Another pathetic admission

I've come to regard stretchy jeans as a reassuring hug that lasts all day long.

I bought this

And I framed it and hung it outside of my office.
I heart it.

Get yours here.

Professional courtesy has its merits

But every so often, it would just be so freeing to be able to say:

Please go away; I don't like you. 

Or

I like you just fine, but I really am not fit for human consumption today. Please try again tomorrow.

My pants are in my corner

I hit Macy's over the weekend and scored three pairs of pants and two sweaters for $51 (which is how much just one of the pairs of pants cost originally). I know how to shop a good Macy's sale.

And the pants fit really well. (Women of the world know how hard it is to find pants that are not only comfortable but look good too. The lack of uniformity in women's sizing is infuriating, but I digress.)

But as I put them on, I noticed a little message printed on the inside of the waistband: Banish the blah and bring on the wow. 

I shit you not. Here's a photo.

Is this what we've come to? Pep talks on the waistbands of our pants? Are we women so down in the dumps about the state of the world and the state of our bodies that we need inspirational messaging in our pants?

Weird.

Still love the pants though.

My weekend in three pictures

Nothing that happened to me this weekend could match the drama and exquisite tragedy of this bra we saw crumpled under an SUV tire in a liquor store parking lot on our way home on Friday. So many questions.

Then, later that Friday night, I was overjoyed to see my Kansas Jayhawks win a spot in the Elite Eight!

And then, on Sunday, not only did I get blown off for my afternoon plans, my poor Kansas Jayhawks LOST. (Lola wasn't happy about it either.)

Shit! Dammit! Muthaf*%ka!!

(and, yes, I got a little nutty with the hipstamatic app on my phone. I'm a dork. When have I ever disputed that?)

Dining with history

If you walk into my house, you'll see a lot of colorful, comfy furniture. Some of it is antique. Some skews modern. Some, quite frankly, needs to be replaced. My favorite piece is the lamest one. It's my kitchen table. Dark wood and Formica. Rinky-dink chairs with vinyl seat covers.

It's the kitchen table I grew up with. Every single family member has sat at that table. Every childhood friend. Every pet I've ever loved has rubbed against the table legs (and, let's face it, probably jumped up on the tabletop) at some point. Even most of my boyfriends have sat at that table (except one, but he was shitty anyway). Pretty much everyone I've ever loved has taken a seat around it.

It's a piece of personal history sitting right there in my kitchen.

My very first memory in life occurred at that table. It was my second birthday party--most of the family turned out; it was two months after my dad died, so they wanted to make me feel extra special. I wore a blue dress and showed my great-grandma the skinned knee I'd gotten in the parking lot of the supermarket earlier when we picked up ice cream for the festivities. Boy do I miss Great-Grandma. I'm glad she sat at that table.

Nobody, not even my mom, likes that table as much as I do, so it's destined to be landfill some day.

Of course, I'm destined to be landfill too (aren't we all?). You can't take it with you, but it's nice to pull up a chair and enjoy it while you can.

I'm becoming one of those weird old ladies

Not only do I have the obligatory candy dish in my living room, I recently realized that I have the following items within reach in nearly every room in my house:

• a box of tissues
• scissors
• carmex/lipgloss
• hair clips/ties
• hand lotion
• purell
• a pen

When did this happen? I was never, ever cool, but I swear I was cooler than this at some point.

Pretty soon I'm going to start muttering to myself and scaring children off of my lawn.

One of my favorite pictures

Of Denver in the summertime. 

The secret of southern politeness

You can say pretty much anything about anybody as long as you add Bless his/her heart before or after the insult.

Bless her heart, she's as dumb as a box of hair.

He has the herpes. I guess that's what you get for whoring around town like a bunny on Spanish fly, bless his heart.

Go ahead and try it. You'll be amazed at what you can get away with.

Beau's three-second movie reviews

My two favorites.

Into the Wild. "It's about a stupid, hungry hippie."

The Devil Wears Prada. "There's no devil. It's just about clothes."

The dumbest excuse yet

Some fellas who are fresh out of relationships just aren't ready to date yet. And that's ok.

They could actually admit that they're not ready and stay out of the dating pool, but many of them date and then find stupid reasons to dump these poor unsuspecting girls.

Here's the worst one I've heard yet:

She has a unisex name. I don't feel comfortable dating a girl with a guy's name.

Yep, she has a name like Chris, Kelly, Shannon, or Leslie, which renders her UNDATEABLE.

For Pete's sake, get the f**k over yourself!!

I think Beau would have asked me out even if my name was Chuck, Bill, or Bubba.

Miracle at the Armadillo

(This is one of those stories that likely won't interest you one bit; but it made my whole Saturday and it's my blog. So there.) 

I have a Pepsi glass that I love. It's quirky, with a 1970s vibe. When I drink out of it, I like to rub it in to Beau (who loves everything 1970s--Dazed and Confused could have been written about him) that I have one and he doesn't.

So on Saturday, I sent him this picture text.

Ha ha! It's ALL MINE.

Thanks to my braggadocio, I was able to send him this one, not one hour later (like my photographic styling? The garden sheers and phone charger are there to inspire jealousy).

SHIT! FUCK! DAMMIT! DAMMIT! DAMMIT!

Beau could have done a little dance of glee at such instant karma, but instead, he replied: We can look for another one at the Armadillo (which, of course, autocorrect changed to Admiration).

The Armadillo is a huge antique mall in the Denver Metro Area. The odds of going into an antique store and finding one very specific (and very small) item are pretty pathetic.

After looking in every stall, we didn't find one.

WE FOUND TWO!!

Now Beau can come over to my house and enjoy a Pepsi with me! And I'll never brag about them again (or the kick-ass Olive Oyl glass I picked up).

A wee Irish tale

Everyone Loves an Irish Girl 

This phrase was on a cute green T-shirt I used to wear on St. Patrick's Day. I have a little Irish blood (and Swedish, English, Dutch, and Scottish--all the folks with zero skin pigmentation), so I figured I was entitled (T-shirt entitlement. How sad).

One morning a couple of years ago, Mom called me last-minute to run an errand at the mall. I was still in my PJs, so I grabbed that T-shirt and a pair of jeans and ran out the door.

Later that afternoon as I was standing in line at the food court, a pervy little old man sidled up to me.

He very pointedly (and slowly) read my T-shirt.

Then he raised his eyebrows lasciviously and said...

EVERYONE???

Buh-bye T-shirt.

Donated it the next day.

A word I utterly loathe

"LOVER"

Yuck.

That word skeeves me out in a heartbeat.

There's simply no way to use that word (other than cat-lover, dog-lover, wine-lover, etc.) that does not bring about visions of shag carpeting, mood lighting, and baby oil (complete with porn-music accompaniment).

There are folks out there who actually introduce their significant others as my lover. Why would anybody EVER do that? You might as well say This is _______. I've seen every inch of his/her nekkid body and now I want you to picture it too.

Am I alone in this?

Why use the word my in an introduction anyway? I've never met anybody who did not have a name. Why use an introduction that connotes ownership?

Most people hate the word MOIST (not my favorite either, unless, of course, you're describing cake. I love pretty much any word that describes a good cake. I am, after all, a cake-lover).

Here's a satanic duo: use the words moist and lover in the same sentence.

Ugh. I feel like I need delousing.

I'd go for the trifecta, but I'll need to eat in the next 12 hours.

If you're going to be a pig anyway...

Abe Lincoln once said Whatever you are, be a good one.

So, if you're going to be a pig, do it well. 

I was driving on C470 over the weekend and spied this shoe-polished on the back of an old Jeep Cherokee:

I BRAKE FOR TITAYS.

I'm sure the young men inside had no idea that what they'd spelled was pronounced TITE-AYES, but for Pete's sake! It's T-I-T-T-I-E-S. I even would have accepted T-I-T-T-A-Y-S in a pinch.

Way to put the dumb in dumbass, dumbass.

(Fun irony: letting the world know that you brake for titties pretty much ensures that you'll never see any.)

Autocorrect

Beau has a new iPhone that has autocorrect (for those of you who don't know about autocorrect, it's when the smartphone assumes it's smarter than its owner and corrects words in texts that don't actually need correcting in the first place).

So now we have hypersensical text discussions like this:

Beau: Letterboxes clean.

Me: You had dirty letterboxes???

Beau: Tuition.

Ah, technology!

Never been a science buff...

But you'd never know it if you looked in my fridge.

I cleaned it out last night. Oh. Mah. Lawdy! Everything had a fur coat! I never knew so many different colors of mold existed.

It's not so much that I'm that gross. I'm just a single girl who can't eat everything she cooks before it's too late.

My apologies to the garbage collectors this morning. That bag was heinous.  

I didn't have the presence of mind to take any photos.

You can thank me later.

Oh, I don't eat those. Wanna know why???

This is not a tirade about people who have food allergies. Food allergies suck and they are inhibitory.

This is a tirade about people who have food allergies and think you want to hear about them. All. Of. The. Time.

My dear, dear friend Jess is extremely allergic to onions. She gets terribly sick if there's one in anything she eats, so we're very, very careful when we go out to eat.

But other than hearing her say I'd like the garden salad with no onions, please; I'm allergic, you don't hear much else about it.

Because it does not define her personality.

I wish it was that way for everyone.

Here's a good rule of thumb:
Unless they ask (or if they're cooking your food)...

Nobody wants to hear the gruesome details about what happens when you get near a strawberry.
Nobody wants to hear complaints about the lack of menu offerings for your special situation.
And for Pete's sake...
Nobody wants to hear about the regularity and/or consistency of your poops.

Ever.

It's an allergy. It's not who you are.

Great books, vol. 1

There are some books I read that are so good they stay with me. I still wonder how the characters are doing from time to time. Truly the mark of great writing. There's a glut bad stuff (i.e., chick lit) out there; I'm always happy to find a gem. And I think to myself I wish I had some sort of platform from which I could share these titles...

Duh, WINNING! (Had to do it once; won't do it again.)

Here are a few titles I enjoyed.

The Last Town on Earth, Thomas Mullen.
Set in a small Washington logging town during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. The town takes drastic quarantine measures to keep the flu away. The book is compelling, historical (in its way), and very human. (Plus, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, I'm drawn to books about epidemics. Weird, huh?)

Bright Shiny Morning, James Frey.
Yes, he's Oprah's whipping boy. And, for the record, though the veracity of A Million Little Pieces is up for debate, the author's talent is not. This book is about LA; Frey explained that though there are great books about many great cities, there were no (up until this point) great books about LA (which either says that there are plenty of shitty books about LA or that LA is not a great city; it also says plenty about Frey's ginormous ego). The book follows the stories of multiple characters making their way in the city (there's also plenty about the city itself, which I found a little tedious at times, but it doesn't detract too much). It's gritty and good.

Zeitoun, Dave Eggers.
The true story of one family's experience during Katrina and the storm's aftermath. Unputdownable. And the most horrifying part of it all is that it's a true story. As you read, you keep thinking I can't believe this happened here. This could not have happened here. How could this happen here? One reviews described it as Kafkaesque. That's the perfect word.

That's it for now (luckily, there are more than three good books out there). More to come.

One last Charlie Sheen post

He's been using this look a lot.

Drunken honesty has its charm (sometimes)

Last night, I was reminded of the company holiday party last December.

For whatever reason, I didn't feel like drinking, so I remember everything perfectly (and I have a photographic memory for all things inconsequential).

That evening, a woman approached Beau and I. She doesn't work in our Denver office, but we both know her and like her. She was wasted.

And she was on a roll.

She told us she really liked hanging out with us because we were so fun (I think what made us so fun is that we stood there and listened to her, because that's all we did).

And then came this memorable gem: I have to apologize to my vagina daily for being an a-hole who never gets any.

I can't keep that one to myself. I need to share it with the world.

The call from the stall

I know we live in a connected society. But how connected do we really need to be?

Yesterday, I walked into the Ladies' Room and heard some woman in a stall yammering away on her phone.

This happens a good two to three times a week.

How important can a call be? Must we be connected at all times? Has common decency gone to hell?

And who wants to get that call with toilets flushing and lord knows what else in the background?

It's awkward for the rest of us in there, because when you're connected, we're connected too (by default). And that's when I suffer through a jumble of thoughts:

• Should I flush while she's on the phone? Would that be rude?
• What if she's trying to disguise the fact that she's in the Ladies' Room while she's on the phone? Flushing would out her. That might embarrass her. 
• Wait. Why am I worrying about this? 
• She's on the phone in the bathroom while she's on the damn toilet. She no longer has a say. 
• WTF?
• I should screech Hey, Mildred! Can you bring me a tampon?

*FLUSH*

Grumble.

It's just plain gross, people.

Three weekend observations

1. I realize that, working in editorial, I'm a bit more sensitive to language than most. But I'm pretty laid back about it in the real world; when I see a misspelling in an e-mail, I'm happy to ignore it.
   HOWEVER, if you're going to permanently ink something onto your body, you might want to get a good grasp on the difference between to, too, and two beforehand.
   I cannot forgive a typo (much less THREE) in a tattoo. Good lord, people!
2. I watched The Towering Inferno with Beau on Saturday. It was ridiculous, but good fun. My only irritation was the injustice of the plot line. The sweet woman who turned a con man around and saved two children from the fire ends up dying one of the most horrifying deaths in the movie. But OJ Simpson saves a kitty cat and walks away scott-free. Pretty much set the stage for another bloody injustice from which OJ walked away scott-free (without even saving a kitty), but I'll get off of the soap box before I get on.
3. Last night, I watched a silent movie: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with John Barrymore, circa 1920. It was awesome; more compelling than talkie counterparts that came along later. I loved it. But, then again, that might be partially because the guy in charge of the placards spelled 'em all correctly. :)

Even though cheese is my favorite food group...

I don't think I want to experience the implied indignity of an Extreme Cheese Explosion.

I'm sure my fellow patrons at Target wondered why I was holding a box of mac 'n cheese and laughing to myself.

It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma

I watched JFK last weekend. I don't know what came over me; I just wanted to watch it (and I had three hours to kill).

EVERYBODY is in that movie: Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Newman from Seinfeld, Sissy Spacek (what kind of name is Sissy anyway?), Donald Sutherland, Kevin Bacon (this movie is a boon to all Six Degrees players), Tommy Lee Jones... the list is endless.

But there's one I'd forgotten about and it completely floored me.

John Candy is in JFK, and he uses words like daddy-o.

I shit you not.

The contest

Over in Beau's department, they're having a hair-growing contest. Everyone puts in $20 and they don't shave.

At all.

They don't trim.

They just let it grow.

And they become one big bunch of scraggly bastards.

Whomever is the last holdout (the one whose girlfriend is either blind or has a thing for mountain men, I imagine) gets the winnings at the end.

Beau was on the fence about joining in on the hirsute fun (I've been dying to use that word forever. I'm a nerd, remember?).

So I thought I'd make a deal with him: Go ahead and join. And as long as you don't shave, I won't shave (won't I look pretty in all of those pretty spring sundresses?).

He thought for a a milisecond and announced

I'M OUT!

Ten kinds of awesome

Charlie Sheen is a national treasure

And he's tired of pretending he's not special.

Hey... ME TOO!

AND he cured his addiction: "I blinked and cured my brain." 

Pure pop-culture magic, I tell ya. You couldn't make this shit up if you tried.

The best part is the fact that he passed a drug test before he went on his Tiger's Blood/Adonis DNA rant (which must mean that Martin Sheen is Adonis and, at one point, he got frisky with a tiger, but I digress).

How does his short-term sobriety make this better??? Drugs or no (he's carrying around his drug-test results in his pocket these days), he's still certifiable. In fact, drugs would make more sense.

Reminds me a bit of something I heard years ago on The Daily Show regarding Michael Hutchence's death by auto-erotic asphyxiation: The only thing worse than being found dead that way is being found alive that way. 

Sober craziness is still craziness, folks. 


In other news:
Gadhafi says All my people love me.
Bernie Madoff says I'm a good person.


Don't drink the water. It's a-catchin'!


(And, yes, I'm aware that this is a tragic situation. The man is obviously manic and an addict, but this ain't that kind of blog.)