August 25th, 2009
Please pardon my absence. My baby sister flew in this weekend, bringing with her my 10 month old nephew and… a stomach bug. By Saturday night, she was in the ER and by Monday morning, I was at the urgent care clinic, yakking my guts out in the waiting room bathroom. You can hear the hand dryer with perfect clarity from the waiting room. Innocent strangers had to listen to me barf. This will keep me up at night for a good, long time.
Since then, it’s been nothing but nausea pills, bread and Gatorade.
But up until that point, I only had good things to blog about. Really good things. Like one, my new super-de-duper iPhone – a late birthday present from the Boy. It is truly awesome. And, by comparison, it kinda makes my BlackBerry look like an drooling halfwit. Two, my equally super-de-duper nephew who now crawls and mimics and shares (whichever slobber covered toy or piece of food he has, just you ask and he will offer you some because, dammit, he was raised right) and all sorts of other amazing things.
While on baby duty Saturday night, I handed the little one off to the Dork Lord for a minute while I fixed a bottle. When I came back, The Dork Lord was beatboxing, while my sweet, squishable nephew clapped and danced. Honestly, I nearly died from the cuteness. So, you know, along with some nasty stomach thing, I’ve got an acute case of baby fever. Good thing we can’t afford one.
August 19th, 2009
Four Things I Miss About Being Single
Remote control autonomy. Yes, this sounds like a total cliche and no, I don’t care. Because it’s true. I could be watching the crucial last six minutes of an hour long program and the Dork Lord will enter the room, grab the remote as if on autopilot and click! suddenly we’re watching sports. Or NOVA. All it takes, gratefully, is a tilt of my head and a raise of my eyebrows and click! we’re right back to Bones or The Closer. My favorite part is that I honestly don’t think he knows he’s doing it. Until he gets The Tilt.
My mess. Oh my god, sometimes when life feels hectic, I just want to leave all the dishes in the sink for three days and my wet towel draped over the end of the sofa. But that doesn’t fly in our combined household. He doesn’t do messy. Even a neat stack of opened mail on the counter makes that guy twitch. I won’t lie. Sometimes I like to watch him twitch. Just for a minute.
Cereal for dinner. He doesn’t expect me to fix dinner every night (though, most nights, I’m all for it), but forget coming home after a long day, eating a bow of cereal and crashing on the couch. No way. This one has to be FED and it had better consist of animal flesh. And okay, I may miss cereal for dinner, but not enough to stay home with a box of Fiber One when he asks, Can I take you to dinner? Mmmmm animal flesh.
Sleeping without ear plugs. Sweet baby J, sometimes those little buggers make my ears hot and itchy. But it’s either that, I suppose, or end up on Snapped! after some crazy sleep-deprived killing spree.
And all the other things I don’t…
Cooking for one.
Telling my bad dreams to the cat.
Thinking of the future as this very fuzzy, unknowable thing.
Wondering if “he” will call.
Being the perpetual third or fifth wheel.
Everything else. Basically.
August 17th, 2009
This really has nothing to do with anything, but I’ve decided that I could happily live in a world with a whole lot less Jon & Kate. And Miley Cyrus. And while we’re at it, anyone with the last name Kardashian. I used to love to hop on over to gossipy celeb sites on my lunch break, catch some poop on famous people with too much money and not much sense. But now it feels a little icky. Failed marriages, baby daddies and exploited teens. Well, it kinda makes a girl miss Paris Hilton. At least with that train wreck, you always knew who’d been behind the wheel.
Moving on…
Friday evening, on a Dallas-bound flight, after a super-intense, totally exhausting, emotionally draining week, I scanned the plane for an aisle seat, spotted one last hold out, and sank into it. All I wanted to do was cash in my drink ticket, down a glass of wine and catch a nap. But after stowing my laptop and powering down my phone, I realized that my row mates for the next hour were a very nice lady and her… four year old daughter. Her sweet, but really, really loud four year-old-daughter. Who, lest she begin screeching about things like GRANDMA! and DALLAS! and DINNER!, needed to be constantly engaged. Seating choice FAIL. I’ve never heard such a small person make such big sounds. And as her mother, clearly acclimated to the yelling, saw no real urgency in distracting her, I took one for the team.
I started with simple questions. What’s your name? How old are you? Are you hard of hearing? Because, LORD you’re loud. And then once the engines kicked on, we moved on to more airplane focused conversation.
“Which direction are we going?”
“That way!” She jerked a thumb toward the back of her seat.
“Shhh,” I said, putting a finger to my lips. “That’s right. But are we going forward or backward?”
“Backward,” she said, turning down the volume a bit.
“Right. You’re very smart. And, are we going fast or slow?”
“Fast!” she said, as the plane took the the runway. “We’re going fast! And UP! UP FAST!”
“Who makes the plane go fast?” I asked, wondering if pilot was in her vocabulary.
The tiny girl with the bullhorn voice was finally quiet.
“Who drives the plane?” I asked again, thinking I hadn’t been clear. But she sat in 16A, silent, looking at me like I was playing some sort of joke. Finally she looked at her mother, then back at me and shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, I don’t know his name.”
I’m pretty sure I was spared some serious eye-rolling only because it hadn’t been added to her skill set yet.
August 13th, 2009
Yesterday, after a fourth round of conference calls involving flared tempers and raised voices, I sat down at my desk, stared at the monthly planner in front of me, it’s rectangular days stained red pen reminders, put my face and my hands and said, This is not what I want to be when I grow up.
It’s probably not the first time I’ve come to that conclusion. And I know I’m not alone – who hasn’t taken a look around their cube, measured out their freedom in PTO, and said, No way. This isn’t what I want to be when I grow up? Yeah, I know. It stings.
My career aspirations are pretty fuzzy (there’s a part of me who would be perfectly content to stay at home with a couple of fat babies and write freelance from time to time) but here’s a list of what I do know to be true about my future goals and ambitions.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be:
An effortless roaster of whole chickens
Geographically closer to my siblings
A home owner
A fiance, wife and mother (in the most appropriate order and time frames possible please, baby jesus)
Totally a-okay with aging
In possession of a Dyson vacuum with that special thing for pet hair
More opinionated and slower to share those opinions
Good at something practical, like sewing or wilderness survival
Better around blood and barf (gah)
Much, much less familiar with the contents of People.com
Debt free
Truly sorry about spitting on my sister from the top bunk (look, I’m working on it but it’s still just a little bit funny)
August 11th, 2009
I was curled up on the duvet, summoning the internal fortitude required to get up, brush my teeth and head to work. The Boy was still buried under the covers, tapping away at his Blackberry, listening to sports radio. The dog was lying on the floor, keeping a hungry eye on me in the event that my pillowcase suddenly began producing bacon and I’d need somewhere to dispose of it. And the cat, well he was off somewhere being belligerent. Not an altogether uncommon scene at our house.
Well, right there, in the middle of all of that common domestic bliss (and directly following the birthday announcements), one of the fellas at The Ticket dropped the bomb that today is THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR. I know. I should have prepared you better for this. Fixed you a snack, sat you down and began with something like, Sweetheart, your father and I love you very much but… TODAY IS THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR. Here, have another cookie.
At first, I thought maybe his mom joined Facebook or something else totally life shattering. But apparently, THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR is universal and it works out like this: We’re halfway through August, which just happens to be the worst month of the year. It’s hot and… um, something about the insufficient number of televised sporting events (personally, the last few months sans many of those three-letter sports organizations have been a sweet, sweet little respite). Tuesday is the worst day of the week (I don’t know about you, but I kind of want to kick Monday in the mouth with a pointed shoe. But okay. Tuesday it is). And at 2PM, when you’re full from lunch and drowsing at your desk, that will be the worst moment of the worst day in the worst month in the entire year.
Me, I’m eligible for my iPhone upgrade today. And any day that holds the promise of my boyfriend not having to recharge my phone battery for me (effing Blackberry) is pretty okay by me. In my mind, THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR (or WDOTY – I’m running out of finger strenth for the all caps) involves a trip to the tax accountant, the above-mentioned Facebook situation, or any day the involves the PrimaCare waiting room or buying jeans in a bigger size.
What about you? What’s makes your WDOTY?
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