Thursday, May 29, 2008

I'm sad.

I have to return Freaks and Geeks to the library. *sniffle*

On the upside, my bf offered to buy me a Wii yesterday. How awesome is that? Know what's not so awesome? My damn pride and inability to let people buy me things without me buying them things in return. So I said no.

But secretly? I really want a Wii so I can play rock band in my living room to my heart's content - by myself. And play all the Mario games. Now I'm sad and lame. Nice.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

I hate hot holidays.

I do. It's true. Memorial Day? Blows. 4th of July? Sucks ass. Labor Day? Slightly better than stepping in fresh dog doo.

It's not that I mind the sentiment behind the days. I'm all for memorliazing, celebrating independence, and the like, but why the hell do they have to be in the middle of the summer when it's so freaking' hot? This country is built around outdoor vacationing. Grand canyon? Outdoors. BBQs? Outdoors. Fireworks? Again, outdoors. These outdoor loving holidayers (is that a word?) have never had to holiday outdoors in Texas. Because it's hot. And when I say hot, I mean an Inferno type of hot. It was 98+ the entire weekend with like 1000% humidity. I don't know about anyone else but that equates horror to me - uncomfortable horror at that.

Mind you I didn't do the typical outdoor activities mentioned above for Memorial Day, but I did participate in the normal holiday hubris - sale shopping. And it was hot. Did I mention that? Did I also mention I have a black car that traps heat like a coffin? (Or what I'd imagine a coffin to trap heat like anyway.) Everywhere I went was hot. It was disgusting. It was so disgusting that I couldn't bring myself to hit Sephora, which is a thing unheard of in my world. I was tempted to go to the movies by myself during the day on Monday because it was so disgustingly hot. I figured the movie theatre would be cool and dark.. and cool. Only the movie theatre was so packed and I was so annoyed at driving around for 20 minutes looking for a parking space that I gave up and went home where I locked all the doors, closed the blinds, turned off all the lights, and turned my ac down very low. Guess what? It was still hot. I hate hot holidays.

If the powers that be are reading this, I still like the day off but can we please try and encourage more indoor activities like bowling or board games or something like that? I'd be much more apt to participate if I knew I didn't have to chance seeing shorts on men.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

And it's out.

I have a new niece. Her name is Chloe Grace. J has enlightened me on the problems that arise from naming a kid a virtue, so there's that. But the Chloe part is nice. And I'm fairly certain my brother and SIL don't know who the Kardashians are - another good point.

She weighed in at 8 lbs, 14 oz. She's huge! And she's 21" long. That's long, right? I mean, I wouldn't want an almost 2 foot long thing inside of me. (I wouldn't want any kind of "thing" inside me but that's another topic altogether.)

She was all puffy and stay-puff-mashmellow-manish and she had an eerie purple glow about her, but by the time we started to leave the hospital in the evening she was beginning to look like a normal baby.

FYI: don't go look in the nursery when the baby makes their first trip there. The mean nurses stick utensils up the baby's butt, poke them with sharp needles, and scrub their poor, little head with a loofa. Boo to mean baby nurses! I wonder what they shoot them with? Rana - any help? I never knew babies got a shot immediately after they were born.

My brother has 5 kids now. Take a moment to ingest that. 5 kids. It's completely bizarre. They were all there at the hospital for pictures and introductions and what not. It was a nice scene.

And then. I won't go into the details but suffice to say that I love my mother and she is a much better person than I will ever be. Don't get me wrong, she's completely batshit crazy sometimes, but I know I can never have the patience and strength that she has. She's a much better person than me. As I sat in the backseat of our car (filled with my mom, my dad, my oldest nephew, and my grandmother), completely filled with rage and practically bruising myself to keep my mouth shut, I gained a whole new level of respect for my mom. My dad better not give her cancer with his goddamned cigar smoking. (That last bit was a completely unrelated aside.)

So there were some highs yesterday and there were some serious lows. I'm choosing the forget the lows and focus on the highs. Yea a baby! Yea a newfound respect for the mom! Yea a baby!

And um, is it wrong that I want to hug and kiss the baby and make her love me more than anyone else? I don't want to breastfeed her or buy her clothes or anything but unadulterated, compulsive love? Yeah, I'll take that.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Apparently I only hear what I want to hear.

So sayeth the mother.

Background: my brother is about to have his 5th kid. Typo? Nope. He's on wife #2 and this is her 3rd kid with him. Alot of numbers? Yep. They're due Wednesday. (They? When did pregnancy become his and hers? She's the one pushing a disgusting, covered-in-all-kinds-of-bodily-fluids thing out of her special place. How does he get to lay claim to this?) This pregnancy has created all kinds of hilarity and um, other stuff, some of which I've posted about. For instance I was home for Mother's Day the other weekend and my dad was talking to my brother on the phone. I hear: "She lost her what?" and then my dad abruptly hands the phone to my mother. I asked him what my brother was talking about. My dad tried to act like it was no big deal but I could see the involuntary shudder as he repeated: "She lost her mucus plug." I don't want to be 12 or anything but... ewwwwwww!!!! (My dad is not Hank Hill but it's the closest cartoon character out there that comes close to describing him, so you can imagine what it took for him to repeat the phrase "mucus plug" to me.)

Anyway. Back to my original story.

So Sunday night my mom calls me about 10:30 (middle of the night for her) to tell me my SIL is having contractions and all that jazz. We decide to reconvene in the morning (because my mom doesn't want to sit at a hospital all night) to see how things are going. In my mind contractions = birth, so I'm thinking they're having the baby that night.

Monday morning rolls around and I speak with my mom around 7:30 a.m. I specifically ask her if she's talked to my brother. I want to know if the baby's born yet or what. She says she has not talked to him since the night before but to get my stuff together and meet her at my grandmother's house (a halfway point where we'll rendezvous before going to the hospital). I repeatedly call her over the course of the early morning asking if she's heard from my brother. Everytime I call she tells me she has not talked to him. I call in to work and tell them I'll be out because the bro is having the baby and all that (I prepared them ahead of time that I travel to family events like these). As I'm in my car driving towards my grandmother's (over an hour away), I decide to call my brother myself to see if he'll answer my call.

He does and he tells me they're still at home because the doctor won't see them until they meet "criteria," whatever the hell that means. Oh, okay. So they're not at the hospital and they haven't had the baby yet and for all that, it could be days before the baby comes (or at least until Wednesday when they'll induce if necessary).

All of that is fine except that I've already taken off work and I'm on my way out of town. I decide I'll turn around, head back to work, and explain the situation to my boss. He won't care. I also decide I should call my mom and let her know what's up so she doesn't rush off to the hospital. I call her and her reaction? "Oh yeah, I knew all of that." Me: How did you know that, Mom? Her: I talked to your brother this morning.

WTF??? Why the fuck was she telling me to travel over an hour to meet her to go to the hospital when she knew nothing was happening? And why did she keep telling me she hadn't spoken with my brother and knew absolutely nothing when in fact she'd talked to him and knew absolutely everything? And why the fuck (did I mention that word already?) was she telling me to waste my precious, precious gas to come meet her when I'd have to turn around and go home when there was. no. baby.?!?!

Her reaction to my outrage? To tell me that she had indeed told me she talked to him. And not only had she told me she'd talked to him but she'd told me what he said (i.e. no baby yet). I very politely (ahem) disagreed with her and she informed me that she wasn't going to argue with me, because I only hear what I want to hear.

You know what? I'll tell you about 5,000 things I did not want to hear: 1) I did not want to hear that I had to call in to work when in fact I did not; 2) I did not want to hear that I had to drive halfway out of town when I did not; 3) I did not want to hear that I had to get up early out of my comfy bed to go to a hospital where a baby was not coming; 4) I did not want to hear that I had to put on make-up on a Monday morning (a task I usually leave until Thursday) when in fact I did not. (Because, see, if there was a new baby there would be pictures.); 5) I did not want to hear that I had to wear contacts on a Monday morning, which I usually don't wear due to the overuse they get on weekends, when in fact I did not. (Again, pictures. And a lot of driving in a lot of sun = sunglasses = need for contacts.); 6) I did not want to hear that I had to coat my entire body with spf because I was going to be driving in the sun all day and I can't afford to have any more cleavage wrinkles (thanks again J) when in fact I did not have to wear spf on my boobs at all, given the short, short drive to my work on normal mornings; and 7) I did not want to hear that apparently my mother is completely, out of her mind crazy, because she doesn't have long term healthcare insurance and I do not want to take care of her ass.

*brushes sweat and furrow off brow* I feel better now.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

I missed Bea Arthurs Birthday!

How could I? I'm such a bad fan. It was two days ago and over at thebestweekever.com they have her top 10 moments. In honor of her birthday and the upcoming SATC reunion, I thought I'd post this video: Bea's take on SATC. Although, to be accurate, Golden Girls was the original SATC so no remade needs to be made... but since it is:

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

My errant phone is embarrassing.

I had Pilates this morning. I woke up at 5 a.m. with a head pounding and ovaries hashing it out over unpaid electricity bills. (I named my ovaries Stella and Joe. I figured it was very Tennessee Williams-esque up in there, so I named them accordingly. Stella and Joe decide to get angry and fight about stupid shit about once every three months. They used to fight more frequently but they've been on anti-depressants so it's now down to a few times a year. When they fight they throw everything out of their vacation home and toss it down the garbage shoot. It's annoying but ya know, ovaries/uteran vacation homes, right? What are you going to do?)

Needless to say I was not in the mood to be all bendy this morning - especially at a god awful early hour. I decided to text J and tell her I wouldn't be making it. My phone has a tendency to send my text messages to random people. I'll specifically pick someone from my contact list to text and when it's sending it will send a message to my mom, for instance. This morning I was very careful and pulled J's name out of my contact list. I deliberately typed: "Period. Headache. Gross. Staying in." As I was tossing the phone back into its trusty bedside drawer (where it sleeps), it starts singing at me tell me I have a return message. I look and it's from my gay boyfriend C. Love him! He writes me: "And it's raining. I'm staying in too."

Shit. My phone sent my period excuse text not only not to J but also to a boy! Argh! Luckily it's C and he totally understands but still. Is it really necessary for my phone to inform my entire contact list of the goings-on of Stella and Joe?

I need a new phone...

Thursday, May 08, 2008

I'm a natural disaster dream hoarder...

Back when Katrina happened I had nightmares that the city I was living in was flooded - like Noah's Ark flooded. I had them repeatedly. I have various other natural disaster dreams anytime I focus too much on how terrifying it must be to have your world destroyed by forces you can't control, i.e. mother nature.

Give the above precipice, I had a dream last night involving a huge tornado that started out looking like a hurricane on a doppler map. I was in a high rise hotel (or apartment building?) when I looked out the wall of windows and realized a huge ass tornado (in my dream I called it a twister) was coming right towards the building. I grabbed the two people I was with and high-tailed it to the stairwell. While I was doing so I called the front desk and told them a tornado was heading for us and for everyone to get in the stairwell. (In my dream I was secretly slapping myself on the back for being so prepared with all my tornado safety knowledge.)

We were in the stairwell when the tornado hit. It hit the building and made a sound not unlike a really big bird thudding into a window in my office building. Then the building started going down. Not down like an imploded casino or something but down like the you'd imagine the leaning tower of piza would go down - all sideways and what not. In my head, again, I started thinking about how in Titanic Jack knew exactly what to tell Rose to do when the boat hit the water (a-I'm very cerebral in my dreams and b-Titanic, wtf?), and I started panicking. I realized I have no safety knowledge on what to do if a building falls down. It occured to me that we should probably have run down a few flights of stairs to get closer to the ground but it was too late at that point. I also, in my dream, moved the vending machine (that was naturally in the stairwell) to the direction the building was going down so it wouldn't smush us. (I've watched a lot of Black Sheep in my time.) But other than that? I had nothing. It was terrifying.

The last thing I thought before I woke up? As I was huddling in a corner with other girls (all girls in this dream and I was the Alpha), I thought that I should probably try to call my mom and tell her I love her because I might die there. But then I thought that my cell probably doesn't get very good reception in the middle of tornado. And then I woke up.

This dream has created several results in its cause and affect nature.

1) I'm extremely tired today due to lack of sleep. Everytime I tried to go back to sleep this morning I was in a falling building in the middle of a tornado.

2) It created a desire for a new phone plan that has all the fancy text messaging for free, so I can contact people in a tornado. I text now but it costs $$$ and if I'm going to be having natural disaster dreams, I really need to be secure in my ability to text and check email for free, ya know? Less potential catastrophes in nightmare land.

3) The dream made me wonder if it was a bad omen or something. Is this a sign that I should put off girls' night and get new tires before my long, car trip home tomorrow morning?

4) Perhaps I actually should buy one of those Worst Case Scenario books. I like to be prepared and it seems I know shit about falling buildings. I bet that's in there somewhere.

5) When I called my mom over lunch to tell her what a sweet daughter she had in that my last thought before death was to call my dear mother and tell her I love her, she replied, "hmmm, I don't know how cell phones react in the middle of tornado. I've never had anyone call me during one."

Three cheers for Mother's Day! (I don't know the html tags for sarcasm but they should be entered before three and after day. Oh and probably before and after this parenthetical reference.)

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Too many gifts to buy in May!!

I have a ton of occasions this month. Since everyone else gets away with lists, here's mine:

1. B's bday - bird theme: bird necklace (by the Naughty Secretary's Club - they're not naughty, just crafty) and a parrot beer bottler opener (opens bottles with its beak).

2. Cousin's college graduation - umm.... necklace? I have no clue. She's getting a trip to Hawaii from her parents and she really doesn't like anything material, so what? I have no clue. She's a recently converted Dem and has no clue what to do with her life, so maybe Colbert's book? Her graduation is on Saturday. I'm totally stalling!

3. Mother for Mother's Day - DVDs. She was easy and very specific. Now I just have to buy one more to complete her list. Apparently she's decided she likes musicals. I threw out a couple of choices and she hadn't ever heard of them. Musicals indeed. Translation: The Sound of Music.

4. Grandmother for Mother's Day - an umbrella. Sounds bizarre but she wants one. A "cool one" as she put it. I'm pretty sure my definition of cool and hers are not at all the same. I got her some other summer/outdoorsy things to go along with it.

5. Brother's Bday - inflatable moose head. He's big into hunting (although the only thing he's ever killed was on a hunting ranch thing, comparable to a loaded lake for fishing). He has two deer heads hanging in his living room. I can't believe his wife let him put them in there (haha! once a bird flew in their house and perched/shit on the antlers of one of them), but maybe she has pregnant brain and wasn't coherent enough to put up a fight. Anyway. I'm always giving him shit about having dead animals on display (I think it's vulgar, tacky, and plain old disgusting), and an inflatable moose head is just what he needs.

6. Brother's 5th kid, bday tba - she's due this month so I have to come up with a gift. I already bought a couple of onesies in newborn, 3 months, and 6 months sizes. What else? I can't afford anything on her registry (see earlier post) and one of her friends already got her all the bath stuff I was planning on buying. She'll have a new baby when I give it to her. She won't care about gifts. Right?

7. JM's bday - oh god. I have no clue what to buy. I think pretty much everything he likes is crap (sorry JM but it's no secret), so what should I get him? See he's into toys. All kinds of annoying, blinking, drive-you-to-drinking toys. I guess I'll go to the local toy store and buy the thing that's most likely to give me a seizure. That ought to work.

8. Nephew's hs graduation - my aunt gave me $100 when I graduated high school. I thought I was rich. Hell, I'd still think I was rich if someone gave me that for a gift. I cannot afford to give my nephew that much $$$ for a gift. I'm poor. I'd volunteer to pay for half of his books when he registers for college (thus delaying the gift-giving although it would be substantially more than $100), but given his desire to do absolutely nothing (legal), it might be a crappy gift. 'Cause he wouldn't use it, see? 'Cause he might not go to college? I suppose I'll just give him cash but I'm afraid of what he'll use it on. Oh well. Not my business I suppose.

Great. Now I'm depressed.

On Chesil Beach

I just finished reading On Chesil Beach. (I don't know how to accentuate book names so I'm italicizing. Forgive me if I'm wrong. I feel like it should be underlined but that looks dumb.) It's a short novel by Ian McEwan (of Atonement fame). It was on the NYTimes list of 100 greatest books in 2007, so I picked it up on my last trip to the library. Of course I haven't finished reading any of the books I checked out, but when I went to renew them online I realized someone else requested OCB and I can't renew it! So it's due back Thursday. Today is Tuesday. Guess what I did over lunch? Read OCB. It's that short.

It's really quite good. I read Atonement and saw the movie but I never really got the hype. Obviously McEwan is a great writer but it wasn't really my cup of tea. There was too much of modern lit in there for me to fully appreciate it. I can't stand all the sacky, emotional, whiny crap that goes into most modern fiction. (By sacky I mean balls and their apparatus/containers.) But I really enjoyed OCB. Maybe it's because it's about sex, maybe it's because it's short, or maybe it's because it's good. I'm not sure. Either way, I highly recommend it if you're into two virgins doing it for the very first time on their wedding night, a night which ends very disastrously due to the above description.

It just goes to prove that you really should do it for the first time in high school when everything is awkward to begin with. It saves everyone a lot of trouble.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

I learned something new on Saturday night.

I saw Baby Mama - or is it Mamma? - Saturday night and I learned what a "taint" is. I had to ask but that's what asking is for, no? My friend J tried to tell me it was your perineum but I didn't know what that was either. I am stoopid. But a little more thorough explanation helped me figure it out. I call it the "you've missed" spot but apparently that's what taint means anyway (an ineffectual stab with a lance).

Don't say I never taught you anything. Or maybe you already knew. Oh well. Consider yourself refreshed.