The Official Statement

All I have to really say on the subject is: screw you NaBloPoMo.  You are not the boss of me. Truly, the very idea of NaBloPoMo goes against everything this blog stands for and I decided it was high time to fight back with non-violent protest.

Yeah.

I haven't blogged at all this week.  Mostly because I was busy with being alive off the internet.  Or because sometimes I forgot.  Both things are legit when we're talking about procrastination skills.

On the bright side, Friday is just around the corner.  And on Saturday I'm getting my nails done which will probably inspire me to write a blog about how much I love my nail salon.  Because I love them.

After the weekend comes 2.5 days of labor and then VACATION!  So YAY!

Also, last night I had a dream that Mike and I bought a big tacky house with a yard and we brought Apple over and she morphed into a hot pink stuffed animal and kept climbing up the walls and fences like a monkey - and then she slipped out of the door of our new house and she ran up the side of the fence and hopped in a tree.  I had to climb up the tree to get Apple - the barking wiggly stuffed toy.

When I woke up and saw the real Apple, I was confused because she wasn't pink and made of cotton and polyester.  It was really strange that I expected to see a living stuffed animal toy in Apple's place and it threw me off for a while.

I think my mind is still in dreamland.

 

(photo courtesy of Flickr user: .Purf)

Dog V. Pillow

No time to really blog tonight... but I'm sticking to the one blog post per day for NaBloPoMo as well as I possibly can, so I present 1:32 minutes of Apple digging into a pillow.

She had skin allergies so we had to put a spray on her stomach area to calm her itchies.  This is how she reacted (and how she reacts to freshly washed bedding, eating a tasty snack and other random things... it entertains me, but she's my dog, so practically everything she does entertains me.)

Have a great weekend! :)

The White Stuff

I love mayonnaise. The really quality stuff... it makes almost everything taste better and  I feel like a good chunk of the world is with me on this one. I eat it in moderation only because of the potential health issues related to indulging in it too much. I think as a condiment, mayonnaise is under appreciated in the US and more disastrously, Mike HATES mayonnaise.

It's become a joke when I'm preparing a sandwich for him (or an artichoke, or tuna salad or egg salad or veggie dip, or...)  I'll ask "would you like mayo?" as I scoop it onto my delicious sandwich.  And he'll reply, "horf" and begin gagging.  I haven't tried to convert him - he's so repulsed by it that I don't think there's any way I could do anything to convince him how tasty mayonnaise can be and part of me just believes he must be lacking a certain part of his brain that really gets the awesome of a good mayo.

Part of it is mental - he can enjoy a well cooked dip or meal enhanced by the taste of mayo and it's not until the moment he sees the empty jar of mayonnaise in the trash bin that he can no longer enjoy the food he was scarfing only moments ago.

I'm tempted to make my own mayo and from reading recipes it seems really easy but I'm sure I'd probably manage to mess it up. Anyone have a killer recipe?  A delicious aoli?

I dislike a lot of foods and condiments, but I don't think any of them repulse me the way that Mike is repulsed by mayo.  I really (REALLY) hate peas... but I love split pea soup - it's a pea texture not a pea taste thing.  Maybe the closest thing I've got is olives.  Mike can eat olives like they're candy.  I have tried time and time again to like them without success.  I'll take a bite and really try to enjoy that greasy squishy dirt taste that Mike seems to love so much but it doesn't click.  How can olive oil taste so wonderful when the fruit it's born from tastes like mud goo?  It doesn't connect for me.  Tapenades make my tongue twitch and a stray olive on a slice of pizza makes me lose interest in finishing the rest of my meal (ok, I'm exaggerating... I'm  really good at eating around them.) So I suppose on a small scale I can relate, but it's a very very small scale.  A miniature scale... for dollhouses.

Blog 2. Woo Hoo.

Before I went on our trip to Iceland I was going to the gym 5 days a week.  F.I.V.E.  Never in my life would I have expected to go to the gym 5 days in a row, but I was doing it, for months... and for a while there, I was actually really enjoying it.

After Iceland (in August) I haven't been able to get my act together and have maybe gone to the gym a total of 8 times. Something happened and now I can barely make it 20 minutes working out without my brain screaming "THIS IS TAKING TOO LONG!!!!"  My body remembers the workout, it's not too fatigued and getting back up to my old pace isn't hard... my brain just refuses to get on board with the plan.

I work out at a really small gym - there are at most 4 other people working out there at the same time as I am.  The cardio machines each have their own TV with DirectTV satellite which used to be enough to keep my brain distracted long enough for me to get in a solid hour of cardio or weight training.

It no longer does the trick.  I can find a boring TV show or rerun to distract me as I work out in the evenings, but as soon as a commercial comes on my brain starts fidgeting and saying "I want pudding", "I want to watch something else", "I could be sleeping", "I bet things are more fun anywhere but here." Once the gym-brain fidget starts I can't get it to stop even when the commercial break is over.

I've resorted to bringing a portable DVD player - which does the trick... for now.  I've been bringing TV on DVD, so I know I can watch either a 2 episodes of a good comedy or 1 drama and get through my cardio work out without fidget brain turning on.  Thanks to this, I've been able to get back up to 3 days a week. 

Now the problem is weight training... bored in 3,2,1... ADHD GYM BRAIN ON THE LOOSE.  My brain starts saying "I don't wanna lift that", "I don't wanna move over there", "I don't wanna do pull-ups."

I can't watch DVDs while I'm weight training but moving a lot does nothing to calm my reluctant brain and my brain has memorized 90% of my work-out motivating music on my Mp3 player so I spend half of the time cycling through the music to find something the brain actually wants to hear.

Maybe what I need is a virtual world game...where I'm, I don't know, battling hoards of mutant alien badgers with a 25lb sword for an hour and in the process doing weight training.  Quick.  Someone.  Invent that for me - the gym-brain waits for no one.

OH EM GEE

I forgot to blog yesterday! 

Dang.  Grocery shopping and pacific standard time and HYMIM and new Conan... it all messed with my head and I forgot!

I'll blog twice today.  And my second blog will be awesome.  Or maybe it will be below average.  I can't make any promises.

In reparation I offer you this:

http://gawker.com/5685128/is-beer-the-reason-any-of-us-are-alive-right-now

and this:

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/


Forgive me.

Sunday

Being that Sunday is the day before a Monday, I find it hard to do much of anything.  My goal on most Sundays is to make it to Church and then do as little as possible for the remainder of the day.  Mostly I end up wallowing in my dread of Monday.  I know that most people agree that Blue Laws originated to enforce religious standards, but I might argue that Blue Laws were put into place by people who hate Mondays so much that they wanted an excuse to not have to do anything on a Sunday. 

Sure, I need to go grocery shopping, and it would probably be more convenient for me to do it now than it would be to go after work on Monday, but it's Sunday... and I'd rather not do anything.  Without Blue Laws, you might call me a lazy slacker, but if I lived in an area that still had Blue Laws, you'd look at me and be like, wow... she's great.  She can't shop on a Sunday because the grocery store is closed so she's willing to do it on Monday after a long day's work.  Give her a pony.

I've always wanted a pony.

Although, Blue Law would mean I'd have to assemble my own lunch today... which is not something I like to do on Sundays.  So, I guess I'll forgo the pony and let you call me a lazy slacker every Sunday.  Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some wallowing to do.

The Vet

We took Apple to the vet this morning for her regular check up and to get her up to date with her travel certificates since we'll probably be taking her with us when we head out to Chicago later this month.  

She's a funny dog.  Every time we go to the vet,  she knows the direction we're going but doesn't know until we get there that we're not going to the bark park  -  they're in the same direction about 2 minutes away from one another.

Even when we pull into the parking lot that is so obviously not the bark park, she  seems to recognize the outside and gets excited, whiny and wiggly and she begs to get out of the car.  She'll drag us on the leash towards the front door but as soon as we open it and step inside,  it all comes rushing back to her:

"wait.. this....THIS IS WHERE THEY PUT THINGS IN MY BUTT!"

We walk up to the front desk as she is now pulling on her leash in the opposite direction - trying to get back out towards the door  from whence we came - half obsessed with the other dogs in the waiting room, but more preoccupied with getting the eff out of that office.  

This is why it requires both Mike and I to take Apple, a 9lb dog, to the vet.  One to wrangle her and one to take care of business. While I'm checking in, Mike is dragging Apple to the waiting room.  Apple fidgets and whines - we imagine she's trying to reason with us at this point:

"Seriously guys.  We can go home now.  We're cool.  Let's just go before anyone notices we were even here.  But before we do that, can we just go over there and sniff that Pug's butt - just real quick and then we can just get out of here.  OK, fine.  I don't need to smell that Pug's butt.  Let's just go.  See.  I make sacrifices, you make sacrifices.  Let's go."

When the vet assistant comes out to get us, we walk Apple back to the weigh station and give her the command to get up onto the scale.  She obeys the command instinctively only to realize that as soon as she steps onto the scale she has now willingly participated in her vet appointment.  This sends her into a panic and she jumps off the scale of doom.   We put her back on - a whopping 9.8lbs - she's gained .8lbs.   Piggy.

We're directed to the room where she'll get her check up and the vet assistant takes her temperature by thermometer... in the butthole.  This is the funniest part (for me) because Apple doesn't move.  She's frozen solid. Her eyes go wide and they roll sideways to look at the vet assistant without moving her head.

"W. T. F."

The rest of the appointment goes normally with Apple leaning as far away from the vet as possible, but she's good - no snarling or snapping no matter how much they poke and prod her.  Every time the vet or his assistant would leave the room to get something, she'd  immediately rush towards the door, scratch and then look back at Mike and me:

"Ok guys, now's our chance... they won't notice if we leave now."

The vet comes back with Apple's bordetella vaccine - which is a spray in the nostril.  Apple sneezes dog snot all over my arm right after it's applied and gives us all a look:

"Oh god.  What was that... that was..."

This look becomes a glare as she realizes...

"You did this to me.  You two. "

At this point, she's stopped her little nervous shake because obviously her anxiety has been replaced with animus. Her evil Eric Cartman inner voice has returned.

"I hate you so very very much."

The vet's assistant brings out a really good treat - the kind where on any other day of the week Apple would have scarfed it before anyone had a chance to take it from her.  Apple turns her nose up at the offering.  The vet's assistant tells me I should try.  Apple looks at me:

" You are dead to me."

We hand Apple off to get her nails clipped while we go back out to pay up and pick up flea meds, etc.  When she comes back in the arms of the vet's assistant 3 minutes later, she's happy as a clam.  She knows it's all over and she is totally pumped to see us again.  God bless dogs.

She still wants out, but since I've got to wait for certificates and vaccination records, I tell Mike to just take her outside.  He does.  And she's back in about a minute.  Thus begins the final ritual at the vet - the Apple in, Apple out walk-a-thon.  

I've still got to pay up and Apple wants out.  So Mike takes her out.  As soon as she's out,  she pees a smidge and realizes I'm not outside and wants back in.  As soon as she's in, she realizes THIS IS WHERE THEY PUT THINGS IN MY BUTT! and wants out.  As soon as she's out, she pees a smidge, realizes I'm again inside and wants back in.  This goes on and on until I've finally finished things up - so maybe 10 minutes of Mike walking in and out of the door... with tiny tinkles between.    

So now we're back and I've got to figure out how to give a dog that is only occasionally food-motivated an oral tablet.   A piece of cheese just doesn't cut it.  I've even hidden tablets in bits of chicken only to find the chicken abandoned on the carpet minutes later and her tiny face watching it from under the bed.  She knows it's evil.  She knows there's medicine in it. 

Her favorite human food treat is scrambled eggs which she doesn't get very often... so I'm giving that a shot.  

Apple, you are one spoiled dog.

Whapow!

I just learned how to make a towel whip - aka. a rat tail whip.  Believe it or not, there's a technique to this skill.




I was watching TV while swinging around my wet hair towel and convinced Mike he should let me practice towel whipping while he sat in the recliner.

Not only did he oblige, he gave me tips and pointers to get the whip motion just right and get that satisfying snapping sound.

And after 5 or 6 tries I NAILED IT!

Right on his knee.

POW... he's now got a red welt on his knee courtesy of my rat tail whip and I've acquired a new skill I should probably add to my resume.  He laughed and ouched at the same time while I did a victory lap around the living room. 

Skillz.

Good ol' AIM

Mike and I recently finished watching "Freaks & Geeks" (awesome - Netflix it if you haven't seen it) and have just started watching "Undeclared" as a follow up (even though it's not a follow up at all. They're both Judd Apatow TV projects, so it was kind of a follow up since we felt abandoned after Freaks and Geeks ended without telling us everything about everyone!!! WHY TV!? WHY!!!?)

Anyway, Undeclared follows a group of college freshman, circa 1999 or 2000, so the music, the clothes and the references remind me a lot of my freshman year in college.  I started looking through my old backup files from my old computer and found a small stash of old AIM chat sessions I had saved from late 1999 - early 2000 when AIM chat was our Facebook.  Most of my really hilarious (in my touched up nostalgic memory) conversations were lost when my parents' computer was replaced, taking with it any funny AIM conversations I had saved on it.  I think I backed most of them up onto floppy disc... but who uses a floppy disc for anything nowadays?  The only ones that I seemed to still have were the ones I had e-mailed to myself after the chat which meant it took place in the University computer lab.

The first one I found was an AIM conversation between Mike and I.  We had talked about this particular AIM conversation before - he was up in the Central Coast, living in the dorms and had just broken up with his high school girlfriend.  I was kind of starting to date someone at my college,  but was still living at home and had not really talked to most of my high school friends in a while.  Here we logged onto AIM,   to reflect on our high school relationships and fess up to old feelings.  Seriously.  I don't remember thinking it was awkward... but reading the stuff I wrote now, makes me cringe... we were SO strange. 

Mike called me "man" a lot.  Like, "thanks man", "totally man", "you got it man", "talk to you soon, man."

At the part where I admitted to having a secret crush on him in high school and explained that I had just recently "got over it" I followed up with "I hope there's not weirdness between us now."

Wtf.

Who says that in real life?

Apparently me.

I mean, I married the dude!  Obviously, we're totally cool now and it turns out those feelings were kinda legit.  So why does reading this conversation now make me feel like hiding under the sofa?  Shouldn't I be feeling "awww... we were so cute?"  We tried to talk like calm grown-up adults, discussing old feelings as if it were no big thang and instead we come off like really really weird eighteen year olds.  Really weird.

 

I found another chat - between me and a good friend from high school (SunsetBBQ... you know who you are) in the Fall of 1999 - and I wrote the entire chat in ALL CAPS.  I WAS INTERNET SCREAMING THE WHOLE TIME.  What am I?  New?

So awkward.  

And while I'm tempted to delete them out of private embarrassment, I can't bring myself to do it.  It's like looking at me in another dimension.  I can actually read how stupid I sounded.  AND when I have grown teenagers that make me maybe want to bang my head against a wall, I'll be able to look at these lame things and put everything into perspective. Right?

I had read about a monthly open mic event done in NYC where instead of people reading poetry, they read pages from their childhood/teenage journals.  I would totally be down for that.  I've got to go find my journals at my parent's house somewhere. I think I have like 40 volumes worth of material.  I had a lot of crap to write about from the ages of 11 to 17 that NO ONE ELSE WAS ALLOWED TO READ.  Nail polish, boys, parents, tv, homework.  I'm sure it's thrilling.  And humiliating.  Well, the kind of humiliating that probably leads to humility.  So.  Not too bad.

Ack

This does not bode well for me.  Day two of NaBloPoMo and I've already got writer's block. 

You'd think I'd maybe write about voting or the election or something... but no.  As part of my civic duty, I voted, but I'm only barely interested.  Apathy? Maybe.  I don't care. Same as it ever was, I suppose the Talking Heads would say.

Work is still too busy and I don't like thinking about it when I'm not being paid to do so. I'm happy and grateful to be working, but I'm really looking forward to the end of November when my stressful work season will pause briefly and I can take a breath before it goes crazy again. 

Sometimes I think about going back to school and getting my Masters... everyone seems to be doing that or having babies... or both... which should make me feel like an underachiever, but really? Meh.  What graduate program? Uh. Probably napping.  I'd make an excellent Professional Napper... I just haven't found a program that really addresses my ideal field of study and I've never heard of anyone getting a decent salary for professional napping services. (And before you suggest it, medical studies are temp work - and they wouldn't pay well enough for someone with a Masters in Naptime.)

I'm really good at it so I'd have to ask for a ridiculously high salary for my napping skills. I could be the clincher of a professional nap-time endurance team. I often wonder if maybe my ideal cycle would be 24 hours awake, 24 hours asleep.  I'm pretty good at staying awake late and once I'm asleep, I've got no problems staying asleep.  Waking up and falling asleep are not as fun...obviously.

Sunday through Thursday I normally dread waking up the next morning so much that I fight to stay awake for as long as possible the night before.  I'll crawl into bed, burney eyed and yawning, alternating keeping one eye open at a time. Watching TV, browsing the internet, reading shampoo labels - anything so that I can enjoy my time after work for the longest period possible.  Irrationally I've convinced myself that the longer I stay awake, the longer it will be until I have to be back at my desk.  If I fall asleep at a decent hour, not only do I miss all the fun TV (this is my inner child talking, she doesn't know about DVR) but I will also be jolted awake by the sound of my alarm after what feels like 2 minutes of sleep.  I know this ends up coming back to bite me in the morning... when I've hit the snooze 7 times and am rationalizing 10 more minutes of sleep when I have to be at work in 15 (I've done it.)  Once I've stepped into the realm of REM, there's nothing I can do better.  10-12 hours of sleep is a comfortable Friday night/Saturday morning if I've got the time.  15 hours makes me feel like I've discovered the fountain of youth. 

Mike used to get annoyed when he'd wake up and be bored on Saturday morning and I'd still be sleeping, blissfully uninterrupted.  No alarms, no gardeners, no loud noises can wake me prematurely on a morning I don't have to be up before noon.  "How could I sleep away a precious day off?!" He would ask.

He finally came to understand that outside of social obligations, sleeping is my past-time of choice.  Where he might like to play video games or even be productive on a crisp sunny Saturday morning, I would like to continue my dream cycle well into the afternoon.   And if you had some of my dreams, I'm sure you would too. 

In  97% of  my dreams I am awesome.  Like I'm flying-ninja-pirate-sexy-Iron-Woman- and-Mother-Theresa-combined-into-one-mecha-warrior awesome.  2% of the time, I have work-related dreams that serve to annoy then amuse and 1% of the time I have nightmares.  Even the nightmares are kind of badass because I always wake up happy that it was a dream and then think, dude... I'm practically Stephen King... except I've never written any of my nightmares down.

I do feel guilty about sleeping in so much sometimes... mostly when Mike is hungry and bored and I wake up at noon to find the kitchen cleaned and laundry being done out of boredom.  Oops.  Eventually I'll make up for it with my nocturnal cleaning  though.  I have been known to suddenly have the urge to clean the ENTIRE house top to bottom at 11:45 in the evening... make the whole place spotless while Mike sleeps blissfully unaware... and then sleep in until 3pm the next day.  So.  It works out.  Mike can fall asleep in 10 seconds flat, but can't stay asleep more than 9 hours even if he tries.  I can take hours to really fall asleep, but when I get there, I make it count.

Ok, it's 11:50PM... I have to post this before I fail at NaBloPoMo on the second day of writing.  Leave it to me to procrastinate this early in the blog game and then write a weird blog.  

NaBloPoMo

New momma, Marci, over at "Marci Explains It All" wrote a blog today reminding everyone that it was NaBloPoMo... aka. National Blog Posting Month.  Essentially a challenge that casual bloggers take up to blog at least once per day every day in the month of November.  

I took on that challenge when I first started this blog, and I didn't do so well.  Not bad... but not good.

I'll be giving it a shot again thisNovember - and of course that means quantity over quality.  Probably a lot of short blogs.  And pictures of my dog.  

So.  Let's get this NaBloPoMo off to a good start... 

 

...With Apple in her Slave Leia costume.  She couldn't be at Mike's Star Wars themed 30th birthday party, but she got dressed anyway. Don't focus too long on the fact that her costume slave torso was too big for her tiny legs and that I ended up just draping it over her like a towel, lest we forget this dog is wearing a wig.  

A DOG WIG, PEOPLE. 

Nothing is better.

Except for Snooki Wookie.  Which was easily the best costume at Mike's Star Wars party... if not the funniest costume of 2010.  It kills me that I forgot to take a full costume shot of her full Wookie outfit dolled up in MTV's Snooki style.

Snookie Wookie / Snooki Wookie

It was a perfect Star Wars party costume - the ridiculous loads of self tanner, the Snooki inspired wig and bling glasses, the official Wookie fur and bandolier with functional pouch.... it all still cracks me up.  Snookie Wookie... hahahahahha!  This is why I always want to throw themed parties... you guys come up with some ridiculously hilarious outfits.

Anyhoo.  This and more to come for NaBloPoMo.