Mirror, mirror on the wall

What's the unsexiest Halloween costume of them all?

Mine.

You can go sexy or you can go creepy on Halloween, and I opt for creepy (I went as Sarah Palin two years ago... I know creepy).

This year, I decided to face my fears and go as the joke that folks make about me anyway.

Today is the company Halloween party. I'm going as a crazy cat lady.

To clarify, I only have TWO cats. But if you're a woman over the age of 28 who lives alone (regardless of whether you've purposely made that choice or own the house you live in), you get The Jokes. Which is fine. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. (I will say here that Beau has two cats and also lives alone and he gets no crazy cat man jokes. I don't even think there are crazy cat man jokes.)

Last night, I ran a pair of dark corduroy pants over the scratching-pole tower that my cats practically live on. Dark no more! I went to my Mom's and borrowed kittycat earrings (she's a former second-grade teacher who will always have things like kittycat earrings) and a stuffed cat. Then I found a kittycat T-shirt in my closet (go ahead and judge). And then, the piece de resistance, I shall cover my face, hands, and arms with these nail polish + fork "scratches":

Ooh-la-la! Beau is out of town this week. I hope I can fend off all of the sex-crazed men who will, no doubt, be driven mad with lust after they see my costume!

Sometimes a simple "cheer up!" doesn't do the trick

Today on Facebook, I saw a status that, while well-meaning, incensed me:

The seeds of depression CAN NOT take root in a grateful heart. DAILY, write down 5 things for which you are grateful.

I completely agree with her that we all need to be grateful for everything we have when so many in this world have so little. I also believe that if you aren't grateful for what you have, you will never have enough (which might explain the credit crisis in this country).

But she doesn't know shit about depression.

I do. I've gotten the help and the medication that I need, and I live a happy and fulfilling life as a result. But I suffered for years before that because of the stigma attached to something society deems a weakness that can be overcome by pulling one's self up by their bootstraps. 

Recently, a 23-year-old Denver Broncos player committed suicide in his home. From an outsider's perspective, he had the world by the tail. It came out later that he'd had problems with depression for years. He always had a smile for everybody and he never reached out to friends, family, or teammates. Depressives are very good at hiding their conditions.

Abe Lincoln had crippling bouts of melancholy.

Clinical Depression is a horrible, debilitating disease. It's a chemical imbalance, not simply a case of the mopes. The "seeds of depression" can take root in anyone (and it tends to run in families). And when you're in such a deep, dark hole that it's a miracle you can get out of bed in the morning, having someone belittle your situation is unbearable.

Suggesting that depressed individuals are simply ungrateful and feeling sorry for themselves is insulting. And it's that kind of stigma that keeps people who need help from seeking it.

If you don't suffer from depression and you don't have any friends or family who suffer from it (that you know of), let that be one of the five things for which you are grateful today. And if you're going to speak out, do your research and have a little empathy or keep your mouth shut.

(Steps off of the soap box, promises to write silly posts about movies, work, and nacho cheese from here on out.)

Overheard

And I just turned to him and said "Screw that! I'm not going to any dry boyscout camp where you can't drink any beer!"

They're coming to get you, Barbara...

Have I mentioned that I loooove the scary-movie marathons in October?

I do believe I have.

On Saturday, Beau and I spent a lazy afternoon perusing the free scary movies On Demand.

I was excited to find the original black and white 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead. Eeeeee! If you haven't seen it, you must. It's a classic. I've seen it multiple times.

We had to pause the movie in the middle because dinner was ready (yep, I can cook AND watch a zombie movie--I'm a multitasker). As we were getting out plates and silverware, I started thinking aloud:

This would probably be a good place to be when the zombies come. They'd never find the crawlspace. Though we'd have to cover this kitchen window and the three windows in the living room. These windows are so big! The doors are strong though. But we'd have to find large pieces of wood. Would the closet doors upstairs work? Probably, but where would we get nails long enough to secure them? I have a hammer, but only itty-bitty nails. I wonder if we could improvise with...

And then Beau stopped me and reminded me that Night of the Living Dead is a movie and not an educational film on how to survive a zombie attack.

Sigh. Buzzkill.

If you're selling lovely red fused glass items on Etsy.com

you do yourself a disservice by giving them names like:

Bloodsoaked
Crime Scene
Blood Spatter

Please take the poll on the right hand side of the page

Pretty, pretty please.

Duff and I need to know if this is funny or not.

Clever, clever Beau

Usually in the evenings, Beau and I will text back and forth and maybe send a picture or two (not those kinds of pictures, Favre).

I got this one the other night and it made me smile because:

1. I love wordplay
2. I adore Disney movies about singing animals

A RITZ 'O CAT! 

I stand by my theory

that nobody's ever met the love of their life at a Chipotle.

It's impossible to be sexy or alluring while you're eating a three-pound burrito.

I'm a giant hypocrite

I rail against sexy Halloween costumes, but I really like this one. 

Granted, her thighs are thinner than ACTUAL Tootsie Rolls. But my hair is better. And it's the color of ACTUAL Tootsie Rolls (which I've decided is somehow superior, though I don't know why, really). And I might fill out the dress just a tad differently. Oh, and I'll never buy it. 

But I'll concede that it IS cute. 

Whatever it is I think I see becomes a Tootsie Roll to me!

Ruh-roh

There wasn't much on TV last night, so I watched an episode or two of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.

Go ahead and judge, BUT:

• I read all day long
• I listened to NPR on my drive home
• I made whole-wheat couscous/feta/green onion pancakes for dinner
• I watched a documentary later

I EARNED those Scooby-Doo mysteries, friends.

And they were as cute and fun as I remembered. With two exceptions:

1. The Mystery Mobile has GPS. WTF? 
2. Velma (who is voiced by Natalie from The Facts of Life, by the way) and Daphne continually bitch and moan about their relationships with Shaggy and Fred, respectively. 

Whuck?

This is prime time on the Cartoon Network. Do we need sexual tension in the Mystery Mobile? And, more to the point, can book-smart (albeit fashion-challenged) Velma do no better than a (let's face it) pothead who loves sandwiches and his dog more than he'll ever love her?

Daphne and Fred are utterly vapid; they're made for each other, but I wanted so much more for poor Velma.

Reminder

It's a reminder to myself as much as anyone else.

Try to be kind to others. You never know what their personal struggles might be.

Hello, Danny. Come and play with us.

Forever and ever and ever...

I love watching The Shining around Halloween. It's so deliciously creepy.

Some of the creepiest moments come from these two. They've got to be the scariest children in movie history (much scarier than the Children of the Corn and waaaay freakier than Linda Blair in The Exorcist). I double-dog dare you to find someone scarier.

YIKES!!

Those girls are so unnerving that you're not really surprised (or upset) to see what happens next.

EEEK!

But my favorite shot is the next one. I love it for the sheer HolyShitWhatTheHellWasThat? factor.

HolyShitWhatTheHellWasThat???

And what's so great about all of it is that none of this is really integral to the plot of the movie. It's just scary window dressing. Iloveitiloveitiloveit.

I know true Stephen King fans (and Stephen King himself) rail against this movie, saying it has nothing whatsoever to do with the book. I've read the book, and that's true. But I'll argue that both are scary masterpieces that stand on their own.

Wendy, give me the bat.

(And, yes, I'm dorky enough to have paused/taken pictures of my television during the movie.)

Guerilla campaign in the ladies' room

There's one of these on each stall door. 

I hasten to remind you that I (allegedly) work with adults, not children.

Buying boycott

(I realize this sounds a little silly on the heels of a post showing off the necklace I bought, but, for the record, I bought the necklace before the boycott.)

Each year, for one month, I don't buy things for myself. I can buy household items and food and experiences, but no books, no shoes, no clothes, no toaster jewelry, no ridiculous plastic dancing solar flowers for my desk, etc. None of that.

I do this for a few reasons:

• It saves me a nice bit of money (in time for the holidays).
• It helps me discern want from need.
• I have more money to donate to food banks as the weather turns cold. 
• It makes me feel less like a conspicuous consumer. 

My friend Duff (jokingly, I hope) admonished me, telling me I'm tanking the economy, but I don't think the discretionary spending habits of one editor are going to tip the scales one way or the other.

If I want something during boycott month, I might write it down to remember it for when the boycott is over. But, most of the time, what I wanted on October 8 sounds silly by November 8.

I challenge you to do the same this year. It's easier and more rewarding than you think!

Because I love the Beau toast story so much

I bought this necklace. It makes me smile and it made Beau smile (in an eye-rolling kind of way).

If you're selling "curvy" jeans to curvy girls...

Don't use a boy-hipped, stick-figure model to do it. The Gap has been doing that for years and it gets on my last nerve.

Also, don't call women who aren't curvy curvy. Someone in the media called Evangeline Lilly curvy.

THIS is not curvy. 

 

Also, on a semi-related note, if you're going to use the word voluptuous in a sentence, don't pronounce it VOLUMPTUOUS.  

Thus ends today's rant. 

Brutal in its desperation and honesty

When I walked in the office this morning, I saw this on the bulletin board by the door. :)

New business lingo

I like to share things like this with you so you can be in the know and impress your friends at parties.

Here goes:

My frustration is...
translates to
This is the reason I, personally, think you suck at your job.

If you slip this into a looooong, repetitive, whiny voicemail (similar to one I got this afternoon), it'll sound businesslike and uberbitchy all at once!

Go forth and use this with abandon!

I am here to help you.

Made my Saturday

Beau and I had lunch on Saturday at a pub near my house. We got both the regular menu and the brunch menu.

This one item at the bottom of the brunch menu caught my attention and made my afternoon.

(it says Blue Plate Special: An ice cold can of PBR and a plate of bacon)

Stalking that you can dance to

1. Jenny, Jenny, you're the girl for me. You don't know me, but you make me so happy.
2. I want you to want me. I need you to need me. I'd love you to love me. I'm beggin' you to beg me.
3. Every single day. Every word you say. Every game you play. Every night you stay, I'll be watching you.
4. If I was invisible, then I could just watch you in your room.
5. I will follow him. Follow him wherever he may go.
6. I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.
7. You belong to me. Tell her you were fooling. You don't even know her. Tell her that I love you.

The very charming messages above are brought to you by the following:

1. Tommy Tutone
2. Cheap Trick
3. The Police
4. Clay Aiken
5. Little Peggy March
6. The Beatles (I shit you not)
7. Carly Simon

Why does stalking sound so much better when it's set to music?

And what are YOU going to be for Halloween, little girl?

I'm going to be a sexy iPhone!
I'm going to be a sexy garbage collector!
I'm going to be a sexy condor!
I'm going to be a sexy rendering-plant worker!
I'm going to be a sexy retail sales associate!
I'm going to be a sexy telemarketer!
I'm going to be a sexy butcher!
I'm going to be a sexy rocket scientist!
I'm going to be a sexy blogger!
I'm going to be a sexy zookeeper!
I'm going to be a sexy lumberjack!
I'm going to be a sexy grocery bagger!
I'm going to be a sexy breakfast-burrito vendor!
I'm going to be a sexy recycler!
I'm going to be a sexy vegan!

(I think you can see where I'm going with this)

I'm going to be a sexy dockworker!
I'm going to be a sexy transmission specialist!
I'm going to be a sexy...

My argument against the thong

I could tell you that they're uncomfortable, they cause infection, and that men aren't foolish enough wear them, but you already know that.

This is my argument.

Sure, VPL (visible panty lines, for those of you living under a rock) are not desirable. But how desirable is VAC (visible ass crack)? If you're wearing a thong with pants or a dress of a certain kind of fabric, the fabric... *ahem* settles right in, creating an even more distracting/distressing look than VPL ever did.

If we all wanted the world to see a big crease down our backsides, we wouldn't wear pants at all.

I'm just sayin'.

Would it kill you to smile?

I work in a friendly (sometimes overly friendly, but that's another story for another day) office. People say hello to each other. We all try to know a little about each others' lives. It's a creative, team-based environment, so we all try to help each other out.

And folks usually smile at each other when they pass in the halls.

Except for four.

These are the most sour-faced, dour people on the face of this earth. They are never friendly and they give the impression that they are much too good to smile back at you or even return a hello.

Who raised them? How did they get their jobs?

The rudeness of it drives me crazy.

I lament the death of common courtesy!!!

My favorite Beau story

A few years ago, he and I went to Glenwood Springs for the weekend. Glenwood Springs is a quaint, touristy little mountain town near Aspen.

Our first morning there, we woke up too late for the free continental breakfast (who eats breakfast before 8:00 on vacation?), so we ventured downtown to a nice little cafe.

The only downside to nice little cafes is that they're a little slow when it comes to service. And Beau's blood sugar was getting low (which is very dangerous for his health--and a little dangerous for our relationship because he gets pretty grumpy). As soon as he eats, he's his sweet self again.

Our breakfasts arrived, and as Beau started to dig in, he groused They're late with my toast.

I knew that more toast was on the way, so I offered him my toast in the interim.

And at that moment, that he uttered the phrase that would delight me and haunt him for the rest of his days:

I don't want YOUR toast. I want MY toast.

:)

Even if you're not a reader...

Don't say the following in the company of another human being:

I read a book once and the ending sucked. That's why I don't read anymore. 

*Sigh*

I concur!

(Courtesy of TheFrisky.com)

New-age experience

I went to a fair with Mom over the weekend. It's always the first weekend in October and we try to make it every year.

We walked around and looked at all of the wares folks had for sale (we bought, but only from nice people without high-pressure sales tactics).

Toward the end of the afternoon, we stopped at a booth with multiple stone/mineral pendants. Each one had a description card with it that told you how the stone would help you. We stayed for awhile, partly because the descriptions on the cards were so interesting, but mostly because we like pretty, shiny, sparkly rocks.

The woman at the booth was chatting with folks, letting them know which stones they needed (she was a little bit psychic). She taught one woman how to let the stone choose her.

1. Stand away from the other stones and put down your purse and other items. 
2. Hold the stone in question to your heart chakra.
3. Clear your mind. 
4. Ask God, Mother Mary, Allah, whomever (your higher power) if that's the stone for you.
5. Then wait. Your body will either be pulled forward or pushed back.* If you're pulled forward, it's right. If you're pushed back, you need to find a different stone.

*This apparently also works in the vitamin aisle at your local supermarket because vitamins are minerals too (though you might raise an eyebrow or two).

Not afraid to try something new (or look like a fool; ask any waitperson in the greater Denver area), I gave it a shot. 

I'll be damned if it didn't work. It was a really odd feeling, but I was pulled forward. I went home and tried with all of my vitamins. All but two pulled me forward (and the others pushed me back). 

Interesting. That's all's I'm sayin'.

New fake word

This time, I'm the guilty party.

Next time you're going for dinner at an Indian restaurant, you should call it...

Dindia!

(I'm ridiculously happy about this)