an Outlook calendar, when I used to color-code all of my school, work, and social obligations using purple, green, and black pens. I also can’t part with anything school-related. When I finished my last Master’s class, I neatly organized all my notes and papers and stowed them in a banker’s box in the basement. I stashed the remaining notebooks with empty pages in the back of the filing cabinet to use as scrap paper and then promptly forgot about them. When I discovered them this weekend, I pulled out two smaller notebooks that I thought were empty and brought them in to use at work.

As I flipped the first one open yesterday, I found a few pages of notes scrawled in Joel’s handwriting. All in all there were about fifteen pages filled with college-era scribbles and notes. July 25th marked not only our first wedding anniversary, but also the eighth anniversary of our first date. Eight years! Skimming through Joel’s notes made me feel so nostalgic, recalling the days when we were boyfriend and girlfriend, meeting up after class to eat dinner and watch Smallville, back when Smallville was still a good show. There were some coaching notes on the first few pages, followed by instructions on how to refinish a door. After that was a page with job possibilities listed out and another page with numbers of computer repair places. Finally, at the very end of the used notebook section, I came across a list titled “Things to do this Summer”. It was so cute to read.  Baseball Game, Annapolis, Smithsonian, Matthew’s Pizza. A few items were crossed off, and I tried to remember doing them. The Baltimore Museum of Art ($5/person), yes, we definitely went there a time or two. How quaint, we had to pay!  Now it's free.  Go to DC and do the tourist thing, yup, we have a picture of us standing in front of some memorial during cherry blossom season on our bookshelf, me with my super-short hair and Joel in that blue t-shirt. Try crabs…well, that’s strange, because I know I didn’t have crabs, real crabs, hit-them-with-a-mallet crabs, until last year. I wonder why that’s crossed off? And “beach”? When did we ever go to the beach? I hate beaches.

And that’s when I noticed the year scribbled next to the list title, 2001, and did some quick math. This is 2010, minus 2001, equals nine. We have been together eight years. Eight is less than nine. RIght? Well, let's see: we graduated high school in 1999.  So that was the summer before freshman year.  2000 would be the summer before sophomore year and 2001 would be... the summer before junior year.  We met at the very end of that summer, and when I say "met," I mean that I crashed on the couch of my friends' house, where JOel had just moved in, for a few weeks before jetting off to Madrid for my summer abroad.  Our conversations, if we had any, were not memorable.  We did not hang out.  We most certainly did not go to the beach together.  I realized that this list, Things to do this Summer (2001), was an accounting of fun things that Joel did with his old girlfriend.

Internet, I do not know if I have ever felt such an intense wave of jealousy. This list looked exactly like the kind we make together, except Joel made it with someone else! Some woman who is NOT ME! I was instantly hateful of this stupid hussy, who from the very little I know about her was a perfectly nice girl.  I wanted to punch her in the face. I wanted to tell her to stay the hell away from MY man. I wanted her to not exist.

As I said, Joel and I met for the first time in August of 2001.  We didn’t say more than a quick hello to each other until I came back from Spain in the spring, and we didn’t start dating for another six months after that.  I spent most of my semester abroad (Mom, close your eyes) going out to Spanish clubs and staying out until 5, 6, 7am. Nearly all my friends that semester had left boyfriends back in the States, which left me and my one other single friend responsible for making out with more than our fair share of Spanish boys, a responsibility we took quite seriously. We even had matching pseudo-boyfriends named Alejandro Uno and Alejandro Dos for a few weeks! So it is not only ridiculous for me to feel mad about Joel having fun summer adventures with someone else during this time, it’s completely unfair and hypocritical. 

And yet, I cannot look at this list without feeling a jealous fire in the pit of my stomach. I want to find this girl he went to the beach with in the summer of 2001 and tell her, Hi, I don’t think we’ve met, but you dated my husband nearly a decade ago and the two of you broke up before we met. And guess what? YOUR LOSS! He’s mine now, I win, back off, and go back to living what I hope is a very happy life in which you are oblivious to my existence.  PS: Stay the hell away from my hunky man.

Time to get the old hearing checked

You may remember the minor freakout in which I was convinced our entire household was going to die in our sleep due to a gas leak in the oven.  I can call it a minor freakout now because it all turned out fine.  The problem was with the oven, not the gas line, and it was quickly fixed for a couple hundred bucks.  No big deal!  God, why am I always so dramatic?  I guess I've seen too many of those BGE commercials.  Wires down, red alert, don't go near, you'll get hurt!  Yeah, I totally know all the words.  Safety first, my friends.

The fix to this problem, unsurprisingly, involved having a guy come over to fix our oven.  Unfortunately, I hate having repairmen come to the house.  HATE IT.  It is so awkward. 

The worst was the exterminator that we've had to have come over several times to deal with the massive ant invasions we suffer here in the heart of the concrete jungle.  He was gross to begin with, all grunty and sweaty (I am quite forgiving of sweatiness, but this guy was above and beyond any normal limits of perspiration).  But even worse, he would always ask me about the baby.  Did I need to go feed the baby?  Should he be extra quiet in case the baby was sleeping?  It would have all been very considerate of him, if, you know, I HAD A BABY.   Which I do not.  Never have.  I got the vague idea that he was trying to hit on me a few times, like he was waiting for me to exclaim that I didn't have a baby because I was single and lonely and wanted to go out on a date with him. It was fucking creepy.  If I had had a baby, I would have kept it far away from him.

But even the ones that don't repeatedly inquire about my non-existent offspring are awkward.  I never know what exactly you're supposed to do while they're fixing your alarm system or replacing that leaky pipe in the kitchen.  Do you hang around in case they have questions?  Just go back upstairs to watch TV and wait for them to call you when they're done?  Are you supposed to clean your house before they come over?  Are you supposed to tip them?  Offer them coffee?  GAH.  What do you say when they tell you "your house is pretty," as the guy who cleaned our dryer vent did?  (I said "thank you" and then spent the rest of the day wondering if he was being sarcastic. On that particular day I'd decided that no, you don't have to clean the house for repairmen.)

Anyway, the oven repairman came, fixed the broken heating element in the oven, and left.  I stayed upstairs while he was working because I was in the middle of a Pretty Little Liars episode, but fear not -- Madison the Cat kept an eye on his every move.  I'm sure he appreciated being micromanaged by a snaggletoothed cat. 

Before he left, I asked him to take a look at one of the stovetop burners.  I never thought it was a problem before, but flames sort shoot out from under the burner when it's on, and after a near-death experience with the oven I wanted to get it checked out.  He said it needed to be replaced, but he didn't carry the parts with him.  They'd have to come back, and in the meantime we shouldn't use that burner.

I was really hoping that it would be a different guy for the second appointment, for the same reason that I never go back to the same hair stylist: I hate making small talk with semi-strangers.  No such luck.  Same guy.  Same cat demanding to supervise his work, same messy house.  This time I opted to just stay downstairs, reading a magazine in the next room while he worked, feeling ridiculously awkward. 

After about ten minutes, I heard him say "Ma'am?", and BOY, good thing I wasn't upstairs, I told myself.

"Yes?"

"Do you by any chance have a bathroom?"

"Of course," I told him, "it's right upstairs and to the left." And to myself, I thought, dear Jesus, please let the toilet be flushed.

"Upstairs?",  he asked.

"Yup, upstairs and to the left.  You really can't miss it."  When was the last time that toilet was used?  Oh god, are my bras still hang-drying on the back of the door in there? 

"Upstairs, and to the... left."  He gave me a strange look and resumed fiddling with the burner. 

Well, I told myself, I guess he didn't have to go too badly.

A little while later, he put his tools down.

"So, it's upstairs and to the left?"

"Yup," I confirmed.

He slowly went up the stairs.  Then I heard him start to come back down.  There had been no toilet flush.  Crap, I thought, was it THAT bad in there? 

He appears at the bottom of the steps holding our purple Dyson vacuum.

And then I died. 

And when the locksmith came over last week to put a new deadbolt on our alley gate, Joel handled the entire transaction while I hid upstairs in my pajamas.  Amen.

TMI, perhaps

When people talk about jobs and offices in general they seem to focus only on the actual work stuff: title, responsibilities, salary, etc.  That's all important, sure, but I think that things like general office culture and the suckiness of the commute are just as vital to overall job satisfaction.  If you could make a boatload of money saving baby dolphins from cancer, that would be super, right?  But what if you had to sit in traffic for three hours each morning and then sit in a basement office with cinderblock walls for eight more hours?  People tend to discount things like working in the basement and never seeing the light of day EVER, but these things can make you pretty miserable even if you do spend all your office energy saving dolphins and curing cancer. Uh, I assume.  

So, my new job (and I swear, after this I will officially stop talking about it) is pretty great except for one big problem: the bathroom situation.  At my old office we had a giant ladies' room, with three banks of toilets, two rows of sinks and a freaking COUCH. I never took advantage of the couch (I'm not really sure what it was for... napping?  Relaxing with a cup of coffee?), but I liked knowing that it was there.  I also liked the ability to easily head for the other side of the bathroom if, say, I entered as the same time as my supervisor. 

There was also another smaller bathroom at the other end of the hall that had soft lighting and a little vestibule and a vase with silk flowers on the counter.  This was referred to as The Nice Bathroom.  I hardly ever used it because it was about fifteen steps farther away than The Regular Bathroom and I am lazy. 

I never thought that the thing I'd miss most about my old job was the bathrooms, but after three weeks of using the teeny tiny (you have to turn to the side to squeeze by if someone's coming out when you're coming in) three-stall facility shared by the entire department (OMG) here, let me tell you: I REALLY miss those bathrooms.  You see, I suffer from a serious medical condition known as Stage Fright.  I absolutely cannot pee when I can see the shoes of my boss's boss's boss six inches away from my own.  And that's even worse, because then I'm sitting there silently and they probably think I'm in there to do something other than pee, when really I'm silently chanting LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE I HAVE TO PEE.  And then there's the awkwardness of making conversation over the sink.  What do you say?  "So... come here often?" "Have a nice time in there?" 

The whole situation makes me extremely anxious, so much so that I went to a different floor to use their bathroom at one point last week. Yes. 

It seems like a silly gripe, but I really like coffee and coffee makes me pee seventeen times a day.  I don't want to get caught slinking off to the other floor's bathroom and become That Girl Who Pees In Secret.  I also really, really don't want to pee next to my boss.  It seems the only choice is to give up fluids entirely.  I'm sure that's healthy.  

I've got a tendency to gripe about the many ways men have things easier than women. Hair dyeing, leg shaving, period having; I'll take all of it because oh my god can you imagine: URINALS. All of a sudden I'm grateful to be the one who gets stuck with childbirth. 

Week One: Survived

I'm going to be using my new job as an excuse for everything that's not getting done in my life for quite a while folks, so you might as well get used to it.  Because I'm so very busy (not really), here.  Have some half-written posts I've been meaning to write. 

YOU KNOW YOUR LIFE IS AWESOME WHEN YOU HAVE PARASITE PREFERENCES

So, Henry The Cat has giardia. Again. I’ve told Henry again and again not to drink stream water while hiking, but he just never listens! (BA DA BING!)

That’s just a little parasite humor for you, folks. I’ll be here all week. Specifically, I’ll be here all week giving my cat antibiotics every twelve hours. I’m not complaining, because out of all the parasites this cat has had, giardia is the least gross. But I am a bit bewildered. Except for visits to the vet, during which he travels in the confines of a carrier, this cat has not been outside in over three years. Because we’ve had so many problems with parasites being passed around within my cat herd, I have them tested every year. For the past two years, Henry has been clean. Madison, who occasionally does escape outside to the alley and is in general a dirty, disgusting animal, is clean. So, technically it’s impossible for Henry to have re-contracted giardia. It’s the immaculate parasitic infection!

DEAR GOD PLEASE LET MY NEW ERGONOMIC KEYBOARD HURRY UP AND GET HERE

A few years ago I bought an awesome cyborg-looking wrist brace at CVS when my left wrist was bothering me and I decided I had carpal tunnel syndrome.  Shortly afterwards, I also ordered an ergonomic keyboard and my wrist stopped hurting and I forgot about it.  The ergonomic keyboard turned into one of those things that I just used because it was there, but I wasn’t sure if it really made a difference. 

Well, I left it behind at my old office and one thing has become abundantly clear: I NEED IT. One week using a regular keyboard and my wrist is in agony. You should hear it, crying all night. It hurts right now, typing this. Kind of a lot. I should probably stop typing.  The things I do for you, internet!

I don’t want to wear the brace to work because it makes doing anything with my left hand pretty difficult -- I guess that’s sort of the point, huh?  But I also just don’t want to look like a pussy. If I play my cards right I can probably keep them thinking that I'm not a total wuss until next winter, when I'll have to get another flu shot.  I'm trying to keep it very professional here.  I left my New Moon calendar at home and I haven't mentioned The Vampire Diaries even once.  But if the new ergonomic keyboard I ordered last week doesn’t get here soon, my wrist is going to have to call in sick.

DON'T CALL ME A BITCH

I am not a fan, in general, of fighting sports. I can get behind the idea of self-defense and martial arts, but people actually getting into a ring and beating the crap out of each other seems kind of… dumb. And mean. I don’t like it.

HOWEVER, I am starting to love this show Joel watches, Ultimate Fighter. Or as I like to call it, America’s Next Top Model for Dudes. It starts out with a theme song that is like a cross between an angry Linkin Park and the techno thump-thump intro from Jersey Shore. The lyrics, when you can make them out amid the screaming, are something like THIS IS THE ULTIMATE! WE ARE THE ULTIMATE! PUSHUP FACEPUNCH ULTIMATE!The show features two teams who compete against each other in fights and people get sent home and I’m actually kind of fuzzy on these details.  But several of the fighters somehow get nicknames, my personal favorite of which was last season’s Big Baby. I miss Big Baby. Treeslam (or whatever his name is) just doesn’t have quite the same hilarity. But the nicknames are awesome.

Big Baby really was a big baby, by the way, and that’s the dichotomy that I’m coming to truly love. On one episode last season two guys yelled the same lines at each other for what seemed like five minutes. One would yell “YOU’RE A BITCH” and then the other would yell back “DON’T CALL ME A BITCH” and they repeated that for so long that I was absolutely transfixed as to who would break the pattern first. "Bitch" is a term that’s thrown around quite a bit. My favorite line from this season so far was when Treepunch (I think) called someone else -- you guessed it! -- "bitch" during a practice fight, and the other guy replied “You can’t call me a bitch! We’re on the same team!”

Basically, these uber-tough guys all live in a house together and call each other bitches and then at the end of each episode they fight. If you have a significant other who’s into this kind of thing, I recommend giving it a try. Just close your eyes when they start bleeding at the end.

MARY MARY QUITE CONTRARY

I meant to write about my foray into the wide world of gardening weeks ago, but it’s just as well that I didn’t because between then and now, not much has happened. It turns out that gardening requires quite a bit of waiting, which in turn requires patience. Needless to say, I am having some difficulty.

The impetus for hobby #472 came when, after a year on the waiting list, we got a call informing us that we were getting a community garden plot in the park a few blocks from our house. I spent a large chunk of my week off between jobs beating that poor neglected plot into submission, and we now have quite a variety of seeds in the dirt. It's exciting.  Yes, it is.

I am in love with the whole idea of growing actual food from teeny tiny seeds, but I can’t help feeling like I’m destined for heartbreak. I am a long-time killer of houseplants and I have no experience with actual outside gardening. I can’t leave the potted herbs I planted on our back patio alone. I check on them every day and then feel crushed when STILL nothing but the basil has sprouted. What do they need? More water? Fertilizer? A nightly lullaby? And then I’m tempted to try all three, and then everything dies.  It's probably a good thing that the garden plot is a ten-minute walk from the house.

I’ve attended a couple of free classes at a local nursery, though, and my hopes are still high. It looks like I’ve killed the cucumbers by misreading the date it was safe to plant (April 20, not March 20, oops) and we might need to re-plant the carrots as well (not good in clumpy soil, double oops), but when we checked this weekend it looked like the broccoli and lettuce were both sprouting! Either that, or there are weeds growing in an awfully straight line.

Because I like to do things 110%, we are also now composting at our house, much to Joel’s chagrin. His exact words, I believe, were “this is an ill-conceived plan.” He is, in all likelihood, correct. But that’s not going to stop me from dumping all our organic waste into a Rubbermaid bin and scouring the state for a single place that will sell me red wigglers, which are apparently the kind of worms you need for composting.  I kidnapped a bucketful of reddish-looking worms from the garden plot and hopefully they are eating their way through all my coffee grinds and broccoli stems.  Either that, or they're all dead.  I can't bring myself to check.  

ADVICE, PLEASE

Finally, I need your input on one of my desk photos.  In an effort to settle into my new workspace I brought in a few picture frames and filled them with some extra prints I had lying around the house. I used one of my favorite wedding pictures, but I’m afraid it’s a little too… passionate for the workplace.

Tell me the truth, internet. Is it too racy? I’m planning to do a print order soon and I could easily replace it… but I kind of like it. Help me. I've expended far too much energy not talking about the new Hilary Duff movie that was on ABCFamily last night (DID YOU GUYS WATCH?) to be The New Girl With The Makeout Picture.

And thanks for all the fish

I felt this odd sense of detachment on the morning of my wedding day.  As we woke up and moved decorations from the hotel to the venue and then went off to get hair and makeup done I kept feeling like it just wasn't real.  Or that it was real, and it just wasn't my wedding.  Until about 3pm, when we arrived back at the wedding site and started getting dressed, I just couldn't process that it was actually happening.  For real.  For me.

I felt the same way on my last day of work last Friday. It was slightly less emotional and there was no photographer following me around, but I spent the entire day feeling like it just wasn't real.  I'm more than ready for a change.  I'm excited about the new job.  But still, it was sad leaving behind the people and the place I've spent 40 hours a week with for the past five years. 

What was even sadder, as someone who considers herself staunchly anti-clutter, was the amount of stuff I dredged from the back of filing cabinets and the dark corners under my desk.  It took me two trips with the car and one final pack-mule ride on my bike to drag home the contents of my tiny office, including:

• Receipts and return shipping labels for everything I've purchased on the internet over the past five years
• A forgotten foldable shopping bag I didn't know I had
• A copy of Glamour magazine from July 2006
• A set of return address labels with my maiden name on them
• A sheet of 2-cent stamps
• Two blank thank-you cards
• A very short phone cord
• The notebook that we used to keep track of our shared expenses before we got married.  Before we got engaged.  Before I learned that Excel is a lot easier than a paper, pen and a TI-83 with an aging battery
• A CD titled "wedding photos 2005," the contents of which I can only guess at (that was a big wedding year)
• A yellowed computer mouse
• Two MP3 data CDs, from before I had an MP3 player
• A plain manila folder containing my marriage certificate, birth certificate and passport
• A floppy disk containing a bunch of stuff from my master's program
• A pair of used Asics that I never got around to sending to Nike's shoe recycling program
• An entire shopping bag filled with shoes from under my desk
• A never-worn baseball cap
• One of those license plate frame things
• An old calendar
• An medium-sized American flag on a stick
• A Halloween jack-o-lantern pail
• A broken hanging folder file
• A dirty Tupperware container
• A nasty pair of flip flops (used for showering at the gym, which I did all of three times)
• A dirty t-shirt (used for summer days when it was too hot to ride to work in a nice shirt)
• Nearly a dozen cardboard boxes of varying sizes and shapes, all filled with tissue paper
• A fork, knife and spoon
• Eight packets of sugar-free hot chocolate mix
• $10.37 in coins and loose dollar bills
• A Coach keychain, still in its gift box
• A table runner, still in its gift wrapping
• Four coffee mugs, a pint glass and a bud vase
• A ziploc bag filled with used sandwich bags (We re-use them. It's gross, I know)
• A sheet of pills that I think are for allergies
• A long-lost coffee shop loyalty card with $16.34 left on it
• Two bottles of Tylenol (one in an Alleve botle, one in an Excedrin PM bottle)
• Approximately 700 napkins and four plastic utensils

And that, my friends, is not even taking into account the three boxes of stuff that I threw away all the things that I bequeathed to my coworkers.  Trust me, I'm suitably mortified at my own hoarding.  And I paid for it when Joel started rooting through the box designated for Goodwill and picking out things he wanted to keep.  

Farewell, little basement office.  I'll miss some things about you.  The cinderblock walls will not be one of them.

********************************************

For those of you who have inquired how the new job is going and if it's responsible for my absesnce from Internetville this week, fear not!  It's going absolutely splendidly because I haven't actually started  yet.  I took this week off as a between jobs vacation.  So far I've spent ten hours weeding our new garden plot, gotten a hair cut and written scripts for several Justified episodes in my head.  It's been glorious.

Social cycling anxiety

We went down to Richmond on Saturday morning so that Joel could drool over expensive custom bikes at this thing, while I got to partake in ABC Family’s Phony Matrimony Weekend with my friend Jenny, who convenient lives in Richmond and shares my love of made-for-TV movies. That name is not a joke, by the way. “Phony Matrimony Weekend” was dreamed up by someone at ABC Family’s corporate office and then approved by whoever lords over this sort of branding. I don’t think I could love the channel any more, and having someone to watch these ridiculous amazing cinematic pieces with me makes them even sweeter.

This a perfect example of the phenomenon Janssen talked about her in her post about People Who Do … there are people who enjoy watching movies called My Fake Fiance, and there are people who just cannot understand it. The movie was ridiculous, completely unbelievable and terribly acted. I loved every second of it. I loved The Perfect Man, which was on Oxygen later that night, just as much. Hilary Duff! Heather Locklear! Horrific New York accents and a ridiculous premise, around which the entire plot revolves! Honestly, what’s NOT to love?

I like good movies, too, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a completely different kind of enjoyment. I can appreciate a movie for being really good, and I can also appreciate a movie for being really, really bad… in a good way. It’s when bad movies take themselves too seriously that we get into trouble and end up with horrors like Post Grad. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Rory Gilmore for that monstrosity.

Anyway, after our day of wine-soaked chick flicks and bike-oogling, we headed home just in time for me to make it to a Ladies Biking Event at new-ish bike shop in our neighborhood. I got a flier for this event when I stopped in to pick up a bike part Joel had ordered last weekend, and I treated it like every social invitation that comes my way. I thought, hey, that sounds like fun, and then immediately began compiling a list of reasons why I couldn’t or shouldn’t go. We’d be out of town most of the weekend so I’d be too tired. I wouldn’t know anyone. I’d be mauled by hipsters when they realized I’m a complete cycling fraud. I don’t know anything about bikes. No, seriously, when I called to see if my bike was done with its complimentary 6-month tune up, the bike shop dude asked me which bike was mine and I stammered that it was the black one. The small, black one. Filed under my name?

I always do this, and luckily Joel is there to force me to go and do things that I’m uncomfortable with (he refused to dress in drag and attend as my lady biking BFF, though). So I went, ALONE, to a social event, ALONE -- an event about bikes, ALONE -- and… I had fun. I wasn’t even the least knowledgeable person there; some people didn’t even have bikes yet. (I laughed their asses right out of town, of course, right after I got done accidentally dropping the brochure for Joel’s fancy schmancy bike show on the ground. I mean, no bike! What a loser! I have a very trendy, important bike. It’s, uh, black. And small.)

I am so glad I went. I learned a lot, had a good time and met some new people. I won’t be joining their mountain bike club any time soon, mostly because mountain biking is terrifying and my small, black bike is not a mountain bike, but who knows! Maybe I’ll go on a road ride some day. Like, for fun, not just to get to work. Or, at the very least, maybe I’ll stop panicking when someone makes eye contact with me at the office bike rack. Either way, yay for, you know, doing stuff.

Just to top off our weekend of atypical activity, we went out for dinner and a movie afterwards. On a Sunday night! We didn’t get home until midnight! Again, my gut reaction was to say no, I just want to come home, watch TV, maybe cry a little if the hipsters were mean to me, and go to sleep. But why, self? Why don’t you like fun? There’s a ton of housework and laundry and backlogged Tivo to catch up on tonight, but so what?

I tend to get very anxious when we have things planned for the weekend, which I realize is kind of ridiculous, but I just really, really enjoy decompressing. I need time to clean, to watch TV, and to just be at home. Again, going back to Janssen’s post, I think there are people who get this and people who’d be perfectly fine traveling and going out every single weekend. I’m not one of them, but I’m trying to remind myself that everything is a good idea in moderation.

And that, internet, is what I did this weekend. Did you do anything fun?

Hypothetical potential non-babies

Blame it on too many after-school specials in Health class or on my natural proclivity to worry about everything, but I’ve been worrying about getting accidentally pregnant for… as long as I can remember. Before that was even, ahem, physically possible. My friends did it too – in college, one of my friends was absolutely convinced she was going to be the next feature in Seventeen Magazine: Pregnant with Triplets and I Never Even Had Sex! 

About three years ago I had this revelation: if I did get accidentally pregnant by some divine simultaneous failure of multiple methods of birth control, it would no longer be disastrous. I mean, it wouldn’t have been ideal timing-wise (call me old fashioned, but I was hoping to, like, get married and stuff first), but it wouldn’t have ruined my life. I wouldn’t have to worry about droping out of school. I was with the man I wanted to marry, we both wanted to have kids eventually. It would have been… fine.

This little epiphany didn’t stop me from worrying about it, though. Instead, I moved on to worrying about accidentally harming my potential non-baby. I drink wine! And coffee! I love coffee. And what about the benadryl and ibuprofen and preservatives in cold cuts and getting toxoplasmosis from scooping the litterbox and oh my god, that's just the stuff I KNOW about.  I probably do a hundred things a day that could potentially hurt my hypothetical non-baby! And I can’t have a baby. I’m not old enough to have a baby. I curse too much to have a baby. I love sleeping too much to have a baby.

But when I’m not busy worrying about having babies by accident, I’m haunted by the idea that I might not be able to have them at all. I might have permanently screwed up my body with that stupid fucking eating disorder when I was in college. Maybe I was never able to have kids. Without skidding too far into TMI territory, I have never exactly been textbook normal with the old womanly troubles. As strongly as I feel like I’m NOT READY OMG I've  always known that I want to have kids some day.  In the distant future when I was a grown-up adult person. And back when I was in high school I certainly would have considered a twenty-nine year old -- WHO IS ALREADY GOING GRAY BY THE WAY – to be such a grown-up person. However, I routinely leave the oven on after dinner and drop kitchen towels on the gas burner and forget to put the car in park and lock myself out of the house. So, obviously, I am not ready for kids. Yet.

Every time I get dizzy or I have a worse-than-usual food craving or I gain four pounds despite working out five times a week, what the hell is up with THAT, dual emotions start tugging at my gut. Part of me is thinking crap crap crap I CAN NOT be pregnant we don’t have enough money saved and our house is too small and I can’t do this… and another, quieter part is thinking hey, this would be kind of awesome.

Oh, give me a home

The last time we visited Joel's family in Vermont the conversation turned to potential places we'd all like to move.  This is something Joel and I think about an awful lot, as we'd like to make an exodus from the Mid-Atlantic some day.  Someone suggested Kansas, which Joel's mom shot down immediately.  "Too many tornadoes" was her reasoning.  The rest of the family thought this was a silly reason to not like an otherwise fine place -- I mean, how many people DIE in Kansas tornadoes?  Probably fewer than perish in Vermont blizzards every year, right? -- but I understand what she means completely. 

Tornadoes don't scare me.  That's not to say I wouldn't run shrieking to the nearest cement-fortified bomb shelter if I was ever in the immediate vicinity of a tornado; I assure you, I would.  But I don't get nervous just thinking about tornadoes.  Alligators, now that's a different story.  I am terrified of alligators and I will never consent to live anywhere in the real south for fear of someday coming across one.  Even though I know, rationally, that the likelihood of my ever being killed or maimed personally by an alligator is pretty low, I just can't even think about it.  I hate alligators.  I can't live where they live. 

Nor will I ever be able to live in a deserty climate: too many snakes. I could never put the possibility of seeing a snake, poisonous or not, out of my head.  And don't even get me started on scorpions. The one and only time I was in Arizona, I hardly slept for fear that I hadn't checked the sheets well enough for scorpions.  I developed a minor case of OCD over checking and re-checking my shoes before I'd put them on my feet. 

So, no Southwest and no Everglades for us.  And apparently, no New Zealand.  My little brother is on his latest adventure there and posted some pictures on Facebook earlier this week.  Among stunning mountain vistas and idyllic country roads was this photo:

It's a little hard to see what's going on here at first, but the caption is "Feeding Freshwater Eels".

EELS, YOU GUYS.

And then there's THIS...

I commented on this photo, writing that I was going to have nightmares; to which he responded: "Jerry kept saying, "don't worry they don't have teeth," but he was bleeding after one bit him so maybe they do."

Well!  There's one less place to consider for our next vacation!

I'm curious if other people have certain things that just freak them out completely.  I'm not scared of animals, or even of legitimately dangerous animals.  Here's a photo I took of a bear on our honeymoon.  And here's a moose.  I want to kidnap these baby tigers from Chile and keep them in my living room.  But alligators, snakes and water-borne critters, in general, scare the daylights out of me.  Oh, and parasites.  I get squicked out just thinking of a hostile organism living in my body, without me even knowing, chewing away -- ahem.  So what about you?  Irrational fear of frogs?  Two-toed sloths?  Ocean riptides? What else should I be afraid of?

My own worst enemy

When I noticed a poster at the gym advertising yoga classes on Wednesday evenings, I thought, "Hey, I should go to that!"  And then I immediately started inventing excuses why I couldn't go THAT week.  It was a Tuesday, so Wednesday was tomorrow.  That was too soon.  I mean, sure, I wanted to go. Just not right now. 

And then the week after that I couldn't go because I had to race home after work to see if my cat was dead. 

And then this yesterday I started to tell myself I couldn't go that evening because I forgot to call and see if I needed to bring my own mat or not.  What if I dragged my mat all the way to work -- on my bike, you guys! -- and it turned out I didn't need it?  But on the other hand, even if they had mats, would I want to use a communal mat?  No, so I should bring my mat.  What if class is canceled?  What if it's over?  What if I don't have $5 for the drop in fee?  Oh, I don't have time to think about this, I'm late.  I'll just go next week.

The really sick thing about this entire line of reasoning is that instead of making my usual long list of New Year's Resolutions this year, I decided to just focus on a few big, overarching things.  Two things, so far.  #1: Get more sleep. #2: Do more yoga.  And the obstacle to #2 is that my beloved yoga studio doesn't have evening classes that cater exactly to my schedule. The night classes are from 7-8:30, which means I don't get home until 9pm, and that severely cuts in to my decompression time.  I've wished many times that they would add a class at 5:30 (except then I'd have to really rush to get there on time, and I'd complain that I hate rushing around all day), and here one is -- one block from my office, I might add -- and I'm inventing excuses not to go.  What is my problem?

Well, the problem is that I don't like change.  Ironically, one of the mantras of yoga is to embrace change (see! this is why I need to go more!).  So I told myself to shut the hell up, crammed my yoga mat into my bike bag and called and reserved my spot when I got to work.  And still, all through the day I'd catch myself mentally whining that I didn't want to go, what if it sucked, what it if was a waste of time, maybe I should just start next week when I wasn't so busy. What if there wasn't a bike rack, then I'd have to walk ALL the way back a block in the wrong direction to get my bike.  I could take my bike with me and just lock it to a sign post or something, but here it's next to a guard station so I don't have to worry about my wheels and lights getting stolen and oh, it's just too much to think about!   

You're just being stupid, I told myself.  Shut up.  You're going. (Yoga is also about "accepting yourself as you are."  I think I need to start going to remedial classes.)  Besides, I thought, what's the worst that could happen?

Well, for starters, I almost missed the whole thing because I couldn't figure out how to get into the goddamn building.  The last time I went to the main gym was years ago (this day, in fact), and I've never been there after 5pm, which, apparently, is after 3pm.  And 3pm is when they lock the shortcut door I've always gone through.  No matter, because I still had fifteen minutes and I knew where the outside entrance was. Emphasis on the word WAS, since there is now an entire new building in front of the outside entrance, complete with a six-foot iron gate.  Which locks at 5pm. 

Undeterred and only slightly flustered, I asked the security guard in the fancy new building if she new how to get into the gym.  She just kept saying "it's right next door", which yes, I knew, what I needed to know what how to get INSIDE, short of hijacking a wrecking ball.  She finally pointed me to the right ("It's right there!  The gym is right there!") and I walked around the entire building, figuring I must have missed the new entrance the first time I went past. 

Nope.

Finally, after walking around the entire block, I found the entrance. Guess who was working the desk?  JUST GUESS.

Basically everything I'd worried about happened, but I still went.  And I might go again next week, just to spite myself.

I have found myself spending far too much time lately debating idiotic issues and worrying over non-problems.  Should I leave my U-lock on the bike rack at work or take it home with me?  Well, if I need to go anywhere at night I'll need the lock.  But I can't think of any place I'd need to go, and if I really need one I can just use Joel's.  But what if I can't remember which lock is mine tomorrow?  What if I forget to bring it home for the weekend?  Just take it.  But I don't need it.  Why should I carry extra weight?  Oh my god, it weighs like three-fourths of a pound.  Just take it.  But I don't need it!  But I might!

You should hear the debate over whether I should go to yoga at 10am or 4pm on Saturday.  If I go at 10am, it will get me out of bed! But then I won'd be finished and showered before 1pm and then I'll waste the whole afternoon away, plus I like the 4pm teacher better.  But what if there's a sub?  And what if I just waste away the whole morning and then I'll have to go at 4pm and that's right in the middle of the afternoon and what if we want to do something?  Oh, please, like what?  I don't know!  Something!

It sounds like all I do is think about exercising, which couldn't be farther from the truth.  You should hear the fights I have in my head over what to have for lunch and what color to paint my toenails.  Should I watch Jersey Shore or Project Runway? 

I am spending far too much time worrying about these things and then beating myself up for worrying about them, and that's going to be my resolution #3. Stop the non-productive internal monologue.  Stop fretting about the possibility of expending an iota of unnecessary effort.  Stop talking yourself out of trying new things. And watch Project Runway already.

Acciversary

One of the things I told myself in the days immediately following the accident was that in a year it would be just another one of those things in the past that we forget about unless we stumble across a reminder.  That thought was really comforting to me at the time, when I was having trouble processing the entire event.  Although I felt unable to form a reaction at the time -- was I angry? scared? upset? relieved it hadn't been worse? -- I felt immeasurably better knowing that at this point next year, the whole thing's effect on me would have passed.

It made me feel better at the time, but it wasn't true.  That accident still affects me a great deal.  Mostly it's my knee, which still hurts.  I think the surgery helped, but it's hard to tell.  Instead of feeling irritated all the time, my knee just turns bright red and runs its own personal fever at seemingly random times.  It's hard to sit through a movie if I can't put my leg up on the seat in front of me.  I have to ice it several times a day, both at work and at home.  It's not ruining my life, but it's enormously annoying and a huge source of frustration.

There are other things, too.  My driving has suffered.  I hate making lane changes on the highway, especially at night.  I cringe whenever I hear squealing tires.  I annoy Joel, who I still make do almost all of the driving even though my knee is capable of working the clutch now, by flinching when I think he's following too closely behind another car.  In short, I'm afraid.  I feel constantly on edge thinking that another crash could happen at any time. 

Maybe a dose of fear is healthy when we're talking about two-ton heaps of metal traveling at highway speeds, but I think that's more than counteracted by my loss in confidence.

It could have been worse.  I know that, and it's a consolation. 

At this moment last year, it hadn't happened.  I wish there was some way to reach back in time and not get in that car.  To choose a different night to go out, to pick a different theater.  To miss or make one light along the way.  To make some small change, any change that would put us somewhere other than in front of that kid's car.

I hope that at this point next year, it will be something I don't think about anymore.

My enemies, let me show you them

Joel and I are out at a restaurant having dinner – that’s one of the benefits of living in the city, when it snows 20 inches you can walk to the movies, and then later to a bar, in effect going out more than you do when the weather is perfectly nice – and I’m looking at Twitter on my phone. I’m about to reply to Kristabella about the Vampire Diaries, and as I type “did you know that Stephen is Steve McQueen’s son”, Joel informs me that it’s actually Jason, not Stephen-with-the-big-head, and he’s Steve McQueen’s grandson, not son. Oh. Well. Backspace-backspace-backspace.

Then we get to talking about Steve McQueen, who I often confuse with James Dean. Joel explains that Steve McQueen is the dude in The Great Escape, which I’ve seen most of, and which I actually liked. Wow, I say, he’s like, all wiry and super-skinny, right? He’s cool like James Dean? Yes, he did boatloads of cocaine and was very skinny, Joel says. And he possibly died racing his car, which everyone knows is about as cool as you can get. Oh, like in that episode of Supernatural, I say, but no, again, that’s James Dean. I don’t understand how this guy is SO cool, I say, and so we do the sensible thing and turn to Wikipedia (have I mentioned that I adore my new phone? It’s quite handy to be able to settle these questions immediately) to find out just why everyone thinks this Steve McQueen character is so goddamn cool.

Ok, first of all: his photo is his mugshot. Second of all, he is making a peace sign. In his mug shot.

Further evidence of coolness: He was an avid racer of both motorcycles and cars, he performed his own stunts, he has a type of Mustang named after him, he was on Richard Nixon’s Enemies List.

And that’s where the conversation stopped being about whether Steve McQueen was cool or not and started being about how you know what I need? An Enemies List.

OPH Enemies List – last updated 12/23/2009

• The guy from the Free Credit Report.com commercials
• Kristen Stewart
• Whoever's idea it was to cancel The Unit
• The guy from the gym who calls my Pinky*
• Max’s (RIP) previous owner
• Car Accident Guy
• Sheila Dixon
• Catherine Hardwicke
• Our neighbor**
• Whoever leaked Midnight Sun
• Handicapped parking space asshat
• Snakes
• The dude who bought my Jetta and keeps getting it impounded***
•  Calleigh Duquesne
• People who can’t parallel park (I mean people who park in the middle of two spaces and have no common sense, not people who can't nail a space on the first try.  Although, I'll have you know, I can nail a space on the first try.  As long as no one is watching and making me nervous).
• People who run to the store to buy toilet paper and bottled water every time the forecast calls for snow****
• Scooter thief 

I have the feeling I might have to  make this list into a permanent page, because I know there are more enemies out there.  Douchebags: they're everywhere.

* Funny story about the gym. So, maybe I told you guys, but I got married and I was really busy doing all kinds of important marrying stuff and I sort of stopped going to the gym some time around, say, June, so that I could focus fully on biting my fingernails and creating superfluous Excel spreadsheets. And then there was the wedding, and then we were on vacation, and then my knee hurt and then I had knee surgery, and then I was recovering from surgery and long story short: I didn’t go to the gym for over six months. When I found out I was going to be having surgery, I meant to call and put my membership on hold so I wouldn’t be paying for my unused membership, but, well, I never got around to it.

So I went back for the first time last week, and I was really nervous. Would it still be in the same place? Would my card still work? Would I get stuck in an awkward conversation with my Gym Nemesis about why I’ve been gone for so long?

I walked in and I’d never seen the guy working at the desk, SCORE. Maybe Gym Nemesis doesn’t even work here any more, wouldn’t that be grand!

When I swiped my card it made a bad-sounding dinging noise so the new guy asked me to swipe it again. No dice. It turns out my membership had been canceled in August, when I changed my name and totally screwed up their automatic deduction system. Score one for procrastination! He said it was no problem, gave me a new application to fill out and said I could just bring it with me the next time I came. He waved me through, I managed 20 minutes on the elliptical, determined that everything was pretty much in the same place as it was six months ago, and went home.

The next day I returned with my completed application in hand. I turned the corner to see none other than Gym Nemesis working the desk. Maybe he won’t remember me! I’ll just pretend that I’m a totally new person and hand him this application and – - “Hey, Pinkie.  Where've you been?”

Fuck.

** Funny story about our neighbor: for no reason at all, she hates us. Well, I should say, she hates me. She seems to have no problem with Joel, which is super since I’m the one who bought her a cute (not creepy) Welcome to the Neighborhood card and introduced myself when she moved in. Anyway, she doesn’t like us, her yappy dog doesn’t like us. So on The Great Snow Day this weekend, Joel is out shoveling the sidewalk (including hers, because he is nice) and she asks him if he can collect her mail next week. And then she elaborates, saying usually she asks her First Tier Friend, Mr. Old Man, but she really can’t ask him "to come out in this weather." Sooo... not only are we her second choice for vacation mail collector, but she hopes we slip on her (unshoveled) stairs and break a leg.

*** Funny story about my old car: apparently you can’t just sell a car, the car remains yours in the eyes of the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration until the new owner registers it in his own name. If, say, he prefers to drive the car around unregistered and all unlawful-like, and then, say, he gets his car towed for parking illegally, you will get an Official Certified Letter from the Official County Government demanding that you come and officially pick up your car, even though it's officially not actually your car at all and you have neither the required proof of ownership nor the keys.  This Official Certified Letter will threaten all kinds of official fees and penalties for failure to officially pick up your car and pay the official towing and storage fees.

I ignored the first letter because it came just before the wedding. When I got a second letter, I called every number listed on the damned thing, from the county police station (“nothing we can do, call the MVA”) to the MVA (“nothing we can do, tell him he needs to register the car”) to the impound lot (“nothing we can do, there aren't any Volkswagens here”). I noted all these supremely helpful conversations and filed the letter right next to the Bill of Sale.

And now I’ve gotten a third letter. This one says the car was impounded on December 3, which leads me to believe that Mr. New Jetta Owner is somehow retrieving his (my) (our) poor Jetta each time. I don't have any way to contact him, since we communicated only via text message and his number was erased when I got my new phone. The best I can manage it to call the County Police, the MVA, and the impound lot again, note the conversations and file the letter away, hoping to the Ghost of Volkswagens Past that when I go to renew the registration on our Mazda next year, the MVA doesn’t tell me that I owe some horrific amount in fines. I figure in that case, I can always “sell” the car to Joel. Or, failing that, we can move far, far away and change our names.

**** Funny story about people in Maryland: Every time it looks like a single snowflake might fall, there is a run on toilet paper and milk.  I honestly don’t understand this. How long do people think they’re going to be snowed in for? Do they really not have enough toilet paper to last them through the weekend? If the snow really does pose an emergency (which it sometimes does, here, because of pure incompetence on the part of the city), really, toilet paper is what you’re putting in your survival kit?

*******************************************************************************

And, well, just so this isn't the most bitter post in the history of Christmas, look!  Snow!

If it's going to be cold, it might as well freaking snow.  That's what I always say.

I like to call this photo "Nevermind".

Ok, I hate the parking situation, but I do love our neighborhood.  Especially when it gets all snowy and I half expect to see a horse pulling a buggy down the cobblestone streets.

 

When pigs flu

After dissecting a series of increasingly confusing emails, it seems I am now eligible to receive a free H1N1 vaccine through my workplace. In the spirit of Christmas Giving, I’d like to offer this vaccine to someone who needs it more than I do. Please present your arm for stabbing between the hours of 7:30 and 4pm tomorrow.

In all seriousness, I will get the shot. I got a seasonal flu shot this year too, for the second time in my life. I work within a hospital system, and although I have nothing to do with patients or patient care, I do breathe the same air they do. A flu briefing I attended last month basically equated not getting the vaccine with killing innocent babies, and while I’m willing to take my own chances with the flu… I am not willing to kill other people. I have a whole host of reasons why I normally don’t get a flu shot: I am not at high risk! In college I got flu-like symptoms from the shot and that sucked! I want my body to develop its own defenses! I don’t want to contribute to the development of vaccine-resistant strains! I don’t want to put unnecessary medical stuff in my body! But honestly, it all boils down to one thing: I really hate shots.

Please, don’t try to tell me “it doesn’t really hurt” or “it’s not that bad”. Yes, it is. I got the seasonal shot, and you know what? It hurt. A lot. It was exactly as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I realize that’s because “it’s all in my head”, but you know what? All pain is in your head. It’s just neurons firing off messages to your brain, so theoretically we could all get over it and walk on hot coals, right?

Yes, possibly I’m feeling a little defensive because people have insinuated lately that I am a big, giant baby. And yes, possibly, they’re right. But nevertheless, I am scared.

I really hate all types of needle-ing, but shots are my least favorite. If I have to choose, I’d rather have something taken out (as in, blood) than have something pushed in. I swear, I can feel the vaccine pushing into my arm, and oh my god I need to stop talking about this. But to all of the people who I am not killing: I really hope you appreciate it. I took a needle for you. Or, I’m going to tomorrow, when I’m not wearing a new sweater. It would just be too much of a shame to get this one all wrinkled by pushing up the sleeve, you know?

Have some more pie, dear

Because of travel and surgery and general busy-ness on the weekends the past few months, we realized last weekend that we’d very nearly missed our chance to go apple picking for the season. Because I am four years old, I like to go to the pick-your-own farm every year. We pick apples off the tree, dig our own spinach and broccoli out of the dirt, take a ton of pictures and before leaving I elbow some small children out of the way so I can pet the resident goats and llamas. So last Saturday we went off along Route 70 -- despite the fact that I swore I’d never again travel that cursed stretch of highway after the wedding was over -- to pick us some apples.

It was the very last weekend they were open for the season and there were hardly any apples on the trees at all, but no matter, we’re not too proud to pick apples off the ground. In fact, we managed to find twenty-two pounds of suitable Granny Smiths to take home with us (the price goes down when you get over twenty pounds and we like bargains). We passed on the spinach and beets because we’re overloaded with spinach from our CSA farm share and I don’t know what beets are – uh, I mean, I don’t care for the taste of beets, how dare you suggest otherwise -- but stopped by the sad, deserted pumpkin patch, filled with poor Jack O’ Lantern rejects. We like pumpkins, right? We could get one or two of those and… do something with them. How much are the pumpkins, we asked. Free, the girl said. FREE. We bought twenty-two pounds of apples to save a few cents per pound, so certainly we were not going to pass up the chance to give these poor, dejected (FREE) pumpkins a home.

We took home eight orange adoptees. I had no idea how many pies a single pumpkin would make, but eight seemed like enough to have fully taken advantage of their free-ness, without quite crossing into hoarding territory. Happily, my first foray into making pumpkin pie out of actual pumpkin went quite splendidly. I found directions on how to cook a pumpkin online, followed them to the letter (!) and turned the first two pumpkins into two pies, a cookie sheet full of toasted seeds, a loaf of pumpkin bread and a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of frozen pumpkin puree. 

So now I just have six more pumpkins sitting in the kitchen. Since I don’t really like pumpkin pie (a fact that I should probably have taken into account before we started heaving free pumpkins into our trunk) and I refuse to throw any food away, I’ve obviously got to clear out some room in our crowded freezer for another bag or six of pumpkin puree.

And that, internet, is how I came to eat four vegetarian sausages whose best-by date was December 2008, two Eggo waffles and a vodka-lemonade cocktail for dinner last night. Lunch today was half a box of Morningstar Veggie Bites. I only have another box and a half of the sausages left, two boxes of the Veggie Bites (they’re not good, in case you were wondering, and the fact that we’ve had them longer than the sausages isn’t helping), a Sam’s Club bag of boneless barbeque chicken wings that I purchased for last year’s Superbowl (also not good), a box of Trader Joe’s eggplant cutlets (these are actually very good) and 1/3 a bottle of vodka to go. Yes, I suppose that I could take the vodka out of the freezer, but truthfully, we don’t have any space in the cabinets either.

Four posts in one

Can someone please shut my cat up?

Henry has never been a quiet animal. The politically correct term is “vocal”. He does a lot of meowing. He meows to announce his entrance into the room, he meows while he’s jumping onto the couch, he meows when I come in the door.

But he also does this very, very loud meowing. It’s more like howling. Yowling. Screaming like he’s stuck in a bear trap. He used to do it from time to time, maybe once a day at the most. It’s a little weird, but cats are strange animals. He also perches himself on the banister like a goat and plays fetch with a keychain. Whatever, right?

But lately, oh my god. The howling is every day for HOURS. He’s howling while we watch TV. I go up to make sure he’s not actually stuck in a bear trap and he’ll just be sitting on the floor, staring at the wall. Sometimes he’s in his cat condo, pulling himself around in a circle. What the hell? Does he miss Max? It’s not exactly like he and Max were cat-BFFs. Our cats are not friends; they largely ignore and just barely tolerate each other. So why the mourning? The very loud, very annoying mourning? Or is he just having a heated discussion with the brick wall? I don’t know what to think.

I feel guilty because he must be sad to be howling like that all the time, right? Or maybe something is just broken in his brain? He also spends a large amount of time pushing around the water bowl in the bathroom, eating hair elastics and chasing his own tail. At least those activities are QUIET.  Now he’s like a screaming baby, he just cries and yells and oh my god I don’t know what is wrong. Have some food? Some treats?  Head scritches?  Want to chase a toy mouse?  Want to get picked up?  Want to bite my hand?  Eat this hair elastic?  Here, there’s some dental floss you can pull out of the garbage!  Tip over the recycling? Chew on some plastic bags?

Nothing. Works. I am going crazy.  If I can find a cat psychologist, what do you think the chances are it will be covered by pet insurance?

The knee bone’s connected to the other thing

Some rare yet serious side effects of knee surgery:

I’ve become so used to treating my left knee gingerly (and being reminded quite indelicately when I forget) that I can’t help cringing when I see people on TV doing things that would hurt it. Jumping on trampolines, are these people crazy? Running through an airport? Sliding into second base? People, you’re going to hurt yourselves! Be careful!

My right knee, by comparison, now feels like a bionic super-knee. I’m constantly amazed at how far and how well it can bend, how I can sit with it tucked under me and go up the stairs and use it to kick the laundry basket out of the way and it doesn’t even hurt! It’s insane! The human body, it’s a miracle, you know?

I get a lot of dirty looks riding the elevator down one flight to my office. I used to similarly judge the people who were too lazy to take the stairs down one flight, so I deserve it. Judge not, lest ye become that person punching the button for basement while all the other people in the elevator sigh and eye-roll.

And it's even pink 

After carefully waiting until both of our contracts were up and then waiting again for the new crop of phones to be released, I have a new cell phone. It has internet and email and it is the best thing to happen to me, technologically speaking, since Tivo.

The one bad thing is that now when I log on to the computer in the morning, all the fun of checking my email/twitter/facebook/Google Reader and seeing what the world has been up to while I’ve been offline is gone.  It kind of makes mornings less fun, if that's possible.  But I forgive it, because it's just so cute and smart and I can't stay mad.

I kind of liked staying home better

One of the things I learned while I was at home with absolutely nothing to do is that, if left to its own devices, by body would like to get no less than 10 hours of sleep a night. At the time I felt like a lazy slouch for spending so much time in bed. What I realize now is that’s how it feels to be rested. Weird. For reasons related to circadian clocks and the conspiracy of the working world against non-morning people, I usually get about 6 hours of sleep a night, and I can manage on that pretty well. But my God, it felt good to sleep right on through to 11am. My brain, like, worked. Faster. Like I said, it was weird.

Not as awesome as I thought it was going to be

So!  Surgery.  It went well, in that I didn't wake up in the middle of it, they operated on the correct knee and I lived.  That's all very, very good.  Surgery on the whole, however... not as cool as I thought it was going to be.

"How much fun did you THINK it was going to be?", NPW asked when I proclaimed this on twitter last week.  Well, I thought it was going to be kind of... fun?  I mean, not the surgery itself, obviously the surgery was a last resort.  But after ten months of orthopedic surgeon visits, physical therapy and rest, it was a necessity.  So, since I didn't have much of a choice, I was more focusing on the fact that I was getting an official order to sit on the couch for a week and do nothing.  No cleaning!  No going to work!  Nothing but me, my couch, my Tivo cache and a giant stack of library books. 

But it wasn't so much "you don't have to do anything" as "you CAN'T do anything."  Let me tell you, there's a world of difference between the two.  Not having to cook, clean, or do laundry sounds quite nice.  Having to smell what your cat has lovingly deposited in the litterbox all day because you can't bend down far enough to scoop it, watching the pile in t the hamper slowly grow and eventually start to spill over the sides... it's, um, frustrating?  Maddening?  Worthy of crying a few times?  All three, if you're me.   

I also forgot to factor in the whole feeling like hell part. I spent the first two days asking Joel if it had been four hours yet and when I could take more painkillers, although I stopped even bothering with the hydrocodone after day two because it did nothing but give me insomnia.  It certainly did not help that I simultaneously had a cold, and when I say cold, I mean one night I coughed so hard that I threw up.  In the bathroom sink, because I couldn't bend my knee enough to barf in the toilet.  So.  Yes.  That was both enjoyable and attractive, as you can imagine.

And on top of this whole pity party, I was bored out of my mind.  I reached the end of the Tivo cache and my Google reader on the same day and from that point things started getting desperate.  I absolutely love days at home by myself, but it turns out that's contingent on my being able to, like, do stuff.  Sitting around all day, getting absolutely nothing done (because I'm recovering, I tell myself!) is difficult for me.  It makes me grumpy.  I didn't start this post to complain about my tragic state of boredom.  I'm just saying, surgery: not as awesome as I thought it was going to be. 

What is awesome, however, is working from home.  People, it's got to be the most glorious thing on earth, the perfect balance of yoga pants, coffee and productivity.  Technically I'm still on sick leave, but I felt so guilty pushing all my work onto my coworkers -- especially just three months after I happily dumped a stack of work on their desks and took two and half weeks off to get married and go on a honeymoon -- that I brought my laptop home.  I'd normally be opposed to this -- if I'm using sick time, I should be devoting all efforts to sitting in bed with a cup of tea and a book -- but this has actually provided a perfect reprieve from the boredom and the guilt.  I'm still at home with my knee propped up, ice pack in place for twenty minutes every hour, but the anxiety that everyone at work is mad at me is gone.  I don't need to worry about all the things that might be going wrong in my absence.  I don't need to have a panic attack before starting up my email, wondering how many red-exclamation messages will be waiting for me.  Oh, internet, if only this were an option without having to have surgery first.  Do any of you get to work from home?  Is it as fantastic when you get to do it all the time?

Sea lions, surgery

I was on yet another business trip this weekend, this time to San Francisco. My god, I am happy to be home. But I had a pretty fantastic time in California. Want to see?

On Holly's recommendation, I went down to the Ferry Building for brunch. I actually have similar pictures from the last time I was in San Francisco, about a year ago. But, uh, I didn't realize you could go inside. Turns out, you can!

I made myself a little picnic and sat outside to enjoy my gingersnaps and iced coffee (I could definitely get used to 75-degree weather in October), overlooking what I’ve now determined is the Bay Bridge. As in, not the Golden Gate Bridge. (The whole time I was thinking, wow, I really thought I remembered it being more… orange.) 

 

Then I moseyed my way down to Fisherman’s Wharf, saw Alcatraz, the real Golden Gate Bridge (It IS orange!), and saw the sea lions.

Now, the last time I was in San Francisco, my sole mission was to see these sea lions. I walked all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf, looked all around, and could not find a single goddamned sea lion. Maybe they’re only here part of the year, like whales that migrate! I told myself. Or, maybe I got the neighborhood wrong. Maybe they’re actually in San Diego.  Maybe they're in a zoo. I was walking, dejected and bitter, back to my hotel when this creepy dude jumped out of what I thought was a bush and scared the living daylights out of me.  (Later, I learned this guy is somewhat renowned for doing this to tourists.)

Anyway, this time I had the address (even though I’d left my hand-drawn map in the hotel. Along with my room key, for the second time that day), and I saw me some sea lions. 

I’d say something like, “I can’t believe I missed them; there are so many and you can hear them barking their heads off a block away,” but… I was sincerely confused about the color of the Golden Gate Bridge, so I do believe it.

Anyway! I had a fabulous time on my own, managed to get back to my hotel (on the cable car, no less!)without getting lost even on and now I’m back home. Oh, and did I mention that I got to meet Holly in person? I did, and she is even more lovely in person than she is online. I also managed to get myself locked in a cage on the street before meeting her, but that’s another story for another time because I have to and shove as much food in my face as I can in the next twenty minutes because I’m not allowed to eat after midnight, in preparation for my knee surgery tomorrow.

I realize I’ve neglected to mention this surgery here, and I’m not really sure how that happened, but here’s the really, really short version: remember that car accident? Yeah, well my knee is still messed up. Hopefully it is getting fixed tomorrow. I am very nervous, mostly about the whole no eating or drinking after midnight thing. And also, the needles and scalpels and what if they accidentally operate on the wrong knee (dear doctors: it's the left one!) and such. But really, I’m sure it will all be fine, and hopefully I’ll be able to do things like walk normally and do yoga again after this.  So, it's a good thing, I'm scared anyway because I'm a wuss, and I have to go eat an entire pizza right now.  

Yup, it's another wedding post

I swore up and down that I wouldn't become one of Those Brides that let themselves get so stressed out about the wedding that they stopped enjoying things.  And, well.  That, um... worked out.   I also promised I'd never refer to myself as a "bride", so... yeah.  I give up.

I was a pretty much prepared to fail at Not Getting Stressed Out.  I stress out when the laundry basket is too full or if there are too many un-folderized photos on my Nikon's memory card or when I'm at page 400 and and Edward still isn't back, even though I'm pretty sure he's going to come back because there are two more books in the series. 

But I wasn't prepared to fail quite so spectacularly. 

The things I'm worried about now are things I have absolutely no control over, which actually kind of makes sense.  If I can't do anything productive about it, I should at least worry myself sick over it!  It's the least I can do!  I know this is counterproductive, but knowing that doesn't make it easy to stop.  I focused on making my lists, checking things off, and trying my very, very best to STOP WORRYING.

And then I started getting dizzy.  Once while I was driving, which was... scary.  But since I've been subsisting on coffee and instant oatmeal and lettuce (from our farm share!  because we needed one more thing to do every week this summer!), I guess it's not exactly surprising.

And then I came down with some sort of ridiculous July flu, which of course I immediately assumed was of the swine variety.  I had to call in sick to work on Tuesday because I felt THAT awful.  I call in sick to work less than once a year.  The last time was about two summers ago, when I almost got hit by a truck trying to walk in to the office after a three-day stretch of particularly brutal insomnia. I HATE calling in sick.  I just feel so guilty (for no reason other apart from my own neurosis) that it negates the entire point of staying home.  But at this point, I didn't have TIME to battle a drawn-out recovery.  So I stayed home, slept for thirteen hours and finished my shower thank-you notes.

And then I got a rash on my face.  And my lips started to feel sort of numb.  And then I developed these ugly looking sores on the inside of my lips AND I got a zit right in that little crease between your top and bottom lip, which made it really hard to do things like, you know, eat.  And talk.  And drink water.

Dudes, you don't even have to say it.  I KNOW that it's psychosomatic.  I am 100% sure that all of these random ailments are stress-related, but you know what?  Knowing that it's all in your head doesn't make it any easier to STOP.  In fact, it makes it harder because now you can start freaking out about how OH MY GOD I'M SO CRAZY I'M ACTUALLY DYING.  But before I keel right over, I need to finish updating that wedding website and find space for all those shower gifts and find twelve of those stupid picture-clip things that can hold up three sheets of 5x7 cardstock and whose stupid idea was it to make the table numbers out of cardstock anyway?

That was the state of things when I went outside this morning to drive to my second dress fitting and realized that I didn't know where Joel had parked the car that morning when he got up at 6:30 to move it to a legal spot.  My friend Liz and I roamed the block, but after ten minutes we had to give up and walk down to get her car because Joel wasn't answering his phone and we were going to be late for the Russian seamstress (who, during the last fitting demanded NEXT TIME YOU BRING FRIEND.  FRIEND MUST LEARN BUSTLE.)  As we raced up I-83 in Liz's Mini Cooper, with my Spanxx and my wedding shoes on my lap, I could actually feel my face starting to swell up. 

But... then the dress fitting was actually pretty good.  I didn't get yelled at by the Russian seamstress this time, the dress still looks perfect and at least my lip didn't LOOK swollen (although at that point they were totally numb).  I did sweat through my t-shirt, but that's why I love those JCrew tissue tees.  They dry REALLY fast.

We drove out to Frederick for what feels like the millionth time this month, and when stopped into the wholesale liquor store to confirm the alcohol order for the wedding (because they refuse to return my phone calls) and the team of teenagers working at the counter promised that they'd definitely give my printed-out list to the dude in charge when he came back, like, TOTALLY, no problem lady, I had this sort of out of body experience.  So what if they don't give him the order?  So what if they don't show up on the day of the wedding?  We know where the store is.  My dad has a truck.  It'll be fine.

When we arrived at the salon for my hair and makeup trial and discovered that on the outside it strongly resembled a trailer, I didn't really care.  It was nice enough inside.

And the hair lady totally understood what I was talking about.  And she didn't even judge me for coming in with hair that hadn't been washed for, uh, a couple of days (dudes, I am not kidding about NOT HAVING TIME TO SHOWER LATELY).  She just spritzed on some dry shampoo, gave me a bottle to take home since I'm all out (and I HAVE NO TIME TO GO BUY MORE) and did my hair exactly the way I wanted in about 20 minutes.  She didn't try to hard-sell me on a more formal updo, she didn't roll her eyes when I asked Liz to take pictures to send to my mom.  She was perfect.  And the makeup lady, who I was even more nervous about (since I don't wear makeup or like wearing makeup and makeup scares me), was even better.  If that is possible.

By the time we left, I was actually smiling. 

Huh. 

When we got home, I realized I could feel my lips again. 

Hi.

I've seen this happen with several other bloggers in the final run-up to their weddings and I really didn't understand it.  They just stopped posting!  Didn't they have millions of things to tell us about?  

And now here I am, doing the same thing.  I have TONS to talk about.  We have a honeymoon!  My dress came in!  I had a bridal shower!  I'm still hung over from my bachelorette party!   So why have I written about none of it?   You guys, I have just been so. busy.  No, seriously.  More busy than I thought was possible.   I'm doing far better on the anxiety front, but there is just so much to do and so many people to meet with that it kind of blows my mind.  (It doesn't help that I also have to go to physical therapy for my stupid knee (because of the stupid car accident) twice a week.)  How busy could a person possibly be, you ask?  Well, let me put it to you this way.  We still have five (FIVE) episodes of LOST in our Tivo.  The show ended in May.  Don't tell us what happened in the finale.

But there's another part of it, too.  I feel like these things -- these huge, monumental once-in-a-lifetime events  -- deserve a well thought-out paragraph at the very least and I just don't know how to put them into words.  The silent horror of watching a Russian seamstress slash two feet of crinoline out from underneath said wedding dress with a pair of shears.  The excitement of getting our marriage license and then the sinking distress of LOSING IT BETWEEN THE COURTHOUSE AND THE STARBUCKS WHERE WE MET THE MINISTER.  (Joel found it.  Phew.) The creeping panic that there are twenty-seven days until the wedding and the caterer isn't answering my emails.

There are so many emotions sloshing around in my brain that I don't even know where to begin.  I'm still anxious about a lot of things, but that's just par for the course.   I had a dream that the antique picnic basket that we bought to use at the reception for gifts and cards didn't have the aluminum lining when we got it home and I went back to the store and demanded they give me that goddamn lining.  The guy tried to argue that I hadn't paid an extra fee for the aluminum lining, so I didn't get the lining.  This dream ended with me yelling I WANT THAT [EXPLETIVE DELETED] LINING in an antique shop, and just think!  Two days ago I had no idea that antique picnic baskets even HAD lining.  I am anxious about how the final details of the wedding day timeline are going to come together, I'm anxious about missing tux measurements, I'm anxious about our two very different families meeting for the first time under such emotionally charged circumstances.  Basically, anything that I can't control and track with a spreadsheet makes me anxious.  But this is nothing new.  It just... is.

When I'm not too busy feeling anxious, I am so happy and excited that I want to cry.  I was overwhelmed this weekend at my bridal shower (which was the most lovely event I've ever been to ever) by the outpouring of generosity and love.  The instructions I gave requesting a low-key, quiet bachelorette party were completely ignored, my sister in law went home with some extremely incriminating videos WHICH SHE PROMISED NOT TO SHOW MY BROTHER, and I am pretty sure I still have a hangover.  Who could ask for anything more than that?

I have been thinking a lot about why I am so keyed up when I know, I KNOW, that none of these details really matter.  I've concluded that the details are just taking the hit for the larger, underlying issues that go along with a wedding.  I'm excited.  I'm terrified.  I'm ecstatic, and I'm sad.  I feel like I should care about things like giving up my maiden name, but instead I cried over selling my Jetta.  Things that were supposed to be hard are easy and things that weren't even on the radar are impossibly difficult.   Every day I think about writing, but I struggle to find the right way to describe how I'm feeling and then it's 11pm and we haven't eaten dinner yet.   I understand now why so many blogger brides go MIA.  I'm not sure I can explain it, but I understand.  (I won't, though. Promise.)

This has probably been a long time coming

Hey, so you know what I did last weekend?  I went to my brother's wedding!  It was the most lovely wedding in the history of weddings.  Here's a picture of the newlyweds.

And that's the only picture I actually have with people in it (and by "people", yes, I mean "their hands") because, huh, that weekend went by at a supernaturally fast pace.  Possibly that shot of vodka my other brother and I did at 1:30 am in the hotel bar had something to do with it.  We were just trying to determine how drunk we were.  You all know the foolproof How Drunk Are You Test, right?  You do a shot of vodka.  If you need a chaser, you're not drunk enough.  If you accuse the bartender of putting water in your shot glass instead of vodka, who does he think he istrying to cut you off, you're fine and you KNOW water when you taste it THERE IS NO WAY THAT WAS VODKA SHUT UP OMG: you're probably drunk.  Seriously, this test works every time.  Try it!

Ever since we got home from my brother's lovely wedding, a sense of general panic has been slowly building up.  You see, I'd been using that wedding as a landmark in my head.  Every time I'd have one of those nagging thoughts about how I really probably should be figuring out whether we need to order table numbers and escort cards and maybe we should register at more than one store, I'd shrug it off because we still have lots of time -- and besides, we need to focus on K's wedding!  And his wedding is much closer!    Every time I'd start to worry about something for our wedding, I'd think about how stressed they must be and I'd go Google chat with my brother about how things were going and we'd exclaim over how fast the time was going by and how much fun the wedding was going to be.  I felt like I knew what I was talking about.  Don't worry about this, forget about that, all that matters is the two of you and your happiness blah blah blah. 

And now that their wedding is over and the newlyweds are off honeymooning in Hawaii, I'm starting to freak out.  There is no other way to put it.  There are a million seemingly simple decisions that need to be made and I just don't know.  Should we extend the reception by an hour?  On the one hand, we have people coming in from very far away to celebrate with us and I feel like the least we can do is give them a party that goes past 10pm... and on the other hand, I don't think I can live with myself if we spend $850 for one hour of time, and that's how much it would cost us to tack on extra time with the venue, the caterer and the DJ.  

Should we have table numbers printed?  What about programs and menu cards?  And what about shuttles from the hotels to the wedding and back again after the reception?  Will people be upset if we don't offer any transportation? 

And have I mentioned that we haven't booked a honeymoon, or even decided on where we want to go?   Or that my dress, which I ordered from a Very Reputable Bridal Shop in November hasn't arrived yet?  I was pretty much OK with both of these facts, but it seems I'm the only one who feels that way.  Everyone I've told about the MIA dress has been horrified.  What do you mean it's not here?  The wedding is six weeks away!  Uh, yes, I am aware.  But what am I supposed to do?  I have been faithfully calling the dress shop every week and they've assured me that everything is fine and the dress will be here in time.  And after all... we still have six weeks!  Six weeks is plenty of time to do whatever needs to be done with wedding dresses.  I'm annoyed that it's late and I'm aggravated that I cannot squeeze a definitive delivery date out of them, but there's no need to panic... right?

And the honeymoon... I mean, I don't' even know what to say to people who say things like "what are you waiting for?  I planned my entire honeymoon to Jamaica in two hours!"  That's great, but we're not interested in an all-inclusive lay-by-the-pool resort vacation.  We're considering all sorts of places: Ireland, Iceland, Canada, San Francisco.  Sure, we're a little behind the traditional schedule, but we've booked entire trips in far less time than six weeks.  In fact, if we book something this weekend as planned, I'm pretty sure it will be the farthest in advance we've ever booked a trip.  We booked the Barcelona trip less than a month ahead.  I only had about three weeks advance notice about the Scotland. So... we're fine, right?  Then why do I feel very much NOT FINE?

Worst of all, I hate myself for feeling this way.  Up until now, I've stuck to my mantra: if it's stressing you out, CUT IT.  I've caught myself a few times this week thinking "wow, it will be kind of nice when this wedding is over", and that is totally unacceptable.  I refuse to feel that way.  I refuse to spend our money and our time on something that isn't at least 90% enjoyable all the way through.

And so... yeah.  So that's how things are going!  I have been hesitating to write this entry because I'm afraid it'll sound whiny, I'm afraid it'll sound like I've lost focus on what really matters and I'm afraid I'll cringe if I re-read this a year from now.  Also, I'm a little bit nervous I might start crying.  I don't know how to write about how stressed I am without sounding like I'm not tremendously excited, which I am.  But I just feel like if I get another email from Macy's with helpful "last minute" wedding registry advice I might kill someone. 

Honestly, I cannot wait for our wedding.  I am so excited and so thrilled and so completely in love.  I know that's all that matters.  But I'm having trouble convincing the rest of the wedding industry.

Sticks and Stones

If I ever got around to making one of those 100 Things About Me Lists, two of the things that would be on it are the fact that I've never broken a bone and never had a cavity.  I'm really proud of both facts, although I'm less and less sure that they're attributable to anything but dumb luck.

Witness: What started out as a scrape on my knee from the car accident in January has morphed into some mysterious injury that is not responding to ice, rest, ibuprofen or cortisone injections.  I counted myself as lucky to have walked away from that accident relatively unscathed, but now I can't help but thinking that a simple broken leg would have been healed by now, goddamnit.  I know, I know.  Stupid.  Unbroken bones are always better than broken bones... but still: WAH.  My knee hurts and I haven't been able to run or work out for months.  I couldn't even go to yoga this week.  Not.  Good. 

I was forcing myself to lift weights 2-3 times a week just to get in some semblance of exercise, and then I went and did this:

I was mauled by a polar bear that mysteriously jumped out of the woods.  And Sawyer was riding on its back.  Shirtless. 

Fine, fine, that's a lie.  I was actually hit by an 18-wheeler carrying a load of smuggled bio weapons that careened out of control when Jack Bauer shot out the front tires and singlehandeldly saved the day. 

FINE.  I tripped on a curb and fell, alright?  Stone cold sober.  But it was raining and kind of slippery SO THERE.

Wait, there's more.  That nasty looking scrape slowly turned into an even nastier looking bruise:

Which then took over my arm...

Which refused to fade ELEVEN DAYS AFTER I FELL WAS MAULED BY A POLAR BEAR... 

Don't worry, though, I'm juuuust fine.  I had four x-rays taken of that bad boy and it's "just" a "bone bruise".  Just like the one on my knee!  I match.   Awesome!

Pardon me, I have to go and compulsively brush my teeth now.  The never-had-a-cavity thing is all I've got left.

Lately

I've been feeling pretty crappy lately.   I feel guilty even saying that, because all things considered my life is pretty fucking sweet. 

I have a job.  It pays me, I get to leave at 5pm, it's a fifteen minute walk from my house and I get a shitload of vacation time.  All things considered, it's pretty goddamn cushy.  But I don't enjoy it, I'm frustrated and I'm bored.  I half-heartedly think about other options, but I am then overcome with fear about starting a new job so soon before the wedding.  And we want to move out of the mid-Atlantic, and I just don't know what I want to do with my life.   And I feel guilty for allowing myself to wallow in this sort of apathetic self-pity, because it could be so much worse.  I am so lucky.

I'm relatively healthy, but my knee still hurts me every single day.  I can't work out, I have to go to the chiropractor twice a week when I'd rather be doing something - anything - else with my evenings.   I think about the kid who ran that red light in January every day, and I wonder if he knows how much he still impacts my life on a daily basis.  I fantasize about going to his house and punching him in the face.  I think of Charlotte Yorke telling Mr. Big that she rues the day he was born, I plan out what I'd say to this kid if I saw him in the street.  Would I go on a tirade?  Would I show him my scar?  Would I cry?  Would I lecture him on how he very nearly cost me me life and how I hope he's more careful now?   I think about these things, and I feel guilty for spending so much time feeling angry and vengeful.  It could have been so much worse. 

I have a comfortable home, but it always seems to be a mess.  Laundry overflows the hamper and cat litter coats all the floors.  I have piles of picture frames I've been meaning to hang and supplies for a yet-to-be-started project sitting in our front room.  We need to replace the window in the litterbox room and the front window has mysteriously developed a huge and growing crack.  The window above the front door still needs to be finished and the bathtubs need to be resealed.  Boards on the deck are warped and need to be replaced.   It seems like every time we finish one project, three more jump up to take its place.  And I hate myself for daring to feel frustrated over the house that we are so lucky to own, that we can still afford.

I have three cats that I adore, but one of them has a fucking roundworm.  Again.  I just took a poop sample from all three of them to the vet for annual parasite testing and they all came back clean, but someone threw up a worm on the carpet three weeks ago and it wasn't me or Joel.   I'm proud of myself because I've almost become numb to this -- last year I could hardly think, I was so grossed out by the idea of worms.  This year I'm just tired, I'm sick of dumping out their litterboxes and washing them every night.  I'm tired of having them spit and gag and run away from me when I try to give them the medication.  I don't particularly want to spend my evenings squirting goo down their throats, either, and I certainly didn't want to spend $120 for the dewormer and take a plastic bag full of poop to the vet's office.  I should be relieved, because Max is doing so well on chemo and Madison's cancer/mystery illness seems to have just gone away, but I'm so goddamn sick of these worms. 

I'm getting married to a wonderful man, but I feel in a constant state of anxiety over the wedding.  I promised myself I wouldn't do this; I swore to myself that the minute the wedding started to stress me out, I'd scale whatever it was back, I'd let it go.  But now that the time is here I'm finding that I can't help myself.  This is what I do, it's who I am.  I worry about things.  I've become adept at managing this part of my nature by figuring out what's stressing me out and either doing something about it or making a conscious effort to let it go... but when it's just this general state of anxiety, there's not much I can do.   I just know that I hate feeling like this.  And I hate that I'm allowing myself to feel like this.

I have more to say on all of these topics, but I just don't know how to do it right now without turning into a weepy, self-indulgent mess.  I really thought that these feelings would pass once spring finally arrived... but they haven't.  I don't like whining like this here, but I am hoping that by getting it OUT I'll start to feel better.  I'm hoping that I'll look back on this entry in another two weeks and laugh at how dramatic I was feeling over nothing.  Because really, it is nothing.  I know that.  That's why I feel guilty on top of feeling crappy. 

Grumble, Part 3... and let's all hope there's no part 4

At the risk of turning this into an all-bitching, all the time blog... let me just tell you about my doctor's appointment yesterday.  

I went to an orthopedic surgeon last month to have my knee checked out, because it was still feeling awfully sore and ache-y, six weeks after The Accident.   It didn't hurt per se, but it felt really sore when I did certain things, like "yoga" and "sitting cross-legged," and if there's one thing I learned from years and years of competitive running, it's that you don't mess with your knees.   So, the lawyer that I have obtained to deal with the paperwork nightmare that is a personal injury claim set me up with an appointment to see an orthopedic surgeon that they work with.  Now, I've seen more orthopedic surgeons than I care to remember (see: years of competitive running), and I have yet to find one that I didn't want to kick in the teeth with the various malfunctioning parts of my body, so I was fine with going to whoever the lawyer recommended... especially because this meant they arranged the appointment for me and the bill went directly tot he lawyer's office (see: paying a lawyer to deal with my hassles for me).   I went to the initial appointment and the doctor said he thought that what I had was a cartilage bruise, which would eventually heal on its own.  Just to be sure, he sent me home with some prescription-strength NSAIDs and orders to obtain an MRI and return in a few weeks.   Fine and dandy.  I think that, including the time I spent filling out the load of insurance paperwork, the entire visit probably took 40 minutes.

Now, this is embarrassing because I used to live in the general neighborhood of this doctor's office, but I sort of got lost on my way to the follow-up appointment yesterday.  The short story is that office is on a street that's one way running south, and I was coming up a street that's one way running north, and I thought I turned the right way to loop around past the office but I didn't.  The longer story involves a panic attack as I tried to drive slowly down the (wrong) street, looking for the office's street number, driving about a mile in the wrong direction, a lot of cursing, and a long history of not being able to navigate my way out of a paper bag.  When I finally got my bearing, I decided to just park the damn car and walk the two blocks to the office because I was really, really getting tired of wasting my entire afternoon off from work driving around one-way streets.  Besides, I rationalized, there were all these signs up the last time about parking in this lot instead of that lot and how anyone who parked in that lot would be towed immediately, and you know what I really don't need?  To have my car towed.  Right, so I'll just park here behind this moving truck and would you look at that, the last person overpaid the meter and I still have an hour and forty-five minutes of time left.  And... I guess I'll put the club on my steering wheel and take the radio face-plate off because wow, this area is a little more ghetto than I remembered. 

Since I was running late by this point, I took a shortcut through an alley.  This was, to say the least, not smart, but by this point I am sure that no is surprised.  What's important is that I made it to the doctor's office with ten minutes to spare during his open clinic hours.

And then I waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  People, I sat in that horrid waiting room for nearly an hour and a half.  To make matters worse, not only had I forgotten my book at home, but I was also the only person in the room who wasn't 1) faking a worker's comp claim, 2) suing Walmart, or 3) both.  I was also the only person who noticed that one of the many screaming children in the "play area" had taken to throwing around duplo blocks, one of which hit me squarely in the back of the head as I was flipping through a year-old Time magazine article about the Dalia Lama.   And the only person who was perturbed by the fact that there was not a scrap of toilet paper to be found in the single bathroom stall in the waiting area.  Also: the only one without an iphone.  Right.

After I'd given up all hope of getting anything done for the rest of the afternoon, I was finally granted my thirty seconds of doctor face-time.  Happily, I do not have any torn ligaments.  So... that's good. 

I walked back to my car in a petulant mood, thinking of all the enjoyable things I could have done with that last two hours of my life when I realized that I'd indeed been gone for two hours. As in, fifteen minutes more than my parking meter allowed.  Oh, shit, I thought.  PLEASE let me have a parking ticket.  Please let me have gotten a ticket in the fifteen minutes I was over the limit, so I can put it in an envelope and mail it to the lawyer's office with a note that says "PLEASE ADD THIS ONE (1) PARKING TICKET, ALONG WITH TWO (2) HOURS OF MY LIFE TO THE SETTLEMENT.  AND ALSO ONE (1) DUPLO-SHAPED BRUISE ON THE BACK OF MY HEAD."

I walked closer and closer, with a sinking feeling in my stomach as I noticed that there were now far fewer cars parked on the street.  Oh, shit, I thought (again).  Was this a no parking between 4 and 6pm zone?  I didn't even think to look since I thought I'd be out of there by 3pm at the latest, but yup, even the moving van I parked behind is gone. 

And then I noticed that my car was gone too.  And for one heart-sinking minute, I thought I'd been towed. 

But then I found my car behind a white van that had just done a terrible parking job.

I got in and drove away. The end.  

Good story, right? 

I'm OK, you're OK. We're all OK!

I talk to cats! You talk to cats! If we ALL talk to our pets that means we're all normal, right? Well, at least that's what Max told me last night. After we finished our nightly Harry Potter book club discussion.

In other news, I'm pretty sure this video is relevant to your workday.

(Link via The Bloggess)

Carry on.

Bluebird on my shoulder

So I have a confession: I talk to my cats. 

I say hello when I come home from work and ask how their day was.  I tell them to calm the hell down when they swarm me in the morning looking for food even though their bowl is filled with perfectly good food and what, do they think food grows on trees?  Well, yes, Max, you have a point, some food does grow on trees but I'm pretty sure that no farmer in Florida is harvesting 10-lb bags of Science Diet.  

You get the idea.

I always tell them goodbye when I leave in the morning.  This morning I was in a chipper mood, and instead of just telling them "goodbye", I said "see you cats later".   I meant "cats" in the cool-cats-50s-slang way, but then I laughed my ass off the whole way to work because CATS!  THEY ARE CATS!  HAHAHAHAHA.

Either someone slipped some Prozac in my coffee this morning or I am really, really ready for this almost-springtime weather. 

If you guys are not on twitter, you're seriously missing out

That is some thrilling, high quality content, right there. And I didn't even go to the grocery store OR the gym today!  Joining time-wasting social media sites while slightly delirious = BEST IDEA EVER.

Or something.

Getting bangs, on the other hand.... not so much a good idea.  Well, you know how the song goes, two out of three ain't bad.  So now I just need to find one other thing to be right about and I'll be all set.

/SLOWEST FRIDAY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORKING WORLD

I now declare it the weekend.  AMEN.

And we won't even get into the Battlestar Gallactica obsession

Thanks to a combination of clementines, snow days (finally!), sleeping late and Harry Potter, I seem to have finally kicked the persistent cold with a side of feverish delirium that has been plaguing me for the past week and a half.  But not before I (1) went for a haircut and ended up with side-bangs, and  (2) joined Twitter.

So, yes.  Twitter.  You may have previously heard me saying that I just don't get it.  Who needs to know when you're going to the grocery store and when you're at the gym?  No one, that's who! Right?  Right! 

But then I read a comment on Janet's site referencing something she'd twittered about, and I wanted to see that particular post (or "tweet," if you will), damnit!  But Twitter wouldn't show it to me until I created a username.  So, fine, I created Twitter username.  (This was a particularly slow evening, in case you couldn't tell.)  And then the next thing I knew I suddenly I had a Twitter "account" and was following 20 people.  And now I am addicted; the end.

Let's talk a bit about everyone's favorite boy wizard.  I have had Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone sitting on my shelf ever since I bought it at a garage sale several years ago, but I never felt compelled to read it.  I finally picked it up in December, hoping it could save me from a particularly rough patch of post-Twilight depression... and I have to tell you, I was not that impressed.  It was a cute kid's book and a quick read, but it was no Twilight; THAT's for sure.  I felt the same way about Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, however, I really really liked.  Really, really, really.  I panicked a bit when I realized on Thursday -- just as I was leaving for a 2-hour train ride to New Jersey -- that the collection of Potter books I'd borrowed from my friend was missing Book #4, but I've now procured my brother's copy and I daresay I'm close to being completely hooked.  I really didn't think it was possible to get any nerdier than being a 28-year-old Twilight fangirl with three cats and a blog, but it turns out I was wrong!  You can also be a 28-year-old vampire nerd who texts in Twitter updates about Harry Potter! Five years after liking Harry Potter was cool!

Not dead, but getting there

Ah, yes.  Hello.  I have a blog. 

I've been feeling rather uninspired lately.  Blog-wise, that is.  Other areas of life remain unaffected.   We got some new kitchen shelves and they are very beautiful!  I bought a watering can that's cute and all old-looking and I'm going to use it at the wedding somehow, someway, so help me God.   Joel planned us a surprise mini-staycation when my weekend plans were canceled at the last minute and we got to stay in the Presidential Suite at the Marriott!  And then he got up early and went home to feed the cats and get me coffee.  He is awesome.   Now you know!

So... things, they are a-happening, but I've not felt much like blogging.  Until today!  Today, my friends, is a sad day.   Today was supposed to be a snow day, but then the snow stopped.   And today was also going to be a sick day, except I had a conference call to be on at 9:30 and it seemed kind of pointless to go home when I was already all dressed and all here and stuff.  Except I have some sort of cold/flu/deadly virus that kind of makes me extremely slap-happy.  My head feels like a helium balloon that could float my body up into the sky.  My coworkers seemed to think that wasn't good but I say, hey, it feels better than yesterday when my throat was all sore and scratchy.   Whee!  Also I am all woozy but that's fine because I sit in a chair all day and do computer stuff.   I am very busy.  Goodbye.

PS - I swear to Jeebus, I have not taken any drugs today except for one (1) Mucinex DM and two (2) Alleve.  I am also about to take some Tylenol, but that doesn't count because Joel told me to and he's a doctor.   Not really, but close enough.  Someone should bottle up this virus thing and sell it on the street, because I'm telling you!  Things, they could be worse.  Hey, italics!  Cool.  

In other news...

Hi guys.  I am not quite sure how to come back from such a gloomy post, but I'll try.  First off, I am OK.  Thank you all, SO MUCH, for your comments, emails, texts and phone calls.   And if I said anything nonsensical to you in response to those messages, um... sorry.   I didn't think that the muscle relaxers were having any effect other than making me pass out in slack-jawed coma for a few hours every afternoon, but I don't exactly remember posting some of the thing I did on facebook or sending some of the texts in my phone's sent folder (not that I said anything outrageous, I just don't remember saying it at all)... so I guess they were working after all?   I'm still pissed off because my coworkers both got sent home with some grade-A quality painkillers and I got stuck with some bullshit muscle relaxers that my doctor-friend told me are pretty much placebos but WHATEVER.   We're all OK, and that is what matters.

I felt pretty much like hell on Thursday and Friday, but I think I'm steadily getting better.  I am back at work today, woohoo.  Life goes on, and I am very, VERY grateful for that.

Moving on...

After the return of Jack Baur on Sunday night, I found myself at Sam's Club yesterday purchasing, among (many) other things, a 15-lb bag of rice and a 5-liter bottle of olive oil.  Then I went through the pantry and pulled out things like peanut butter and told Joel "we need to get some more of this shit.  This never goes bad."  

And then I told him I thought we should get a gun and he spent the rest of the evening on the computer looking at tactical rifles.  

The thing is, I love shows like 24 and Jericho... but they scare the living shit out of me, to put it mildly.   And I can't even tell you how terrified I was after reading The Road.   I used to have nightmares that revolved around there being some sort of natural disaster and my being unable to wrangle all three cats into a carrier before being evacuated.  Now I'm afraid of riots and survival in a post-apocalyptic breakdown of society.  

(After we decided we need to get a gun, I also realized we also need to get a goat, at least two sheep, and some chickens as well.  And a fallout bunker.  Joel will commence looking at real estate in  Wyoming as soon as he finds the perfect gun.)

I'm either the smartest person I've ever met or the craziest.  If it's the latter, I'd like to blame everything on "the amnesia", which is what I have taken to calling the drop in IQ I've experienced after the accident.  Don't get mad when I can't remember what happened last season on Battlestar Gallactica!  It's the amnesia.  I think I may have over-inflated my front car tire, but I can't be sure.  It's the amnesia!  You know how it is. 

Yesterday was my last day home before returning to work and I was very excited about the prospect of being home at 5pm to watch the entire hour of Gilmore Girls on ABC Family (instead of the last half hour, which I usually catch at the gym).  No missing the first half of the episode, no laughing too loud because I have headphones on while I"m on the treadmill... just  me, my couch, and Luke Danes.  And then I turned on the TV to find Kyle XY on instead!   If that's not a sign of the upcoming apocalypse I don't know what is. 

Good thing we have enough soup to last us through the nuclear winter.

This Really Old House

Over the past few weeks, I have become somewhat obsessed with completing some of the home improvement projects that have been hanging around on our to-do list since, oh... we bought our house?   Which was in 2003?  I am not really sure what triggered this particular compulsion in my brain, but it has been activated and there is no going back.  Last week I had a plumber come over and fix our kitchen sink, which leaked occasionally under some unknown set of circumstances.  I never could get it to leak on purpose, and trust me, I tried.  I turned the water on super hot, ran the garbage disposal, tried the dishwasher on various different cycles, did all of these things at the same time while wearing a blindfold and hopping on one foot -- NOTHING.  And yet the pan I put under the pipe would have water in it from time to time.  Not every day, not every week, but sometimes.  If there's anything I hate, it's a pipe that doesn't even have the decency to leak consistently. 

Anyway, the pipe is hereby fixed.   I still have a pan under there, just in case.  Obviously this pipe cannot be trusted.  But I feel better, it's fixed, box checked.  NEXT!

We have finally purchased a new window for the broken bit of glass over our door that's been serving as a convenient escape route for all of our heat for the past five winters; now Joel just needs to install it.   Joel has also fixed the broken weatherstripping around our front door and scraped off all the chipped paint around the doorframe so we can re-coat it with paint that is actually intended for outdoor use.  Sigh.  Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the assholes who rehabbed our house?  HATEHATEHATE.  I am trying not to project this hatred onto the house itself, but oh, it is hard.

Tomorrow I have a dude coming over to clean and tune up our furnace and clean out all the air vents and most importantly, the dryer vent.  When Mr. Dude came over to take a look and give me an estimate earlier this week, he seemed very concerned that our dryer is packed on top of the washing machine in a closet that has about an inch of clearance on each side.  When I informed him there was no possible way that the dryer can be pulled out from the wall because it doesn't fit through the door frame and there's no way in hell I'm taking that door frame off again, he seemed to think this was going to cause some problems.  Have I mentioned that sometimes I really hate our stupid 107-year-old house?  And the rehabbers who made a laundry closet that's too small to fit any machines manufactured on this planet?

Next on the list is to find a good roofer to come over and determine if it's our roof or the neighbor's roof that is leaking water into the litterbox room when it rains.  Because, yes, water, it is leaking into our house.  I discovered this when I was vacuuming out the poo-room and the vacuum brush was suddenly leaving wet marks across the uber-dusty surfaces of the plastic storage containers we keep in there.  My first reaction was to round up Henry and Max into separate interrogation rooms and then force one of them to flip on the other and tell me who had managed to piss on the rug underneath a pile of junk, because that takes considerable skill.  But upon a complicated forensic investigation, my nose and I determined that it wasn't cat piss soaking the rug, it was rain water.  So, yeah.  Anyone know a good roofer? 

Last but not least, we had a handyman come over to see about replacing three of our windows.  Two of them are permanently fogged up inside, which has been the case since we moved in, but suddenly it has become absolutely intolerable.  Joel need to call the manufacturer to try to get us some replacements for free, and that better happen soon because those windows and their foggy trickery are driving me insane. We also need to buy a new window for the poo-room because the one that's in there... well, it's the wrong size.  The propped-up drywall that's holding it in place was serving quite well until a few weeks ago, when a heavy sideways rain storm resulted in a huge bubble of water behind the paint.  DEAR PEOPLE WHO REHABBED OUR HOUSE:  ROT IN HELL.  So, yeah.  Windows.  Need to buy some.

And when the handyman/window installer is here again, I'm going to get him to re-seal both of our bathtubs too, because all of a sudden the DIY job we did a few years ago after the great Water Leaking Out of Tub and Through Wall Incident (HELL. THE REHABBERS ARE GOING TO HELL.) is now driving me crazy as well.  It is working, but it looks crappy and it must be fixed.  Soon.

All of these minor-ish (with the exception of the water leaking in, that's a real problem) repairs are suddenly driving me nuts and I am not really sure what my problem is.  Joel is out of town for a race this weekend, and last night I found myself moving all of the furniture in the front room (which is heavier than I remembered) so I could roll up the carpet in search of the source of the mysterious cat piss odor.  The phantom cat odor has been surfacing at irregular intervals for years, but last night just seemed like the right time to move all the couches (by myself) and roll up the rug (by myself), wash the floor underneath and carefully inspect for signs of cat piss (none found) and then move all of the furniture back (by myself). 

The really strange thing about all this is that these minxy fogged-up windows and a less-than-professional (but fully functional) tub sealing job are really weighing me down, while the fact that we haven't had a bed frame since we sold our old bed (in JUNE) doesn't bother me a bit.  And until we have a new bed frame, the new mattress and boxspring (which are not really that new anymore) are just resting unattractively on the floor.  I am OK with this.  And because the mattress is sitting on the floor, the storage containers full of clothes that used to go under the bed are stacked up in the hallway, serving as a cat condo for Henry.... also, fine with me.   I have a stack of picture frames next to the nightstand, still waiting to be hung and a drawer full of fall clothes begging to be organized and donated to Goodwill. 

But all of that seems unimportant when there are dusty air vents and magically foggy windows to be dealt with. 

How to pretty much guarantee you're never asked to give a toast at a wedding again

A Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Start off with some sentimental stories about all the good times you've shared.

Step 2: Break into a choreographed dance based (very) loosely on your friendship.  

Step 3: Have a grand finale that involves displaying the bride and groom's names on your asses.

Step 4:Try to wrap up with a quick, sentimental statement about how happy you are for the bride and groom.  This may be difficult because you will be extremely out of breath from all that Running Man.

Step 5: Proceed immediately to the bar. 

Etc, etc

I got an email yesterday from one of my favorite people from college, asking what my current address is, if I was still with Joel, and if so, what was Joel's last name again?  He is getting ready to mail out save-the-dates for his own wedding in May, and it totally made my day to hear from him.   I'm not sure why, but I have been absolutely terrible at keeping in touch with people since graduation.   I could theorize that it was because I had such a terrible time transitioning to Real Adult Life that first year out.  Maybe it was just laziness.   Maybe it was the crushing insecurity I felt over not having even an iota of career ambition after four years at a prestigious college, when everyone else seemed to either be heading out to grad school/ med school/law school or an impressive-sounding job.   Whatever the reason, it's one of the things I would change if I could rewind my life. 

It was so nice to get the thirty-second update on his life, and I'm already looking forward to his wedding.  I'm not positive why this excites me, while the thought of my five-year college reunion made me want to vomit with anxiety, but, again, if I had to guess I'd say it was a combination of 1) The fact that a wedding will be much more contained than a reunion - the guests will be his friends and family, not every damn person in our graduating class, 2) Now that we've set a date, I feel like I have something official to report; evidence that I haven't just been wasting my life for these past five years.  I hate the way that sounds, because I am not at all one of those girls whose goal in life is to get married as soon as possible to the first willing guy that comes along.  It's more that I suffer from a self-imposed inadequacy complex and I am very, very crazy.  Anyway, whatever stars are responsible for reconnecting with long-lost friends must truly be aligned, because this morning I ran into my sophomore year roommate on the street.  

**********************************************

In other news, As of Monday the OPH household has officially moved out of the dark ages:  we now have DSL.  And lo, it is glorious. 

**********************************************

I've been having a divine time playing with my new camera.   Dudes, I can't tell you how much I love it.  I've been taking a ton of pictures, pictures of the new flowers I got for our window box, pictures of trees in the park, pictures of taxis and buildings on a quick trip I had to make to NYC for work.  

I don't know how we lived before digital cameras.  I'd be broke (er, more broke, I should say) if I had to shell out cash to have all these rolls of film developed.  God bless America!  Or whoever invented the internet!  Or whatever!

And of course, there have also been a lot of cat pictures. 

*********************************************************

I'm off tomorrow to a wedding in Ithaca (sister-wife Bethy has opted for a more traditional marriage), and it promises to be a fun-filled, utterly exhausting weekend.   Do you have anything relaxing planned?  Please tell me about it.  I miss my television.

This and that, here and there

My new camera, let me show you it.

So, I bought myself a new camera.  It's a Nikon D80 and I am in love with it.   Our cute little point-and-shoot is still quite useful for carrying around in my purse and taking self-portraits in hotel mirrors, but my Nikon, it is my baby.  And now, just imagine!  Instead of seeing crappy pictures of my cats, now you'll be seeing crappy pictures of my cats in 3872x2593 pixels.  Like this!

Plus, the in-camera processing is pretty much The Shit.

Oh, yes.  I foresee many good times ahead.

Oh, crap.  I have to go to class tonight.

The impetus to finally up and buy this new camera, which I've been salivating over for months (ever since I realized that our cute little point-and-shoot did not have the ability to adjust f-stops manually) was that I'm taking another photography class.  It's noncredit and not a big deal at all, but it's already 100 times better than the last class because the teacher is not insane.  One week down, and so far that hasn't been a single picture of a stuffed pig dressed up in an Attila the Hun costume! 

Hey, guess what!  I went to Utah!

I got to try out my new camera in Utah this weekend.  I had a meeting in Salt Lake City on Friday, and I got to meet the fabulous Heidikins on Saturday.  I am on a roll with meeting up with bloggers lately!  Heidi took me on a whirlwind tour of the SLC area, and dudes.  It's pretty out there.   We went up to Snowbird (where my little brother worked for approximately one week earlier this year) and on the way down we saw a storm passing through the canyon below.   It was awesome and scary and beautiful.  We also saw a sphinx with the face of Joseph Smith and the famous Temple Square and topped it all off with lunch at Cafe Rio.  Now, I've carefully considered the statement I'm about to make, and I want you to know that I take food very seriously.  The burrito I had at Cafe Rio was the best I've ever had.  It was better than Chipotle.  As I said to Heidi while we were eating (at 11:30am, after we'd already made trips to both a Starbucks AND an Einstein Brother's Bagel shop earlier in the morning), the only thing that could have made that meal better is if I had been really, really hungry.  Is there anything better than eating something truly delicious when you're really, really hungry?  I think not. 

Boob tube

I think I'll need to dedicate an entire post to my thoughts on the return of TV, because my thoughts.  They are many.  But it's nice to actually have new shows to watch!  I sort of forgot what that was like.  Now I'm back to bemoaning the terrible decision to get the Tivo that only records one show at a time.  But still!  New stories to watch! Also: Wild card, bitches!  YEEEEHAW!

I don't know if I'm becoming even more cranky now that I'm nearing twenty-eight or if commercials are really stepping out on a limb nowadays, but there are three commercials on right now that not only annoy me, they offend me.   The first one might only be a regional commercial, and in that case you should feel very lucky if you don't live in the Baltimore metro area.  If you do, though, have you seen that Comcast commercial that's on EVERY FIVE SECONDS singing Get what you want!  Get what you need! while a series of attractive, hip-looking people (mostly women) jump on a trampoline in the background, whipping their head around like they're having the time of their lives at a rave?  Does it make you want to kill something, too?  Because I hate that commercial so much that I can't even fast forward and ignore it.  I have to watch it, every time, and every time I come to hate it that much more. 

The other two shit-list commercials are the two variations of the High Fructose Corn Syrup is Actually Quite Good For You Campaign. 

I think that these commercials are personally offensive to me because they are so well done.  If they were just filmed in someone's basement with a camcorder, they wouldn't be so goddamned convincing.  And the thing is, I consume my fair share of High Fructose Corn Syrup.  But at least I KNOW I'm making a Poor Food Choice when I do so, and I sort of feel bad about it for a second or two before enjoying that delicious cinnamon frosted Pop Tart!  Now I'm all kinds of confused.  I should go on a high fructose corn syrup boycott, just to protest this ridiculous campaign, I think to myself whenever they come on.   But how is that fair?  I don't WANT to give up cinnamon frosted Pop Tarts!  NOW I AM CONFUSED ABOUT POP TARTS, THAT'S WHAT THESE COMMERCIALS HAVE DONE TO ME.   I hope those bastards burn in hell, that's all I'm saying.

And on that note, I think I'll get back to work.

Or break something.  WILD CARD, BITCHES!

Out of the office reply

So.... it's the eighteenth of August, my calendar tells me.  That means I am leaving for Scotland, um, tomorrow!  How about that?

I have not even opened the lovely Frommer's Scotland book I so studiously borrowed from the library three weeks ago.

I realized this morning that we probably should obtain a power adapter or converter thingiemabober, but I have no idea which kind.

I have not packed. 

I have not finished reading Twilight for the third time.

I think it might be cold in Scotland. 

I am not sure where my passport is. 

But most importantly: despite several diligent web searches, I have not been able to find Ewan McGregor's address. 

HALP. 

So, internet, I may not see you for awhile.   Don't rob our house, we have three vicious attack cats armed with a pink piggie and an arsenal of Aflac duck keychains.  

Be afraid.

Post #2 of what I assume will be many - New Moon

You guys have no idea how hard it was for me to resist staying up all night to finish New Moon.   My coworker and I made a pilgrimage to Barnes and Noble yesterday at lunch -- which required us borrowing Metro passes and coordinating lunch hours -- when I realized that with the $6 Amazon was charging plus $3.99 for shipping, it would be cheaper to just fork over $10.99 to Barnes and Noble.   Plus, let's be honest: I really could not wait 3-5 days for Amazon to ship this book to me.

(SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!  DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ NEW MOON) 

Dude, where's my UPS box?

I had my first wedding-related nightmare last night.  (I say "first" because I'm sure there will be more... worrying, it's what I do.  Even in my sleep.) 

In the dream, we were apparently having our wedding in some sort of island destination.  My family and friends all went out to this island about a week before the wedding and we were having a great time until I suddenly realized that the wedding was the next day and holy shit, I'd forgotten to do everything that I was supposed to do during that week. 

First, I realized that I'd never ordered any wedding bands, and I sent Joel off to find something we could use for the ceremony in a one of the local shops.  Then I started running around the island looking for florists and photographers when my mom reminded me that the dress was still way too long - I'd never had it hemmed.  I ran and found a tailor who said she'd happily fix it that same day... for $1,000.  The flower ladies were spouting on about some island rock (yes, rock) had made traditional bouquets impossible BUT they could do this weird thing with rope instead when my two friends came back with long faces on.  The local butcher had no idea how to cut up the wild hog I'd brought for the wedding feast (I finished Omnivore's Dilemma, in case you couldn't tell), they said.  We'd have to find a caterer instead.  Joel came back, saying he couldn't find anything but a pair of gold hoop earrings for us to use for the ceremony, and at that moment I realize that I had never found an officiant.

This whole time someone (who shall remain nameless because I know she would never do this in real life) was laughing.  Just as I was screaming "this isn't funny, STOP LAUGHING AND HELP ME!" I woke up and realized that I was mega-late for work.

See, I told you.  Breaking Point!  Officially reached!

In other news, I cannot find my car.  I was going to drive to work this morning so I could go to the grocery store after work, but car = missing.   Does anyone know where I parked my car?  Black Jetta covered in pigeon poop?  Anyone?

Lastly, I came home last night to find a note from UPS saying that they'd left a package my brother had shipped here with some last-minute stuff for his bike trip "BY FLOWERS -->".  I looked in in the shrub that the United States Postal Service so enjoys abusing, but there was no box to be found.  Someone stole it, which isn't all that surprising since UPS basically left a nice shiny box on the sidewalk on our heavily foot-trafficked street.  I am officially adding "mailbox" to the list of requirements for our next house, right after "closets", "designated parking", and "more closets". 

Whip THIS

I have officially hit The Breaking Point.  I knew this was coming, but it still sucks.  A lot. 

I feel like our house is falling apart at the seams.  Somehow we have no food (again), even though we got up extra-early on Saturday and went to the Farmer's Market.  There is cat litter everywhere and a layer of dust an inch thick on every surface.  I put in a load of laundry last night, and when I went to put it in the dryer I discovered it was full.  So that's where all my underwear has been.

Nothing major has happened, but we're leaving for our trip to Vermont on Saturday and I just feel like I don't have time to breathe.  I have to get the house cleaned, get a haircut, decide how I want my hair cut,  do the laundry, book my work trip to Chicago later this month, get ready for my BFF's bridal shower, and book a trip to Scotland.  Yes, Scotland.  As in, land of kilts and bagpipes and the Loch Ness Monster.  And Ewan McGregor. 

So, I'm a little bit stressed out.  And I also feel like a hugely hypocritical asshole, because the reason I "haven't had time to breathe"?  Is because I was at Penn State all weekend with my friends, drinking $1 Long Island Iced Teas and getting milkshakes at the Creamery and doing things like this:

Because I need something fun to focus on (and I'm still too busy feeling like I"m going to puke about Scotland, does anyone else get queasy when they click "book ticket"?), let me tell you what I am going to make for this week's Whip It Up challenge.  My little brother (remember the one who drove cross country by himself?) is off on his latest adventure: biking across the country with two of his friends. 

They left northern New Jersey on Monday morning, and if all goes to plan, they will arrive at my house in Baltimore sometime on Thursday.   I will then provide them with showers, a place to sleep that has four walls and a roof, and cram them as full of vegetables and protein as I can before they get back on the road and return to eating pasta at a campsite every night.

My menu, so far:

• Salad crammed full of veggies
• Blade Steaks with Mushrooms
• Roasted Red Potatoes with Rosemary
• Grilled Portobello Mushrooms (I was going to make grilled corn on the cob, with fresh corn from the Farmer's Market, but Joel very wisely pointed out that corn on the cob + riding a bike all day with very limited bathroom access = an uncomfortable situation)
• Homemade Iced Tea
• Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies

I think that should hold them over for four thousand miles or so, don't you?  At the very  least, it will keep me occupied with something other than having a nervous breakdown until we board our plane to Vermont on Saturday.

Two down, four to go

I've got two weekends in my six-weekends-out-of-town marathon down, and so far... so good!  I was a hot, cranky, tired mess when I rolled into Baltimore around 6pm on Sunday evening, but since then I've done some vacuuming and some laundry and caught up with some emails, and I feel fairly recovered.  

In terms of a quick weekend recap:

• My three side dishes for the fancy bridal shower came out wonderfully (if I do say so myself)

• I FINALLY went to see Sex and the City (loved it... totally cried during the Brooklyn Bridge scene)

• I had two servings of ice cream cake at the Fancy Shower to combat the brutal heat and GOD WAS IT GOOD.  How come no one reminded me how good ice cream cake is?

• I went to a swanky clubin NYC for the bachelorette party, where I did not pay for one thing.  It is good to have friends with connections, it seems.  Also, bottle service is the best thing ever.  Especially when it is free.

The one real snag of the weekend occurred when we arrived at the apartment we'd graciously been given access to for the bachelorette party.  As I walked in with my suitcase, dragging a cooler of leftover food and drinks from the shower, I saw a very large fish tank in the middle of the room.  Please tell me there is a fish in that tank, I said to my bride-friend.  Please, please tell me there is a special fish who doesn't need any water in that tank.  A fish who looks a lot like a snake.  Because that cannot be a snake in that tank.  NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS GOING TO BE A FUCKING SNAKE.

In case I have not mentioned it lately, I HATE SNAKES.   "Hate" isn't a strong enough word.  I fear them, loathe them, wish they did not exist on this planet.   And the snakes I fear most are those of the constricting variety.  I do NOT DO nine-foot, 50-lb boa constrictors.  Absolutely, positively, no way in hell.  I don't love anyone enough to sleep in the same room as a boa constrictor, sorry but THOSE THINGS CAN KILL PEOPLE YOU KNOW. 

And then the funniest thing happened!  I had about nine drinks, and all of a sudden the snake didn't seem so scary anymore.  I made a tentative peace with the snake, and I even tried to get the bride (who happens to be a professional snake handler) (seriously, that's not some kind of bachelorette party humor... she handles snakes and other reptiles for a living) to feed the poor snake a sandwich when I learned that he only eats once a month. 

I slept not more than an arm's length away from him and he didn't strangle me in the middle of the night.  I guess that's what you would call "progress".  Or, "passing out".  Whatever.

A midsummer night's breakdown

If it's not too late to post about the weekend, perhaps you'd like to know that mine was fabulous.   We drove to New Jersey to celebrate my mom's birthday (which is actually in February, but that's how we roll in in my family), and spent Saturday hiking in New Paltz, NY.  When I remarked, after seeing a bride being photographed in the formal gardens at Lake Mohonk, that this would be a beautiful place to get married, my mom's jaw hit the floor.  "What! Don't you remember, the last time we were here, I said this would be a great place to get married, and you said 'Sure, maybe if you're old"", she asked. 

Um, no I did not remember saying that at all.  And I take it back, the place is lovely.

Throughout the day we had several more exchanges in which my mom recalled how scared I was of a cliff, how I cried on a hike (more cliffs), how I generally just had a terrible time.  Still, no recollection from me.  I was a bit unsettled that I could completely block out an entire experience like that, but I chalked it up to the fact that I must have been really, really terrified of all those cliffs.  (My fear of heights (without a railing; if there's some sort of protective rail, they don't bother me) is eclipsed only by my fear of constrictor-type snakes.)  (The fact that all my irrational fears have specific criteria is a topic we'll have to discuss another day). 

Finally, after about the fifth time that my mom asked if I really, seriously did not remember saying what a horrible old person place this mountain paradise was, I thought to ask when exactly this alleged previous visit took place.  Turns out it was when I was somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen. 

I'd like to make a rule right now: all snotty statements about old people places and horrible times should have an expiration date, after which no one can hold them against you.  Five years, perhaps?  Ten years?  Maybe we could say that upon graduation from high school, all previous bratty behavior is expunged from our records, and the same thing would go for college graduation and other milestone achievements.  Any of you lawyer-types out there, feel free to get started drafting up some legislation to that effect.

I feel much better knowing that my memory hasn't been completely erased by all those alien abductions -- I just, understandably, don't have crystal-clearn memories of every single hike and every remark about old people places that I made fifteen years ago.  And besides, by the standards of my twelve year old self, I AM old.  Don't mind if I do add yet another venue to the ever-growing list of  Places We Should Get Married.  

So, throw in some torrential downpours on the ride home and some great BBQ, and that was my weekend.  How was yours?  OK, great, now that I've politely pretended to be interested, I can move on to The Complaining.

Internet, this past weekend marked the beginning of my summer marathon of being out of town.  This coming weekend we have Bridal Shower/Bachelorette Party #1 in New Jersey.  After that, I'll be spending the 4th of July in State College, PA visiting some college friends.  The weekend after that, we leave for a week-long trip to Vermont to visit Joel's family.  When we return from that, I'll be driving straight up to NJ for Bridal Shower/Bachelorette Party #2.   The weekend after that, I'll be helping Sister-Wife Jenny move from Williamsburg to Richmond.  For those of you keeping track, that's six consecutive weekends that will not be spent on my couch at home.

True, most of these out of town activities are for fun.  But, still.  I'm the type of girl who needs enough quality time with my Tivo and a good half-day each week spend organizing and compulsively cleaning the house to feel balanced.  When are we going to look at the remaining wedding venues on our list?  When am I going to do laundry? Go grocery shopping?  More importantly, when am I am going to watch that new ABC Family show with Molly Ringwald and lie in my new magical bed?

I am really, really going to try not to let all of this stuff stress me out, and to remember that most of this IS FOR FUN.  SO IT SHOULD ACTUALLY BE ENJOYED AT THE TIME.  But honestly, I'm not sure I can make any promises that I won't be curled up in a corner sucking my thumb when August rolls around. 

I survived.

If you are wondering why I was so stressed out about this reunion weekend, let me explain:  I am crazy.  I have problems.  And have I mentioned that I'm crazy?

In general, I just hate these sorts of forced functions.  I got one email (among dozens regarding this reunion because I made the mistake of accepting the invitation to join Reunion Facebook group) last week about a networking event on Friday and the phrase "break out your business cards" was actually used.  I almost threw up reading that - do I need to explain, or have I sufficiently covered my hatred of networking in over the past two years of blogging? 

Because I still live in the same city as my alma mater, I've gone to Homecoming events every year.  It was never great, but never that bad.  The Young Alumni tent is an overpriced frat party, but it can be entertaining if you're drunk enough.  The homecoming lacrosse game is still a boring lacrosse game, but it can be entertaining if you're drunk enough.   

I've never panicked the way I did this year because there was always the possibility of just ignoring homecoming altogether.  If there were people I cared about coming back, I'd show up at a few events, pay my $20, collect my commemorative beer mug, and catch up with people.  But this year was The! Big! 5! Year! Reunion!  It was going to be So! Much! Fun!

For most people in our class, this was the first reunion they'd attended.  And I can see the excitement in that.  But this is my FIFTH.  And quite honestly, I'm over these reunions.  I feel like I need a disclaimer here, because I didn't hate college.  I LOVED college.  I had a minor life crisis when college came to and end and my life as I knew it ended with it.   Twenty-two was a not a good year for me.   I spent the majority of it feeling simultaneously lonely and overwhelmed as I struggled to adjust to working full time, cohabitating with Joel, and just becoming an adult.  I wished a million times that I could turn back the clock and just go back to school, where everything had a purpose and I knew what  my role in the world was.... even though I spent quite a lot of time senior year stressing out about tests and papers and thinking about how easy everything would be once I just graduated and started working, because then I'd have money and my weekends would be free from endless studying and staying up all night bullshitting papers.   Grass: greener, etc.

But then Joel and I bought a house, moved out of our craptastic apartment, got some cats.  I got a new job that sucked significantly less than my old one and paid significantly more.   At some point, I stopped feeling like a college student masquerading as an adult.  I moved on, for lack of a better phrase.  And I'm happy.  Though I may complain about trivial (and at times, not-so-trivial) things here, I am so content with my life it's ridiculous.  I love where we live, I love my friends, I love my family, I love my fiance.  I  love my three adorable cats.  This is the life I want. 

And yet, when I find myself forced to make small talk with people I don't know well, I inevitably feel a crushing sense of inadequacy.  I feel like a loser because discussing careers and networking opportunities makes me want to throw up.  I feel like I suck because I don't have a fancy job title or a posh city loft or crazy stories about my wild nightlife.  I feel kind of boring.  I don't WANT one of those fancy jobs, I don't want to be a single girl partying hard in NYC, I don't want to be in law/med/business school.  But I do feel bad for NOT wanting those things.  Sometimes I feel like I used my reserve of overachiever, reach-for-the-stars gasoline during high school and college, and now I'm just a slacker.  Honestly, that is probably a good thing.  The level of perfection that I used to demand from myself in every area of my life was unsustainable and I am so much happier and healthier now that I have let all (most) of that go.  But I still feel guilty about it.  If that makes no sense at all to you, that's because you're sane. 

In a nutshell, that's why I was dreading this reunion.  I felt like I was supposed to be SO! EXCITED!, when I really just wished I could hole up in my house and ignore the whole thing.  But I couldn't do that, because that would be antisocial.  And so  my friends and I decided that we had an obligation to attend at least one official reunion event.  We decided on the lacrosse tailgate because 1. It was cheap, and 2. It was not the frat party Young Alumni Tent.   I was OK with this decision until we were sitting in a coffee shop across from the lacrosse field half an hour before the tailgate was scheduled to begin, and all of a sudden I started having a panic attack. Why are we going to this?, I asked my friend Sarah.  What the hell were we thinking?  Do you want to just cut our losses and run? I seriously would have PAID the $15 ticket price just to not have to go to that event.

What is my problem?  Well, let me try to explain the totally irrational roots of my social anxiety reunion disorder: 

1. I have totally sucked at keeping in touch with people from college who aren't either A) Joel B) My friend Liz , who doesn't really count as a "college" friend because before we were college friends, we were high school friends, C) From my track/XC team.  Over the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time thinking about why and how this managed to happen, and I think it's partly because I overscheduled myself SO much during college that I missed out on a lot of just hanging out time, and partly because I hate talking on the phone so much, and partly because I just suck.  Remember my New Year's Resolution to keep in better touch with my friends?   I made that resolution because I KNOW I suck at this and I want to get better.

I was afraid I'd come back and see how everyone is still BFF with all their college friends except for me, and then I'd feel like a giant loser.

2.  I really hate making small talk/bullshitting about "what I'm doing now".   I feel like I have nothing to report on my life.  Still living in Baltimore, still working at a job, same old same old same old.

3. Sure, I have the big engagement news, but the next logical question is "so, when's the wedding?" and I'm not positive on this one, but I don't think that durrrrrr? is a socially appropriate response.

4. Did I mention that Joel was out of town all weekend?  I usually have no problem being on my own while he's coaching or traveling for work, but at these kind of extremely stressful social events it would be really, really nice to have him to lean on, instead of calling him from a bathroom stall and begging him to come home right now PLLLLEEEASE.   

5.  We found out last week that Max has cancer, and that is not related to any of this at all except for that it isn't exactly making my mood any better, you know?

So those are all the reasons that I am crazy.  Now for the good news: this weekend was not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be.  Actually, it was kind of awesome.   After having a joint anxiety attack, Sarah and I agreed that we would go to the tailgate for half an hour fifteen  minutes seven minutes.  We'd grab some snacks to get our $15 worth, and then we would book out of there and we would be able to say that we went to the stupid reunion.  Our two friends who abandoned us "forgot to register" agreed that they'd go for a walk around campus and that if we hadn't re-emerged within fifteen minutes, they'd call us so that we could pretend there was some emergency and extricate ourselves.  And just as we were about to get up and go in, I spilled coffee all over myself.  Oh, yes.  I did.  I am THAT awesome.

We purposely went at the very beginning of the tailgate to avoid the crowd, and it was beyond awkward.  There was ONE other person there, and she was weird.  She chatted us up.  It was bad.  And we still had five of our seven minutes to go.

And then something amazing happened.  Other people showed up.   People that I love and haven't talked to in years.  People who are now married to other awesome people, people that I actually wanted to talk to.  People whose numbers I obtained so that we could meet up later and hang out.   People who just laughed and helped me and Sarah exit gracefully when the tent actually started to fill up with ex-sorority sisters and a dude who actually refers to himself as HK03 (Homecoming King) (I'm not joking) and the whole thing started to go downhill very, very quickly. We lasted thirty-three minutes in an Official Reunion Event, and it was actually sort of fun! 

And then we went to Holy Frijoles, which now has a liquor license.  I pounded a pomegranate margarita and ate every bite of my burrito and everything was alright.  Because sometimes alcohol really DOES make things better.

The rest of the weekend was actually wonderful - I got to see my friends, my cats didn't cause anyone to go into an allergic fit (although they came close), people actually called me and came over to my house and we all hung out and it was so lovely.  Best of all, since I didn't know that that People I Haven't Seen in Five Years would be coming to my house, I didn't even have time to freak out and obsessively clean beforehand.  (But things were still generally in a VERY clean state, thanks to my mom's visit a few weeks ago, don't worry).  We spent time watching TV in our pajamas, I stayed up until 2am catching up with people I truly love, laughing so hard that my abs hurt on Sunday. 

Sunday was a laid back day, filled with a long lunch, and a lot of chilling out.   I didn't even have to call Joel once to beg him to come home early from his race. 

Even though the weekend as a whole turned out extremely well, I've never been so happy to return to normalcy.  Joel came home soon after my last friend departed, and we quickly settled into our normal Sunday night routine of making dinner, watching TV and getting ready for the week ahead.  God, I never knew normal could feel so good.

One can dream