Get to know me!

Thanks to Susan, I'm finally feeling like a member of the blogspot community. (uh, other than Jesse wanting to recruit me as a stripper, that is).

So, without further ado:

8 TV shows I love: ( in no particular order)

1: Grey's Anatomy
2: NOVA (Geek alert!)
3: Desperate Housewives (Yup, we housewives are ALL that hawt. Yup.)
4: Keeping Up Appearances
5: Samantha Who?
6: MythBusters
7: Dirty Jobs
8: The Office (UK and US)

8 Favorite Restaurants: (in no particular order)
Uh, Okay. It's kind of against my husband's religion to eat out, but I'll do my best.

1: Ruth's Diner
2: Himalayan Kitchen
3: Millcreek Cafe
4: Yanni's Greek
5: Uh, there's a possibility that I'm overly fond of a Big Mac.
6: Cafe Rio
7: Citris Grill
8: Rino's

8 Things that happened yesterday:
(Shit. What was yesterday? They all blend together....oh! Yeah.)

1: Gym with the hubby.
2: Lunch with hubby
3: Christmas shopping (*shudder*)
4: Trying to surreptitiously check out the ass on the guy running the treadmill in front of me who was not my hubby.
5: New shield on the iPod (yay!)
6: Petted a bunny
7: Cooked something
8: Went to bed waiting for the hubby to return from head-banging at the Metallica show. *snicker*

8 Things I look forward to:

1: Wine
2: Friday Brunch, Bitch and Booze with Sara and Tami (and Susan if she dares!)
3: Wine
4: Annual Lake Tahoe Girls' Escape
5: Gambling in Tahoe
6: G becoming a bibliophile. (She has to. I will shrivel up if she doesn't)
7: Wine (is there an echo in here?)
8: The next four years.

8 Things I love about the Fall:
1: Wool socks
2: Rainy days that give me the excuse to curl up on the couch and read and drink tea. Or wine. Whatever.
3: School's in!
4: No more sunburns or additional freckles
5: Big comfy sweaters so I can stop sucking in.
6: Down comforters
7: Mulled wine
8: Playdates at Susan's.

8 Things on my wish list

1: A waist
2: A dog without a nervous bowel
3: My daughter having a life happy enough to spare her from ginormous therapist's bills in the future.
4: Boobs that aren't trying to make friends with my knees.
5: A month in London.
6: A vacay below the equator. (Not my equator...the Earth one where things are warm and sunny and there's a beach where someone will bring me endless drinky drinks.)
7: An end to knee-jerk hatred, close-minded opinions, uneducated rhetorical spew, no starving babies, no dead soldiers, no excuses for personal failure, a realignment of our national priorities.
8: That I could always be as deep and profound as that previous statement.


Um, I'd tag someone specifically, but don't really know anyone on here, so if you're reading this: Hey! Your it!

Quirks, Quarks and Qurap

So. I dunno if anyone noticed, but I've been a little absent on the myspace scene of late. I know, I know; you all missed me horribly and were worried sick. Don't fret, I'm okay. It's autumn and I do this every autumn, it's just one of my things.

Speaking of "things", I have a thing. More specifically, I have a husband. Whom I love, who loves me, blah blah blah, we're livin' the dream, but really: at what point is it okay to smack someone upside the head and ask "What. The. Fuck?"

We got a new refrigerator. Which, in our household where the general philosophy is to use something until it dies a painful death, is pretty major. We stopped at Sears one night when driving home from the grandparents' house, which is also major because we never go anywhere that might involve shopping, but the husband had some fun money burning a hole in his pocket and was itching to sacrifice it to the Manly God of Craftsman. My husband doesn't do porn, it's all about the garage toys with him. So, the daughter and I left him happily fondling wrenches and other metal manly things and went to find the appliances. The fridge we had came with our tiny little house and was also tiny and had no crisper drawers nor ice maker but did come with annoyingly bendy wire shelves, which I was okay with, I'm no princess and can make my own fucking ice. But still, looking at the shiny new fridges with the adjustable shelves and the humdidity-controlled drawers, well, let's just call that a little bit of housewife-porn, shall we? Ditto on the front-loading washer and steam-cleaning dryers. Oooooohhhhh…..must…have….more….But; we are the people who live simply with what we have until it sends out smoke and bangs, so when I mentioned that I found a really nice fridge ON SALE, I nearly wet myself when he said "Okay." The fridge was delivered, the husband drilled holes in the kitchen tile floor and plumbed that sucker and viola! I am in ice, baby. My gimlets are chilled, mo' fo'. And my lettuce is not wilted, either. It does what I want it to do and I am happy.

He, on the other hand, has spent the last three weeks making minute adjustments to the refrigerator temperature settings with several different measuring devices, including the remotely read hygrometer/thermometer he had to pry off the outside of the house. He's moved that wheely-thingy inside the fridge a hundredth of a millimeter until the temperature holds steady at 34.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is fine, it's just one of those quirks that I've grown accustomed to over the years. My husband gets into something and cannot let it go until he knows every detail, has every aspect exactly where it seems he thinks it should be. Did I mention he's German? Not that I like cultural generalizations, but let's just say he might have made a mistake marrying an Irish girl who could give a rat's ass how something works as long as it does what she needs it to do.

Before, when I said that he said "Okay" to the new fridge? That was after a week of him researching EXACTLY which model would be right for our needs. I would buy the cheapest one that made ice. This fundamental difference between us is quite pervasive: His garage is immaculate with a place for everything and everything in its place, mine has a flattened soccer ball in the middle of the floor that I try not to run over every time, and if you move something on a shelf be prepared to have things fall on you. I can never find my keys or cel phone; his never leave his body unless they are precisely placed on his dresser for the morning ritual. I don't check voice mail until someone calls back asking if I got their message, he diligently reviews the saved messages every day and repeatedly tells me how many of them are for me. How we don't kill each other, I don't know.

What else….

I finished reading the His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman. Ate them up, actually. Remember the Golden Compass movie that came out last year? These are the reading-thingies that go with that. I'd not seen the movie, although it looked really cool, but I for some reason prefer to wait until something isn't cool anymore before I see it. That's how I roll.

Anyway, I LOVE THESE BOOKS. If you've been to my page, you might have noticed the What the Bleep? graphic posted under my movies. That movie was my religious epiphany. I've never gone into my personal religious convictions in here because, eh, who cares? But here's a hint: I believe that there is no Heaven, there is no Hell, there is only energy and God resides in quarks. So to find a story supporting that, my goodness, I was a happy little bunny. I would recommend these books to anyone who wants to be mad at the church, anyone who thinks physicists are on to something big, and anyone who ever thought it would be really, really cool to have a talking animal accompany you everywhere.

On the personal dilemma news: I'm here, writing. The book is eeking its way out of my head at a pretty darn satisfying rate right now. It might be a pile of crap, but it's mine and it won't be bugging me all trapped inside my noggin for much longer.

Hope you all are well, sure enjoyed talking with all of you and getting supportive messages while I was mired in a pit of despair and depression…oh, wait….;P

I Always Wanted To Be A Stripper

There. I've said it. Secret's out. I feel much, much better now.

Of course, I'm going to qualify that statement by revealing that I wanted to be a stripper based on seeing that classic 80's movie, "Flash Dance" when I was eleven. I mean, come on; what could be more desirable than getting to work a badass job like welding during the day and then after that getting to go put on fancy frilly costumes and do really complicated choreographed dance routines on a stage in front of men who fall in love with you? And then use that valuable experience to gain entry into an exclusive dance company? How awesome!

And let's not forget the great little Burlesque routines that sometimes would show up on the variety shows in the 70's. Bah-dah-dah, Bah-dah-dah, BOOM-tsh-tsh! BOOM-tsh-tsh! And all they had to do was take off their dress, flip it around and maybe shake their still-brassiered chest. How much fun would that be?

Then someone took me to a strip club.

Never mind.

When I was 19 and still living at home and looking for gainful employment, I perused the want ads one morning over coffee. Well, I say morning, but I was a college student. It was probably more like noonish. Anyway, I see all these ads for "ESCORTS WANTED." Huh. Get paid to go out with men? I'd seen "Pretty Woman", and figured it was probably something like that, without the being a whore part. How hard could it be to wear really nice clothes and escort rich, handsome men to fancy-schmancy cocktail parties and dinners with the mayor? And then, of course, said handsome rich guy would fall hopelessly in love with me, climb up the fire escape and whisk me away to his mansion/penthouse. Done.

"I think I'll be an escort," I say nonchalantly to my mom as I sip my coffee. I think her coffee came out of her nose before she choked out "What? NO! God No! You're not doing that!" I'm sure I rolled my eyes, figuring my totally-uncool mom had it way wrong.

Hey, then I met an escort. By chance, while studying at a coffee shop, one of my friends introduced me to her. She looked like about ten miles of bad road (at the age of 20) and had two kids. She proudly showed everyone at the table pictures of her in her "Escort attire" when she was, oh, nine months pregnant. And my illusions were shattered. She told me what really goes down. Uh, including her. No Pretty Woman? No Richard Gere-type rich man falling in love? Nope. More like Dick the garbage man on pay day. Not that there's anything wrong with paying for a little lovin', but, um, no. No. Never mind.

Naïve?

Yes. Yes I am.

I also thought that I could major in Biology just by taking lots of classes in college about science stuff. Like Evolution, Morphology, Bird Care, Astronomy, that kind of thing. Imagine my shock and horror when I finally went to the Biology Department and met with a counselor. Physics? Organic Chemistry? Physics? Calculus? And, um, Physics?

Math is not my friend, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I needed Physics to be a zookeeper, but I gamely tried. Did you know it's really, really hard to learn Physics and Organic Chemistry when the classes are at 7 a.m. and the words are really big? Especially when one has a killer hangover from the Jager Bomb special the night before? Nope. New major!

So, after all that, I learned an important lesson:

Do your research. Don't go through life making big decisions with just half the story or with some crap someone forwarded you on the internet.

And never, EVER, innocently ask an escort how much money she gets for a hummer, especially when her boss is standing nearby. Ass-whupping all over.


So, how about you? Ever have a "dream job" and come to find out it wasn't what you thought?
Is there anything going on in the world right now that, oh, I don't know, you think you should do some research about before forwarding stupid rhetoric-and-hate-filled emails?

A whole New Generation of Playground Fun

One good thing about being a parent is the ability to take your child somewhere that you loved as a child and relive the magic through their eyes. The wonder of experiencing something new, the joy of simply doing something for the sake of doing it, of learning new skills.

The Dinosaur museum: Ooo! What if we had pet dinosaurs? Would that one eat me? Did they REALLY live on Earth? Where's the gift shop? And I watch her crane her little neck up to see the dino's skulls and smile.

Swimming pool: Look! I'm a mermaid! NO! I'm a platypus! Watch me cannonball! Momma, why is that man wearing swimsuit bottoms like yours? Where's the vending machine? And I watch her slip through the water like she was meant to be there.

And especially:

The playground: Watch me do the monkey bars! Watch me climb up here! Look how much bigger the slide is than the kindergarten slide! Look what I can do on the big pole!
And then I watch her slide down the big pole, spinning around with one leg hooked around it, other arm gracefully extended, head back. When she lands with a little flourish, I clap like any good mom. Then I look around, to see one of the older girls (third grade) with whom we walk home also spinning around while sliding down the pole.
It's after school, so there aren't a lot of kids there, but I notice that there's quite a line for the pole. Each little girl climbs up the slide next to it, grabs as high as she can and then gracefully spins down. One even has mastered the behind-the-head grab, spinning slowly backward to the ground.




And I realize:

They're doing stripper pole moves.

A million questions start to spin through my brain.

What. The. Fuck?

Do they know what they're doing?

Do they get points for the difficulty of each move?

Could I do that?

And most importantly: How in the HELL did elementary school girls find out about this?!?

Walking home I'm trying not to giggle. The other third grader that we walk is a talker. I've been able to get some pretty juicy stuff out of her before, so I ask her if she likes sliding down the pole. "Not really," she says, but then brags that her mom "can do the one where she's upside down and only hanging on with one leg!"

"Wow," I say, "she, uh, do that in your basement?" Hoping to get some dirt on the neighbors, you know. *snicker*

Her face looks momentarily horrified, and I realize I might have tapped into something here. "Uh, No, uh—wait up, you guys!" And she scurries off before I can ply more secrets from her.

My friend Susan called me the other day. She was stuck at the school with a busted car and was watching the kids at morning recess.
"Have you seen the sliding pole thing? How they all line up? There's a line a mile long for this! How funny!"
"You mean the stripper pole?"
Pause.
"OH. MY. GOD. You're right. That's totally what they're doing!"

Ah, childhood innocence.