that star can twinkle

Oh internet, I am delusional. You see, today I was at the mall and I saw a sequined dress that I instantly fell deeply in love with. I'm very crow-like in that shiny or sparkly things draw me in and the ultimate in my mind is a black sequined dress. Nothing gaudy or too over the top, just a simple dress with sequins. Twinkling, light catching sequins. I've been obsessed with the idea of this dress for a couple of years now and almost bought one last year, but jparks' holiday party was much too casual for it.

Anyway, back to the delusional aspect of this story.

I was walking through White House Black Market when I stumbled upon the perfect little black sequined dress. And then I tried the dress on and saw that the word that needs the most stress in that last sentence is little. It is hella short. I tried it on, looked in the mirror, thought "holy crap, that's a lot of leg" and then bought it anyway because I am stupid delusional. This is the kind of dress that you either have to be 21 or Tina Turner to wear and unfortunately I am neither of those. But I'm keeping it and wearing it to jparks' work holiday party.

If I had one of those ever popular Life Lists "wear a sequined dress" would be on it. I know right now I'm not in the best shape to rock a dress with a "high hemline" but chances are, in the future I'll be in worse shape. I'm also well aware that this dress doesn't have to be the one that fulfills my desire, in fact Target has a really cute sequined dress right now, but I figure go big or go home. Or in this case, go teeny tiny hemline or go home.

So there you have it, I have lost my mind and bought a short sequined dress that is not meant to be worn by an adult of my size. And I have bought it to wear around jparks' coworkers. I'm considering it payback for last year's holiday party where jparks got drunk and yelled in the middle of the dance floor "I have poo issues! I can't poo if people can hear me! So what!" Honestly, I think what he did was worse. It's one thing to have an inappropriately dressed wife, it's another to loudly share the requirements of your bowel movements while people are trying to dance to YMCA.

Can anyone make a shoe suggestion to complete the look? Also, the model is wearing fishnets with open toe shoes, are we rocking that look now? I was going to maybe wear opaque tights so I don't blind people with my white legs, are open toe shoes okay with them? Is it acceptable with tights so long as they aren't reinforced toe? I'm so confused because open toe shoes with tights have been such a fashion no for me for so long that even the idea of wearing them together feels wrong. And can someone talk me out of buying this tank? So shiny!

I might be the only person that was happy for Monday

Well, this was a fun weekend here at Parks Place. Assuming the new definition of fun is "exceptionally bad or displeasing." Or "having undesirable or negative qualities" would work as fun's new definition as well. Either way this weekend was sucky. And crappy. And did I mention not fun at all?

Thursday night Tru started with a fever, which we managed through the night with tylenol and cool rags. Friday I took him to the pediatrician expecting to be told we were all clear and it was just a fluke spike in his temperature. Expect it turns out it wasn't just a fluke and the kid had swine flu H1N1. And because the flu wasn't enough, the pediatrician called a few hours later to tell me that Tru's urine sample came back positive for a urinary tract infection. I do want to give Tru props for being a trooper, as sick as he was, he was still smiling and generally in a good mood.

We're past the worst of the flu and now are left to deal with the UTI. Apparently UTIs are not very common in baby boys so when he's done with his antibiotics, Tru gets an ultrasound. Depending on the results of that we'll move on to a voiding cystourethrogram which involves a catheter and dye inserted into his bladder. I'm trying not to worry too much about this because what good will it do? We can't get the ultrasound for at least a week, and I refuse to obsess about it until then. I will not be referring to Dr. Google because that just leads to sleepless nights spent staring at the ceiling while I chew my bottom lip off.

While I was at the pediatrician and the bad news was washing over me, I kept reminding myself that at least Saturday would be a good day because it was New! Car! Day! A couple of weeks ago jparks and I decided to get an Audi Q5 and Saturday was the day it would be ready for pick up at the dealership. I spent a lot of time while we were considering a new car walking around dealerships, talking to salesguys, researching on edmunds.com, and test driving various models and the Q5 came out on top time and time again. For a bigger car it's sexy, it handles beautifully, and it comes with enough gadgets inside to make jparks happy. I felt like if I were going to be buying a Mom car, the Q5 was a pretty damn cool Mom car.

Saturday morning came and I called the dealership to make sure the car was ready for pickup when the salesguy dropped this bomb on me "My sales manager says I can't sell you the Q5 at the price we talked about." Basically he claims that the Q5 is in such demand that they can sell it at sticker and we had agreed on a price that was not sticker. We hadn't filled out any paperwork yet because they wanted us to take care of all of that once the car arrived and while I probably could have gone to the dealership and made a scene, I just wasn't feeling it. The disappointment of not getting the car I wanted and expected should have lit a fire under me, but instead I was feeling rather worn down and just told the dealer "Thanks, but no thanks."

It's safe to say that my plan to eat better did not work out so well this weekend. When life gets tough, pie and cookies are very comforting. I guess my new plan is that if I can't have a new car, I should eat until my ass is as big as one. Good plan!

improvements a'plenty

For the past few Novembers I've participated in National Blog Posting Month, and for a couple of days at the end of October I was stupid enough to think I would be able to participate again this year. And then the second day came and I stared at my laptop screen for a few minutes and promptly passed out. I never realized before just how hard it is to string together words into a post when you've had all the creative energy sucked out of you by an infant that enjoys made-up-as-you-go songs. Excuses, excuses.

Since I failed at NaBloPoMo before I even really got started, I've decided to take up another task, Slynnro's NoImYoSeMo. Instead of making a blog post a day I'll make a list of things I want to improve in my life, which oh my god there are so many, and then try my best to get the list done by the end of the month. Sounds easy enough, let's go!

Drink more water. I'm breastfeeding and I work out like crazy, yet I barely drink any water. Diet coke, yes. Coffee, yes. Water, not so much. I have a feeling that my life would be better with more water in it.

Clean out my bathroom drawer. The other day I was digging in there for a ponytail holder and found quite a few lip glosses I thought were lost, some expired medicines, and an unmarked airplane safe bottle of something, but no pony tail holders. That drawer is a pit and I need to do something about it.

Run. And then run some more. Meaning run longer, run faster, run more frequently. Run.

Put away the pile of clothes that has resided on my bedroom floor for weeks now. Make sure the pile doesn't come back.

One fourth of my closet is tank tops. No person needs that many tank tops. Time to clean them out. No mercy!

Clean out the kitchen equivalent of that bathroom drawer. Do I really need two sets of incomplete measuring cups? Do I even know what appliances half the attachments in there are for? God, I hate that drawer.

Eat better. I pay a lot of money to belong to a gym and have a personal trainer yet I've done nothing to change my diet. Eating like I do means I'm basically wasting the money spent in monthly fees. While I don't need to go on a full-fledged diet, I do need to be more mindful about what I'm eating. Maybe I'll even go crazy and start having breakfast.

Read a book. I've read one book since Truman was born and I guess that's good considering the circumstances, but it bothers me. Time to take back my kindle from jparks and read more.

Sign up for one of the half marathons I've been thinking about. I've had the registration pages open for the Kaiser Half and the Rock and Roll Mardi Gras Marathon open for weeks now, but I haven't been able to bring myself to make the commitment. It's time to man up and register for one or both

None of these are huge changes to my life but each one will help me in some way. And besides, I'm not certain right now is the best time to try and take on a huge change. I feel crappy enough that I failed at NaBloPoMo, I can only imagine how crappy I would feel if I weren't able to make an improvement in my life that I had told everyone about and that I wanted to accomplish. So drinking more water and cleaning drawers it is!

whoa, the boring might overwhelm you

Usually I'm up for celebrating Halloween but someone apparently peed in my Halloween corn flakes this year, because I was really not feeling it. I tried to get into it, I really did, but between the super crowded Google Halloween party and the disappointing Fall Fest I attended, my Halloween spirit died quickly. I did manage to dress Truman up once in his caterpillar costume which made me happy:


ohhhh it's the elusive Regan smile. No one make any sudden movements so we don't scare it away

On Halloween night I thought about hitting a local mall with a friend to see the kids all dressed up for a costume parade, or visiting a neighbor's house because they had set up their porch for a Halloween photo backdrop, or even just going to another friend's house to hang out but in the end I was lazy and stayed home. Since last year we had one kid come to our house I hadn't bought any candy and now that we were going to be home, and I would hate to get egged, a quick trip to the store yielded one bag of Mr. Goodbars, which are one of my favorites. Turns out we got more kids than I was expecting and when I lowered the bowl of Mr. Goodbars down for them to grab some, there were quite a few disappointed sighs. Who knew kids aren't into chocolate and peanut goodness. Sorry kids, I'm happy to share my candy with you but I can't promise our palates will like the same things. You should be glad I didn't hand out dark chocolate covered salted caramels since that's what I really like.

Maybe next year will be better. Tru will be old enough to stand up and act cute in his costume and I'll know not to buy Mr. Goodbars for the trick-or-treaters. Or I'll buy Mr. Goodbars but then get something else that kids actually like. Maybe I'll even go crazy and buy a pumpkin. Whoa, slow down self, you don't want to get too wild.