We are living in an anthropomorphic world...

...and I am an anthropomorphic girl.

Okay! Before I post the following exchange there are two things you need to know. 1) everything in our house has a voice and, 2) I have a problem with small appliances who don't pull their weight. I only have eight feet of counter space, so if you're not toasting or brewing at the highest possible level, you're out.

Keeping that in mind, please enjoy this exchange which took place this morning during breakfast preparations (which were behind schedule, I might add):

Kenny (surveying the slightly burnt toaster waffles): Uh oh. Watch out, toaster, your days might be numbered.

Me: Don't blame the toaster for that. It's because we both over-slept and I didn't keep an eye on them.

Kenny (to the toaster): I'm sorry, Toaster. Hey...where'd you get that dent? There's a dent in the toaster! Did you hit it?

Me: No! I didn't hit the toaster. Sheesh.

Kenny (to the toaster): Did she hit you?

Me: I DIDN'T.

The Toaster: yes! that lady hit me!

Kenny: Why did you hit the toaster?

Me: I DIDN'T. Are you really going to believe the word of a Target toaster over your own WIFE?

The Toaster: ow...

Kenny: But, the toaster said you hit it!

Me: I DID NOT. This is TOTALLY GOING IN THE BLOG, YOU KNOW.

Kenny: Well, if that's what it takes to clear your conscience...

Why I Hate the Gym in January

I've written before about how much I hate the crush of January resolutionists who make my gym a crowded hell. I hate it. I understand that everyone wants a fresh start but by mid-February most of them disappear anyway, so why can't they just start not coming in January and let me have some space already?

Last night I went to my usual 6:30 spinning class and by 6:15pm TWENTY people were lined up waiting to get into the spinning room. Twenty. There are only 24 bikes! Madness. Before I even got to the line I was already annoyed for the following reasons:

1. Snippy (a woman who used to annoy me at my old gym and now annoys me at my new one) was in the locker room having an incredibly loud cellphone conversation with her father. I know this because she kept saying, "OH, I KNOW, DAD. I UNDERSTAND. DAD, DID THE SHIRT WE SEND FIT YOU? DAD, IT'S AN EXTRA-LARGE, SO IT SHOULD FIT. OKAY DAD. OKAY. GREAT DAD. OKAY, DAD."

GOD. She was standing right next to me and kept glancing over like she was trying to catch my eye but I was to busying trying to mind my own business during all this because a) I don't actually know her, b) I was half naked, and c) I DON'T CARE. Really, I don't. And I'm naked, so stop looking at me!

After she finally hung up I could feel her looking at me some more and she said, to the air around my head, "Bless his heart!"

OKAY THEN. After that went toward the bathroom where I heard this genius exchange:

Girl #1: I just love that whole thing, "Women don't sweat, they glow!" you know?

Girl #2: Uh, what?

Girl #1: Haven't you ever heard that?

Girl #2: Uh, I guess so.

L:FHSIbuA:OEIrhIOWER;HSDNGKLN (This is the sound of my brain exploding.)

I finally got in the enormous queue for the great honor of riding a bike nowhere in a dark room while listening to New Zealand's idea of cool music (really, what is going on over there?) and eventually shuffled in and found myself a bike. The very last empty bike was next to me and it remained empty until the class was just starting, at which time an older-but-sporty-looking guy came in to claim it. I found out pretty quickly that he was actually the devil. The devil in bike shorts.

The class started and the dude started coughing. Not in that, "Ooh, I have a little frog in my throat" way but more in the "Did I just hack up a chunk of lung?" kind of way. The kind of coughing that has no business in a small crowded room with questionable circulation. Oh, that wasn't the worst of it though. I glanced over and caught him blowing his nose into his shirt. Oh my God. He actually pulled the collar of his t-shirt over his nose and used it like a handkerchief. I'm sure the look on my face was priceless. The guy on the bike on the other side of the Devil looked equally horrified and our eyes met in a moment of mutual horror.

Maybe, I thought, it was a one-time bad judgment call. Maybe he just got desperate this one time. BUT NO. He continued to cough in a hacking, phlegmy way all through the class and during each rest break he'd blow his nose in his shirt. I felt like taking one of the 80 billion free boxes of tissues that the gym has strewn about and pinging it off his head. I think he knew this because he left right before the class was over but not before I exposed to his nastiness for a full 45 minutes. WHY.

CAN YOU STAND IT?

My weekend was SO EXCITING. Okay, not really. It was satisfying though.

Saturday: I had lunch out with my Mom here, where we drank $9 glasses of wine and I ate moules frite. I adore some moules but every time I order it I feel like I'm playing shellfish roulette and I wonder, will this be the day I get a bad mussel? It hasn't happened yet but I'm sure my day is coming. After lunch we toddled over to the chocolate shop so I could buy an assortment of gross candy that nobody but me likes (chocolate covered gummi bears and Trolli gummi cola bottles, to be specific. See? Stop making that face.) and then we went to see Juno which is 100% worth the hype. I swears.

On the way home it was snowing and I took this picture of the house, but forgot to turn off the flash (get clicky to see the full size):



Cool, right? It's snowing magic, y'all!

Then I went inside and Stella arranged herself thusly:



I tried to tell her how much I love her with a hug but she glared at me and stalked off to listen to Morrissey and practice her goth eyeliner look.

Sunday I worked on the fucking bathroom of doom. Here's when I started. I KNOW SHUT UP.

Here's the progress I made along with a dust-filled self portrait:











The End.

Sixteenthirtysixish Candles.

Hi! It's my birthday today. I'm at work which seems sort of unfair, somehow, but they've all been very nice to me - flowers, cake, gifts, lunch out, I mean, dang. This is a far cry from a few years back when I had the worst/best birthday ever. It was the worst in terms of my job situation and the best because you can't put a price on a call from Anderson Cooper. Most of you know this story, but if you don't, read about it here.

I just got back from the cake-with-co-workers thing and everyone in the office took turns guessing my age. The first guess was a full FOURTEEN YEARS too young. I mean, I know I look young, but HELL. Maybe she was fucking with me, but she really seemed shocked that I was so creakily ancient. Clean living, is what it is. Clean living and lots of candy. Take notes, kids, for I just gave you the secret to longevity: CANDY.

I meant to write more but I'm all jittery from the cake and M&Ms and the twee little dessert I was given at the Japanese restaurant where we had lunch. It was a little white pod that came with a candle stuck in it and all the employees sang. Mortifying! But sweet. Fa ra ra ra ra. The dessert was a mysterious thing - some sort of frozen confection covered in an almost impenetrable paste coating. It was sweet but had no discernible flavor. My helpful Internet friends immediately concluded that it was mochi which I'd never heard of. How is this possible? How is there a dessert I've never heard of? I really must buckle down and start studying harder or something.

I got tagged...and it itches.

Oof, I got tagged by my friend KB, y'all. I'm supposed to tell you 7 random and/or weird things about myself, but really, is there anything left that y'all don't already know? I can't imagine I haven't already told you every nasty little thing. Okay, here goes:

1. My friend KB is one of my oldest online friends. Her #4 pretty much outlines how we met but we didn't actually meet in person until my husband and I hung out with her and her husband on our honeymoon in Savannah. They are good people. She suggested we spend a couple days on Tybee Island which was the best damn part of the honeymoon. Thanks for the suggestion, KB! And yes, I made my husband meet my ONLINE friend on our HONEYMOON. I am a catch. How did he get so lucky?

2. I'm pretty sure I don't want kids and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to change my mind. I'm a little tired of being told this decision is somehow "selfish". That makes no sense to me. Wouldn't it be more selfish to bring small people into the world when I doubt I really want them? Don't misunderstand, I like kids, I just don't want to raise kids.

3. My 36th birthday is next Wednesday and I'm kinda "eh" about it. I get dinner out and bread pudding, which is awesome. Moving on! Nothing to see here.

4. I'm reading a serious book about a difficult subject right now and when I read in public I secretly hope people are impressed. I can't even believe I just told y'all that. Embarrassing.

5. I hate diet Coke. I hate diet anything and I think artificial sweetener tastes like poison. If you offer me a beverage under the guise of it's original form and it's actually "diet", I will be very sad. I will also probably mock you a little bit.

6. The sight of a dead squirrel in the road will bring me to tears every time. There's something about the tiny, soft-looking lump of grey fluff that really upsets me. It makes me hope squirrels have a little heaven somewhere that's all oak trees and full bird feeders.

7. I can tie a knot in a maraschino cherry stem using only my tongue. I have skills, people. Skills you can't even imagine.

Have a great weekend!

Feeling Punchy.

Yesterday was an interesting day inside my head. I had some nice duality going on, for sure. The weather here is unseasonably warm and yesterday on my lunch break I took a walk across the campus to buy stamps. On my way back I paused by the lake and happily watched the ducks paddling around and diving for their lunch. It was peaceful, the sky was blue, and it occurred to me to feel grateful and lucky that my life is so easy, comparatively. I don't live in a war zone, I'm not poverty stricken, I have people in my life that love me, a roof over my head, etc. I stood there and felt very fortunate. Two seconds later I was annoyed as all hell because the tag in my sweater was itchy.

It's that week, though, so pretty much everything is annoying me. I get this internal frustration that hangs like a little black cloud over my head. Can you see it? I'm not really surprised.

Last night I went to yoga after work hoping it would chill me out. Good one! That's funny. Yoga isn't any good if you're all keyed up and grumpy, which I really, really was. Also, I was still in a world of pain from the mountain bike ride I did on Sunday. Every. Move. Hurt. It was starting to piss me off, but I decided to push through it and just concentrate on how I'd feel afterwards, when I was home eating dinner and drinking wine. Heh.

The woman on the mat next to me in class was older and was dressed in high-waisted, pleated mom shorts and a polo shirt. This doesn't seem comfortable to me, but maybe Downward Facing Wedgy is what she was going for. Either way, by the end of the class I was ready to punch her in the face. OM THIS, LADY.

What is my damage, you might wonder? Why would a peaceful, tranquil, body-bending experience such as yoga make me punchy? I'll tell you why - she was a moaner. Yes, through each and every pose she quietly moaned in a way that was both creepy and overly-intimate. She moaned, she groaned, she let it all out.

One of the reasons I enjoy taking yoga at my gym is because I can avoid Yoga People and still take yoga. She was Yoga People and she was grossing me out. I lay their trying to relax with clenched fists, which is pretty funny today, but not so much last night.

I didn't truly relaxed until last night during an episode of Hidden Potential when the prospective house buyer, commenting on green striped flooring, said, "This would be great... for turtle racing!"

TURTLE RACING. Oh my God, I love that. Still.

The Unbearable Lightness of Pastry

You guys, I bought this evil cream-cheesy chocolate muffin and inhaled half of it and the other half is looking at me. Please advise.

I have just been obsessed with food, lately. I mean, more than normal. I think it's the cold weather because I feel like a bear that is readying itself for hibernation, only I want cheese and chocolate instead of raw salmon (though I'd probably eat that too, especially if it were rolled around some cream cheese.) I remember a few years ago when I was Super Health Girl and was able to distance myself from food and view it in a distracted sort of way, as a source of nutrition and energy. Back then I would never have bought a muffin with a creamy cream cheese pleasure center. I wouldn't even have considered such a thing. Now I buy it and eat half and then I'm tortured by the other half's siren song: Oh, Amblus! How I looooove you. How I want you to... NOM NOM NOM.

Whoops. At least I don't have to listen to it anymore.

Righteous Ennui

What the hell. Why am I not at home in my monkey pajamas eating cookies? I have been unable to write due to the weight of having to live like a grown person again. Days and days of grazing on a selection of fatty holiday snacks, drinking inappropriate amounts of wine at inappropriate times, and staying in my pajamas all the live-long day has completely ruined me. I want the finer things back! Fuck this!

On the bright side, tomorrow is Friday.

That out of my system, I had a ridiculously nice holiday. I didn't do jack shit. Remember that Christmas when I spent my whole week off painting the kitchen? Har-dee HAR. THAT WAS STUPID. I mean, sure, the kitchen looks great and my bathroom still looks like this from when I stopped scraping back in July, but I had more important things to do. Things like:

- Sleeping. A lot.

- Perfecting my Wii tennis backhand.

- Playing with the new fancy remote that came with the digital cable/DVR we just got(!!!) which was not so much a Christmas gift as it was me making begging puppy noises until Kenny broke down weeping and told me to order the damn thing. Thanks, honey! Sorry I broke you!

- Eating fancy cheese and really good bread and ginger cookies and homemade chocolates and shortbread and spicy nuts and decorated sugar cookies. For lunch.

- Watching back-to-back episodes of my new crack, Flip That House. I also like Flip This House.
(I love that neither network could come up with a better title. If I had to come up with my own flipping show I'd call it Gonna Flip A Mother-Effing House, Yo! Or maybe, FLIP, FLAP, SOLD! Something good like that.)

- Looking at the insane stack of nice gifts I got and feeling overwhelmed by the stuff-ness of it and then immediately feel the need to go check out all the post-holiday sales.

- Going to see The Golden Compass with my sister. It was a great movie but could have used Daniel Craig more effectively, I think.

Ok, God. I'm so depressed. I have to work some more and then go to the gym and then make dinner and tomorrow morning I have to get up early AGAIN and shower and put makeup on and drive to work. Over and over and over again. Weeping.

Pictures:

Zephyr camped out under the tree the entire time it was in the living room:


Here is the living room looking all nice:


And, the aftermath:


Kenny is happy:


This is my sister's tree:


Pretty! I go cry now.