OrangeZen

Hi again

2007-09-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

I'm experimenting with good old Blogger and word press...not sure which I like yet, but so far Word Press seems a lot more user friendly. I may just have to switch.

It's June already?

2006-06-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

Where did the first half of the year go?

Anyway...
My lack of posting lately has been due to me not having any ANY spare minutes when I wasn't working, talking to people at work, going to work, coming home from work, or sleeping. I may be exaggerating just a tad. I do work a lot though. Most of the time I'm too exhausted to even think much less type out something coherent. Also, much of what I've had to say lately has been about (in)fertility or home improvement or assholes that I have the misfortune of meeting while driving to or from my job(s). While everyone can relate to stupid maniac drivers, and most people have done a home improvement project at some point, not many people have had to deal with infertility. I feel like I would need a whole other blog just to dedicate to all of the (too much) information about it. There's a lot of checking of temeratures and bodily fluids and body organ positions and it's all a little bit overwhelming at times even for me so I can only imagine how gross and just too much it is for the average person.
Thus, I have made a decision to kind of put the blogging on hold for a bit. It's pretty much been on hold for the last year anyway because I have a very boring life or I have run out of things to talk about...or something. It's harder to come up with random things when I'm not sitting bored at a desk, which is where I was when I first started this blog.
So that's pretty much that.
And, in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
=)

Morons...

2006-05-09T16:35:00.000-07:00

Why do people think I am going to pull over when they are gesturing to me in traffic?

New job(s)+new house= ??

2006-03-29T16:11:00.000-08:00

Just when I got used to staying home, I went out and got not one, but TWO jobs. The last time I had 2 jobs I was a newly divorced single mom making slightly more than minimum wage and struggling (sometimes failing) to make ends meet.
So how did I come back to having to have 2 jobs? It's called starting over in a different career....gotta climb a different ladder. Tech support was beginning to wear on me. It's obviously not a creative field. I'm not entirely sure if that's what the problem was or if I was just burned out and bored with it. I'm not even sure I will like doing cakes as a "career" but it's not terrible which is a start I suppose. I like to cook but I don't have a feel for how to put recipes together very well. Having a meat and potatoes type of family definitely doesn't help that very much. Baking is very measured and precise. It's chemistry. And almost everyone likes cake.
I am currently a cake decorator at Cold Stone Creamery AND teaching cake decorating at Michael's. I hope to one day gain enough experience to work in a proper bakery or a grocery store bakery or some such place. Ultimately though I want to do what my good friend does and just do cakes for people and make them pay me for it. Who knows if that's even a real possibility for me who is sorely unmotivated and a big time procrastinator. But you have to start somewhere.
In other news...
We closed on our house yesterday. We even have KEYS. The first items have already been moved over. Those things we don't use very often and storage stuff. One of the first things we did was tear down the hidious wallpaper in the kitchen. All of the seams were visible so it was not a hard thing to do. I have a weird thing about peeling things. If I get a sunburn I can't ignore the peeling skin.I try to get it off in one big sheet. If I get a zit, I mess with it until it's a hugesss blemish. I think when I'm old and senile I'm going to probably have to wear mittens taped to my hands. The best thing is that it's OUR house so we can go into the kitchen and peel off the shitty wallpaper and not have to worry about security deposits and all of that lovely crappy stuff that goes with renting. I can't wait to get out of here and into OUR NEW HOUSE.

Jobby Jobs

2006-03-22T07:41:00.000-08:00

Why is it people pay you big bucks to do things you loathe but if you want to do something you actually enjoy, they can barely manage to scrape together a few pennies?
I am now officially (well, almost) a Wilton Method Instructor. What this means is I am taking my cake decorating non-talent and passing it on to others who would like to learn. I'm doing this mostly because I want to work in a job where the main thing is not talking to people on the phone about how to locate the Start button or explaining to them why it's a good idea to save their work frequently when working on documents that takes 3 hours to compose. The pay is NOT good, the hours couldn't be better, and there are a number of perks that go along with it, not the least of which is a 40% discount (woohoo!). Having finally procured this job, after a couple of months of limbo over another job that I ended up NOT getting because I bounced a check 10 years ago, I got an email from a head hunter today offering me a help desk job in Chesapeake. While I said I would never get a tech job again, the money might just be too good to pass up, especially since we will be basically drawing from savings every month to live in our new house if I can't pull in the extra. Then again, if it's not, do I take the crappy job at the crappy pay just because I would be making more at that than doing cake stuff?

Etc.

2006-03-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

My back...hurts.
I don't know what the hell I did to it. Maybe it's because I have no access to the chiropractor. Maybe I strained it emptying the catbox. For almost 2 weeks now I've had lower back pain and I don't like it! I can't sit for long before it starts aching. Not a sharp pain, but a dull ache. For a while I was sitting on my exercise ball instead of my regular office chair but my stupid cat popped it so now I have to try to use my chair again. One of the good side effects of not being able to sit for that long is that I'm getting more done around the house, which is always a good thing.

I also went back to the gym this week. It's been since before Christmas that I've been. I got a cold right before Christmas and couldn't breathe so, therefore I stopped going. I made a couple attempts to workout at home, but once we got new furniture there was no room to workout anymore. All of that's behind me now though because I'm starting again. After having been out of it for so long I feel like I'm starting from scratch. But starting slow is better than not starting at all I suppose. I've managed to avoid the annual Girl Scout Cookie conspiracy this year so that's about 5 unnecessary pounds I won't be gaining this year. Yay. I weighed myself this morning and discovered that I have lost about 5 pounds since January 1. While this is no great feat, I'm happy with it. Small victories or something like that.

I am more motivated to lose weight now that I've been to the Reproductive Endocrinologist(RE) last week. He said I may have a condition called PCOS and that "diet and exercise" may improve my fertility. I still will have to take medicine though. He told me a lot of things actually. I am to go in for an HSG (see I told you there were a lot of acronyms dealing with infertility) after the start of my next cycle. I've not read a whole lot about HSG's but what I have read is that they are uncomfortable to say the least. I'm not looking forward to it. Why is it that all of the female tests and procedures for diagnosing infertility problems are painful or inconvenient while the male part in it comes down to not wearing tight underwear and getting to masturbate into a cup? NOT FAIR I say... Jeff is being a good sport about it though. I've read stories of some women's husbands who balk at the idea that there might be something wrong with their testicles and refuse to get the test done. Hopefully all of that time around a nuclear reactor didn't hurt his little guys too much.

Apparently I've been writing web pages in my sleep. My husband told me this morning that I asked him for the keywords. I did the same thing yesterday morning. I don't remember any of it. I've been ask by a friend of mine to administer a message board that her and another gal have just started up. It's a message board for cake decorators called The Baker's Bar. It still looks ugly and needs some tweaking, but at least it works. It was the first time I had worked with php or mysql. Fortunately I know people who aren't as dumb about this as I.

We will be moving to a new house in about a month. When we first moved to Norfolk, we didn't know anything about the area or where we should live. Let's just say we didn't choose well and now we're moving to a better area; one where our neighbors will not see fit to put their major appliances and furniture in their front yards to be picked up as trash. It gets a little ridiculouse. How many couches and old stoves do these people have?? Ah, and the music will now be something that I pick for myself instead of someting I'm forced to listen to,in another language, at top volume, at 1am. Fortunately my daughter will stay in the same school. I'm excited about living in the new house and fixing it up to sell, but I ABSOLUTELY despise moving. I wish I could be one of those uber-organized,have-everything-packed-a-month-ahead-of-time type of people. I still have boxes in my house that I haven't unpacked from when we moved her...almost a year ago. Hopefully that's not an indicator of the next one.

FRER gave me a BFN

2006-03-02T02:26:00.000-08:00

Many people don't realize that there is a whole subculture out there. One full of acronyms, obsessive compulsive behavior, probing into regions of the body that usually only one person (an OBGYN) sees.
You see I am anywhere from 16-18 DPO right now (depending on if you ask TCOYF or FF) and I'm on CD33. My AF hasn't shown up yet so I am in the 2WW still. We were doing the SMEP this month so I was sure this would be a god month. I haven't had many symptoms, bb's don't really hurt, and my CM has all but dried up...not to mention that my CP is still high and soft. I have had 2 temps below my CL, but I'm not sure if that means anything. This morning I tested with FRER and got a BFN. Tomorrow I have an appointment with an RE to find out why my husband and I have been TTC for a year now and still don't have a baby.

See what I mean? It's like a whole other language that must be learned. Basically what I just said was that I ovulated 16-18 days ago (depending on which chart you look at). I haven't gotten my period yet so I took a pregnancy test this morning (First Response Early Response) and got a Big Fat Negative. I don't know why this negative was any more fat than normal negatives, but it seems that in the world of Trying To Conceive that it's not just negative it's Big and Fat (same goes if you happen to get a positive result). Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with a Reproductive Endocrinologist. They are the people you go to see when the OBGYN just isn't cutting it and you need the "real stuff". These doctors specialize in the why's and how's of why people can't get pregnant. That's definitely the man (or woman) for me! There was a time when I would be very depressed about getting a negative pregnancy test, but now I just want to get whatever the problem is sorted out and get on with the baby makin'!
The rest of the stuff mentioned above...you just don't want to know, believe me. I mean I suppose you could look it up if you are so inclined, but I'll let you figure that out.

Non-post post

2006-02-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

You are a
Social Liberal
(66% permissive)

and an...
Economic Moderate
(41% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Centrist

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Close Call

2006-02-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

So I sort of re-discovered Mike's blog today and was thinking about a childhood memory that I was also reminded of yesterday when I read this disturbing article that Jeff had sent to me.
This is a very vivid memory for me. I was probably about 9 years old riding my bike to the convenience store that was about 3/4 mile from our house. This in itself boggles my mind because there's NO WAY IN HELL that I would even let my almost-12 year old daughter ride her bike on a busy road to a place that was that far from the house, but I guess things were different then or something because I was going to get some milk for my mom for dinner (or something). I was almost there when a man approached me and said hello. I stopped and said hi. He was probably about 20-ish, but it's hard to tell age when you're 9 years old. He had scraggly dark blonde hair that was sort of wavy and needed a haircut and he had a beard and a mustache. He was dressed casually in a flannel shirt and work boots...I remember his boots had mud on them. He asked me if he could show me something. I said sure. He said it's just back there in the woods. He pointed behind him to a fence and some trees. There was a sort of creek that ran through that part and he said what he wanted to show me was down there. I said no I really have to get back, my mom needs some milk. He said are you sure? It will only take a minute. I just said no I gotta go and I left. I don't know if he tried to follow me or anything because I didn't look back. I don't remember feeling particularly anxious or scared because he was not a scary looking man. I remember the ONLY reason I didn't go with this man was because I knew I would get in trouble if I took too long getting the milk! It didn't occur to me until years later that I may not be here writing this if I had actually gone with him. I could have been a statistic, a headline on the evening news, a wreath laid beside the road to mark the place I was last seen alive...you get the idea.
I guess my point is that I don't think parents (myself included) have any idea just how many sick people are out there waiting to prey on children. And I'm not talking about small children because a lot of times they are smarter than we give them credit for, I'm talking about that sort of "tween" age that isn't quite a little girl and not quite a teenager. Sure we've all heard the "don't take candy from strangers" mantra, but what about the not so dubious sounding requests? My daughter has ADHD, is very naive, and very outgoing and I can totally see her just trusting anyone without a thought because she's forgetful like that. It's a scary thought indeed. I think I will let her read the article. That might be the best way to illustrate to her that people aren't automatically deserving of our trust.

The Special K people think you're a big fat pig cow!

2006-02-04T19:41:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't seen this little gem of a commercial, let me set it up for you...
There's a picture of a scale and meat products are dropped onto it until it reads 6 lbs. while "Barnyard Boogie" by Louis Jordan (specifically the part that sings "Oink Oink, Moo Moo") plays in the background.
Does anyone else think this is the most blatant subliminal message? As if to say "Hello all of you big fat Americans! Buy Special K! You need to lose weight!" I mean how awful is that??
And their red berry Special K is so good! And now I have to stop buying it because their commercial could be insulting me! Besides, no way in hell am I eating cereal for 2 meals a day for 2 weeks!! I'd never leave the bathroom!

Hmmm...anyone else notice the ridiculous amount of !!'s and ??'s in this post??(????)

Side note...not a real post...

2006-02-02T05:56:00.000-08:00

Notice the timestamp at the bottom of my posts?
It's 3 hours off.
Since we've moved here, the time on the laptop has remained on Pacific Time and thus is 3 hours behind the ACTUAL time here on the East Coast. I don't know why I did that. I think I was homesick at first or something. Now it just seems silly so I think I might change it.

Time to go play with my birthday gift...TheSims2:Nightlife. New job can't get here fast enough...

Happy Birthday to me

2006-02-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

Yup, today it's 31...(sigh)
When I was a teenager, I thought that 30 was OLD.
Since then I've realized that teenagers are idiots who don't know anything, but think they do. So it's all good!

Watching Food Network...
Ever notice that Giada De Laurentiis wears WAY too much makeup and looks like a lollipop (you know, teeny tiny stick body with a HUGE balloon head). She's like a train wreck, I can't help watching. And what's up with the OCD hand washing after everything she touches? I wonder if she has a special bar of soap and everything.
WTF happened to Rachel Ray? She used to be cute in a girl-next-door kind of way but now I guess she has put on a few pounds or something because she looks funky in a bad way and her overzealous personality seems to have morphed into some kind of psychotic, giggle infested, EVOO, drug induced bad trip or something.
Alton Brown never disappoints though. He's my surrogate husband. When Jeff was gone on deployment, AB was the only man that I saw almost every day. I still watch all of his shows even though I've seen them thousands of times.

I made my own birthday cake today. It was chocolate with chocolate filling made from scratch, including the fondant. It looks sort of like a purse...or a pillow, or something. I'll post a pic eventually.

Hmmm what else...OH

I got a job! Staying at home has been fun, but I am not doing anything productive while I wait to be impregnanted so I may as well make some money. I'm waiting for a security clearance so that I can work on the base here in Norfolk. It's your basic helpdesk type job but for less pay than I was getting before. I'm not all that concerned about how much I make, since it's all going to be extra anyway. It's nice to not have to worry about that for once...

Speaking of trying to get impregnated...yep we're still trying. I had an oh-so-pleasant pelvic ultrasound a few weeks ago and the results were "normal" according to my doctor so there's no reason why I have such a weird cycle. I must admit that I never dreamed having a baby would be this hard, if i had known this in high school I wouldn't have worried so much! March will be a year and a half (more or less) that I've been off of birth control. Of course, Jeff was gone for several months in there and some high stress things were happening in my life (oh, like moving accross the country...) so it's not totally abnormal yet. This will be my 3rd month "charting" so maybe it will get better. I use a nifty little website called "Fertility Friend" (I know it's hilarious isn't it?). I think that link contains more information than you will EVER want to know about me, so click at your own risk.

Ok, I'm fighting sleep...time to surrender. =)

The joys of parenting a tweenager

2006-01-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

I've come to the conclusion that I don't necessarily give my child toys and things like that to keep her happy (although I admit I may do that on occasion), rather I give her these things so that I have LEVERAGE when it comes time to discipline her.
Yesterday I had my ultrasound and we left my 11 year old at home, as she's done a few times in the past, for a couple of hours to avoid the inevitable "I'm bored" and "when can we go?" type of whining. While we were gone her job was to empty the dishwasher, as is her job every day. When we returned and I started making dinner I noticed some curious scrape marks on the handle of the refrigerator. When I went to get the bread from the breadbox, I noticed some of the fruit sitting on top of it had similar slash marks on it. After heavy questioning, much denial, and finally threatening to take away computer games, it came out that my daughter thought it would be fun to take a steak knife and hack away at the refrigerator, banana, and pear. After the thoughts of her cutting off her finger or her toe and gushing blood everywhere had gone from my head I think my head exploded or something because the next thing I knew I was yelling at the top of my lungs about the danger of playing with knives-what would you have done if you hurt yourself-that's MY fruit you slashed up-you are not playing any video games for the forseeable future-what on hearth posessed you to do such a thing-madness and she was sent to her room.
I guess she won't be staying home again by herself for some time.
WheneverI end up yelling at my daughter in that way, I end up blaming myself for 1)not instilling in my child that knives are a tool and not a toy and 2) because it's really MY fault that those things happened because if I had been here they obviously wouldn't have but mostly 3)how I must be the worst mother in the world!
Which starts me thinking..."and I want to have another one??". Somehow I convince myself that it will be different this time because THIS time I won't be a single mom. I'll be able to stay home and be around and available all the time. But will it REALLY be? I am 11 years older than I was when I had my daughter (at the just graduated from high school age of 18) and I should be wiser and more world-weary, right? RIGHT??

Newness

2006-01-02T11:56:00.000-08:00

Organizational maven that I am, I went to change my calendar and found that I hadn't flipped the month since October. I rarely remember what day it is much less the date. All of that really has no meaning when I have no where to be like a job or other commitments. I mean if I need to do something for school for my daughter, they always send home a flyer so I'm good there.
Why do they always put wintery scenes in winter? That's not when people want to be reminded of cold. They want to see cold, snowy weather in July to help them cool off and they want to see hot, sunny weather in January because they are cold (unless they live in the South where it's never really "cold"). When I make a calendar, that's what it's going to be: snowy weather in summer and sunny weather in winter.
So how is your new year so far?

New Year? But I was just getting used to this year...

2005-12-31T02:46:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe this year has passed already. Don't we say that every year?
I was watching TV yesterday and they had one of those "year in review" type montages on there. Brad and Jennifer breaking up seems like it happened 2 years ago, doesn't it? Cause you know that was THE NUMBER ONE thing to be worried about this year... My hair has grown about 4 inches, as has my waist unfortunately. Soon to be remedied though! Monday is the big day when I start back to the gym...again.
I've lived in Virginia for almost 8 months now and it still doesn't feel "right" to say that I live here. I still use the wrong zip code when I address envelopes and the wrong area code when I use my phone number. This is less a place that we live than a place we're staying at for a couple of years until my husband is out of the Navy. Then we can go find a "real" house.
I finished a book I got for Christmas in less than a day. Either I am a fast reader or the book was so hopelessly elementary that it was that easy to read. I haven't finished a book since high school I'm sure. I always try to get into reading but I can never stay interested long enough. I think I have ADD. The book I read was Dark Lord:The Rise of Darth Vader. Nope no great literary classics for me, I'm all about the Star Wars geekiness. It is the first Star Wars Expanded Universe book that I've read and it spurred my interest to read more (since there won't be any more films). Reading it felt like watching one of the movies. There was a lot of action and there were parts that let you get inside of Vader's head and find out what he thought of the suit that kept him alive, the Emperor, and his self-pity and anger that ultimately makes him stronger in the Dark Side of the Force.
My geek alarm is blaring so I must digress...
I wasn't directly affected by any of the hurricanes or other things that happened this year, but I think I must have given about $100 to the Red Cross and other charities raising money for the victims. $100 doesn't sound like much, but given that I usually give $0 to such charities, I think it's quite a bit. I also sent a care package to anysoldier.com. I think it's a good way to support the people risking their lives in Iraq even if you don't agree with the reason they are there.
On a more personal note, this year has been a little disappointing in that we have been trying to have a baby and, well, we're still trying. I'm reading books, charting temperatures, taking tests, and trying to assess places that really only my OBGYN should be assessing. I don't even really like to think about how long it's been because 1)I am impatient, 2)I don't like to think about the fact that it's been this long (9 months) and it hasn't happened (so maybe it's not going to) and 3)I know for a fact that there are people who've been trying for three or four times as long as we've been trying and it makes me feel insignificant. I go in for a pelvic ultrasound on January 15th so they can look at my ovaries. Hopefully there will be some kind of "aHA! there's the problem! here's how we fix it!" type of thing as a result.
Whew
Anyway, I think we will be taking it easy tonight. Staying off the roads is probably a good thing to do with all of the sobriety checkpoints that will be open around here. I say dinner, maybe a movie, watch the ball drop, get some nookie, go to bed...not necessarily in that order.
Simple enough.
Good luck and good health in the new year everyone!

Do you look famous?

2005-12-30T07:29:00.000-08:00

Check out this site. You upload a pic of yourself and the site matches it to that of a celebrity!
Depending on the pic, I resemble Vivien Leigh, Liv Tyler, Angelina Jolie, and Courtney Cox (none of which have the requisite RED HAIR).

Got lights?

2005-12-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

I know at least some of you out there have seen this video of the Christmas lights that are in sync with music, BUT here's a link to even MORE of them including links with directions on how to put together displays like it. (better not show this to my husband lest he get any ideas)
I mean, if you're going to waste energy, don't screw around by driving around a gas guzzling monstrocity of a vehicle that gets 8mpg, REALLY do it right by plugging in hundreds of thousands of lights into an electrical timer that will sync everything to the music you are broadcasting over a close range radio station! Better yet, invite friends and strangers in their gas guzzling monstrocities to drive by your house repeatedly blocking traffic and invading private property! To hell with those nay-sayers who say there is a fuel shortage!
I know that's sort of bah-humbugg-y and even a little bit hypocritical. I enjoy Christmas lights as much as the next person, but there are people who can't even afford to heat their homes this winter and put food on their table and here we have the equivalent of Clark W. Griswold, FFS!
I digress...
I'm mainly posting because I updated my photos, only about a quarter of what I've taken, but I think personal photos tend to have a sort of "slideshow vacation" feel to them. No one knows who is who and no one cares that much.

Merry Christmahannakwanzakah!!

2005-12-21T18:05:00.000-08:00

Ya like that?
How the heck are ya? Are you ready for the holiday? (whatever holiday you happen to be celebrating) I just finished up my online shopping tonight. It's a beautiful thing being able to do 80% of your shopping without even turning off the TV.
Ok so I haven't totally slipped into a coma. We have had the tree and lights up for about 3 weeks. We did all of our holiday baking. Some of the things turned out great. I highly recommend Alton Brown's Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel cookies. We tried to make fudge about 4 times with absolutely no success. I don't understand because I used the exact recipe I used last year. It was either way dry and crumbly or it had the consistency of Nutella or peanut butter or something like that. Nothing that resembled fudge though. I did learn a few things from the experiment(s) though. Don't try to make fudge on an electric stove. Also, don't try to make fudge on a gas camp stove. Maybe it's the humidity? Or lack of?
Hehe...I'm watching Pretty Woman while I type this. They just showed the part where they're doing it on the piano...gotta do that eventually.
Anyway, not much is new. I have pictures that I've been too lazy to upload. I have had stuff to say that I've been too lazy to type out. I'll try to be better about that sort of thing. I can't believe it's been another year. Last year at Christmas I was sure we would have another little person on the way by this time. It's secretly what I wanted for Christmas (ok not secretly, but maybe inwardly). Oh well,there's always my birthday (in 2 months if anyone is counting!). I have managed to lose 5 pounds which is not really saying much because I am now back to the same weight I was before we moved to Virginia. It's an ok start for a New Year's resolution though.
Speaking of those, they are as follows:
Lose 50lbs. (I'll start with 20 and take it from there)
Exercise at least 3 days a week.
Go for walks 2 nights a week.
Finally unpack every box that I have from when we moved and either use the contents or give them away.
Purge half of my wardrobe to some other fat girl who might require "business casual" at her place of business.
Update my blog at least twice a month. I know this is a pitifully small thing, but it's something I've been meaning to keep up and just haven't because I'm a procrastinator like that.

Of all of those, only the top 2 are absolutely non-negotiable. The rest are sort of my wish to be ultra super organized. We'll see what happens.

Princess in training

2005-11-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

I thought this was the cutest thing ever!
Apparently there was a Star Wars costume contest on this site and some of the costumes are really good...but the idea of putting the fake hair on this kid was too funny!

WikiTree

2005-11-02T20:57:00.000-08:00

A group of people trying to make a family tree of all humankind. No small feat, but it's sort of fun. Give it a try. You can add your own info or that of your family members to see your own family tree.

For the love of GAWD....

2005-11-02T20:24:00.000-08:00

please stop shopping at Wal-mart!!!

From the article...
"It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric."
"It sells in three months what number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year."
"To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas."
"...dozens of companies contacted declined to talk about even the basics of their business with Wal-Mart... Why in the world would we talk about Wal-Mart? Ask me about anything else, we'll talk. But not Wal-Mart." (what are they, the mob??)

So the moral of this story is, support your local businesses. Stop lining the pockets of Sam Walton's heirs.

Goth wannabe

2005-11-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

Move Over Courtney Love...
Originally uploaded by Ja-nelle.

Here's my daughter on Halloween. She looked cute in a Marilyn Manson/Courtney Love sort of way.
We ended up with NO trick or treaters! Not ONE! So now we have all of this candy laying around! Oh NO! What are we going to do??!! =)

Peach Rose

2005-10-29T00:50:00.000-07:00

Peach Rose
Originally uploaded by Ja-nelle.

Here's the test post! That didn't take too long to figure out. Enjoy my wannabe artistic pictures. =)

Creepiness...

2005-10-29T00:38:00.000-07:00

If you click here, you can play with a woman's body...literally it's like she's dead and you can pick her up and move her all over the screen.

Who comes up with these things?

Check out the pictures in my flickr page thingy. Among them are recent cakes I've done (including the one I did for my sister's reception) and our trip up to DC...go on, bore yourself silly! Maybe I'll do a test post...

If I'm ever put up for auction...

2005-10-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

I am worth $1,108,724 on HumanForSale.com

The new me, back in WA...

2005-10-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

but only for the weekend. I surprised my sister with a visit to make a cake for her (5th) wedding reception. She was, obviously, surprised, which was fun as she had absolutely no idea I would be there. The cake turned out both better and worse than I expected. I'll post a pic when I get home sometime Monday.
When I saie "the new me" I did not mean the "new and improved me", quite the opposite in a lot of ways! I need some inspiration. I'm seriously lacking in the blog posting department and it's because my life has become D-U-L-L. There's nothing inspiring or exciting about getting up, going to the gym, cleaning, cooking,playing too many video games, watching too much TV, or any of the other non exciting things I do every day. I have grass is always greener syndrome. For years I was a single mom and I wanted nothing more than to be able to stay at home and be just a mom or just a wife, or whatever. Now that I actually DO that, I wish I could do something else! You know, out of the house. Not a job per se (although a satisfying job would be wonderful), but a reason to explain my existance. I mean, I'm not agorophobic or anything like that. I do go out when I have to get groceries or some other nonsense. I know a woman who has kids in soccer, coaches soccer, heads several comittees, is involved with her church, runs a charity, AND she teaches cake deco. classes twice a week. Just talking to her makes me tired. I think maybe that's my problem. I'm LAZY. In theory, doing all of that stuff sounds great, but in practice, I'd probably be kicked off of all of the committees, my team would lose all their games (in no small part because I'm really dense when it comes to soccer...), and the charity would go bankrupt if it were all left up to me.
So this post is really pointless, isn't it? Just me bitching about stuff that's perfectly within my control. If I were my friend I'd tell me to STFU and get off my ass. I have some sort of mental block that keeps me from "accomplishing my goals". I always think of all of these things I could be doing to make my life better and then I come in the door and I immediately feel like the only thing I can manage to do is vegetate.

blahhh
Why can't I listen to me?

Murder!

2005-10-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and went downstairs where my husband was busy cleaning out our fish tank. He had the fish sitting on the counter in the pitcher labeled "FISH" on the front while he cleaned out the tank. I went on my business, got myself some juice, poured some cereal into a bowl. When I went to the fridge to get the milk I heard
"Oh shit..SHIT!"
I turned to see my husband with his hand down the garbage disposal. He had poured one of the fish down the drain! It was one of the two remaining neon tetras!
"What did you do??"
"I was trying to pour off the extra dirty water and one of them fell in!"
"If he would only stop moving around..."
"Well he can't breathe!"
I grabbed the remaining fish who were flipping around in the remaining half inch of water in the pitcher and poured them safely back into the tank.
"Why didn't you plug up the sink!? You've probably poked his eye out by now."
"You try then..."
I put my hand down and I could feel his slimy lifeless body. He was dead.I was sad. It's my fish! In the garbage disposal! He's swimming around in the pitcher one minute and the next he's down there with the bits of old potato and corn gasping for air. It must have been a horrible way to die.
I turned on the water and let it run until I couldn't feel him there anymore.
I feel stupid for being sad because of a fish, but he was one of the fighters! We had started out with 5 neon tetras and 3 had died along the way. There was only these 2 left. He made it all this way to get poured down the garbage disposal!

RIP little fish...I'm sorry my husband murdered you.

Course 1...again

2005-09-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

I mentioned earlier that I was going to retake the Wilton classes...here is the product of that...

not bad for a beginner, but for someone taking the class for a 2nd time, let's just say I'm not going to be doing this for a living any time soon...

Tonight is the Coldplay concert! Can't wait for that...full review to come. Cause you know, my opinion matters...to me and stuff.

Here's what I would look like if I were a Southpark kiddie...

Cement sunburn and the "sound of freedom"

2005-09-17T15:47:00.000-07:00

I went to an airshow today. It was free. You know, because nothing is better during a fuel crisis than an airshow using lots of...fuel...needlessly. I have to admit though, it was very cool and I didn't realize how fast Super Hornets actally went. 550mph is pretty fucking fast and will make your ears hurt after a while. It was also a great big FUCK YOU to all of the residents that live near the air field who complain about the jet noise. Hmm...seems to me like these idiots would have figured that out before they moved there.
The funniest bit was when the Skytypers spelled "Happy Annivdsary Doti". OOps. Apparently there is no spellcheck in sky typing.
I took a lot of precautions about not getting a sunburn but ended up with one anyway. You see, I can't even say the word sun without burning. So now I am a lovely shade of crimson just because we were standing on white cement. Who would have known. I guess I should have...

I'm goin upstairs now...

2005-08-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

Cause it's 'puter time. That nightly ritual right after family time in front of the TV. We are the "American family". Typing that makes me a little bit nauseous actually. At least we've gotten our exercise for today. Tonight, in light of it being Friday and all, I've decided to deviate a tad from my normal nightly routine of computer games to post on my oh-so-neglected blog. What can I say? I don't work anymore so why do I need something to distract me?
Not working...yeah...it's not nearly as fun as it sounds. Don't get me wrong, I like not having to show up on time, pretend to work, do my job and all of that but along with that came a certain amount of, I don't know...pride? A feeling of being "worthy" and accomplishment. I actually feel guilty that I don't have a job. I feel useless like I'm just taking up space. This feeling of course is only in my own head. My husband has none of these feelings and only really wants a clear path from the front door to the television and maybe some dinner thrown in once or twice a week. My parents, despite my telling them about 500 times that I wouldn't be working when we moved to Virginia, ask me every time I call them "so, do you have a job yet?" "so, anyone call you back about a job yet?" "so when are you going to get a job?".
And they wonder why I don't call more often.
See to them, if you're relaxing or not actively earning your keep then you lose all rights. Money is the great motivator evidently. Who cares if you don't like your job, you need money. Well I won't argue that point, but must we all be miserable in the process?
Anyway, I've taken some steps to insure that I won't slip into a coma from boredom or anything like that. Remember all of the nifty cakes and things that I used to post about? Well I get to do that again, only this time I'll be like Monica in "The One With The Cooking Class" and go to the head of the class and get a star made out of foil.

In other news...Time marches on. Soon I realize it's marching across my face (thank you Steel Magnolias). Having purchased every available salve and balm to try to camouflage the evidence of "fine lines and wrinkles" I have come to the conclusion that I'm no longer considered young or youthful or any of the other things that are meant to be desirable. blah
And why can't I lose weight? I run every day and I try not to eat anything terribly bad for me on a regular basis. Do I need Jenny Craig? My period is 3 weeks late and I'm not pregnant. What is up with that? I'm too young for menopause!

Ah, that's about all I have. Oh except for this.
Spousal complaint #627
How come you never turn on the fish? They don't like the dark...

It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

2005-07-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Today it is hot and sticky and muggy and sauna-like pretty much all the live-long day. It's like every day of every week since I've been here.
So, I've decided that staying indoors is the best thing to do. Unfortunately I'm not used to staying home all day with nothing to do. I feel like I'm on some sort of extended vacation. I don't remember what day it is half of the time. So you would think that I must have gotten a lot of things done, right? With all of this free time, my house must be spotless, right?
You would be WRONG.
A typical day is when I get up at 5am, make lunch, then go back to bed for about 3 hours. When I finally do get up, I make the bed and shower (maybe) then I head downstairs and contemplate breakfast.Once thats done, I see what the Tivo recorded for me the previous night and watch that for an hour or so. After that I clean up the kitchen and head upstairs to play a video game of my choice (Star Wars Galaxies or The Sims 2). If I get bored with that, I might venture out and shop for a bit, maybe run a few errands. When I return, I usually head back up to do some more computer nonsense. I'm aiming to play enough to bring my character's combat level up high enough so she can travel to other planets without worrying about being blown to bits...because you know, you gotta have goals...
Anyway, I usually do this until Jeff returns from work. I go to the gym, make dinner, wash it down with a banana milkshake, play some more video games, and collapse into bed at about 11pm only to begin the whole thing over again.
When I first started thinking about staying home, I didn't imagine myself doing any of these things. I thought I'd have "tons" of time to "do things" and "get things in order". The problem is that, yeah I feel slightly guilty about basically doing nothing all day, but I don't feel guilty enough to actually, you know, do anything. My house is clean...enough. All of the things that I absolutely can't live without are unpacked and put away and organized...enough. So what's the problem?
Guilt isn't the problem about being lazy. The problem is hearing my mother constantly nag me in my head about not doing anything "constructive".

blah

A thousand words...

2005-06-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

Knock, knock....anyone there??

2005-06-06T17:15:00.000-07:00

Hi! It's me! Did you miss me??
Probably not...oh well.
I'm now a resident of the great state of Virginia. Having been here about 3 weeks, this is only my third day of having Internet access due to more misunderstandings than a Three's Company episode, only not as funny, which isn't saying much I suppose, but there you go. All that's missing now is garbage pick-up. You see, the garbage people are collecting money from me to collect my garbage, but they have not given me a can to put all of the trash in so unfortunately my garage is half full of it.
But at least we have Internet...ahhh so much better. I had no idea how reliant I had become on it. We (really I) were utterly lost until we found a cyber cafe close to our house.
Virginia is nice so far. It's much warmer and muggier, but that is to be expected. I feel like I'm on an extended vacation on account of not having a job and living in a new unfamiliar place. I will feel much better once I can establish some kind of routine to sort myself out. Living out of boxes gets a little old after a while.
The trip out here was long and rather boring at times. Going through places like Montana and South Dakota makes me wonder why on earth we in America have so much land. It's not like people live in these areas, they're just there taking up space. Some of the areas didn't even seem to have farms on them, they were just open space with nothing there. There's a good amount of interesting history in the parts of it though. We managed to squeeze in time on the trip to check out Mt. Rushmore...just enough to go up there, say "Yep, there it is" and then leave. We did the same thing at the Grand Canyon. It's not that we took for granted that we got to see them, but there's only so long that you can stand and look at something like that before it gets a bit redundant.
Anyway, my daughter stayed with my parents for a few weeks while my husband and I drove down here. She's back home now, but not for long because she's off to Florida for the summer next weekend. It's just as well because she's at an age where she knows everything and no one can tell her anything. I guess it only gets worse until she's ready to move out, right? That's what I keep hearing from people at least...I don't remember being as stubborn or arguementative when I was her age, but I'm sure i have selective memory.
Time for bed now. We're off to Busch Gardens in the morning.
It's good to be back. =)

Officially unemployed

2005-04-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

I have no job. I am now a "domestic engineer" (or some equally PC word they use now for housewife). For the last 3 days I have packed, played Sims, painted,played Sims, done laundry, played Sims, watched tv, oh, and I played Sims. I think I'm enjoying my free time just a little too much.
We sold our house! It took surprisingly very little time and we did the whole thing with out a "buyer pimp" (as my dad calls them...otherwise knows as a Real Estate Agent). It was stressful with the phone ringing off the hook and people just popping by all the time but it's done now and we can look forward to the joy of packing and moving.
It's 3 weeks and counting to the big move. The good thing is we've found our new place. I could fit about 2 of my houses into the new one. It's a condo/townhouse/duplex thing. Not too shabby.
The bad thing is this may be my last post for a while. I will be lots very much mucho busy for the next few weeks. This is good though because I really haven't had a decent post in a while. This blog may be winding down. I haven't decided yet but I'll wait until after we move before I decide.
Anyway, enjoy spring wherever you are...or something equally saccharine and sugar coated...

Misc.

2005-04-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

Today I walked by a door, the same one I walk by every day, that says "Please knock" on it. I knocked, and kept on walking down the hall. I like to follow directions.

*************
Overheards

Doctor (to an old man sitting in a chair) "She has what is called congestive heart failure"

Cancer patient (dressed in hospital gown, hooked to IV, walking the halls with a friend) "Well it could be worse, I could be dead..."

Dirty Man (talking to store manager) "...but I work really well when I'm sober."
**************
Days to Go

14 days until my last day at work
38 days until the big move

My brain is taking a vacation. I wish I could go with it.

No title

2005-03-30T09:35:00.000-08:00

Finally I'm able to get in and post. I've been trying since Monday and Blogger has been giving me fits.
Also, you can now access this blog by going to my VERY OWN DOMAIN!
http://nelley.org.
Yes org. I can be an organization if I want, can't I?
A lot's happened since my last post. I'll fill you in.
****
St. Patrick's Day was fun. We dressed in green, made a shamrock shaped cake,

and shepherd's pie for dinner.
At this point I came down with some uber cold virus and was sick all weekend and the following week as well. I'm still sneezing and coughing. I have my lovely husband to thank for giving me this gift of a cold. We had to impose a "no more kissing when we're sick" rule. Hard to stick to, that one...
My grandmother passed away on the 22nd of March. She had fallen and broken her hip about a month or so ago and her health had been steadily declining since then. I was not particularly close to my grandmother and had mixed feelings when she finally died. It was one of those times when death brought relief from the pain she was in from her fall and from the congestive heart failure she was suffering with and the dementia which had gotten worse and worse for the past 5 years. When I went to see her in the hospital a few days before she died, she didn't remember who I was, but she kept trying to tell me I had pretty hair. She always liked my hair and always complimented me on it. I held her hand and she tried to talk. It was hard because she had been on oxygen, which dried out her mouth and throat to the point where talking was very hard to do.
She died in the very early morning. I had been awake when the phone rang and my mom told me what had happened. I wasn't sad in a sense that I cried, but rather I was sad because I had never really had a chance to get to know my grandmother. She was incredibly shy and it was hard for her to show affection or emotion very much. She and my grandpa used to watch me when I was younger and I can remember going to their house, but it was hard to keep in touch as her health declined because I was living in Florida. So I guess the thing I was sad about was that I felt that there were things about her that I will never get to hear from her.
The funeral was on Friday. It was open casket (something that I had never experienced before). She didn't look like her at all. She had been covered with bruises from the IV's and so her hands and face were all covered with an orangey makeup that made her look like a wax figure in a museum.
All of the grandkids got up and said something they remembered about her and I knew then that I wasn't the only one struggling with not getting to know her. All of us talked about how we wished we could have known her better. It was nice to hear what everyone had to say though. When I have to go to another funeral, I hope it's like this one was.
I was able to take bereavement leave from work which, with the horrible cold I had, turned out to be a good thing. I would have had to take the days off anyway, unpaid, since I'm out of leave. I also got a chance to get some more packing and cleaning and organizing done. It was funny, my cousin's and I all compared how much bereavement leave we got from work when we went out to eat after the funeral. It's not a thing to joke about, but I guess that just shows you how my family pushes our feelings way down...just like gramma and grampa did. One of these days we're all going to have emotional breakdowns or something like that.
Easter wasn't bad this year. I made a cake (of course).

I took side dishes to my friend Tiffany's house and had dinner there. E is getting too old for egg hunts so we didn't bother with coloring eggs and all of that malarky.
Next weekend I'm going back for more sugaring. It's the 2nd in a series of 3 to get rid of...ummm everything.
The clock is ticking on my time here at work. I'm down to 3 weeks left...but who's counting.
ME! That's who. I am looking forward to getting the show on the road as far as packing and moving. I'm impatient like that.

Wax off

2005-03-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine and I decided that we wanted to give our husbands a surprise when they came back from their deployment. We decided to get sugared! Sugaring is like waxing, only better. It is more sanitary, less painful, less damaging to the skin, and less expensive. We visited a place called The Sweet Spot in the Freemont area of Seattle.
Once inside, we chatted for a few to get to know the woman who would be seeing what we got and then it was time. I was "elected" to go first so she told me to strip down to whatever I felt comfortable in and lay on the table. I'm not a modest person so I left only my socks (you know, so my feet would stay warm...) and shirt on. She sprayed on something called a tonic which apparently "calms" my skin (Great, get it all nice and calm before you rip the hair out of it...). After a minute or two it was time to begin the sugaring. She put latex gloves on her hands and pulled a glob of molten, amber colored sugar paste from the pot. It looked like honey but was darker and very clear. It felt warm going on but pulled slightly as she applied it against the direction of the hair. So it was like all of the hairs were getting pulled at the same time (not the best feeling in the world I can tell you...).
"are you ready?"
"yep. pull 'em out"
"ok take a deep breath..."
I breathed in deep and she wicked the paste off my skin with a flick of her wrist. Ouch...
Ouch...
Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It felt like pulling off a Bandaid. The part that I thought would be the most sensitive was actually the part that hurt the least (and you can just figure out which part that is on your own..). Once the right side was done she moved to the left. For this she got a new ball of sugar out of the pot.
"are you ready?"
"eh...no biggie..whenever" By this time it was a piece of cake.
"ok...deep breath..."
I breathed in deep and she wicked the paste off my skin with a flick of her wrist...
"YEOOOOUUUUCHHHHHHH!!" the room spun, I saw red and my whole body tensed up with pain.
"what the hell?? the other side didn't hurt NEAR that much!"
"Oh, I forgot to mention, most people are more sensitive on one side than the other. For most people it's the left." Now she tells me...
"Did I mention I am the Queen of torture?" she adds. Ha, I wonder if she puts that on her business card. Who knows, she might just get a whole new crop of clientele that way.
The second half of the sugaring was a series of "ouch", "OWWW", "HOLY....", "MOTHER...". Yeah it hurt a lot more and by the time she said "ok flip over" (yep, it was a Brazilian...clean as a baby's behind) my entire body was coursing with adrenaline and I was shaking. Sort of like the afterglow of sex, but without the sex.
When all was said and done, there was nothing left but pink skin. By this time, having spent the last hour in various compromising positions with a complete stranger looking at my hoo-ha, I was completely ok about running around with no underwear (In fact, my friend had to remind me to put pants on to go across the hall to use the restroom). It's funny how that happens.

Etiket and Protakol

2005-03-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

In the words of Julie "this game is great!"
P.S. Watch out for the man riding on a kangaroo shooting laser guns at you.

He's back

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

I've been away. Sorry about that. It's been a busy 2 weeks.
Calls were made, elaborate plans were made, none of them panned out the way I wanted them too and we still had a great homecoming (that's what it's called when sailors come back from being deployed...homecoming).
Last week was a whirlwind of activity with cleaning, baking, sugaring(but that's another post), and lots of other "ing's". On Thursday night, E and I travelled to Everett to wait for the big day. After a lot of unplanned events, everyone else was in bed by 10pm so me and E watched a movie in our room and I soaked my feet.
Every time the ship comes back I get a picture in my mind of what it will be like when I see him for the first time in months. I don't know if everyone does this, but I get a little picture in my head (no, I don't picture the lame sappy thing where we run towards each other with outstretched arms...). I can see the people around us but once I see him it's like things move in slow motion and we just grin and put an extra speed in our step and once we meet it's like a movie where there's music playing and we kiss for a long time...blah blah blah. Of course it never happens that way. He inevitably has duty on the day they pull-in where he has to stay on the ship or he'll have the last watch where he has to shut everything down (that's what happened this time). Because of this he's gotten out of wearing his dress uniform just about every time. He gets off the ship, there are so many people that I don't see him until he's practically right in front of me, we can't stop in the middle of the rush of people so I get a big hug for a few seconds and then we have to keep moving.
We did hold hands though...

It's absolutely great having him back. Going from basically being a single parent to being a whole family can be tricky. I'm still trying to get it in my head that I can actually share some of the everyday stuff with him again. I'm adjusting to having another person in my bed again.
The idea of being able to have sex whenever I wan't isn't a bad thing either. ;)

Today is President's Day.

2005-02-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

Instead of sitting around my house all day and enjoying a day off, I'm sitting around all day at work and getting paid for it.
I don't know why we still call this day President's Day. In England they don't feel the need to label all of their holidays. They just call them "bank holiday". I mean why do we need to pretend that we're honoring presidents? It's just another reason for a store to have a Presidents Day Sale or to sit around and drink or in my case to sit at work and play on my laptop. I won't complain.
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A special hello to whoever found my blog by doing a search for "fuck Bremerton". I'm not sure what this person was looking for, but I'll join in with his/her sentiments...whatever they may be.
And, to the person in good ole Yulee, FL who spent 37 minutes looking through my archives, don't you have anything better to do with your time? I mean, I know you live in Yulee which is not exactly a hotbed of activity and thanks for reading and all that, but that's 37 minutes of your life that you'll never get back. And you didn't even leave a comment!
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This past weekend was the yearly torture I like to call "E's sleepover birthday party". Every year she wants a sleep over for her birthday and every year she has one. She'll send out invitations to 5 or so people and we'll mark very clearly "Please RSVP at xxx-xxxx". Every year no one bothers to call until the day before or the day of the party to say whether they can come or not. When did people become so rude? When you're given an invitation that clearly states RSVP, you make a 30 second phone call to the host/hostess and say yes or no. It's quick, it's painless, and it really helps with the party planning. Every year we go through this crap and every year I say "this is the last one, there's no more after this" but something happens to my memory from one year to the next because we always find ourselves around new year starting to plan a sleepover.
This year was no exception of course and in the end we had 2 girls staying over. This is the worst thing that could happen. Having 2 girls is fine, having 4 is fine, but having 3 always ALWAYS guarantees that two of them will gang up on the 3rd and fights will break out that require parental involvement (which comes down to me saying "y'all work it out yourselves").
All in all it was a good party. I made a cake (of course).

Other than that, the weekend was fairly productive. I've packed 1 box. Only 60 more to go I reckon...

And I get paid to do this.

2005-02-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

As if I needed another mindless thing to help me pass my work day...(but it's pretty cool anyway)

(My best is Level 7 Score 17590)

Good Morning Blogland!!

2005-02-15T10:21:00.000-08:00

Don't buy Real Simple magazine

2005-02-10T21:57:00.000-08:00

212 pages...178 of them have ads.

But I did learn 14 secrets of how to save money all year long. Apparently the key is to NOT SPEND MONEY. The second tip should be don't spend money on magazines where 3/4 of it is advertisements.

Yikes, time for an update

2005-02-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

I don't even know what I've been doing to keep me busy, but I haven't posted in a while. OOps.

Working. I gave my notice last week. My last day will be May 13. It's a little weird for me because this will be the first time in about 15 years that I haven't had a job...on purpose. I'm going to look for something that I can do part time or from home, but I'm also going to enjoy some time with my daughter before any other people decide to show up and she feels really jipped because I never got to stay home with her. I was a single mom for 7 years so I always HAD to have a job. I'm very nervous about not having one now. Will we have enough money to pay for stuff? Will I have enough stuff to do to not be bored? Will my husband resent me for not working?
These are the things weighing heavily on my mind. That, and the fact that I have a MAJOR move coming up in about 4 months and I'm not ready yet. There is more painting to do, home improvements to be improved, packing, selling, sorting, and all of the other fun stuff that goes along with moving. The Navy isn't helping out with that at all of course which I've heard is normal. I'm the type of person who likes to have things done and dusted. I don't like waiting until a month before a move like that to make arrangements for strangers to come pack up my stuff. Therefore, we will be packing/moving ourselves. At least that way we can save what little control we have over a situation that we really have no control over (if that makes sense).

Birthday. I had a total of 3 "birthday parties";one for every decade I've been alive I suppose. I don't feel older, I don't look older, and I still get carded. Maybe I didn't age?
The remainder of the month will be spent with Valentine's parties, birthday parties for E, and whatever other things I can think of to make the time between now and when Jeff get home go by as fast as possible. I'm so sick of this stupid deployment. Thankfully there are only a few weeks left.

I've had some really interesting dreams that I wish I could remember to blog about. The one that sticks out in my mind is the one I was woken up from on Sunday when my mom showed up to paint. I was in a public shower and I was fixing to get out of the shower, but I didn't have a towel. So I'm in the shower naked and soaking wet and I'm running around seeing if I could borrow towels from people (kinda gross if you think about it). I ended up having to borrow a towel from a midget...which ended up being a hand towel sized towel. Better than nothing I suppose.

Not over the hill yet...

2005-02-01T13:15:00.000-08:00

...no that happens when I turn 50.
I got the cutest thing for my birthday. I love it! As an added bonus, there's apparently a big controversy over them too. Typical. People have to get something to complain about from something as harmless as a teddy bear...maybe they're just jealous.

Don't gross out the world.

2005-02-01T00:35:00.000-08:00

Test your international dining etiquette

oh, and happy birthday to me.

It was the shortest longest weekend ever

2005-01-31T14:35:00.000-08:00

And now for the REAL post I was going to make today...

My living room/dining room are now a lovely shade of Cincinnatian Hotel Taupe. Painting is a big pain. I never want to do it again. It's funny how easily I forget that I say that every time I paint something.
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This weekend I had Greek Pizza. Here's the recipe:
1 can of refrigerated pizza dough (unless you feel like making your own...)
1/2 cup of pesto
2 grilled chicken breasts, shredded
1/2 cup of red onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup of calamata olives, pitted and chopped
1/2 cup of marinated mushrooms
10 cherry tomatoes, quartered
3/4 cup of feta cheese, crumbled

Spread the dough out onto a pizza stone or a cookie sheet. Layer the ingredients starting with the pesto and ending with the cheese. Bake at 350 until crust is GBD (golden brown and delicious).
***********************
I ate the above at an impromptu "dinner party" with a couple of my friends. T and I are going to make a cake for an upcoming "adult" party that she is hosting at her house. Since this is a PG rated site (ok sometimes rated R, but still...) I'll just give you a link instead of the picture. Go ahead and look, I'll wait...

naughty cake

This cake decorating thing is addicting I tell you. You start out with a nice round cake with flowers and swirly things all over and before you know it you're making cakes that look like a man who is whacking the spam javelin.
***********************
I sent a sappy card to my husband for Valentine's Day. It's sad because I'm almost embarassed. I don't send sappy cards. I make fun of people who sent cards with curly fonts and people walking hand in hand on a beach. So why on earth did I decide to do it?? Deployments do funny things to people. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
***********************
I think I will paint flames onto my stand mixer. Sort of like this...but white.

(pic courtesy of AB)
***********************

Asshats aplenty

2005-01-31T13:24:00.000-08:00

It appears (to some) that in reading my blog, I may seem to be a bit whiny. Now, I realize that there are others in situations much worse than my own. The thing is, although I can sympathize, I really don't care what other people are going through when I'm writing. I'm not thinking about them when I write because I am writing about ME. Not anyone else. When I write about ME and what I AM feeling, it's obviously written from a selfish point of view. I wish people in this country could learn what the OFF button on their TV's and radios are for as well as that if they're looking for monkey porn, this is obviously not the right place to look. Sorry to disappoint you, but if you choose to read what I write, you're going to have to put up with my whiny, pity, woe-is-me attitude once in a while.

Oh and just in case any of you were wondering, I'm not a lesbian (but I play one on tv).

Miffed

2005-01-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

There's no "official" word (is there ever?) but it looks like Jeff's deployment is being extended again...indefinitely (what else would it be?). Media sources really like to use that word, it's very dramatic. I'd prefer to not know anything until they are on the way home. Then again, they've been turned around before. I just want this whole thing to be over. I'm selfish. Screw the thousands of homeless tsunami victims...I want my husband to come home. Send someone else's ship there.
*******************************
Mr. Creepy, who has been attempting unsuccessfully to keep a low profile after that whole suspension fiasco, thinks Joe Hardwareguy is out of shape because he can't lift a LaserJet printer by himself. I told him maybe he didn't want to be crippled from lifting something that heavy. He said "yeah, but then we get L&I!". Moron...Why should he or anyone get to collect L&I simply for being a stupid I-don't-need-help lifting-heavy-objects idiot?
*******************************
This week, in general, has been pretty crappy. Maybe the planets are out of alignment, maybe the full moon is affecting my mood, maybe my hormones are raging (and not in a good way). I don't know, but work's been stressful, my toilet overflowed and flooded my bathroom again, the cake I made for my final cake class fell over when I brought it home and crumbled into a million tiny pieces. There's more than that but I can't think of it right now. So I'm actually looking forward to this weekend...when I get to paint my living room, dining room, and hallway. Come join my pity party.
*******************************
One of my new year's resolutions last year was to stop using so many ...'s when I type. Brian says people who use lots of ...'s just don't know how to write. FINALLY someone understands! (ok, so I just got around to writing about that, that's just how my brain works... HA! THERE!........)

Just a girl...

2005-01-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

This morning a man came into our office asking how to dispose of his old PC. I started to take his name when he saw some of the network engineers in the back and said "Nevermind, I'll go talk to them, they will know." as if to say "you silly female, you can't possibly help me, I'll go talk to some men because men always know what to do..." Um. Fine, JACKASS. I didn't want to help you anyway.
I'm PMS'ing and I know I'm overreacting, but things like that REALLY get under my skin.
***********************
Yesterday was a landmark day. I deleted my Jamie Oliver voice mail...on purpose! It's not from him, per se, but rather it's him talking while giving an interview last year at the book signing I attended in Seattle. I know, I'm pathetic, but I have had this voice mail for almost a year so I was a little sad to get rid of it. Jeff will be happy though...
***********************
I'm starting to feel the crunch as the date of our move gets closer. In about 4 months I will be in the midst of packing up my stuff and moving 3000 miles to the other side of the country. I've done that in the past, but I've always had more time to prepare. Unfortunately the Navy doesn't care if I'm prepared or not. The good thing about moving though is that finally, after 3 years, we will have a "normal" family. What a novel idea! And hey, instead of being a single parent for months on end and having to go through all of the adjustments of Jeff having to go out to sea all of the time, it'll be like we are a REAL LIVE family with soccer games and after school activities and doctor's appointments and house work and home improvement projects! I can have a CLEAN HOUSE and help my daughter with her homework and make dinner for everyone. You know, the kind that we eat every night, at the same time, around a table.
Don't I just sound like Betty Fucking Crocker...

Happy Hugging Day

2005-01-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

Every day is a "national xxxxx day" it seems. Today is National Hugging Day.
So be nice and give someone a hug.
**********************
I think Diane Keanton is secretly a man. Every time we see her, not only does she look as if she's trying to hide some hideous rash that's covered her from head to toe, she also seems to be confused on whether to wear a suit or a dress (so she opts for a litle of both).

hmmm i should submit her to Fug...
**********************
This article (sub. required, but it's free) from the NY Times pretty much summed up my feelings on the inauguration of Dubya. How much body armor could $40,000,000 have bought for soldiers fighting in Iraq?

Sign on the dotted line

2005-01-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder what kind of signature you could get away with?

Wonder no more.

I think I'm going to use an arrow for my signature...no one steal my idea.

Gmail

2005-01-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

I have Gmail invites if anyone wants one.

I laughed, I cried, I bought some candles...

2005-01-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

That sort of sums up my weekend.

I've had a really shitty week, to be honest, mostly because of the extension but also because my daughter has been driving me mad. To say the least, I'm glad it's over.
What really bothers me is I never really know what's going to upset me. I've had more than a few "mini breakdowns" this week where I sort of just fall to pieces for a few minutes, but then once it's out of my system, I'm fine.
I think the thing that bothers me most about this whole thing is not necessarily the fact that I have to wait longer to see my husband (we've done the 10 month deployment...this isn't that bad). It's the frustration of not only not knowing when he is coming home (or even when they're going to make a decision about when they're coming home) but also not being able to do a damn thing to change it. I know Jeff feels the same way and is just as frustrated and mad as I am, which is itself also frustrating because the only way we can communicate that with each other is over email and I really have a sense of not being able to help him or "be there" for him. I think email has really spoiled us. I don't know how people managed before it.
To try to get myself out of this funk, I went to a PartyLite party. It's the equivalent of a Tupperware party, but with candle paraphernalia instead. I managed to get out of there with just a candle that matches my bedspread; a first for me.

Oh, and I can't remember what I laughed about. I'm sure it'll come to me...eventually

Well that really sucks...really...a lot

2005-01-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

We received the news yesterday that Jeff's ship has been extended for an indefinite period of time (oh how this rings of January 2003...). The actual verbage of the email we all got was "we'll know in about 2 weeks when we can set a date for homecoming".
TWO FUCKING WEEKS??? ARE YOU SHITTING ME??? JUST TO DECIDE WHEN THEY COME HOME???

On top of that, I read this article that, to me, seems to make this entire effort into a political thing (surprise, surprise). Apparently the countries that we are digging out of this mess don't even really want our help.

No, I'm not bitter...

"See, this is why George Bush is so dumb..."

2005-01-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to argue that George Bush isn't dumb, but it's certainly not because he sent one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world to help out in the tsunami disaster. You know, the one that can make water and electricity and transport people and supplies with helicopters that it can maintain on board...yeah that one. The one that my husband just so happens to be on right at this very minute.

Link from Varifrank via MSNBC via David

Things that make you go..."WTF??"

2005-01-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

How do these people get elected to public office?

There is an ~~ignorant asshole~~ Representative from Virginia who is moving pass a bill to require women who have spontaneous miscarriages to report it to the police no more than 12 hours after it happens. If she doesn't, she can get a year in jail and/or $2500 fine.

There are so many flaws with this, I don't even know where to begin, thankfully, there are other people who've done a better job of ranting about it than me. Sometimes I get so livid about things that every coherent thought falls right out of my head.

And this is the state that I'm meant to be moving to in 5 months time...I just can't wait.

Born. Eat. Shag. Die.

2005-01-06T17:16:00.000-08:00

Yay the Mayfly Project is back again!
Have you submitted your 2004 yet? Why not???

Here was my submission.

misdirected love, realization, rediscovery, healing, miss him!, our ESP working again, he really is the One, i can't wait

Kinda profound, eh? So what are you waiting for?

I bet you didn't know...

2005-01-06T16:10:00.000-08:00

that I have a scar on my leg that my mom told me was a birthmark, but it's really where she dropped a hot pan on me when I was 3.
that I nearly had an abortion when I found out I was pregnant at 18.
that my "magic number" is 15, but only 2 people know that.
that the first time I had sex was on a kitchen floor.
that I've never seen a single episode of Survivor...no not even one.
that I secretly wish I could be a stay-at-home mom.
that I can play "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd on the guitar.
that I'm a little bit shy in person.
that I was married and divorced by the time I was 21.
that my favorite ice cream flavor is Mint Chocolate Chip.
that I'm married.(well you might know that...)
that I got married in Vegas and no family attended (because we didn't invite them!)
that I've never had a broken bone.
that I've sprained both of my ankles more times than I can remember.
that I've lived in 12 different houses...10 of them in the last 10 years.
that my last apartment had more square footage than the house I live in now.
that I've never been to a Halloween party.
that I once built my own computer.
that I like the sound that my shoes make when I walk...especially my boots.
that I was in a fender bender on the first night that I had my license, but my parents don't know that (until now that is...)
that I once bought those pills that make your boobs bigger...news flash THEY DON'T WORK! (i know, shock horror.)
that the carpet matches the drapes.
that I can't stand it when there is toothpaste left in the sink...RINSE IT OUT!
that the smallest size I've been is 10.
that I'm currently the largest size I've ever been, even when I was pregnant, but there's no way I'm telling you what that is. =P
that when I was 16 I took my parent's car to Atlanta (a 6 hour drive) without them knowing and attributed the extra 1000 or so miles to "just around town" driving. (and they believed me!)

that it took me about 3 months to come up with this list of garbage...

Happy Thursday

house and the sheds/SATC/WW

2005-01-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

Spamusement never disappoints.
I'm always self-conscious about laughing out loud (LOL!) at work. There have been times that I've been "caught" having a laugh at work and I sort of felt guilty. My old boss, never the confrontational type, would send me emails or call me on the phone (his office was right next to my desk) if he heard me laughing about something to ask me what I was laughing at and to tell me that it was inappropriate and to get back to work.
This would of course make me laugh even more...because of the ridiculousness of someone telling me "hey, no laughing...no having fun...this is WORK".
@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@

Sex and the City is a show I love to hate. I Tivo'd it and I like to watch it just so I can yell at Carrie Bradshaw about how ridiculous it is to wear 5 inch heals to walk an overactive dog or to wear a white outfit to a country vacation in the woods (while expecting there to be air conditioning) or to expect a man who has treated her like garbage in the past to suddenly change his ways. They entire cast all seem like caricatures. Carrie is the middle aged woman who is desparately clinging to her youth (seemingly by dressing like a hooker), Miranda is the typical cynical New York lawyer who is a bit on the slow-to-warm-up side, Charlotte is the traditional naive "good girl" , and Samantha is the aging sex kitten who practically purs all of her lines. What did people see in this show? Unless of course they were all like me and love to yell at the TV...
@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@

So I'm starting the weight loss thing that's endorsed by Sara Ferguson tomorrow. I really despise telling people that I'm going to attempt to lose weight. It sets up an expectation that if I don't, it is some kind of failure on my part and I really hate that. I'm stubborn that way. After a childhood of always being told "I told you so" and lectured on and on about why something happened and what I should have done to prevent it, I REALLY hate admitting failure. I think this is a big part of a problem I have in that I always feel the need to be right. I always want to have the last word in an arguement and I'll argue it until I'm blue in the face.
Anyway, what the hell was I talking about before going off on that tangent??
Oh yes, weight loss.
The idea of losing weight is not complicated. Burn off more calories than you take in, only eat when you are hungry, don't eat a bunch crap with loads of fat and calories...seems easy enough right? What I have discovered from just under one week of "only eating when I'm hungry" is that often I want to eat things just because I like the way they taste, not particularly because I am hungry. Ice cream is one of my favoritest foods. I'm not one of those people who can buy the no fat, no calories garbage they try to pass off as ice cream and enjoy it. I have to buy the GOOD stuff because I believe if you're going to eat something that's "bad for you", don't screw around with something that tastes like cack, go for the REAL THING...just eat less of it.
The "eating less of it" is where I seem to have a problem.
So I thought I would preface the next few months (10 weeks to be exact) by warning everyone that I might be overly obsessed with what I eat. I am thinking of charting my progress (perhaps with some motivational pictures) and posting it somewhere. We'll see if that actually happens...

Hmmm...about time to go see the therapist again...

Yappy New Hear

2005-01-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

I'm sick (yes, again) so I am heading to Poorly Planet again. This time between naps, instead of hours of SWG, I hope to play The Sims 2. This way I can make a family that looks just like mine who actually gets to spend Christmas and New Year's Eve together. (plus the me in the game isn't sick...)

Oh, and I've just been told that the 12 days of Christmas actually start ON CHRISTMAS.
Oh well, one can't be right all of the time...(sigh)

¿♂ or ♀?

2004-12-29T10:09:00.000-08:00

This morning as I was getting ready for work I was doing my usual listen to the radio thing and the topic was "What would you do if you could be the opposite sex for an hour". You would have the same brain so, presumably would think the same way on things as you do now.
Guys were calling in and saying things like "I'd play with my boobs for an hour" or "I'd go have sex with the first guy I saw". Yeah, cause any girl can just walk out and say "let's have sex" to the first guy she sees and FFS, we can't stop playing with our boobs...
One guy called up and somehow they got to talking about menstrual cramps and the guy on the phone kept saying "oh, how bad could it be? it's like a charlie horse."
Yeah sure, if that particular horse is kicking you in the gut repeatedly for days... For you guys out there, think of the worst gas you've ever had and multiply it by X (with X being your tolerance for pain, or lack thereof). If you're doubled over in pain, you're almost there. Granted, they're not always this bad and it depends on where your uterus is positioned. If it's towards the back, then all of the pain I just mentioned will be centered there. Now does any of that sound like a charlie horse to you??
If I were a guy, I'd have to do the obvious thing of course, which is find some snow and go write my name, or at least see how far away I could place targets and still hit them. Next, I'd have to revel in the fact that I can go to any public place and scratch my crotch whenever I feel like it not to mention spit the yucky stuff out that I just coughed up instead of searching desperately for a tissue. I could walk around with no shirt in hot weather and not be arrested as well. (I don't understand the double standard of that...) After that, I suppose the only things left would be sex. What's it like to have an orgasm every time you have sex? hmmm the mind boggles... If I still had time left after all of that I could appreciate not wearing makeup and only having to choose between which shirt to wear with my pants. You guys don't know how easy you have it.

Bring on the January!

2004-12-28T12:50:00.000-08:00

Well I didn't quite make it back to update did I...eh...oh well.
I'm soooo done with Christmas. I didn't decorate this year so I don't have to go through the tedious task of un-decorating, so now I'm just waiting for it to be Saturday, January 1. E will be home on that day which is good enough in itself but it also marks the final month of waiting for Jeff to come home. (yay!) Where did the months go?? What happened to all of the time I had?
It always seems to go that way with deployments. I start out thinking it's going to be SO_LONG and then before you know it everything catches up to you and you wonder what happened to it all. It'll be good to have him back. My list of "honey-do's" has gotten rather large. It's not like I'm not perfectly capable of doing them, but I had to save him some of the fun things like painting and mowing and fixing.
This year our family had 3 Christmas parties, which isn't that unusual except that this year they were 3 days in a row. Eve was spent at Uncle Bud's house, as is the tradition every year, with my cousins. Day was spent doing (MORE!) baking and getting various other things ready to take to my sisters for dinner which consisted of ham log (ham that's been formed into a log-like shape...weird, yet tasty), twice baked potatoes, green salad with mandarins, garlic roasted asparagus, and rolls. All was very yummy of course.
I am going to post pics of the cake I made for the 3rd Christmas party when I have access to a USB cable that actually fits my camera. Why can't the stupid things be standardized??

$10 word of the day.

2004-12-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

Gewürztraminer - pronounced 'ga-VERTZ-trah-MEE-ner'. It means Spice Grapes in German.

OOPS

2004-12-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

I made a bit of a boo boo. Somehow with all of the tinkering and cutting and pasting I was doing to creat my new template, I messed up the URL for my blog. So it was slightly messed up over the weekend. Hey, it deserved a break. It's been going for over a year with no breaks.
I'll do another post in a bit, just wanted to get this in while I had a minute.

More later...

Day 12 of 12...

2004-12-24T13:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the twelth day of the twelve days of Christmas...

It's Christmas Eve and I've only wrapped to f**kin' presents. - Blink 182

The song goes on to talk about hate, hate, hate your guts and various other obscene things that are very un-Christmasy. I'm feeling slightly unChristmas-y today so I guess that's ok. I've not wrapped my gifts yet so I suppose that's a little bit fitting.
I've gotten exactly one call here today at work. The rest of my time has been spent playing Sims 2..heh...well I had to have something to do today.
Not much else to say right now...
So...
Feliz Navidad
Mele Kalikimaka
Frohe Weihnachten
Maligayang Pasko
Joyeux Noel
and all of that stuff.

More baking

2004-12-23T22:21:00.000-08:00

I'm waiting for my red velvet cake to bake in the oven while I watch some HGTV. One thing I don't get is when did rooms become "spaces". You never hear any people on this channel talking about their rooms, they're always talking about their "spaces". It's slightly annoying really.

My cat just ran over me. She was sitting on the couch grooming herself when she suddenly tore off across the couch, over my head and down the hall. Cats are weird like that. They'll be sitting there totally fine and minding their own business then they suddenly decide that they have to get to the other end of the house AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. Maybe they see dead people.

I've never made red velvet cake before so I'm hoping it turns out ok. There was a lot of mixing and combining and setting aside and folding. If it tastes like crap...well I don't know what I will do really...

Day 11 of 12...

2004-12-23T11:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the eleventh day of the twelve days of Christmas...

I'm in the process of building a blog template for a blog that I'll be starting when I move in May/June of next year. This has led to me slowly going blind over the course of today trying to see the screen. It was pretty dead today here at work so I had plenty of time to mess around with the code. I'm beginning to see what programmers mean when they talk about seeing lines of code in their sleep. Not that I'm a programmer by any definition of the word, but HTML isn't really that different from a lot of programming languages. Since I don't know very much HTML or anything else, it was a very time consuming process and I really didn't get very far.

That's about all for me today...maybe i'll check in later tonight.

Day 10 of 12...

2004-12-22T11:06:00.000-08:00

Today is the tenth day of the twelve days of Christmas...

As you can now see, I've put a link to my moblog on my sidebar.

Babysitting last night was a lot of fun. I was a bit out of practice for a 2 year old and I found myself starting to worry about little things like "Ok, what do I do if she chokes or has an allergic reaction or my cat bites her...." etc. Thinking back to when my daughter was that age, I don't remember EVER getting that freaked out about things like that. I guess because it is someone else's kid makes a big difference. I couldn't get over how 180 degrees she was from my daughter. Where my daughter used to be all over the place running and getting into stuff, she was content to just sit on the couch quietly and eat her pretzels or watch a movie or look at the fish in my tank. She was the quietest 2 year old I have ever met. She showed some interest in the Christmas lights on my street so we put our coats on and went to look at them. She wanted me to lift her up so I did and was walking accross the street when my foot hit a bump, or some kind of hole and I fell FLAT on my face, still holding her, onto the curb. I held her up as I fell so that she wouldn't be hurt, but in doing this, I got the lovely bruise that you can now see in my sidebar...and twisted my ankle. At least she didn't get hurt. In fact, she was more interested in the Christmas lights than the fact that we had just fallen flat.

Also, here's a band that is new called Benchmark. They are kind of acoustic/folksy/pop-y sounding. At the very least, they have a spiffy looking web site.

Day 9 of 12...

2004-12-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

Today is the ninth day of the twelve days of Christmas...

I'm not feeling that great today either. Whatever virus I have has taken residence in my head causing my sinuses to fill with snot and my tonsils to swell so that they are nearly touching. (yummy)

Why is it that you can simultaneously have wrinkles AND zits? Isn't there a period where one can have completely clear skin AND not look like you are approaching middle age?
Or maybe it's hormonal...

Why do people think it's ok to swear at me when I talk to them on the phone? It's one thing to do it when we're having a casual conversation, or even a debate about something, but to just come out and say "Oh, SHIT" in the middle of me trying to help you with a computer problem is not only unprofessional, but it makes me about 100 times less likely to want to fix your problem in a timely fashion. If I were to do the same thing, I would no doubt be given a "talking to" by one of my 4 bosses. This applies doubly if the problem that caused you saying "Oh, SHIT" was your fault.

On a more positive note, I get to babysit my friend's two year old tonight. I'm a little out of practice for two year olds, but it should be fun.

Day 8 of 12...

2004-12-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

Today is day eight of the twelve days of Christmas...

I feel like utter shite today so I'm going to keep this short.

My boss gave everyone in our department a Christmas card with a car air freshner in it (you know, the ones that look like a tree). It's new car scent. Last year I received a pot scrubber (you know, the kind where you put the soap inside and push the button to make it come out). At first they seem like really odd gifts, but really it's ingenious. People always want to get gifts for Christmas that they wouldn't buy for themselves;new mp3 player, flat panel TV, new dvd's/clothes/tools etc. Who doesn't need a car air freshner? or a pot scrubber?

Have yourself a nerdy little Christmas...

2004-12-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

Why didn't I think of this...

(link from clara at SHB)

Why don't we have cool stuff like this in the US?

2004-12-19T22:28:00.000-08:00

Anyone wanna go to China?

Day 7 of 12...

2004-12-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

Today is (was) the seventh day of the twelve days of Christmas...

Got up at 3am...hit snooze...alarm didn't go off again.
Sat bolt upriht at 4:30 thinking (oh shit, we're going to miss the plane) that I had only been sleeping for a few minutes, when in fact it had been an hour and a half. I had a dream then. How does that happen in such a short space of time?
After several attempts, E finally got up and got dressed. I quickly threw her stuff in the car and we were out the door by 4:42...a record for us if there ever was one.
After the airport I went to my mom for more baking. Today it was fudge, more banana bread, and spritz cookies. We were completely done by noon. Sometimes it does pay to get up before then. It's cool because you, like, actually get to DO stuff.
New concept for me...Sunday's my day of lazy.
Yeah like I need another one of those...

People watching...

2004-12-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

with all of the hair removal options available now,why would a woman choose to shave her face? The five o'clock shadow does little for most women's appearances...

Day 6 of 12...

2004-12-18T10:55:00.000-08:00

Today is the 6th day of the twelve days of Christmas...

No time to post much today. Must get cracking on my errands and stuff like that. Tonight we're going to Zoolights, which is a yearly tradition with my cousin and her son who is a year younger than E. It's the same display every year, but it's fun to trapse around in the cold and rain looking at Christmas lights...at least we've convinced ourselves of that. At any rate, it's a chance to catch up with my cousin since we don't get to see her very often.
After we brave the cold we are going to try to catch A Series Of Unfortunate Events. I've not read the books, but E has and she's really looking forward to seeing the movie. It's her last night in town so i thought it would be fun to do something just me and her. I like Jim Carrey so it shouldn't be too bad...maybe along the lines of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
Last night I went to my friend's house for a sort of Christmas party. Unfortunately 3 of the families that were supposed to show, didn't...so it was just me and her and her daughter and her friend and her 2 sons. It turned out to be a good thing since her friend's kids were a bit...spirited. While the kids decorated gingerbread cookies, I decorated a cake. Here's what it looked like...

It's hard to make out but there is a snow angel next to the snow man and then footprints leading over to the pile of snow balls. Cheesy, I know, but I thought it was creative.

Day 5 of 12...

2004-12-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

Today is the fifth day of the twelve days of Christmas...

bah dum dum dum...

I've nothing clever or witty to say...yet. Maybe something will come to me.
So if you're lonely, you know I'm here waiting for you. I'm just a crosshair. I'm just a shot away from you.
Ok, I stole the above from Franz Ferdinand, but as I said, I've not much to say today. Is anyone not quite feeling the Christmas spirit this year? I know I'm not. Could it be that I'm going to be quite all by myself from Sunday onwards until New Years Day? Could it be that I am working on Christmas Eve Day so as to not have to think about it being CHRISTMAS and I have NO WHERE TO GO?
Eh, maybe. I'd put my money on it.
It's not all pity party and sad sad. I mentioned that I will be all alone. My daughter is going to visit her father in Florida for her break from school. Normally I would be a little down about her leaving, but I have to say that right now she has been the very definition of tweenager and is, quite frankly, driving me bonkers. I overheard her father on the phone to her last night "you know, your mother wasn't really very rebellious when she was your age...but I can relate". Great, so now I am the "not understanding" parent. Well at least I didn't blow up a tree with a homemade grennade.
But I digress...
I'm sure this feeling will wear off after she's been gone for a day or two and then I'll be desperate for her to return home. Parenthood is funky like that...

Day 4 of 12...

2004-12-16T10:52:00.000-08:00

Today is the fourth day of the twelve days of Christmas...

So here are the results of my visit to the salon yesterday.

In honor of OrangeZen... I don't usually use color on them so it's kind of strange to look down and see them. I like it though. The scar on my hand is from when I scraped it on the side of the "Konga River" ride thing at Wild Waves (you know, where you sit in the innertube and the water pushes you around...).

I went for a lighter color this time, I usually have dark red or dark purple or some other kind of dark color. There's a saying that people whose middle toes are longer than the rest of their toes are good leaders or something like that, but I don't really buy it. I'm not very fond of my feet, but they get me where I want to go so I don't complain too much. The purple dot on my left foot is a scar from a blister I got while we were in Hawaii.

So that's pretty much that with that. Have a good day everyone.

Remember Weezer?

2004-12-15T13:41:00.000-08:00

Used to be one of my favorite bands...
Lead singer once broke his leg or something and had to hobble around with a cane for months while attending college disguised as a hermit with a full beard so no one would recognize him.

Yeah Rivers Cuomo...who has apparently done a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner?, but more importantly, made a blog (well sort of). It's cool when famous people make blogs.

...link from busblog(now also famous)...

Day 3 of 12...

2004-12-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

Today is the third day of the twelve days of Christmas...

Today I'm getting a manicure. It's one of the gifts I'm getting me for Christmas. (along with the new laptop, a vacation in Hawaii to see my husband, and some new clothes...) I don't often get them because I have midget hands and short stubby fingernails that I often bite, but I have some kind of problem with dry skin so I thought a manicure would help. (at least it'll make my hands look better)
I'm also getting a pedicure because my feet resemble the feet of a 75 year old man who walks around on gravel with no shoes...yeah, I would say I'm a tad overdue for a pedicure...
The third thing the people at the nice salon are going to do to me is wax my eyebrows. It's a small, relatively painless procedure in which a "trained professional" applys burning hot wax very near my eyes with a popsicle stick, then presses some cloth into it and rips it off.
Eh, no one ever said women do smart things, but at least my eyebrows won't grow together...

One more before I go...

2004-12-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

Got this article from Lovisa, originally authored by David Suzuki.
Although I don't personally agree that I do the whole Christmas thing to "fill a void", I think the idea that a lot of people do that is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Christmas complaints miss the point

December 03, 2004

It started over a month ago - even before Halloween. The television commercials, the flyers in the mail, the decorations in the mall. Christmas is now a two-month event - one long blowout sale.

But there's also no shortage of people decrying the commercialization of the holidays. The criticism itself is nothing new. People have been complaining about it for decades. Every year, the Christmas season gets a little longer and every year people complain about it a little more.

It's certainly a valid criticism, one that I can't help but make myself. As the holiday hype escalates, so too does our accumulated waste. The roads become packed with anxious shoppers, driving from mall to mall in search of the right gifts. The malls become stuffed with Christmas goods and trinkets, all vying to catch the shopper's eye. And the shoppers themselves become stuffed with holiday sweets and extra-large gingerbread lattes. The whole enterprise is a monument to excess.

For some, this excess typifies everything that is wrong with the developed world. We consume far more than our share of the world's resources. We create huge amounts of waste. We obsess with fads and fancy while species die out, pollutants seep into the food chain and the climate changes. Christmas is the pinnacle of our hyper-consumptive lifestyles, so it's easy to point a finger and condemn the whole stressful, chaotic, overindulgent experience.

But the real question is why? Why do people put themselves through all the stress and pressure? Why do they go into debt so they can give gifts that the receiver probably doesn't even need? Why do they complain about the excesses of Christmas and then fall for it again every year?

I believe they are trying to fill a void. With fewer and fewer people taking part in the religious aspects of the holidays, many are looking for other rituals to take their place. Humans have an innate need to connect to their families, their communities and to the rhythms and cycles of nature. Throughout human history, we've done that with celebrations and rituals to reflect the changing seasons, the lunar cycles and important stages in our lives.

But today's world is very different, very new and in many ways runs against millennia of the human experience. This new world runs 24/7. This world is built on consistency and uniformity, rather than reflecting natural rhythms, local cultural or geographic differences. This world has few rituals to reflect the stages of our lives, the changing of the seasons and the passage of time. It doesn't matter if it's dark outside. We just turn on a light. It doesn't matter if it's cold outside. We just turn up the heat. The seasons may change, but our work schedules stay the same. Fresh vegetables and fruits are available year-round regardless of whether or not they are in season or grown anywhere nearby. A Big Mac is a Big Mac, here or in Turkey.

This world we've created is hard on the planet and it's hard on ourselves. We've tried to isolate the human experience from the rest of nature, but it's an impossible task. Humans are a part of nature. Whether we like it or not, our bodies respond to changes in the natural world. The more we try to deny who we are, the less connected we will feel and the more damage we will do to the planet.

In the absence of God or spirituality, in the absence of a capacity to respond to seasonal patterns and natural rhythms, and in the absence of meaningful social rituals, people are grasping onto whatever they can to help ground them in their communities. If that means spending days at a time in a crowded mall, then that's what we do. That becomes the ritual. That becomes Christmas.

I think people are hungry for change, but feel trapped. We are yearning for meaning, but accepting baubles and trinkets instead. Until we stop denying our biological roots and embrace our humanity, we will never find the meaning we seek. It's just not something you can pick up at the mall.

Exploding Blog

2004-12-14T13:22:00.000-08:00

From Jay, I got this link to a site to generate blog traffic.
I even created a little banner using the graphic that David was so nice to create for me.

Not bad for MS Paint...

Someone has too much time on their hands

2004-12-14T13:09:00.000-08:00

Hmmm now am I talking about me? or the person who made these crazy drawings?
...link from The Dastard...

Some of them are a little disturbing actually.

Day 2 of 12...

2004-12-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

Today is the second day of the twelve days of Christmas...

I was singing in the shower this morning. I didn't think it was that loud until I heard "Mommy, why are you singing in the shower?".
I guess the acoustics in my shower are better than I thought.
I was singing, in my just-woke-up-frog-in-throat voice, a Christmas song that I once had to sing as a trio in high school. For Christmas our group dressed up in Dicken's era garb and put on a Christmas dinner-theatre type performance where we spoke with fake English accents and were served by the lowly underclassmen. The song was called "My Babe Must Rest" and featured three part harmonies as well as 3 solo parts. It was my solo part that I was remembering...with disgust. I am a good singer. Not great or anything, but I can carry a tune and my voice isn't horrible...unless I'm nervous. Then I turn into Simon's worst nightmare and couldn't carry a tune in a bucket with a lid.
My voice is 2nd alto and my part had one note that was just out of my normal vocal range, forcing me to sing falsetto for one note, which wasn't a big deal until I was standing in front of a hundred or so people and there were NO other sounds in the room. To make matters worse, I had had a cold and was just getting over the horrible cough that went along with it.
So there I am singing along waiting for my part (the 2nd verse) to come and my knees are literally knocking back and forth. When it was finally my turn, I sang the whole thing beautifully...until that one note..."following the star TOOOO Jeee-sus...it was good but now my babe must rest..." (hey I didn't say it was a brilliant song...)and my voice cracked on the "TOOOO" part. I knew everyone had heard it. I felt the hot creeping into my face and I began to feel lightheaded but somehow managed to sing the rest of the song. I then promptly found the nearest exit, went outside (in my huge Victorian gown) and vomited all over the grass. I had never been so embarassed or nervous in my life. I went back in and everyone told me I was pale as a ghost, but my solo sounded great. Great?? Are they kidding?
About a week later I heard that one of the other girls in the group had been gossiping about how awful my part was. At that point I was so glad that it was over that I didn't really care. (So Katrina Acosta, if you are reading this, I know that you were gossiping about me!)
Anyway, as I was singing the song in the shower today, I sang that part over and over, just to assure myself that I actually could sing, it was just the nerves that did me in.

Day 1 of 12...

2004-12-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of the twelve days of Christmas.

I, like ESC, sing the praises of my Kitchenaid mixer...(tune of Oh Christmas tree)

Oh Kitchenaid
Oh Kitchenaid
You make such yummy cookies...

Yes I know, I'm a big dork, but I don't care! It's not Christmas until the cookies are baked! Seeing as I'm not particularly in the spirit this year, that's exactly what I did yesterday. My sister, my neice, and I all got together at my mom's house to have a baking fest of sorts. There were Chocolate Peanut Butter Buckeyes, Chocolate Dipped Coconut Macaroons, Russian Teacakes, Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheels, Magic Cookie Bars, M&M cookies, and Sugar Cookies with Glace icing...oh and Banana Bread.
Most of what I took home will be sent to Jeff somewhere in the middle of the ocean, the rest I plan on giving away to whoever likes banana bread. (who likes banana bread?)

Today I'm wearing a bra that pushes my boobs up to my chin. I'm also wearing a vneck shirt so I'm feeling a little self conscious. I'm not used to all of that boobage. It's weird to look down and see them hanging out there. Plus, it's a new bra...kinda stiff and uncomfortable...had to be a man that would come up with something like this. Perhaps I need to go adjust it. I also bought underwear to go with it but it turned out to be this underwear that goes up way past my belly button. I have no idea how I ended up with that. I thought it looked big in the store but I wasn't really sure until I sort of held it up to me once I got it home. (yes mental picture of me with granny undies...thank you very much...). So I will need to see about returning it as I can't wear it, it'll come up past all of my pants.

Don't you want one of these??

Christmas Window

2004-12-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

The Player and I did a window in the cafeteria where I work again this year.
Here's a pic.

As we were painting the window, some people gathered behind us to watch. I could feel their eyes watching us and they were making comments about it. "...so inappropriate...", "...someone should tell them to take it down...", "...i hope they don't win...".

WTF? It's not even like they were trying to be quiet about it. They were just talking like they thought we couldn't hear. Finally I turned around and glared at them and they stopped.

Either they have no sense of humor or they weren't smart enough to figure out that it's a HAIRDRYER in the picture, not a gun.

cough cough...cooouuuughhhhh....

2004-12-07T22:07:00.000-08:00

What's it called when you cough so hard that you vomit? I've had this cold/virus thing for about 2 weeks and I can't seem to shake the seal-like barking cough that goes with it. It's not exactly the sexiest thing in the world...not that I'm trying to be sexy, but it's a bit inconvenient when I'm in a place when I really should be quiet (ballet, library, in bed asleep) or not hacking all over the place (bus, airplane, other forms of public transport). People at work have started calling me Typhoid Janelle.
So with all of that, plus a friendly little UTI, I decided it was time to visit the doctor before things really got out of hand. He gave me some antibiotics and cough syrup (with narcotics!) to help me sleep.
So I get my drugs from the pharmacy and the pharmacist says "It's a suspension, not a syrup..." and proceeds to go into big detail about the differences between the two and the side effects..."and I think it tastes like butterscotch"
we'll see about that...
After I left the pharmacy I opened the antibiotics to find 6 pills about the size of half my pinky. I would have to quarter these bad boys, half was still too big.
I finally got all of that sorted out so hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow. Thursday night it's the Deck the Hall Ball so i def. hope I'm not hacking all over everyone there. It's not cool to cover people with your germs at a concert.

whew what's up with me and the gross out posts lately? I gotta find some more appealing things to talk about...

Post-hangunder/gross bug story

2004-12-06T13:42:00.000-08:00

I am feeling a little better after Friday night's mischief. Unfortunately, getting carded for alcohol doesn't mean that you won't feel it's effects proportionate to the number of years you are over 21 (8 in my case). Luckily it's a rare thing for me. I like to go out, have a few, get a little tipsy, but I usually draw the line there. On Friday, I was so far away from the line, the line was a dot to me.
I really need to stop with the Friends references...

Tonight is the next installment in my quest for pastry embellishment...yep another cake decorating class. More complicated this time but hopefully just as fun. Anybody want a cake? I need some practice.

Weird dream last night consisted of this huge lady bug that kept trying to crawl all over me. It was about the size of my hand so you can imagine that might be a little disconcerting. The following is pretty gross so if you're squeamish, skip to the next paragraph...In my dream, I had fallen asleep and when I woke up I had these bumps on my hip that were about the size of M&M's. When I pulled on one of them, it came off and underneath I could see a black pod about the size of a sunflower seed...I squeezed the surrounding skin and it popped out where I could see that it was a baby lady bug. You see, the huge lady bug had laid her eggs or something on my skin and they burrowed in sort of like a tick or something. It was quite disgusting, but strangely, didn't hurt. After I had cleared my skin of these horrid bugs, I found the lady bug laughing at me so I did what any human would when something much much smaller annoys her...I stepped on her.
Perhaps I ate something bad before going to sleep or maybe it's another side effect from my hangover. At any rate, I couldn't shake the feeling of things crawling on me this morning as I got ready for work.....yuuukkk

I have installed some nifty software on my work computer that is supposed to prevent RSI's (repetative stress injuries). Every 15 minutes or so it promps me to take a Micropause which it defines as a break in which you put your arms at your sides, close your eyes and relax for about 15 seconds. I'm not sure what good this is supposed to do, but it is fun to take breaks that often. Since I've started doing this, I've discovered that I can sleep for short periods of time while sitting at my desk. I close my eyes and lean back in my chair, but scoot it all the way in so it doesn't look like I'm leaning back in my chair. Occasionally my head will nod a bit but I've perfected it so that from the back it looks like I'm reading my screen...when I'm actually catching some zzz's. It beats napping in the loo...

Hangunder

2004-12-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

I feel so low, it's under not over. It's karma's way of saying "Fool, you drank too much and now you shall pay for your gluttonous ways"
After an evening of much drunken debauchery at Bremerton's craptacular dive bar, the Horse & Cow, I feel like utter shite. If I move, the room moves with me.As Chandler from Friends would say "Well, my apartment isn't there anymore because I drank it...". Even with that it feels as if I've swallowed a big bunch of cotton balls. My head feels sort of like it's filled with marbles or heavy rocks or something. Even a shower didn't make me feel better. My cat, somehow sensing my pain, is curled up snugly against me while I watch Tivo'd episodes of Sex and the City (what's up with Carrie and her uber trashy clothes?) and EastEnders (British soap opera).
The things I remember from last evening are more like looking through a stack of pictures...a lighted Christmas tree, the meter in the cab, clouds of my breath while standing outside, the DJ with pink hair...the rest is kind of a blur.
All of this typing is doing my head in...about time for a nap.

Officially Aloha'd out...

2004-11-30T17:17:00.000-08:00

Whew, back from vacay and I can safely say that I don't think I would like to go back to Hawaii for a while. At least not the part I visited this time. Waikiki, it seems to me, is old, rundown, dirty, crowded, expensive, stifflingly humid, and not that much different from any other city in a lot of ways (hard-to-pronounce-Hawaiian street names aside...). It's like stepping back in time. Most of the buildings look as if they were built 40 years ago. Everywhere you go it's ALOOOOOOOOOHA! and MAHALO! and people call you "CUZZIN" because everyone is one big happy "OHANA" (family). I felt like saying "seriously?" It was all very touristy and kitschy and cheesy to me. Maybe I'm just too cynical for my own good.
Anyway, we had a good trip. At the very least, E and I got to spend loads of time with Jeff for the few days we were there. It will be another couple of months before I see him again but it was nice to spend Thanksgiving with him, even if we didn't get our pumpkin pie and turkey dinner. The luau we went to on Thanksgiving was all of the things I mentioned above rolled into a 4 hour long mai thai fest.
We did get to see the famous North Shore and the Banzai Pipeline. If you've ever watched a surfing movie, it looks just like that in real life...lots of waves, lots of sand, lots of surfers, and lots of signs saying "don't swim here".
Pics forthcoming...

We are about aloha'd out

2004-11-26T19:28:00.000-08:00

We are about aloha'd out right now. If you have ever been to Hawaii then you know what I'm talking about. More later..mahalo

Wireless is Wonderful

2004-11-24T14:35:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here in the Seatac Airport at a cafe and I'm blogging! How nifty is that?
I got to the airport earlier than I had planned because I kept seeing on the news how these huge crowds were expected and get there early etc. I got through the check-in AND security in less than 15 minutes. So E and I grabbed a couple of magazines and a bite to eat and she is now happily Gameboy-ing and I'm doing my thing on the Internets. It's nearly as fast as it is at home too.

So I'm off to Hawaii to see Jeff and get lay-ed (hehe) and go to a luau and stuff. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. =)

Sick Day Excitement

2004-11-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was sick. I am borderline losing my voice, even today, and just generally not feeling well. This turned out to be not such a bad thing because I was able to rest a bit and then get some packing done for my trip.
While I was resting I started to get a little chilly so I decided that it would be nice to rest on the comfy couch with a fire in the fireplace. I have those fake-out cheating quick-lite firelogs so it's not an ordeal for me to light a fire. We recently had a new damper installed so I made sure it was 'open'...I heard it thunk...so I thought 'mmmm must be open' and proceeded to light the fire. Jeff had called me from Hawaii and I was walking around the house talking to him and doing this and that while the fire got going. When I hung up the phone I started to put together the stuff to make another cake and I heard the loudest screaming beeping noise coming from my alarm...yes the fire alarm. We have monitored security and fire prevention on the house so when the alarm goes off it immediately calls the monitoring people and they call me to find out if it's a false alarm or not. So as I was frantically opening the damper, doors, and windows, and turing the fan on high, I got the call. I was expecting to just tell the person it was my stupidity that set the alarm off but there was no one on the other end. No matter, I thought, I'll just call them and tell them everything is A-ok.
After hanging up with them, Jeff called back to laugh at me for setting off the fire alarm. That's when a huge yellow truck with a ladder attached to the top drove up and a guy hopped out and started setting it up. I ran out and told them the deal and they sort of smirked and rolled their eyes...yes ANOTHER stupid person who doesn't know how to open the damper properly...that's me.
Here's a link to the picture...

Happy Birthday OrangeZen!

2004-11-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I've been doing this for over a year. Where has the time gone?

The one year anniversary of this blog is Nov 19...which was last Friday but I sorta forgot about it until yesterday and then I was sick. The actual "first day" was before November 19, but that's when the archives were transferred over from the other blog I had so I'll just use that as the "official" day.

There is nothing worth reading way back then, just a collection of jibberish and links and nonsense, but I suppose the same could be said for the posts I make now as well.

So here's to more years of jibberish, nonsens and links!

I'm sick...

2004-11-22T23:41:00.000-08:00

yes again...
I took something called Delsym. It's pretty rank but works good.
I'll be back to work tomorrow.

OK bye.

Droopy kind of cheese sammich.

2004-11-20T16:50:00.000-08:00

No Virgin Mary in mine though...I'm on the ferry right now. I went to Seattle today for some early Christmas shopping. It was cold and lonely and my pants were itchy. It's weird how you can feel lonely in a big city surrounded by lots of people.In less than a week I will be warm and happy and wearing more comfy clothing because I will be in HAWAII!! We get roast pig and mai thai's and who knows what else for Thanksgiving. I can't wait!

It's all about the OH...MY GAWD GIVE IT A REST YOU TART!

2004-11-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

Am I the only person who thinks the girl in the Overstock.com commercial is a ho?

Sitting there with her tennis skirt and her legs spread sipping on the straw and with the ghetto bling-y gold 'O' necklace...whenever I see that commercial I change the channel as fast as I can...makes me cringe! I did a Google to see if anyone else thought this way, but all I found were a bunch postings from guys talking about how hot she is. Sure she's ok looking, but she's just so..I dunno sleazy??

Don't get me wrong, I love Overstock.com. I've gotten many fine products from them, I just hate their commercials...

Gave blood...

2004-11-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

and now I am feeling a little bit lightheaded and sleepy. So this post might not even make any sense. It's a little like being tipsy.
I knew I was a little bit dehydrated going down there so I made sure to ask them for lots of water. After about 10 cups, I am still not feeling right. Plus, if I drink any more I think I'll yak. I usually donate every few months or so because they are always calling me up begging me to go give blood. It's a good-citizen thing to do. If nothing else, you get all of the cookies you want.
I kind of resent the questions they ask you when you go in there though. It's sort of like the whole "has anyone else handled your luggage" question they ask you at the airport. Do I look like I'm an IV drug user? Do I look like I weigh less than 110 lbs? Do I look like a person who has sex for money (even once)??

Yawwwwn...is it time to go home yet??

Ever have the feeling you are being watched?

2004-11-19T09:41:00.000-08:00

This site is very cool. You can type in any URL and even if the site doesn't exist anymore you can view archives of it*.

So are these people just trolling the Internets randomly and archiving everyone's sites? Where can I get a job like this??

*It seems to have problems with old message boards, but other than that, it's all there!

Analyze this

2004-11-18T22:30:00.000-08:00

In my dream last night I had a date with a fellow blogger who shall remain nameless. I don't really even know what this person looks like, but the person in the dream didn't really have a face, it was sort of the "idea" of that person...
Anyway..
I had a date with this person. He had a 2nd job in the xray department of the hospital that I work at and for some reason we decided that we had to meet there. We were speaking on the phone and I told him I would meet him there. On the way there I completely forgot that I hadn't shaved my legs in a month. (which actually is true because I haven't shaved my legs since my husband has been gone...) So I had to go home, which was my parent's house in the dream (I was a bit younger), and shave before I went to meet him. For some reason I couldn't find my regular razor (I use a Gillette Venus with the purple handle) so I had to borrow my dad's electric razor...that he uses for his face. This is funny because I actually did this once when I was a teenager and I caught fiery rage for it. So here I am trying to shave off my month worth of growth from my legs (sorry if this is TMI) and it's just not working for some reason. I have to go over and over and over the same spot.
So by the time I got my legs relatively hair free about 2 hours had passed and I hurried to the hospital to meet my date.
Upon arriving I found that he had left me a note saying that he thought I was better than tostand him up and that I wasted his time etc. etc. This is about the time that I woke up so I'm not sure what else happened.

So what's up with that? Why am I having weird dreams about dating other blogger that I've never even seen? What does this mean?