capers

*knock knock knock*

Person peeks through peephole

"Have you seen proof of majesty in the world? No? Would you allow me to introduce you to capes? I think they'll make a big difference in your life!" 

But seriously guys. Capes. They are where it's at for the fall. I love them and want to buy every one I see, turning myself from slightly crazy lady to full blown nutjob who possibly thinks she's a superhero.

Trina Turk and apparently sold out every where, which I know because I tried to order it from four places and each one cancelled my order. THAT HURTS GUYS.

The knock off of the Trina cape dress but look at the hidden pink! You could do sweeping arm motions to flash it.

 

 

I hate navy yet I would still knock down a small child to get to this cape. It also comes in "pale grey" which looks more like oatmeal to me but who cares, it's a cape!

Boden added fur to this one and good lord, that funnel neck would make me gag every time I wore it but I would somehow persist. (gag me because I can't wear turtlenecked things without dry heaving my way through the day)

Please can I have $865? Please?

Now you can cosplay as Little Red Riding Hood for less than $40.

In closing, can I have $865? Please?

pictures are coming

I assume it's common knowledge that jparks is an internet celebrity, right? If not, the short version is he's a Big Deal in an online video game called Eve, where he considers himself a badass spaceship pilot and I consider him lucky to be married. Every year for the last 5, he's traveled to Iceland for FanFest, a giant three day celebration of these badass spaceship pilots and the video game they love. 

At FanFest there's lots of this:

I tried the VR once but did it while he was also playing so there's no photographic evidence

and this:

Daily keynotes in an 1800 person concert hall filled with badass space pilots and their wives/girlfriends who have are desperately trying to not fall asleep

and some of this:

Booze because vacation

As my tolerance for sitting in keynotes, panels, and other assorted video game discussions is short I made sure to see and do plenty of tourist stuff as well. Cultural things like the penis museum and grocery shopping:

Those would be replicas of the Icelandic handball team's penises

So cultural! (get it, because it's yogurt. FYI: I'm cackling over this)

But really, the best thing I did in Iceland was having Viking portraits taken by a guy who works on Game of Thrones when they film there. I was skeptical, especially since my previous experience with a photo session of the not-family variety was a slightly traumatic one, but still I ventured on. Turns out I got super fucking lucky and something that could have gone horribly wrong went really, really well.

Fact: Vikings totally wore false eyelashes. 

Fact: Vikings swords are heavy, especially when held awkwardly

Fact: It's a good idea to drag a friend to do pictures with you especially if you barely know the person and things could potentially go horribly wrong

I made friends with one of the other badass spaceship pilot's girlfriends and somehow convince this very shy and reserved girl to come with me to take these pictures. I'm not going to lie, she managed to get the best picture from the bunch and I'm 100% jealous of it. 

Fact: She looks like a total loon and its the best thing ever 

To be honest, Iceland was never high on my list of places to visit. It's cold, small, and they eat shark that tastes like it's soaked in urine; those things are not exactly appealing. But after a week there I'm willing to admit that it's pretty amazing. Good job winning me over Bjorkland. 

It took me so long to write this post because my fingers frozen when visiting this frozen lake and just defrosted. 

In pictures (and a few words): Seattle

I had planned on writing a nice post about Erica and my trip to Seattle but the day after we came home I ran myself over to urgent care and had this delightful little set up done to my hand.

I guess I'm a Longhorn fan now

I think we can all agree that when you break your finger as you're just about to head to the airport for a child-free weekend, you just push through and get that shit checked out when you get home.

Without use of my left hand I can't easily type on a keyboard. I mean, I can type but I'm not sure you would be able to decode what I'm saying with all the random letters strewn throughout the text. So I'm blogging from my phone which isn't super conducive to long, wordy posts about how we did a bunch of stupid shit like run/walk a half marathon on a broken foot and busted hip and eat enough ice cream to cause lactose intolerance.

So in place of words please enjoy a photo tour of Super Social Food League's first road trip. We are currently accepting applications for an adult chaperone for our next trip. 

Erica never quite figured out that if I ask to take a selfie on a plane, the caption will have to do with us dying.

Fully functional toy oven that nearly gassed us on a daily basis

Someone, not me, was unable to control herself at the first bakery we visited. 

Okay, fine, it was a lie. I over bought too. But can you blame us? Check out those cheesy, paprika encrusted layers

We partied HARD. 

Look at me moving that broken finger like it's no big deal. 

The really adventurous runners used a chip as a utensil for eating cake. 

We participated in a half marathon that featured Blerches, nutella sandwiches, and birthday cake. 

 I blame the runners high for what happened after the race. We decided that going to three ice cream/gelato places for dessert was a good idea. We are truly stupid.

The implied "in moderation" is understood by everyone but us.

 It's seems wrong to me now, but once upon a time I really loved ice cream.

Molly Moon's Ice Cream. Stop #1. Such joy here.

Bluebird ice cream. Stop #2. We are starting to have doubts. 

It's weird, but it's almost like Erica doesn't want to make a choice at stop #3.

This was not staged, the only thing we could do upon arriving home was to be one with the floor.

in which I drown my feelings in juice

About three weeks ago I hurt my hip. Actually if you want to get technical I didn't hurt my hip, I was just standing in my living room when jparks let the dog into the house. 50 pounds of canine stupidity came running full speed at me and took me out. Less than a week later I was at the orthopedist for my hip because the situation was not good. I was told I should cut back on pretty much all lower body crossfit activities and see a physical therapist. I then made the brilliant decision to run a 2.5 mile relay to see if my hip could handle it since I had a half marathon planned for two weeks later. It could not. My physical therapist at that point told me I was allowed to do nothing. No swimming, no crossfit at all, no nothing. I was to sit on my ass for a month, only moving to do my rehab exercises.

You can imagine how well that went over with me. "Can I go to class and just..." "No!" "I'm signed up for a half..." "No!" "Well, what if I just.." "No! You are to do nothing. You need to heal otherwise you'll hurt yourself more and need surgery. Rest!" 

At this point I figured if I was going to sit around being miserable and mopey, I might as well add a juice cleanse into the mix! 3 days with no food! That is totally doable if I can't workout! I've done it before, I know it's possible! Other motivational self talk! Then I started cleanse shopping and suddenly the idea of three days of juice seemed really unappealing. And way too expensive. Eventually I settled on the Suja Essentials 3-Day Fresh Start because it was only three juices a day with small "meals" between them and it was cheap. Yay for cheap!

Juices purchased, raw almond purchased, rice cakes purchased, let's go!

Breakfast: Spicy Lemonade. Chased with black iced coffee. Because you know, I'm just not committed to this enough to stop drinking iced coffee. 

My body is as nourished as my backyard grass

Oh, hunger! Time to consult my booklet and see what my morning meal is! 20 raw almonds and an apple! Well, that's just sad.

Lunch: Green Greatness, which I was warned was the worst thing that a friend had ever tasted. My excitement was obviously high. 

Everything is better through a straw, right? Juice, cocaine, etc. 

Honest talk? It wasn't bad. Not great, but I would rather suck down another bottle of it before ever touching BluePrint Cleanse's beet, apple, carrot, and despair juice again.

Approximately 15 minutes after finishing the Green Greatness, hunger hit again. Time to really splurge on solid food. Boiled eggs, plain guacamole, and pepper. It was surprisingly good and filling. Thank you fine print in the booklet that casually mentioned non-vegan meal options. Also, thanks Trader Joe's for selling peeled hard boiled eggs. I'm pretending they aren't weird and sold to you in a giant bucket filled with chemicals that you repackage into less gross baggies. 

I don't even understand how I managed to take a picture before falling face first into the bowl.

Dinner: Vanilla Nutz. 

The unnecessary z did not add a tinge of idiot to the flavor

Vanilla Nutz managed to be watery and slimy at the same time but the taste was good. I think it must have been because of the inclusion of banana, which is not in the far superior BluePrint Cleanse's cashew vanilla milk. 

This one actually held me over the longest, thanks fat and extra calories! But still I got hungry and decided to go off booklet and have gluten free toast and almond butter. 

My definition of "meal" has really changed

I won't take you through the next two days because I can honestly say they were almost identical to day one. I did opt for a rice cake instead of the toast on the next days and one day I took my egg and sliced it onto the rice cake with a smear of guacamole under it. That's actually a snack I'm going to keep in rotation. 

On the morning after the cleanse, I woke up not really knowing what I was going to have for breakfast. I could have ANYTHING. No restrictions! So what did I have?

plain greek yogurt, hemp seeds, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, drizzle of honey, sprinkle of cinnamon

I'm actually embarrassed about how healthy that is and even more embarrassed to tell you that I like it so much that it's my regular breakfast now. That was my takeaway from this cleanse, that when I strip away all the crap I eat, I do actually find healthy foods to be good and filling. I paid ~$30 for the 9 bottles of juice so really, that's not that expensive to reset some pretty crappy eating habits. It's almost something I could see doing every few months just to keep myself in check or get back on track, though I don't know how I would have fared if I were still lifting weights and running. 

During this 3-day cleanse I sold my juicer to someone from Craigslist in a grocery store parking lot while Truman ate Cheetos standing next to me. It was hard not to laugh at the situation as I drove off drinking a pre-made bottle of Green Greatness. Convenience will always win with me. 

here be (not really) naked pictures

As you may have heard via my Instagram account, this blog post, or my twitter account, in July Erica and I did something really stupid, even by our super social softball league standards. We bought Groupons (already you should see red flags) for a photo session at Glamour Shots (bright red flags everywhere). But it turns out that I didn't pay much attention to the fine print of the Groupon and the deal was not for your typical headshot session, it was for a bourdoir session. (can you see anything besides red at this point?)

So, after much laughing until I was crying, Erica and I buckled down and decided to treat this session with as much sarcasm as we could muster. In her case that meant pictures dressed in a flannel shirt and Wayne's World hat and for me Google Glass, a Captain America shirt, and jparks' gaming headphones. We were also told to bring our husband's favorite coffee mug, which confused me. I mean I keep 2.5 gallons of iced coffee in my fridge at all times and even I don't know how a coffee mug equals sexy. But being a rule follower, I grabbed a Star Wars mug and packed it into the bags of props I had ready to go.

Are you incredibly turned on right now? I'm sorry, blame Vader.

The whole situation was pretty ridiculous in ways that even my "imagine every possible negative outcome" brain couldn't imagine. The photo taking part was actually less horrifying than I had prepared myself for but after that was over, and the salesgirls thankfully let Erica and me put back on real clothes, they sat us in a room which was delightfully decorated and just left us there. For a really, really long time. I still get nervous sweats just thinking about that damn "living room" and all the tasteful photograph options displayed.

 Don't forget, it's not too late to get that Glamour Shots credit card you've always dreamed about. 

 We were really having a great time, as I'm sure you can tell from this picture. 

After hours and hours and the hardest sell I've ever experienced, our freedom was finally bought and we were allowed to rejoin society. A few weeks later the three final images from my session arrived and I spent the rest of that day staring at them wondering exactly how much photoshopping it took to make my legs so fake. Also, are my legs really so bad off that they had to take pity on me and do free retouching, something they usually charge quite a bit for? Should I be more concerned than I am? What do you know Glamour Shots, that you aren't telling me?

That's a lot of build up for three images that really aren't much of anything. They aren't funny in the way that Glamour Shots from the early 1990s are. They aren't overly ridiculous like some of Glamour Shots boudoir pictures are. Don't get me wrong, they are ridiculous, but in a "You invested how much time, energy, and money into this?!?" sort of way.

Have I sufficiently built up and then crushed your expectations? Perfect, that's right where I want you.

I have no real way to close this except to say hello to all the new parents from preschool and kindergarten who have Googled me and landed here. Good luck looking me in the eye at Back to School night.


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