a post in two parts

Part 1
I woke up this morning kinda pissy. This is not a new occurrence, I generally wake up pissy, blaming jparks for everything I can possibly think of, ranging from: "It's your fault that I have to get up at 8am!" to "How come you let the democrats pick John Kerry as their presidential candidate when he was obviously the wrong choice?"

But this morning the pissy-ness was not aimed at jparks (he was confused by this), but more at life in general. Why? Because life, being the bitch that it is, has decided that jparks and I are doing well. Maybe even, great. And life did not approve of this.

So life sent us a letter from the IRS saying our taxes last year were wrong and we owe them our first born child. Or $9000. I forget which one since they sound exactly the same to me.

Add that to the obscene amount we owe this year, and I think jparks and I are going to tax jail. Anyone want to volunteer to adopt Lily and be her surrogate mom?

Part 2, Later in that same day

So I wrote that first part while at work. And with baseball season gearing up, I'm hella busy and was sidetracked by actual work and wasn't able to finish the post. In the time it took me to get something worthy of a paycheck completed, jparks had done his husband-ly duty and grabbed the IRS by the balls. "How did he do that?" you ask. Are you ready for it?!? He wrote them a letter!

ohhh, the IRS isn't going to like that. Not at all. A letter will teach them to ask for our money. They better back off or he'll write another, this time with a P.S. at the end of it. Damn IRS, you don't want that.

All kidding aside, jparks did a wonderful job of sorting out where the screw up was in last year's taxes and calmly and quickly started to correct the situation so I wouldn't have to lose much hair over it. It's times like this that I'm extremely glad I married him. Although, if I hadn't married him I wouldn't had the freak out in the first place. Ah-ha, I've directed the pissy-ness back to jparks! All is right in the world again.

I really should think about having a point before I start the post

I have a secret and I might lose my Democrat street cred when I admit this, but well, here goes.

deep breath

I didn't see An Inconvenient Truth.

I had really good reasons for not seeing it, the main one being that after the hurricane I saw a trailer for it and that trailer made me cry. The trailer. The 30 second long trailer. Made. Me. Cry. In a movie theatre. While I was alone. Surrounded by people that just wanted watch Friends With Money and not have to uncomfortably ignore the insane person sitting a row behind them.

I'm well aware the planet is going down the crapper and we're not doing much to stop it. I know this and it scares the hell out of me. Scares me enough that I wonder if I should even have kids. Why should I bring more people into a world this fucked up? Or why should I add more people to the problem?

Another reason why I didn't see An Inconvenient Truth is because I like to go to the movies and forget about how much life sucks and how we are all going to drown in the near future. I like to pretend that while I'm in the dark theatre there is someone actually doing something amazing to stop global warming and save us from our destructive ways. And when I leave the theatre I'll walk out into a world that is a bit cooler and frozen on its tips.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be preachy. People that don't believe in global warming aren't going to be swayed by me. It's just that lately this kind of crap has been on my mind. I guess I'm growing up. Although I still think the word poop is funny, so maybe not.

woe is not me anymore

Sorry everyone, I didn't mean to leave the "woe is me" post as the main thing facing the world on this here blog o'mine for the whole weekend. I hope I didn't make everyone think I'm a pathetic excuse of a human, hiding out in my apartment, scratching at myself, and occasionally pulling out lumps of hair as I mutter under my breath about the state of housing in the Bay Area. I mean, I totally did that, but I found time to do other things as well.

I would like to thank everyone that offered to drive around with me and help me search this vile area for a new place to live. It really made me feel better that so many people wanted to help me keep my sanity. But, in the end, the best decision for jparks and I was to just resign our lease. I know, I know, we could have found a better place to live, but really did we need to spend money on a deposit? Did we need to spend money on a rental truck? Did we need to kill our friends by making them lug around boxes of our crap? After much thought, we decided the answer to all of these questions was no and, with heads hanging low, we marched up to the rental office to take it up the ass resign our lease.

The other reason for resigning our lease was that I needed to stay put. All we've done since June of 2005 was move and I am sick and tired of it. I want to remain still for more than a year. I want to not have to update my address with my 391 magazine subscriptions. I don't want to get a new driver's license. I need to not move to another apartment even if it was in the same building. Humans are not meant to move as much as jparks and I have recently, dammit.

So stick around folks, in about a year you will probably see another "woe is me" post. Then I'll be ready to accept your offers of apartment hunting help. This also gives you a year to think of excuses as to why you can't come and help me move. And they better be good excuses or else I'm not going to accept them.

eloping, the low stress way to get hitched

This weekend I was talking to Lauren about how great eloping was. While I love going to weddings, I learned that planning one is so all encompassing that you will wake up in cold sweats thanks to nightmares about the chair ties not matching the exact color of the bridesmaid dresses. The only solution is to try to locate the Pantone number for the dresses to give to the reception place. And this must happen right then, at 3am, or else your wedding will be a failure and your marriage won't survive longer than 5 months.

Eloping was a piece of cake compared to that. Chapel? Booked days before going. Dinner reservation? Booked days before going. Dress? Ordered days before going. Flowers? Ordered days before going. The only thing we really did ahead of time was order those beautiful announcements.

I was telling her that I have no regrets about my wedding, but later that night I realized I did have one. Most couples take engagement pictures before the wedding and jparks and I did not. It's not the engagement picture experience I miss, it's the pictures themselves. Jparks and I really have no pictures of us. Us in a park. Us smiling cheesy in posed positions. Us being cute together.

I would love to have these done now, but isn't it corny to take family pictures when you don't have kids. Or, the real reason, can I justify the cost of a photographer to take pictures of just jparks and I? Probably not. You can justify that when you're planning a big wedding because really a photographer can be small change compared to other wedding expenses. But in daily life, a photographer is hella expensive.

So there you have it folks, my one and only wedding regret. Well, that and that I married a monkey.

No really, I love my husband

the height of excitement

Some days I pull up the admin screen to write a blog post and the words won't come to me. It's not that I don't have things to say, because blabbing away is my special gift handed down from God upon my birth. It's more that the words won't come to me in any kind of entertaining way and the last thing I want to do is bore everyone with lackluster tales of my weekend.

So instead of that, I'm giving you a couple of random things.

First a picture of me bouncing on the trampoline. Check out my shirt, it has humping unicorns on it.



And second, a random thought I've been pondering:
Why are yellow shoes so popular this season?

advice taken

As anyone who will stand still and listen to me whine knows, I've been feeling stuck in a fashion rut. The casual office atmosphere of California blind-sided me and I adapted to it much too quickly, with arms way too open. I went from wearing dresses and heels daily to living in jeans, tee shirts, and comfy shoes. And while I don't think there's anything wrong with any of those items, I was starting to feel boring. And old.

Desperately wanting help, I turned to a very nice person with a very helpful fashion focused blog. And boy, help is what she gave. She wrote a long post packed with tons of tips to cure me of my fashion ailments. It was such a helpful piece that jparks even read it, and today said "You're wearing an accessory, just like the post said to do!" (nevermind that I was wearing a necklace that I wear all the time. I was just impressed he read a fashion article)

I've taken Susan's advice to heart and am planning on stocking up on chinos, strappy sandals, and a jean jacket as soon as I can get to a mall. Or wrestle the credit card out of jparks' wallet. Until then, I'm shopping my own closet and hoping for the best.

And because she asked so nicely, here's a picture of today's outfit. I dug out some jeans from the Gap (I noticed after leaving the house that they are just a bit too long, even with heels), a silk shirt from Banana Republic, and some heels I had forgotten about. It was a simple outfit, but somehow felt better than my normal work uniform.


Now if I could only find the time to flat iron my hair and throw on some makeup I'd be unstoppable.

slow on the uptake

Recently some of my friends have announced their pregnancies and after the "Congrats for them" type thoughts, I started to think about how much trouble I would be in if I were pregnant. And then it dawned on me: I would be in absolutely no trouble if I got pregnant. It would not be a family scandal, no one would whisper behind my back about me not being able to keep my legs together, and some folks would even celebrate the news.

Yes folks, it only took 8 months of marriage for this thought to finally sink in: Holy crap, I'm a married adult! And can reproduce without the fear of being banished to a boarding school for nine months so neighbors don't see me all preg-o.

Now excuse me, I'm going celebrate my newly found adulthood with an ice cream sandwich, and I don't care if it's too late at night to eat one. No one can stop me! Hell, I might even jump on the bed while I'm eating it.

Being an adult rocks!

my newest hobby

People in the know probably think this is going to be a post about my sudden desire to take ballet class. (which I am going to start doing next week) Well people in the know, you are wrong. This post is about my sudden fascination with earthquakes. Actually, I'm not sure fascination is the correct word. "Obsessive about dying" in one might be more accurate.

Recently we had a mild earthquake out here. While jparks and I were actually pretty close to it, we felt nothing, yet our friends further away did. And even though it was very mild and caused no damage, it still got me thinking. And by thinking I mean, pissing my pants.

Before I get started let me say that, yes I know I should be excited about little earthquakes and not just because it was a great Tori Amos album, but because they release the built up tension and help ward off bigger earthquakes. I know all of this and yet I'm still terrified of earthquakes no matter what size they are.

So the other night we had that small earthquake and it got me thinking "Hey self, did you know you'll probably be killed in an earthquake. And self, if you don't die then you'll probably be trapped under a bookshelf and Lily will have to gnaw through your leg to free you. And she's got really tiny teeth, so that's going to take awhile." I thought maybe if I spoke to resident Californians about earthquakes they would help ease my mind, but that has not proven true at all.

One set of locals told me about how in the 1989 earthquake places were without power for awhile and how part of the Bay Bridge collapsed onto itself. (I refuse to drive across it) At no point in time did they ease my mind, but thankfully nothing they said was new information.

Then I tried another set of locals and that's when things turned ugly. The words that have done me in are "In an earthquake you are either the squish-er or the squish-ee." Guess what folks, I'M A SQUISH-EE! Holy crap, I live on the bottom floor of a three story building. I. Will. Be. Squished.

Now at night, rather than sleep, I stare at the ceiling willing it not to fall on me in an earthquake. And when I'm not doing that, I picture the couple that lives above us crashing through it and flattening me with their bed, which I imagine to be a four post one that will impale me on one of the posts. Then I immediately go back to willing the ceiling not to fall. In short, I'm having trouble sleeping at night.

And I'm not just obsessing at night. At work I'm on the second floor. This means I'm a squish-er and a squish-ee. I'm going to die while squishing another person. It's almost enough to make me quit, but then I would just be hanging out in my apartment all day where I'll die a squish-ee. At least dying at work I'm earning money so I'll die dressed nicely and in good shoes.

I need to find a new hobby quick.

be warned, I'm in a mood

Today I put on my underwear correctly, not inside out. While putting on my underwear inside out is not a normal problem, with the particular pair I'm wearing today, it is. They are stripy on the inside and the out and in the mornings, pre-coffee, I'm not much interested in examining my underwear to see if I'm putting them on properly. I'm much more concerned with not falling over when I lift one leg to put on the underwear. That, in itself, is quite the challenge.

Yet somehow this morning I managed to put on my double sided, stripy underwear correctly. I honestly think this is the first time I've accomplished this since I purchased the pair almost a year ago. I'm pretty darn proud of myself for finally putting them on correctly, although it's not the kind of thing you can boast to your coworkers about. The internet, yes. Coworkers, no.

And while we're on the subject can we eliminate the word 'panties' from our collected vocabulary. Too harsh? Okay, lets eliminate it from everyone over age 6's vocabulary. It's just too froufrou of a word for an adult to use. And it's also not a sexy word, and I would really like it if Victoria's Secret would stop telling me about their panty deals. I wear underwear, not panties and I also call a penis a penis, not a ding-dong or winkle.

Come on people, be adults with me.

a bunch o'crap in list form

This morning I saw a man wearing UGG boots. Part of me died instantly and then was thrown up into my mouth.

I never should have started recycling my way to Blogher. My kitchen is now overrun with bags of glass bottles, empty cans of soda, and plastic water bottles that need to be brought to the SMaRT Center, but that I never get around to taking.

I'm searching high and low for Cadbury Orange Creme Eggs. If anyone sees them please buy one and send it to me. Please

I noticed yesterday that, for a non-washing day, my hair was pretty decent. I still had to wrangle it into a ponytail, but it wasn't as greasy as normal. Real Simple was right!

When I lose 15lbs (I'm at 9.4lbs lost right now) I'm getting this skirt in the granny smith variety. That skirt has been on my want list for a while now, but I had no reason to buy it. I think it'll be a better way to celebrate 15lbs lost than eating this or this.

Dear god, don't those look tasty?!? Now I can't stop thinking about them. crap

And these. They weigh heavy on my mind as well.

mmm, carrots taste just as good as fudge

it's part of having a blog

I've been feeling kinda blah lately. It's not happening for any reason that I can put my finger on and it seems to have struck right out of the blue. It bothers me that I feel like this, especially since life seems to be going so well right now. Jparks is doing great at work, I'm doing great at work, I'm losing weight, we are both kicking ass in trapeze class, and at least my cats love me.

But still the blah feeling is there. Nagging at me when I sit and watch tv. Nagging at me when I try to relax with a book. Nagging at me when I visit my holiest of holy grounds, Target. It's a heaviness on my shoulders that I can't knock off no matter how much I bounce around on the trampoline.

I feel like sitting on the couch with a carton of ice cream and watching every episode of Scrubs back to back, except I know that will make the blahness worse. I know this is just one of those things that needs to run its course and pass without any pushing from me.

Of course, a new outfit might help it run its course a little faster.

we'll be hosting an exorcism soon

Having a husband that's possessed by Satan kinda sucks. I'm constantly having to wipe pea soup vomit off the walls.

on raising a teenager

Jparks and I are currently raising a teenager and it is difficult. And crappy. And it makes me wonder how in the hell we are going to be able to handle a real teenager.

Lily used to sleep snuggled in bed next to me at night. Sometimes she cuddled up with jparks, but mainly she was stuck next to me. But then, in the past week, something has changed and she no longer wants to stay in bed with us. In fact, I can barely even convince her to come in the bed for a few minutes to get some petting. It's like, all of a sudden, she is totally over spending quality time with us and would much rather hang out in front of the movie theatre with her friends and talk about how she steals sips of our booze and then refills the bottles with water.

Then this morning, excited that my dog might actually want some attention from me, I sat down on the hallway floor because it appeared she was running towards my open arms. Except the moment she saw me, she literally turned tail and ran away. She ran right back to the couch where she hid her head out of embarrassment that her oh-my-gawd-you're-embarrassing-me-mother would like some attention. She finally resurfaced when jparks called her and she ran to him. The little bitch (I can say that since she is tiny and is a bitch) ran right over to him and begged to be picked up. Beaming because for the first time ever Lily picked him over me, jparks proclaimed "Well, every child turns against their mother at some point."

I can't figure out what I did to turn Lily against me and I assume that's how most mothers of 15 year olds feel. I know it kills me when she ignores me and it drives jparks insane when she ignores him. We usually end up bribing some attention out of her with a spoon full of peanut butter. In the 30 seconds it takes her to eat the spoonful of peanut goodness we get to pet her, pretend that she likes us, and act like a normal "doggy" family.

What worries me is that this is our dog that has figured out how to manipulate us into giving her treats and other bits of goodness. A real live child is going to have us so wrapped around her pinky we might as well just hand our paychecks to her. I think it's safe to say jparks and I are hopeless and screwed. And that our kid is going to be one spoiled prick.

I survived!

Today marks the end of my period of shoe sobriety. This means that if I really had the need I could run out and buy a pair of shoes and not get a whole bunch of guilt from jparks. The thought of guilt free shoe buying is a glorious feeling.

In the past 3 months I've gone from purchasing about one pair of shoes per week to one pair of shoes per month. While one pair per month might seem excessive to some folks, it was definitely a huge step down for me. Not necessarily a hard step, but still a step.

Here are the shoes that were purchased during this sober period. Each pair was well worth it, and since I hadn't been buying shoes as frequently as I was used to, each pair felt like a treat.

I bought these Steve Madden mary janes while in New Orleans for my grandfather's funeral. I didn't want shoes, but I hadn't brought anything nice with me so shoe shopping was required. I think I managed to find a pretty sensible pair of shoes that I would get a lot of wear out of.


I bought these pink Converse because while walking around the mall my green Reeboks ripped open. I could have just gone home, but I didn't have another pair of cute trainers that I can wear on a daily basis and not feel like I'm just about to hit the gym. And these were kinda of a gift from jparks and we all know gifts were totally acceptable.


The final pair were bought with a store credit. They are seriously cute and on sale. I couldn't not get them.


Three months ago, when I started this, I would have placed money that today I would be running directly to the mall to buy a pair of shoes that I had been lusting over, but that's not the case. While there are plenty of pairs of shoes I would love to own right now, nothing is standing out as a necessity. I guess that means I've grown up. Or maybe it just means all the cute spring and summer shoes aren't out yet.