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.

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…

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.

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)

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.

I can be one disgruntled wicked witch of the west (or bicked bitch, according to my sister), but that’s nothing that half a glass of wine won’t undo. I’m easy. See also: cheap date.

To give this particular business trip a bit of sheen, four of us went out Tuesday night for some “team building” at a pricey steakhouse. And after a cocktail or two (because, as we all know, “team building” translates to “resent each other and your jobs less by drinking heavily,” conversation left the topic of work entirely and headed into much, much more interesting realms. Someone confessed to plastic surgery. And I, being medicated enough to lose most of my good breeding, wanted to know every single detail.

Lipsocution and lobster tail. Just add wine.

I’ve always been of the opinion that if you get plastic surgery for someone else (or general attention whore reasons), you’re kind of a sick puppy. But if it’s something that will change how you feel about you and make your world a better place, meh, okay. It’s your money. I’d rather buy a house.

What about you? Fake ta-tas and botoxed brows seem so common place now. But do you think it’s sad or not such big deal?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been in the castle. It came as a tremendous disappointment that not just any little girl who loves – really truly loves — Cinderella gets to venture inside the castle (unless you count the gift shop where your mom assures you that you cannot afford to touch anything, let alone buy it). But guess what? If you are a grown up with spending power (or a meal package) you can go any damn where you want. Including Cinderella’s castle where the princess herself will make an appearance at your meal. I’m pretty sure the Boy’s sister and I will be wearing white gloves and tiaras if left to our own devices. Our boyfriends will also be wearing gloves. Golf gloves. Out on the golf course. Because they’re just not emotionally equipped to handle that kind of celestial experience. Also, they sort of refused to go. I’ll tell you now that things will have to be going very wrong for us to notice their absence. I’m just saying.

The Dork Lord, who is used to his own dorking out seemed pretty amused by the whole holyshitcinderella’scastle! and the ensuing nerdvana.

“Will you get your picture taken with Cinderella?”

“Are you freaking kidding me? We’re going to get drunk and make out.”

“Oh dear.”

Seriously, I don’t know what else he expected to happen with thirty years of build up. Picture, schmicture. 

This weekend, I learned that what stays in Vegas isn’t necessarily your seedy tales of debauchery so much as your money. Even on a most-expenses-paid work trip. Even if you only lose fifteen bucks to the slots.  Aren’t we just the most underachieving gamblers? Fifteen whole dollars. Risk takers! While true, we lost the money on slot machines (instead of something fancy like Black Jack or Craps) and that’s pretty sad, it’s sadder still that we only did it because our car to the airport was not due to arrive for another thirty whole minutes and what else were we going to do to fill the time? We couldn’t possibly eat any more or spend any more time getting prune-fingered in the pool. So, we threw fifteen bucks in the crapper and had a fine time doing it. But then, we have a fine time doing most anything that ends up in fart jokes.

Speaking of: I spent Wednesday night in the hotel solo – the Dork Lord wasn’t coming out until the next evening. And glory hallelujah, wasn’t it just heaven to have a big old king sized bed to myself, and all those divinely squishy pillows for me, just me? It really was… until I realized, in the middle of making snow angels in the smooth white sheets, that it was going to be me, just me all alone all night long. I know my friend Mike thinks this is pathetic and horribly codependent (he sent me an email saying as much), but after months and months of sharing bedtime with my best friend, going to sleep alone wasn’t worth all the extra space and all the deliciously plush linens in all the off-strip hotels in all of Vegas. I didn’t like it one bit. Bedtime – even excluding any headboard knocking antics – is one of the best parts of the day. It’s when we trade love you’s and back scratches and yeah, usually fart jokes because we’ll probably never be proper grown ups. When I was a little girl, lying in bed at night, I could hear my parents in the bedroom above mine, their laughter getting sucked down and pouring out of the heating vents in my ceiling. I think about that sometimes when we’re falling asleep, still laughing about something silly, and if I have my way, that’s how it will be for the restof forever.

Unless, of course, one of us is on a business trip. And that’s when cell phones come in handy.

Thirty was a… strange year. It’s ending so well that I’m tempted to call it a great year, but then there was all that bit about losing my job, being forced to sell the rights to my unborn children to pay the IRS, and oh, yes, there was the rather auspicious beginning the whole thing took when I was stood up the night of my birthday by a man-child who’d invited me to a party and then developed an acute case of sudden onset amnesia. See? Icky. But then I got a job, a nephew and a perfectly imperfect boyfriend (all on the same day even!) and things, they took a steep upward turn. And even though this year my actual birthday will find me squished into an economy seat of a Dallas-bound airplane, I’ll be squished right next to the Dork Lord after a weekend of goofing off in Vegas. So, you see, I have to dig pretty deep to find any complaints. Except about elbow room.

* I cried at least three times during this movie. Heart strings = tugged. HARD.

Movies I Have Seen Lately That You Should A) See or B) Paper Cut Your Eyes out First:

Away We Go. See it. Gosh, what a charming, warm, honestly delightful movie. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so good about spending ten bucks since I lived in the vicinity of an H&M.

Inkheart. Skip it. I know it’s on On Demand and that makes it very convenient. Likewise, the cast seems promising (Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren), but even as a kids movie, it’s insultingly witless.

The Proposal. See it. One, Ryan Reynolds is really funny. He always has been (come, sit. We’ll watch Van Wilder together). Also, he is hot and he takes his shirt and everything else off. And then there’s Betty White who almost made me pee.

Passengers. No. Just no. See that part about the convenience of On Demand, mix it with any good feelings you may have for Anne Hathaway (look, I own The Princess Diaries on VHS and I watched Get Smart twice) and your love of bad sci fi (I know. I can’t help it either) and even that will not be enough to save you the pang of regret from hours wasted on total crap.

Transformers. Wait for the DVD. Holy cow, for how much shit that blows up in the movie, it’s so freaking BORING. I expected silly. I expected gratuitous blow uppage. I expected Megan Fox’s permanent porn mouth. But boring? That really threw me. The Boy was less bored, but that’s because he poured about four shots of bourbon into his Diet Coke.

Public Enemies. See it. Excellent acting (even Christian Bale’s muppet-like growling affectation is totally absent), lots of intensity and it requires no bourbon at all to appreciate. The only disappointment was that despite knowing the outcome of the actual historical events, I was still kinda hoping the bad guys would win. That says so much about me.

If you’ll pardon me channeling a certain little mermaid for a moment, I want more. Wait, or is it less? I think it’s less. Less time busting my tush on projects that go nowhere. Less grocery shopping, and litter box cleaning and loads of laundry that I’m just going to wash again in a few days. In short, less of real life. And just for a bit. I want an island with a hammock – make that two – and the smell of brine and Cyprus trees and water so blue it makes my heart take up temporary residence in my throat. I want to walk up crumbling stairs to places so old and magical that I won’t be quite sure that I’m not imagining them. To fall asleep next to my snoring fella, tipsy on cheap wine and wake up in puddles of other-hemisphere sunlight to no plans at all. To wear white linen and tan lines and feel the slight sting of an almost sunburn on the top of my nose. Freckled, smiling, full on new food and adventures.

Instead, because travel is expensive and the reason I’m in debt I might never dig myself out of, I’m sitting on the ottoman in my living room, filling out government forms for work,  while the dog lays on the couch occasionally emitting farts that smell like rotten broccoli.

Only, it got complicated. And thus the long version of the story has me walking back to where my car was parked in a stall in the dealership lot (in search of my insurance card – for the loaner), to find that the tow truck driver had scratched the hell out the passenger side. A representative from Tow Jam (totally not kidding) came out, spent many inarticulate phrases telling me that the truck driver could NOT have been responsible. The down-to-the-metal chunks out of the paint were…wait for it… door dings. And the series of scratches on the wheel well? They must have been there before.

“If the driver hit something,” he explained, “there would be many more scratches.”

“If there driver had not hit anything, there would be no scratches AT ALL.”

It went on like that for a while. He talked to me like I was an idiot. I calmly told him he was effing nuts. I even shared with him the heartwarming tale of sniffing around my car in search of the gas leak earlier that very afternoon, with my face within inches of the now scratched-to-hell door panels, seeing no evidence of the current and appalling ruination. He remained unmoved. So we both took pictures. His photo album will be a bit thinner than mine; he took pictures of only one door panel because, if he gathered evidence of the whole show, no one would buy his story.

Then, when I was about ready to fall apart if I did not go home – where no one could break any more promises or talk to me like I was the intellectual equivalent of a box of hair – right that very second, it was revealed that there wasn’t actually a loaner car to be had. And the rental car that would have taken its place was given away while I was trading witticisms with Mr. Tow Jam. They’d have one in oh, maybe an hour or so, if I wanted to go wait at the Enterprise office. Near to tears, I texted the Dork Lord, Please come get me. He arrived twenty minutes later – pissed.

“Calm down,” I said, patting his arm as his head spun round in circles looking for someone to kill.

“No. They aren’t treating you how you deserve to be treated.”

He stalked off toward the Service Center and I put on a solemn face. But it was really hard not to smile. Even with all that overdone hype about white horses, spell-breaking kisses and climbs up long braids of hair to the tops of very high towers, being rescued is still totally underrated.

“I just want to see what it’s all about.”

“I know what it’s all about: bad acting and teen vampire love.”

“Snob.”

There just so happened to be nothing else On Demand in HD (because in this household we don’t WATCH programs in regular definition. Ahem.) that wasn’t entirely too serious, so I conceded. Fine. I would watch it. But I wouldn’t like it!  And I didn’t. I didn’t hate it, but it very well may have been the biggest piece of cinematic cheese I’d ingested in years – and I watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on a startlingly regular basis.

Also, VAMPIRES DON’T SPARKLE IN THE SUNLIGHT, THEY BURST INTO FLAMES AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT!

Last summer, I picked up the first Twilight book and within 30 pages, put it back down. It was bad writing and that’s all there was to it. Yeah, yeah, I understand that it’s a very story driven kind of series, and that you can become deeply invested in this forbidden blood-sucking romance, but it was bad and I felt insulted by it. So when I saw my friend Amy’s Facebook status reference her most recent read being about teen angst and vampire love, I immediately rushed to provide intervention. But before I could save Amy from herself, she dropped what has to be the most honest and compelling pro-Twilight review out there (and this shit should go on the book’s back cover):

Speaking of mad, I want to quickly address the last post and the number of you who are SO.UNHAPPY. about the last line. Friends, I cannot imagine any of you being around this long and still taking me so seriously that you’d get upset by that. Was it smug? Oh, yes. Overly so. Because it was tongue-in-cheek and meant to be silly. Jeez louise. Do I literally mean that my big-headed boyfriend is better than all the other men out there? Um, no. If your man is being a twerp, gimme a holler and we can talk about the time mine announced that marriage sounds like a really awful idea – right before the lights went down in a movie theater. At that moment, my boyfriend was not better than anyone’s boyfriend and I seriously questioned the dedication it took to sit through Terminator: Part Christian Bale for such a man. Or about the time we moved and I did all (ALL!) the unpacking while he futzed around with computer cords. Look, I’m in a human relationship. If some days I feel like crowing, there are plenty of days when I feel like issuing karate chops to sensitive parts. It’s funny, because I was in the middle of writing a big old essay about the harder, not-so-cheery parts of my relationship, but hadn’t posted it for fear it was too negative. Now I’m wondering if that’s really more up the collective alley. 

Food for thought, I suppose.

Oh, yeah, I limped. After what could have been as many as 75 trips down three flights of stairs and then UP three more flights of stairs, my quads and calves were a disaster, and after thirty minutes of not moving, they were pretty stubborn about getting going again. I promised them ice cream, and that seemed to do the trick.

En route to ice cream, I looked up at the boards and saw that my flight had been delayed again and set my jaw. I would not have at total breakdown at the airport. I just wouldn’t. But oh, how I wanted to. I was tired, in pain, and the five-and-a-half-hour meeting I’d sat through earlier in the day wasn’t what you’d call invigorating.

Heather: I just want to come home.
Dork Lord: I know, baby.
Heather: Now they’re saying there’s a crew change. I’ll never leave! I will have to live in the airport and eat McDonald’s. FOREVER.
Dork Lord: That’s not too bad!

Aw, loving a man who loves fast food. I should have suspected I’d get absolutely zero sympathy for a diet based on red meat and fake cheese (to him, it’s heaven in a foil lined wrapper). But that’s what I wanted. Sympathy. And a hug. And to be home with climate control and my shoes off. By the time I climbed into my car at the Dallas airport and headed home, the Boy was already gone for the evening, off to watch the Stanley Cup Finals. I was a little disappointed – that hug would have done the trick. But when I walked through the apartment door, I saw that in his place, he’d left behind a dozen long stem red roses and I thought, Who needs a stinkin’ hug, anyway?

My patience.

All that crazy love is going to double in November when my brother and his wife have a baby Cylon girl. A girl who will love me for my unparalleled skills in dress-up and Barbie hair-doing (including botched haircut rescue). And if she isn’t into those things, well, she will love me because I let her do shit her parents won’t. I am an aunt. It is my right.

I just sighed the biggest sigh. Did you hear it from way over there? The Boy and I are in possession of a last minute invitation to the Ranch and we’re heading out after work for some quality gettin’ dirty time. Not that kinda dirty, perverts. The four-wheelin’, jeepin’, eatin’ messy barbecued brisket dirty. Um, no, we’re not exactly packed for the move on Wednesday (though, the Dork Lord’s computer cords? They are VERY organized). But if I don’t fill these lungs with some country air and cake some serious grime up under these fingernails, the only thing getting packed would be me – off to a very quiet room with padded walls and no Internet.

I didn’t declare any allegiance during the whole Jen-Brad-Angelina fiasco. But I’m saying it right now, in case it’s not immediately apparent: TEAM BETTY.

I know. All worked up over a comic book. I never said I wasn’t completely nuts. But I think it doesn’t help matters that moving has made me somewhat (more) cantankerous. And pouty. God, so pouty. Then add to that a big heaping dose of Watching What I Eat (I had to wear a swimsuit the other day in friendly company. I didn’t cry. But I was close), and basically, it’s like I told E: I’m getting through the day one snack at a time. Pathetic? Yes. Do I care? Nuh uh. It’s days like today that make me want to make lists of things I hate (eggplant. Miley Cyrus. Obviously fake, french manicured nails) and then systematically eradicate them from existence. Might want to sit on your hands, ladies.  Anyway, I get that my anger at a fictional character might have a little something to do with melted cheese deprivation and an apartment full of half-packed boxes and that’s the defense I’m going with when I get caught breaking into Archie headquarters to do a little… eradicating.

In other news, after I typed the above, I went out at lunch and bought a pair of shoes. They’re helping a little.

You’d think that with all this time we’ve had to wait and prepare, packing would be well underway. Oh, sillies. It’s not even started. And we’re going out of town this weekend. After packing up my own apartment five or six weeks ago, I have very little enthusiasm for more quality time with cardboard boxes and packing tape. In fact, the words dread and I’d rather stand in a pile of fire ants come to mind.The Boy, bless his heart, wasn’t exactly the biggest contributor to the moving out experience (my mom, bless hers even more, was. Total. Effing. CHAMP), so my inner six year old is throwing a special little tantrum regarding fairness – or the lack thereof – at the prospect of another pack-up job. But love is love, and also I know that the more labor I do, the more unappetizing tasks I can ask him to do in exchange. Like, getting my car inspected. Also maybe washed and waxed and vacuumed. And that’s all before I clean his oven.