Two Songs Rewritten for the Tunes Sake

So I haven't felt like being an exhibitionist lately...

2009-05-17T14:51:00.001-07:00

....well? I haven't. At work, I started to write again on my lunch break...a couple entries here and there. I haven't gotten around to posting them though. Here's the first one (and the most important since it basically recaps the events that have taken place since my little blog sabbatical):

Ok, every once in a while I get sick of my blog and move on for a while. Obviously this was one of those times. It just so happened that I moved on during a PARTICULARLY eventful time in my life, so it makes me sad to look at my blog now and see that the latest update about my life is about the Kitty Half Time.

In March I got laid off. It’s ok, I didn’t like the bathrooms at the firm anyway, and I hated making nametags. HATED IT. Here’s how it went down:

The Firm calls a mass meeting to tell us we’re laid off.
Here is what I was thinking during the meeting: “SHIT.”
They tell me my lay off is effective the next day and I tell them there is no way in hell I’m going back to my desk…now…or EVER.
…so, I get in my car and punch my steering wheel and cry for like ten minutes on the phone to my mom…
…and for ten more minutes at the mall on Colin’s shoulder.
I go home and apply for grad school…
…but then get freaked out about student loans, so I apply for jobs as well.
I sit around for about a month (in hindsight, this was awesome)
…and then get hired by a new, better company.

Yep, that’s right, I got another job. Within a month. MIRACLE. The only downsides to this job are:

My cubicle has no window L. I know, boo hoo, poor kate.
It is one (1)(uno)(un) HOUR from where I live. That’s two (2)(dos)(deux) hours in the car EVERY DAY. I never in a million years thought I would listen to as much morning radio as I do now. I even have thought about calling in a couple times because why SHOULDN’T I be part of the discussion? I mean, I’m listening every damn day, I feel like sometimes the morning show should hire me.
They do not provide me with free plastic dishes and silverware. Or subsidized snacks and sodas.
Stupid handles on the bathroom doors. I will attempt to take a picture later, surreptitiously, with my phone.

They do, however, provide me with the following:

The opportunity not to blow my diet on 25c snacks and sodas.
A better salary
Cooler people who do not talk about their children ALL DAY.
‘Cause some of them don’t even HAVE children, which is nice.
More work and more responsibility, so I only have time to update my blog during my lunch hour.
A reason to move to the outskirts of St. Louis
Way nicer building
No window IN my cubicle, but the window BY my cubicle looks onto a lake, and not a brick wall.
If there is a terrorist attack on downtown St. Louis, I will not be the first to go.
Way better parking situation
Way better boss/delegation
More jeans days
A coat hook that came WITH MY CUBICLE.

Things the Firm gave me:

a month off
severance pay

Ok, lots of other things. It’s a way better situation.

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My other big news is that I finally got my engagement ring!!!!!! I know, this happened like three months ago, but in thinking about it, I decided that maybe the only thing my future children will want to read about on my blog (future daughters, anyway) is my engagement and wedding. Probably about their births and the trials and tribulations of our early marriage before they came along, as well.

For now, all I have to really talk about is wedding planning. It is probably a good thing that I did not update my blog when I was in the initial phase of wedding planning.

Let’s discuss how my wedding is still ten months away, and I have already made it through the “initial phase of wedding planning”. Some normally adjusted women might not have even started planning at ten months out, or at the very least would have JUST started planning. NOT ME. I am finished planning, save for the cake. Yep, that’s right, the cake is the only thing I have left to plan in my wedding, which is in March of next year.

So, that’s why I think it’s probably best that I didn’t update when I was furiously planning every detail of my wedding in a single two-month span. At that time, the only thing interesting about me was how crazy I was. Anyway, I can sum up the whole wedding planning experience in one post, instead of the two months worth of daily posts it would have required back then:

I booked a reception hall (which subsequently required me to book a caterer) and a ceremony location.
I asked my grandfather to officiate.
I bought a dress. This experience is still resonating “crazy” in the world of Kate because I have a picture of said dress on my cubicle wall. Mostly to remind me to STOP EATING.
I made mock invitations. OK, heres the thing. I would love to just ORDER invitations. However, I feel like if I do not make them myselves I will be judged. Still, my mock invitation took about three milliseconds of design skill, so perhaps I will be judged anyway.
I picked out bridesmaid dresses
In a particularly intense wave of crazy, I made a playlist for my wedding reception. Which resulted in a minor discussion between C and I over whether or not it was appropriate to play Tupac.
My mother and I booked a florist. I’m not entirely convinced my mother didn’t book him more because he was a fabulous gay man and less because he is also a fabulous flower designer.
We booked a photographer who is the BOMB DIGGITY.

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That's as far as I got on my lunch break. Today I haven't been feeling very upbeat so reading my upbeat journal entry makes me a little more disphoric than I already was, and less inclined to write more.

I intended to post pictures of all the wedding stuff, but I'm feeling a little burnt out on weddings lately. I dunno why...maybe because it just seems like it's so far away. I think that's a good sign to put it on the back burner for a while, anyway.

Ok, gonna go cook dinner. I promise I'll update more, blog. I'm sure my future children will thank me not to write only about my cubicle, skipping the important, exciting moments.

2009-02-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Only something with as great a magnitude of ridiculousness as the Kitty Half Time Show could shock me out of my blog-coma this time.

Here it is:

http://animal.discovery.com/tv/puppy-bowl/video/video.html?playerId=1369813243&titleId=9812760001

Every single one of those cats is like WT-BLOODY-F IS GOING ON.

It just reminds me of why I love cats. The puppies that participated in the Animal Planet Puppy bowl were so oblivious to the fact that they were being poked fun at. Whats this you say? You want us to romp around on a fake football field for an hour? There are toys involved? The kitties however...they had the right idea. In the first place, there is no way Animal Planet could get kitties to stand for this nonsense for any longer than they did, hence the kitty HALFTIME. Second, look at all these kittehs. They all look shell s hocked. Every once in a while the camera zooms in on a kitty in the midst of a plaintive cry for help. Of course you can't hear it because of the krazy kitty music they're playing in the background.

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In other news: I'M ENGAGED!!@#. I would post a picture of the ring but I can't find my camera card for my big camera. I would take one with the camera at work but my ring is being sized. Wedding plans are already progressing nicely, but I don't feel like typing about it. Theres nothing funny or really interesting about planning a wedding unless you're in it.

SORRY.

2009-01-06T07:22:00.000-08:00

You know what I think? If you don't have anything to write about, take half a month off. Now that I've sufficiently restocked the number of life experiences that I don't mention on my blog, I can write again.

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Where to start, wheeerrre to start...oh yes, Christmas. Christmas was....christmas-y. That's about all there is to it. I baked 5 dozen cookies and ate a lot of pork. This year my little cousin had his muslim friend stay over for Christmas and New Years. Poor kid, he must think we eat nothing but pork, all day long. Sausage in the breakfast casserole, ham sandwiches for lunch, christmas ham for dinner, leftover ham for snacks, ham candy, ham popsicles, ham cookies, ham in our stockings...you get the point. There was even pork in the delicious meatloaf that my mother made especially for him on Christmas eve. Being the heathens that we are we debated even telling him, but being the questioning agnostics that we are, we considered the possibility that maybe pork IS sinful, and didn't want to risk his soul for a little meatloaf.

I got good presents:

a super nice camera lens
a kindle so I don't have to haul books around when I travel
a bike from C
a gorgeous pie plate from poland from Callie
other odds n ends that I don't feel like typing out

I gave good presents:

ex libris stamps for my dad and sammie pie that i designed myself
a $100 mood gift certificate for my mom and a cool quilt pattern
a box from poland for callie for her earrings*
a blender, some cologne and something else that i cant remember for C
a wallet and $20 bucks for john vernon**
something for jessica that i cant put on here because i havent given it to her
a GPS for C's parents***
a diamond necklace for C's sister****
some beer steins for C's other sister

*no, we did not consult with each other beforehand on the topic of whether or not to both purchase gifts for each other from Poland. We're just cool like that.
**I thought long and hard before buying this potentially lame gift and then I thought...he's fifteen, what could be better than $20 bucks?
***went in with his sister and her fiance and C. C'mon, I'm not THAT ~~rich~~ nice.
****it was on deep dark "please take this from us" clearance. also, not that nice.

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Then for New Years we went to ~~the godforsaken frozen north~~ Wisconsin to visit C's family. It was...cold. C thought it would be a great idea to bring Olibur Finwik, even though there was two feet of snow and he is only 1.9 feet tall. Not so much. The first thing he did when we got to my probably future in laws house is run around to every room like a maniac for about five minutes, finishing his romp off by pooping in the house while running.

Great. 20 years from now they will still be talking about when my dog came and left a trail of poop in their house for Christmas.

Then we tossed him outside where he proceeded to pee on the screen door and poop on the welcome mat, refusing to touch his porcelain ass to the snow. Finally, on our last day there he peed on the carpeted stairs.

Anyway, aside from that New Years was great.

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When I came back to work, the first thing I did was check my email, and then I entered fifty or so sweepstakes. That can be my new years resolution: Win Sweepstakes.

Heres a (partially) comprehensive list of what I could win!

A trip for two to the North Pole!
A trip to Montana
A trip to Branson
Eight Vera Wang Bridesmaids dresses
A trip to Ancestral Scotland
A West Virginia getaway!
Some super expensive baseball bats for C
A couple diamond rings.
combined approximately 2 million dollars
trip to disney world
a fifty thousand dollar wedding
a wood cutting machine
two sweeps with Hasbro and hellmans mayonnaise that i don't remember the prize for
a new set of pots and pans
a nice casserole pan
a motocross bike.
a fifty thousand dollar car.
some other stuff i can't remember.

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I started this post right after Christmas and now it's like a month later and I'm going to finish it by god.

Is it sad that when I added the "people I'm related to" application on facebook, it showed about ten people that I have never even HEARD of in the "possible relatives" section? Possible relatives meaning I have at least one relative in common with them. Maybe I should get home more...OR maybe my second and third cousins should stop marrying and having babies at such an alarming rate.

I think thats a good place to end things....

2008-12-20T20:14:00.000-08:00

C and I will be spending part of this Christmas at our family farm at my father's behest. For those who don't know my father, let me tell you about how he is arguably the smartest person I have ever met. Eloquent, thoughtful, educated, well-read, cultured etc etc etc. My dad is the person I call when I need a mini-lecture about quantum physics or string theory or when I need to know what the scientific name of the sea cucumber is (all three of these things are actual bonafide questions that I have posed to my father and he has had the answer to.)

HOWEVER...put my father within about fifty miles of our family farm and he...changes. I think my father wishes sometimes that he could trade in the civic for a john deere and call it a day. He wishes that he preferred labs and sheep dogs to tiny, nervous greyhounds. Most of the time he's ok with it. He likes his iPhone and routers and his hybrid civic...none of which are functional in the country. But being around our farm really hits him hard.

SCENE:

Dad (drives up in light blue hybrid honda civic with my sister and I. Callie is a French major, I am a graphic designer. We have a tiny greyhound in the car. Our relatives are leaning up against a tractor wheel discussing the harvest (I think.) Dad waves and gets out): Well fellas, I reckon the soybeans are about as high as an elephants eye!!!

(Our relatives sheep dog tries to come after Oliver and he is mortally offended and makes a scene)

Our Relatives (collectively): Yep.

Dad: Billy, I saw you got 'bout fi'ty head o' steers on the back forty!!

Billy: Sure do!

I'm paraphrasing of course, because who wants to hear about breeding heifers? Well, some people do, but I'm not sure they're reading this blog. The point is, when we got back in the car Dad was right back to waxing poetic about our ancestors and popping in Ani DiFranco.

It's ok, Dad. I get it. Sometimes I too wish that my life were uncluttered and simple and free of the city. I long for it most when I look out my office window and see the tops of buildings and only slivers of sunlight.

hurray, it's the holidays.

2008-12-20T19:41:00.001-08:00

Today the mac went into a little tiny coma. Needless to say I immediately went into OMG mode and hauled its little computer butt out to the counties to the Apple Genius Bar to have it "diagnosed", the problem being that it refused to boot up past a certain point.

All its troubles were miles away, however, after I hauled it into the store in the freezing cold and braved the mall the Saturday before Christmas. The nice, hip/harassed-looking apple genius (his shirt proclaiming: "If I were a reindeer, I'd be fixen") plugged it in and turned it on and it made a joyful little noise and booted up faster than I'd ever seen it boot in it's life.

So...thats great. It's back at home now after it's car ride and journey to the mall.

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I though I had all my Christmas shopping done but people keep giving me presents at the last minute, leaving me having to lie about where THEIR present is.

"Oh, your present is coming in the mail. It's very exciting! I ordered it from Poland."

I DID order some of my christmas presents from an online store called "POLStore" which sells polish souvenirs to people who are too broke to actually visit. Best believe I've been letting the people who got Polstore gifts know that THEIR gift did actually come from Poland, even though the postmark is Poughkeepsie, NY. Some people I lie to, however, which leaves me in a position of having to find something to give them that looks like it might have actually come from eastern europe and not from the mall.

You never want to tell people that they weren't on your gift list to begin with. This happened to C and I a week or two ago, when we got a present for someone we hadn't even CONSIDERED buying one for. Early in the season we vowed to seek out people we didn't want to spend money on and have The Conversation with them. You know The Conversation, it goes like this:

"Hey, times are tough, why don't we just go out for drinks or something in lieu of presents."

But, we got lazy. The weeks just flew by and we never had The Conversation and then one day a present arrived in the mail. C found it and called me at work to tell me. He sounded about as bummed as any human being can get after receiving a gift in the mail. "You'll never guess who just sent us a present." he said. I already knew...our list of People We Don't Love Enough To Buy Presents For is pretty small, all things considered. "Awww dammit! What are we going to do now?"

I think this puts us pretty squarely in the scrooge category for 2008. To make up for it we spent a lot of money on everyone who DID make the list. I guess in hindsight we could have spread the wealth but ah well.

Well, ya'll, I have done absolutely nothing of any significance today and I think I'm going to cap it off by reading my new book in the bathtub for a while. Cheers!

Jury Duty.

2008-12-17T07:11:00.000-08:00

This week I had jury duty for the first time in my life. I expected it to be a lot worse than it actually was; all my relatives recounted waiting for eight hours while the judge deliberated over traffic tickets gone wrong and the like. In truth I waited about two hours to be called (aka: curled up in a corner of the waiting room and read a book) and spent the rest of the day being questioned for a rape case. Yep, that's right. My first jury duty could have been anything but it turned out to be rape. Two counts of forcible rape AND burglary. And I was selected for the jury.
It's an odd thing to sit in front of the accused and know that it is your job to judge them, that your vote will decide the path of their life from this courtroom forward. The defense was nineteen years old; a child. His mother was in the back row as we filed in but they did not look at each other. He vacillated between looking at each of our faces and hanging his head in his hands. Interrogation was done group style, questions were posed to the whole group and those who had an affirmative answer stood up and announced it. Eventually it came to the "have you or anyone close to you ever been a victim of violent crime?" question and literally every other woman stood up. " I was raped, 15 years ago" "My sister was raped" "My daughter was raped" "My mother was a victim of domestic abuse and she was raped".

I am cynical enough to recognize the possibility that some of these women were telling a terrible lie to get out of judging this kid. Some of them weren't. Some of them stood up and their hands shook. Their faces told the story for them. Even from across a crowded courtroom there were shadows on them. Some of them would not look at him because he had added another to their ranks. He, on the other hand, looked at each one. He looked devastated. I would like to think he was devastated because he had become the object of each of these women's nightmares but I suspect otherwise. He was nineteen, and most likely he was devastated because he was facing two life sentences.

I have my own experiences with questionable sexual activities that could have gotten me out of jury duty, but they don't haunt me like what these women went through. I could look at the accused and feel an appropriate mix of pity and objectivity.

On the second day after spending hours with our eyes on him he plead guilty rather than endure another day of listening to us recount our grievances.

2008-12-12T10:40:00.001-08:00

PS: Lately, I'm so irritated by this one blog that I used to read and love. At first I thought she was just a smart, snarky MomBlogger. Sure she was desperate for attention, what blogger isn't really desperate for attention deep down? Lately she's been putting together this book filled with funny entries from blogs and she actually posted an entry where she asked her friends to tell her what her funniest post was. The desperate for attention part is ok until you actually straight up are acting desperate on your blog.

I guess I just expect more than "Here, read this post that I think is hilarious AGAIN. Haha aren't I the funniest person ever?!" from a blog that has thousands of readers. Isn't tooting your own horn against the Bible or something. I think I remember this verse:

1 Jes. 2-4:
"Verily I say unto you, thou shalt not tooteth thyne owne horne.
Nor the horne of thyne neighbor.
Nor the horne of thyne wyfe.
Nor the horne of thyne childryn."

OR SOMETHING.

Gah. It's time for the office holiday party. GET EXCITED, KATE. No really, try to get excited.

2008-12-12T09:42:00.001-08:00

I am currently on hold with the Missouri Department of Revenue to ask questions about what the @#$% do I bring to get license plates. I am currently number TEN in line, and my approximate wait time is: ONE. MINUTE.

To this, all I have to say is: LIES.

Lets have babies!!

2008-12-12T07:42:00.000-08:00

This morning Oliver pissed in his own bed. Well, I should say that he did the deed sometime last night and let himself lay in it until we woke up because by the time we discovered it he was pretty much saturated in urine. Imagine if you laid a piece of felt in some pee all night long.

Usually Oliver wakes up earlier than us and sort of snuffles around and/or jumps in bed with us so when we heard his little collar jingling and his little nose burrowing away in his bed we didn't think anything of it for about two seconds until C says "do you smell something?" More like "do you detect the smell of our dog that has been lying in his own mess all night?" For a couple minutes (like five) we just shifted our bodies to the other side of the bed and buried our noses in each others hair to mask the smell. Dinah Lou seemed to sense that we were on her side and she came up for a scratch. Finally we had to give in and in the dark of morn, bathe the dog and his doggie mattress.

Yeah, we're gonna be great parents.

PS: Callie, this is why you don't want a damn dog.

The Bean Trees

2008-12-11T14:05:00.001-08:00

My all-time favorite book is The Poisonwood Bible. Many years ago my father read it and after he had tossed it aside I picked it up. I won't go into the details except to say that it's pretty much the Best. Book. Ever. If you don't agree, well, sorry. You're wrong. That's all there is to it. I've been through about three copies and my current copy is looking a little worse for the wear.

ANYWAY, the point is, about the time that I finished my first reading of TPB I bought another book by the same author, Barbara Kingsolver. I though, surely I will love this book as much as TPB.

Not exactly. The book, called The Bean Trees, stayed on various shelves in my house, unread. It traveled from house to house and for some reason I was reluctant to just put it away or sell it or give it to charity. Honestly, I should have given up on it but I couldn't. Every time I would start to read it, it would fail to interest me. I kept it around for the same reason I keep Skinny and Fat Jeans and shoes that need to be fixed and old pieces of wrapping paper and ribbon. "Maybe someday I will need it."

It's funny how characters in a book can change depending on your circumstances. Two days ago I picked up The Bean Trees for about the millionth time and for some reason it spoke to me. Maybe I am old enough to be friends with the women in this book now. Maybe we have more in common. The point is, I finished it. I read it cover to cover. It only took me five years.

I am thankful for: my spam folder.

2008-12-08T08:22:00.001-08:00

I love the spam section of my email. I can't help it. Long ago I gave up on having a separate email for spam, since inevitably I would accidentally send something I needed to "spamsuckssof***off@yahoo.com" (except without the stars) and I wouldn't know the password. So I just started using my regular email for everything. G-mail has a nifty "THIS IS SPAM" button you can push, and I use it liberally. It's because of this that I get probably two hundred spam messages a day, and because of THIS I have learned the joy of perusing my spam folder.

I think of my spam folder as a flea market for words. Every once in a while hidden in the piles of junk and velvet black Jesus posters is a real gem. Nowhere else do I receive correspondence from the following people and/or inanimate objects:

MyColon (does your colon send you emails?)
Colon Cleanser
Mesothelioma (No thanks, I don't accept emails from CANCER)
Dallas Wysiskolla (born in eastern Europe, raised in the west!!!!)
Baby Back Ribs (please kate, we want to live!)
Body Pillow (please stop getting me stuck behind the bed)
Mr. Allen
Laughter Petrailia (should I ever be forced into sex slavery, this will be my alias)
Me
Wind Generator (hahahaha)
Birth Control (Dear Kate: I am in your uterus and I make you miserable at least three times a week. Love, BC)

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I think that my addiction to perusing my spam folder stems directly from my addiction to perusing craigslist. For a couple of weeks now I've been wondering where in the piles and piles of classifieds are the crazy desperate people who want to sell "GHOST OF A YOUNG WOMAN IN A MASON JAR" for $100 dollars to make their utilities payment? Remarkably, craigslist has all but avoided these kinds of shanigans as far as I can tell. People do get desperate though, believe you me.

Observe:

1 BEER CAN, DAYTONA 1991 H.D.!! - $10 (St. Ann)

Snow Globe Musical by Willitts #7402 - $4 (Forestbrook,Myrtle Beach)

exCUSE me?!:

Used underwear panties boxer briefs undies - $40 (NYC brooklyn manhattan)

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Ok, I'm off to be busy and do work.

2008-12-06T23:22:00.000-08:00

God, I suck. I guess the least I can say is that I TRIED to update every day. That's better than nothing.

I've been trying to think of meaningful things to be grateful for, but I find the usual things to give thanks about make for boring entries. For instance, today, I was thankful that I didn't have to work so I could sleep in til ten. Then I was thankful that there was a Whose Wedding is it Anyway? marathon on. I guess I'm also thankful that Daniel's work gave me a table to put my TV on (in my room) so I could achieve ultimate slovenly-ness and watch said marathon in my underwear.

I was NOT thankful that Sam gave C a Lowes gift certificate for christmas. We spent a goodly amount of time picking out the PERFECT metallic black spray paint. Thanks a lot, Sam.

I'm thankful that I invented a new drink tonight at Halo Bar: Amaretto and RedBull. Do you like sweettarts? Do you like delicious things? Try this out. It is both of those things (delicious and like sweettarts) Honestly, you might just have to be a bad person if you don't like this drink.

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DORK ALERT: You are a dork if you receive hundreds of dollars worth of clip art and a book about fonts for christmas. Extra seventy eleven trillion points for being stoked about it.

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For the last seven minutes or so C has been trying to take a picture of our cats and dog sleeping together on the bed. On the one hand, how can you not love a boy who is taking pictures of kitties. On the other hand....he's taking pictures of kitties. I feel like this is important insight into what it will be like to live with C in a retirement village. You may ask....is it possible to be a cat MAN? Well, I'm here to tell you. It's possible.*

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I'm beginning to think updating your blog every day is a bad idea, like having sex every day. It seems like a great plan at the time but then after a while all you can think about is the style network marathon you watched in your underwear that morning while you're doing it.**

*Heather: C is not as bad as Dave. Yet.

**we don't have sex every single day so don't worry, my sex life is not as boring as my blog.***

***I hope.

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To sum up:

1. I'm boring and apparently lazy

2. ....thats about it.

I swear I wrote this two days ago and didn't finish it.

2008-12-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

Submitted to CISWY, December 2008.

Sixth grade was a tough year for me. Not only did I have a bowl cut, but I also sported jean jumpers, turtlenecks tights and lace-up boots (all at the same time). This was during the era of Limited Too, which I was too fat to fit in. Plus, sequins* just don't tend to flatter a rotund, pre-pubescent figure.

So to sum up, if I wasn't already desperately uncool because I wasn't wearing Limited Too, I also was totally into dissection, I brought in a leather-bound version of Treasure Island to school (because duh? I loved Treasure Island), I didn't have a trapper-keeper and I couldn't figure out how to put my hair in a ponytail. Instead of writing notes in class I was writing stories about Pegasus and unicorns and imaginary creatures. I formed a club called "The Iron Horse Club", devoted solely to the pursuit of galloping around the playground; members: 2. Me and the horse.
One day whilst galloping and prancing about I happened to prance by a crowd of my cooler classmates who were playing truth or dare. They invited me to join. Thrilled that I had been invited, I accepted, dismounted and tied up my imaginary steed and sat down in the space that had cleared for me in the circle.

"Truth or Dare?" asked Jennifer.

"Truth?" I, tentatively replied. Both sounded dangerous, but at least with Truth I could lie. I was good at writing stories...and telling them.

"You can't pick Truth, you have to pick Dare."

This in hindsight was a red flag, but I was desperate. I shifted in my jumper, glancing back over my shoulder at the school yard and the observing teacher. Both seemed very far away.

"Ok, dare."

A snicker erupted in the circle and I remember how my face flushed. How I hid my blush behind my mop of tangled hair. Even writing this almost fifteen years later my heart pounds in memory of the next moment, my legs are still hot with adrenaline.

"We dare you to have sex with that telephone pole."

I was mortified and the snickers were unabashed. Some even surpassed snickers and came out as snorts. I looked at the circle, and they were staring back. In the distance my Iron Horse was pawing at the ground, restless and desperate to carry me away across the soccer fields, across neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs and in to the safe arms of my mother. We had just completed Sex Ed. in school and the act of sex had seemed too personal, too intimate to contemplate. I was universally undesirable in sixth grade and I knew it.

"You don't have to take off your clothes. The teacher would definitely notice that."

Today I am sitting in my office remembering the feel of cool, smooth wood on my lips and tongue; my awkward thrusts and the splinters in my hands as they clawed the pole. I had clenched my eyes shut and imagined a day when I would write this story without feeling my shame and desperation as physically as I did that day. That day has not yet come.

*A staple of all limited too clothing.

2008-12-02T16:05:00.001-08:00

I promised a picture of Oliver in his new fancy-schmancy long sleeved wool lined sweater made by his Grandma Sue. Plus I haven't updated today and if I can't even make it two days I might as well hang it up. Here it is:

You'll have to excuse the fact that I look like I'm 30 years older than I really am in this picture. It's COLD. And it's the END OF THE DAY. And to be honest I just don't care.

I was going to post something better than this, but this is all I can muster up at the moment. Soooo...I'm off to target.

ok Ok OK, I'm updating every day starting.......NOW.

2008-12-01T10:05:00.001-08:00

So it's December and I no longer have any excuse not to update every day. I'M GONNA DO IT.
Plus, I've been provided with a "theme" for my December entries. This is good. I work well with structure. For December my theme is: "THANKS."

I had a little time to think about this. THANKS (caps not my edit) is a pretty broad theme. THANKS a lot! THANKS for nothing! THANKS for the memories! You get the idea.

So today, December 1, 2008, I will write a list of what I am thankful for, in general. You know, for starters.

I'M THANKFUL FOR:

My job. Even though sometimes I want to lay down in my cubicle and kick and scream and throw my chair through the window*. Or cut myself with the paper cutter. You know, all the usual office related death wishes. This is par for the course with an office job, right? Right?! The truth is, I do like my job. I'm thankful for the stability it brings to my life. I'm thankful for the occasional piece I get to add to my portfolio because of it.
C. Ya'll, sometimes I don't even recognize myself when I'm with him because I'm all gushy and twittery and ridiculous. OK, sometimes, along the lines of the ridiculous, I want to shove his face in the dirty laundry that he lets pile up and let him lay there and think about it. That's not very often though. Usually my response to the laundry (and everything else he does) is: "I love him!!! It's ok!" The bottom line is: I love him enough to do his laundry** and make bread when he asks and scratch his back 20,000,000,0005011 times a day.***
For my new gmail "skin" which changes to match the weather in Saint Louis. It was pretty cool when it was rainy or sunshine-y but now that it's snowing its SUPER COOL because it displays little piles of snow on top of my Google chats, even when I expand them out of window!
For Daniel's co-worker who came over and clipped Rex's wings for me last night, free of charge. Now he can't fly to the top of my kitchen cabinets and crap all over everything I own every time I let him out of his cage. You know what they say...if something is a little bitch to you every time you come near it, render it immobile and dependent on you for it's life. That'll teach him.
For the foresight to start buying Christmas presents for people three months ago. Go me!
For my mom, dad, and siblings. They're the bomb. Special props to my mom who made a whole brisket for thanksgiving even though we already had three turkeys. That's right, THREE whole turkeys. And a brisket.

Ok, I have other things that I'm thankful for but I'm supposed to fill up a whole month of thankfulness in my blog, so I better give it a rest. More later, perhaps.

*While sitting in it.
**He does do his own laundry, just not as frequently as we need it.
***get some lotion already!

booze and hors, here I come.

2008-11-25T14:28:00.000-08:00

Ya'll....just two seconds ago I typed up an email to send back to a coworker. I was THISCLOSE to sending it and heres what it said:

"...it should be on your desk tomorrow. Love, Kate."

LOVE. I ALMOST SIGNED MY WORK EMAIL WITH LOVE. I NEED TO GO HOME RIGHT NOW BEFORE MORE DISASTERS ALMOST HAPPEN.

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Along the lines of other stupid email blunders....two days ago while discussing (light heartedly) over email with my coworkers whether or not to have a cocktail and hors d'oeuvre hour instead of a gift exchange I actually sent the following email to my entire office:

"You guys know I'm always game for alcohol and hors."

Yeah, I'm really big on hors. Especially with alcohol.

Ugh.

2008-11-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

Today Callie and I were discussing the newest abomination in advertising: The Lying Cheating Glade Lady:

me: know what commercial i really f-ing hate

that damn glade commercial

its so offensive

divingdarlin8812: which one?

i dont have tv

me: oh right

its a newer one

ill describe it

It starts out with this perky housewife ushering her kids and husband out the door

because "she has a lot to do"

so off they go to slave away at work and school

and then she sprays glade air freshener all over the house and goes out to lunch and plays tennis and shit

and when the kids come home (and the husband too, obviously she cant even be bothered to pick up her kids from school)

theyre all like "wow mom, it smells great, you must have worked all day"

and shes like "oh yeah, ive been cleaning all day"

divingdarlin8812: ugh

me: but then the husband finds the glade bottle and they all laugh about it

divingdarlin8812: lazy bitch

me: i know right?

divingdarlin8812: that would bug me too

me: theres another one where shes pulling cookies out of a box and she lights a gingerbread glade candle

and her friends come over and compliment her on the cookies she just baked because they smell fresh out of the oven

and shes like "thanks!"

divingdarlin8812: geez whats with lazy women?

"glade...for the lazy housewives"

me: i just want to be like "jeez you f-ing ho, so glad your husband slaves away so you can go out to lunch and play tennis and NOT even manage to clean your house"

divingdarlin8812: seriously

i hate glade

me: me too

i totally dont even want to buy it

even if it DOES penetrate the carpet fibers more deeply than febreze

So basically, all these commercials make me want to do is burn down the glade plant, especially the advertising wing. I take issue with most commercials for products that are stereotypically the domain of women (for instance, when was the last time you saw a commercial for a vacuum cleaner that featured a man using the product and not merely slapping his wife's ass while she vacuumed under his feet? Ok, maybe that's a little too histrionic an assessment, but you get the idea) but at least these products show busy, industrious women who usually look happy to be providing a service for their family. At LEAST. Not this woman. Her husband works all day, presumably making enough money for her to enjoy luxuries like a country club membership and lunches out with the girls. Her only job is to clean the house, and it's supposed to take her all day. Instead she sprays it down with Glade and attempts to lie badly about it.

I feel as though there's some sort of grim subtext to this commercial. Why is she lying about not cleaning the house? Will something bad happen to her if her husband finds out about the Glade? Does he work for Febreze?

To add insult to injury Glade leaves us with the worst punch line ever invented at the end:

"Wow, you must have been cleaning all day!" For eight hours! Did you even eat? You look emaciated!
"Yes, well, aren't you glad" Aren't you glad you work 40 hours a week so I can clean the house for eight hours a day!
"Don't you mean....GLADE?" Oh, haha! I get it! Glade is just like Glad except it has one extra letter! How much are they paying their advertising execs to come up with this shit?

There's another one where she pretends to bake cookies and uses a candle to simulate the smell of freshly baked cookies to impress her friends. Then she ruthlessly eats a poor anthropomorphic gingerbread man who has curiously sprung to life to expose her.

Obviously this woman will stop at nothing for the approval of her peers and now I am a Febreze user for life.

First Glade Commercial:

Second:

A Partial Christmas List for My Millionaire Friends.

2008-11-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

Ok, I've done some thinking, now I'm ready.

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I was thinking that I haven't posted tree cam since...well, since I started posting tree cam. The tree is bigger now, and its looking all fall-y and winter-y. We're contemplating bringing it inside for the winter but I am (probably rightfully) afraid that I won't water it and it will wither away. NOT a good sign for the tree that is supposed to be representing our relationship (ya'll sometimes we're so sappy it makes me want to barf, so its ok if you do that now).

Tonight C and Downstairs Dan. are both at work so it'll be the perfect time to update Tree Cam. GET EXCITED.

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Ok, even though I've done some thinking, I'm still not feeling very verbose and exciting so instead I'm going to provide my Imaginary Christmas List for 2008, with pictures (some)! Without further ado:

Kate's Imaginary Christmas List Presuming Her Loved Ones Won the Lottery 2008

1. a pony. I'm not even trying to be cute here because I really really REALLY do want a pony. I'm fairly sure this one has topped every Christmas list since I was five :(

(this horse is prettier than me :( )

2. a house While I love my CURRENT house, and my current roommates are fine and dandy, I do NOT love living with three other people (not including C).

(room for ONLY two people and lots of love!!!)

3. a vacation to somewhere exotic actually, anywhere but st. louis is sounding exotic enough to me at the time being. I've found myself saying to C, "Hey baby, lets get a room at the Holiday Inn by the airport! Won't that be fun?!" Yea...I need to get out more.

(both of these are Holiday Inns...)

file this one under "boring ass posts"

2008-11-24T10:38:00.000-08:00

Soooo, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. It ended up that I had ALL of my vacation days left to use (yes, you are in awe of my ~~extreme fear of getting fired~~ work ethic!) so I took Wednesday off to absolutely shorten the amount of time I have to spend at work this week. At the moment I am seriously regretting not taking tomorrow off as well. Alas, I am greedy and want to carry over as many vacation days as possible to next year.

GOD this entry is boring. Were you expecting something pithy? Perhaps something touching and nostalgic? TOO BAD, you get to hear about my vacation days.

I gotta go think some more before I finish this so I don't fall asleep on my keyboard.

2008-11-21T10:46:00.000-08:00

When I was about eight, my parents signed me up for Cotillion. We had been living in the South for several years by then (two to be exact) and I suppose they were either A. enamored with the gentility points that you get from sending your daughters to a school for manners or B. trying to fit in. Probably a little bit of both.

My siblings and I were christened in the Midwest, in the Reformed Latter Day Saints church surrounded by our stolid relatives, but we were baptized in a white clapboard Episcopal church, dripping with Spanish moss. I only have memories of that church being damp as most things were in the South; damp sidewalks, dewy moss clinging to saturated grave stones, cold holy water on my forehead. Our baptism did more than open the doors to the social hall at St. Pauls, it also bonded us forever in holy-siblinghood to our former family friends-made-God Family.

What is a God-Family to a bunch of RLDS Midwesterners displaced to the deep(ly religious) South, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Your Godmother and father are responsible for assisting in your spiritual growth. They will watch you when your parents are out of town and you will have countless Easters, Christmases and Thanksgivings together. Your God-Siblings will have warmed their body next to yours in a crib or a bathtub. You will have snickered through a multitude of church services only to run screaming into the church yard afterwards, ignoring the priest on your way out. Your Godbrothers will be your Cotillion dance partner and on some level people will probably assume they are your betrothed.

Yes, that's where Cotillion came in. At the age of eight my Godbrother and I were pulled out of the creek in the backyard where we were most likely building a fort out of mud and narrowly escaping death by Cotton-mouth. We were stuffed into church clothes (on a Tuesday night!!) and packed off to ballroom dancing where likely our parents beamed from behind a crack in the door.
Mrs. Whipple was our teacher, devoted to enlightening us with the ageless joys of the waltz, the fox-trot and the tango. Godbrother and I were deeply mortified at the prospect of touching not only each other in what seemed like such an intimate fashion, but of touching other boys and girls. You can only imagine the consequences this had on our dance skills as we shuffled around the room, as far apart as two eight year olds can possibly be without attracting the attention of Mrs. Whipple, who was probably eight around the year 1800 and had since forgotten completely what it was like.

In addition I learned to keep my knees together when I sit and cross my legs at the ankle, tucking them politely behind me and folding my hands on my knees (a habit I still keep to this day). I learned to balance books on my head so as to avoid rudely "walking" and adopt the habit of "gliding" across the room instead. This was particularly hard for a girl who was overweight, grossly unfashionable, a huge dork and accustomed to ducking through hallways and around corners instead of "gliding". I learned to curtsy, how to kneel in a skirt and how to accept an invitation to dance from a gentleman caller. Godbrother learned how to issue an invitation to dance (I'm fairly certain neither of us has ever used these two particular skills).

We learned together what a Victrola was when unexpectedly the CD player broke. Of course Mrs. Whipple had purchased a Victrola (probably around the time they were invented) for just such an occasion, and that week we danced to scratchy renditions of dance music from the 1910's, gliding around the room in the strained silence that always accompanies a group of 50 eight year olds being forced to waltz.

My sister and I were never given away as Debutantes, so in theory our Cotillion training was a waste. I'm fairly certain C considers me an eligible young woman for marriage despite my lack of a formal introduction to society. I'm fairly certain Godbrother has never asked his longtime girlfriend to dance in the proper way.

Occasionally though, in the way that many things about the South still do, a piece of Cotillion sneaks up on me. I will sink all the way to the floor instead bending to pick something up. I will hold C's hand in the style of a waltz if our favorite song comes on the playlist while we are alone in our room. I will sit at my desk and ignore the ergonomic qualities of my desk chair, sitting straight with my ankles crossed until the end of the day when I will crumple at home, legs akimbo and stockings pulled down. This much I am sure I have in common with Mrs. Whipple, may she rest in peace.

OH (cold) SNAP

2008-11-20T14:48:00.000-08:00

PS: It's COLD today. Tonight the low temp has the word "teen" in it, and no, I'm talking about fifty-twoteen degrees. Commence lack of fashion......NOW.

PPS: Speaking of fashion, my mom has agreed to fashion a long sleeved fleece jacket for Oliver. I will definitely provide pictures.

PPPS: Someone today told me the picture of oliver in his stupid cow hat was, well, stupid (those weren't her exact words but I get it...it IS stupid) and I quickly set the record straight. That hat keeps him WARM. Ya'll I'm so serious. His brains would probably turn to ice if he didn't wear hats in winter. I assume his cranial space is made mostly of water, so this is entirely possible.

OH SNAP. It's five o clock. I have actually been busy today AND updated my blog. Yep, I'm awesome.

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE THURSDAY.

2008-11-15T21:12:00.000-08:00

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE SATURDAY:
Ok ok, I'm updating. It's only 11:10 so it still counts for Saturday.

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE MONDAY:
That's what I wrote for Saturday. MAN I'm a loser. Clearly the problem is just that I need to start at the BEGINNING of the month and not in the middle of it. Clearly.

Ok, now I'm really going to update.

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THIS IS WHAT I WROTE ON WEDNESDAY:

I put the Onion widget on my google desktop because, well, I love the Onion, and ever since I did this I keep thinking the headlines it posts are real. This results in quite a few of these: "Hey baby, President Bush just took a wild tumble down the steps of the Washington Monument! Did you know?!" and "oh my gosh, a blistex employee made a fool of himself at a lip balm conference!" and "Jesus! Bush just got his arm bit off by a crocodile!" and other ridiculous outbursts that have nothing to do with real news.

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Today I will really update. I really will. My latest exploits include searching for vacations in Sun Valley Idaho for the family and blowing the lint out of my keyboard with the magic dust remover. That stuff is amazing! PS: why does the can get cold when you use it? Anyone?

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Occasionally my phone does this thing at the office where it will randomly turn the ringer back on at it's loudest possible setting. Let me tell you, when I'm expecting my phone to merely buzz harmlessly and instead a blaring rendition of my alma mater's fight song, Al Green (C's ring) Hall and Oates (Sammy's Ring) or Don't Stop Believing (Gibble's Ring) comes out of my phone unexpectedly....lets just say I've knocked a couple elbows and knees around jumping out of my seat when it happens.

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BEST OF YAHOO ANSWERS V. 3

I feel upset, so will you sing a Nickelback song to me please?

What is the best website to date teen girls in Oman ?

What will the plot of the next cat porn, starring Adam and Sophie, be?

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Anyway, I leave you with this:

NaBloPoMo

2008-11-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I joined NaBloPoMo as extra incentive to update EVERY DAY. Get excited!

I'm not going to put up the November NaBloPoMo badge becauuuuse November is half over and I definitely haven't posted every day.

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In other news, November is half over!! How?!

Tomorrow it is supposed to snow in Saint Louis. GREAT. I used to really think snow was awesome, because it only happened once every ten years in South Carolina. Well, the reason for that is because snow is only awesome IF it happens once every ten years. You need at least ten years between snows to forget how much they suck. I mean, don't get me wrong, snow is pretty. If you happen to be in the country, in a quiet field surrounded by sleeping trees and with grey-blue sky stretching as far as the eye can see. If you have a snug coat and cute hat on, even better. Snowflakes will fall on your nose and eyelashes and everything and everything will shimmer with joy. Yeah.

Unfortunately when it snows on Indiana Avenue, immediately it turns grey and fills up with dirt and soot and crack needles. Oliver goes out into the yard and refuses to go further than two inches away from the porch so the snow in our yard is spotted with dog poop and pee. I consistently Soooo, not that great. Nothing magical about that.

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Speaking of Oliver, this morning when I woke up I found a present that he left me IN MY SHOWER. When he was a puppy, I understood this sort of behavior a lot better. I said to myself, why wouldn't the equivalent of a two year old child come and poop in my house? As he got older, I said "sure, the equivalent of a 15 year old person SHOULDNT be pooping in the shower, but this is oliver so maybe that fifteen year old is delayed a couple years"...if you know what I mean.

Now he is equivalent to a thirty year old human and i truly, TRULY cannot think of a good reason why a 30 year old man would drop a deuce in my shower. He's getting gray on his muzzle now, so he's got to be old enough to know that pooping in the shower is bad. I'm sure theres a wise adage about this somewhere (as you all know, my grandfather was a sailor so I know ALL ABOUT adages):

"Gray on your muzzle, don't poop in the shower."

....

I love him, but sometimes I think back on the day I picked him out. There were literally HUNDREDS of dogs there (it was a puppy farm, mistake no. 1) and I picked the dumbest one. Sure he was pretty and expensive, but he was dumb from the start. That's very classic kate behavior, by the way. Sort of like my $350 leather boots. Pretty, expensive, and a very dumb idea from the start. Of course I still love them (a lot, much like Oliver, I will cry when they bite the dust). My boots don't poop in the shower though. Not to my knowledge, anyway.

In other animal news, C just informed me that Ethan got locked in a room and was screaming bloody murder. IF there's any living thing in the house dumber than Oliver, its quite possibly Ethan. Here is a picture of him, telling me how he really feels:

Ethan is also a pooper. So is Dinah Lou, since Ethan moved in. Between the cats and Oliver, its often like the book of revelations come to life in this house.

ALSO, look how THIN I was! I guess that's what livin' off of cigarettes and adderall will do for you.

Anyway, its my lunch break now so I'm going ot watch the office.

Heck is for people that don't believe in gosh.

2008-11-13T14:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Blog,
Sorry for not updating regularly.
Love,
Kate

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Anyway, I would like to tell you that I'm so busy that I just don't have a minute to break away to write but that's not true. I'm just lazy. Lately I've mostly been consumed with reading other people's blogs and this had made me intimidated and feeling sluggish about regaling the internet with stories about my cubicle. Or...well, my cubicle. That about sums it up. Yesterday I cleaned it! Today I rearranged the magnetic poetry on my cabinets! Oh, did I tell you about when I organized my books from largest to smallest?!

Yeah, cubicles suck.

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SORRY, MORE ELEVATOR RANTING:

This morning I was late to work. I parked my car by the elevator (I always park like three floors higher than necessary so I don't have to walk a long way to the elevator. Whoo...I am SO not living an active lifestyle and will probably die from deep vein thrombosis or something) What was I talking about? Oh right, the elevator.

ANYWAY: This SUPER cheery woman was holding the door for literally every single person in the whole garage. Including me, even though I was busy fiddling with my car, and putting my shoes on and losing my keys in my purse (you get the idea). I even gave her the "go ahead without me" wave and she didn't get it. I'm not sure what else I could have done except give her the "I LITERALLY WOULD RATHER HURL MYSELF OFF OF THE TOP OF THIS GARAGE THAN RIDE DOWN TO THE STREET WITH YOU AND THE SIX OTHER PEOPLE IN THERE" wave.

Eventually she got the message, but SERIOUSLY people. I'm beginning to think my hatred of the elevator is borderline sick.

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Since I've been reading other people's blogs I've been feeling less and less important/articulate. I think I've mentioned this before, but MAN, some of these ladies don't even curse. HOW?

Once, someone told me that someone told THEM that I had a gift for telling stories, which I don't think exactly translates into my blogging sometimes. For one, it must seem as though I have absolutely no grasp whatsoever of the English language, or it's grammar (one I got a C on a paper in COLLEGE because it had 17 comma splices, so this might actually be the case). But seriously, I just don't see the point in editing my blog. What you see is what you get here, people. This crap comes straight out of my brain onto the paper. No filters.

Secondly, it has occurred to me lately that maybe I was good at telling stories...back when I had some stories to tell people. I mean, it's not hard to tell a story like this one:

Once upon a time, Kate and her Friend Sam trespassed in a National Park by climbing the fence at Monticello into an apple orchard planted when Thomas Jefferson lived there and absolutely GORGED themselves on delicious, ripe little national treasures.

True story! But man, compare that to this:

Once upon a time, Kate was late to work because she couldn't find any pantyhose and she didn't want to get in the elevator and then her computer broke and she converted some firm resumes into a new format and went home and waited for C to get off work because she has no other friends.

WOW.

This same person also told the person who told me that he told her (right? right.) that when I cursed, it sounded "right" or that "it fit". At the time I was not interested in cutting down on the amount of cursing that I do nor did I regularly post in a blog that my grandmother may or may not read. So I was excited. Yea! I'm good at cursing! Now I'm not so impressed with myself when I can't come up with anything better to say than "shit." But I still make mistakes. Probably like ten times a day.

Hey, my grandfather was a sailor. That's what my mother told me and that's probably what I'll tell my daughters when they curse someday: "Hey, your great grandfather was a sailor, it's ok" and so on down the line. Someday there will be a distant ancestor of mine saying unspeakable things and her mother will tell her "Hey, I bet someone in our family was a sailor, so it's ok".

I think I really need some help. Shock therapy or something.

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*BONUS: Right as I typed this tome excusing myself from cursing my grandmother sent me an email with a prayer in it from Billy Graham. What's that you say? No one cares that your grandfather was a sailor? Cursing isn't cute anymore because you're a grown woman and not a whippy, in-your-face college girl?

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To sum up, and a few more small things that are happening in my life:

I should not curse because God will use my grandmother as a tool to make me regret it by coinciding her devout emails with my excuses.
My life will never, ever be as exciting as it was in college, but hopefully it will not continue to be this horrifyingly boring.
God, I hate elevators.
I tried for the fourth time to burn off the wart on my hand this weekend, and its STILL THERE.
C and I looked at engagement rings! That's exciting, right?! I won't even allow myself to talk about it because people DEFINITELY dont want to read descriptions of the 50,000 rings I liked. Bottom line, C? If it's got some diamonds in it, I think I'm happy.
It's four fifty and I am getting the ~~hell~~ heck out of dodge.

2008-11-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Today is absolutely crawling by at an excruciating rate. I've even been busy, which usually helps the time go by, but no dice. I'm suffering.

Yesterday went by super quick, however, because I did THIS:

www.katefenwick.com

Need a photographer? If I make enough as a photographer I will not have to suffer through days like this anymore. So if you need one...I'm your girl.

Too bored to write.

Insert Olympic Theme Music Here

2008-11-04T09:54:00.001-08:00

In case any of you hadn't already heard, C and I competed in and won the Saint Louis Beer
Olympics on Sunday. Well, C competed, I spectate-d. For those of wondering how on earth a Beer Olympics team with me on it could win, that should clear things up. I'm not really in a writing mood, so pictures will have to suffice

C holds the Beer Olympics trophy aloft, filled with Beer on Sunday.

The team drinks out of the dismantled trophy.

\

(GRIPE: blogger will NOT let me delete the following sentence without deleting the picture, so it willl have to stay:
ng mood at the moment, so some pictures should suffice)
This is me drinking out of the glory cup while simultaneously drinking a beer. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?

C drinks out of the cup. Lookin' a little red in the face there, buddy.

Anyway, thats about it. Other than that my life is steady and happy, as usual. Go figure, makes for boring blogs.

Happy Halloween.

2008-10-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Halloween and I just don't have the ~~desire~~ energy to find a costume. Also, if I remember correctly from my college days (side note: I find myself waxing nostalgic about my college days more and more, and usually I make a policy not to be nostalgic about anything unless it was at LEAST five years ago, but anyway...) Halloween if you are over the age of eight is mostly about conceiving a costume idea that is mundane and adding the word "Sexy" to it and going out to get drunk and possibly hook up. Since getting drunk is expensive and I don't need to put on a cat suit to hook up, what's the point? Maybe I just need to be shocked out of my boring-ness.

If you didn't ever indulge in this sort of ridiculousness in college (Hi, Mom and Dad!) let me tell you how many Sexy Nurses and Sexy English Teachers and Sexy Trash Ladies there are out and about on any given October 31st. The best, in my opinion, are the Sexy Animals (I myself have given into the Sexy Cat Phenomenon and once attempted the rare and difficult Sexy Peacock.*)

This year our roommate attempted to make plans with us to get dressed up and go out on the town. She's going as an (sexy) Stingray to her friend's (sexy) Crocodile Hunter. I assume these costumes will be "sexy", because she is not the kind of person who would dress herself in the actual image of a stingray, triangular fins and weird prehistoric feeding hole and all. Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how one goes about dressing up as a stingray without employing a large amount of felt and/or construction paper and/or poster board. C and I entertained ideas of going out as Borat (because C does a mean Borat imitation) and a Gypsy (bonus! Gypsy is the cute (only to us, I presume) nickname that C has given me) and then someone suggested I go as Sarah Palin because I wear glasses and have bangs and can pull off a French twist and a blazer. Then I suggested in an Ultimate Moment of Laziness (UML) that I ressurect my Sexy Flight Attendant costume and C pull out his Sexy Airline Pilot...uniform. Hey, no one has to know he's not in costume haha! But then if he's going to do that, I might as well be a Sexy Graphic Designer for a Major Law Firm and if thats the case we should definitely stay home.

Although the above suggestions were met with minor bursts of enthusiasm, it was nothing earth shattering enough to rouse us from the couch to go plan said costumes. Thus, I assume we are Not Going Out for Halloween.

I'd like to say we would prefer to stay home and pass out candy to the eager young trick or treaters on my street, but there are no eager young anythings on our street. Sure there are young children, but I doubt their...ahem, caretakers...will be putting together a candy getting expedition for their progeny any time soon. So staying home will only result in eating all of the candy I buy myself and actively becoming LESS sexy. While I don't relish the idea of dressing up as Sexy Kate, I strongly reject the notion of becoming Fat and UnSexy Kate. So thats out.

I suspect what will end up happening is that we stay at home and turn off the porch light. Like that deterred me from coming to someone's house to get candy when I was little.

* But ended up as a Sexy Flight Attendant.

2008-10-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

A Warm Sound

Carolina is curved
like the wing of a bird.

Our feathers intertwine;
a basket of flight,
the nest crumpling
and still my heartbeat
next to hers,
the steady mother thump
asserts that we once
fit together like two shells
before I was sent away
proclaiming the whirl of salt
on my lips,
my daughter stain,
one less babies ear on her shores.

Here are the ghosts
of everything sliding up across
the ocean swatch:
tell them I know
the warm sound of home
that assumes the shape of a birds wing,
the taste of warm fruit,
the sea trapped in a shell,
the road that disappears
to the west.

The return of the cold is dredging up memories of the last time the weather swung from hot to cold in Saint Louis, and I was here to see it. This place has started to seem more real now that I can recall four seasons living in it, that I can share my own memories of the strange flux from hot to cold in the midwest. Here is one:

Last October I was still reeling from my move, still lying in bed each morning and looking at a strangers walls. I thought then that it was, perhaps, a little histrionic to say that I was grieving, but in hindsight this is probably the truth. The process of leaving my childhood home was the same familiar sadness of losing a lover or a friend. I remember the heaviness of my body getting in and out of bed, the inconvenient gesture of getting dressed and looking presentable. The unimaginable task of befriending people and forging a life comparable to my old one.

I remember one freezing morning, driving to church choir and praying, literally speaking the words out loud in my cold car (since the window was bashed out and I was unemployed and unable to fix it, my breathing crystallized in the air despite the heater), that someone would ask me about my day. I think secretly, though I did not add this to my prayer, I wanted someone to notice my grief. To accept that I was nearly consumed with feeling like a misfit, everything from not owning any acceptably warm clothing to not being able to call someone up for lunch or coffee, and all the nuances of acceptance that lie in between. I had C, and thank god for him, but while C is good for many things (among them: coaxing me through that difficult winter), running to target to peruse the women's clothing (among other things that I yearned for) was not one of them.

Each morning at church, the members of our choir "passed the peace", and usually the passed it right over my head, stopping only cursorily to shake my hand or smile thinly in my direction. Truly, I can't blame anyone for it. I myself would also likely not offer a hug or a warm(er) handshake to the aloof, slightly sad looking girl in the back row. As such (and this is where the histrionics reared their ugly head, both now and then) , the "peace" offered me little actual peace. So much so that I can recall mentioning several times to C and my mother how I wished weekly to disappear during this perfunctory moment of togetherness .

That October morning when the peace came and I reached out my hand for its obligatory shake, I got instead a warm hug, probably the warmest most important hug of that year. Now, we're not talking a bear hug. I'm not even sure it could be labeled as anything more than a "It's great to know you, peace be with you" hug. I'm sure this person went on that day and didn't think anything more about it. But it rallied my courage. I did not miss sweet tea or the ocean or any other South Carolina cliche in that moment.

I have never told this person what that meant to me, lest I sound crazy or desperate. I promise I'm not. But, on the off chance that she reads this, I hope she knows what that meant to me.

It's fall again

2008-10-27T12:44:00.001-07:00

And you know what that means! Yes, thats right:

STOP EATING CANDY CORN RIGHT NOW, KATE.

Some well meaning member of my office brought in cupcakes and candy corn for us all to feast on. DAMN HER. I love candy corn so much there is literally no force on earth that can make me stop going over there to eat them. Hopefully they will be gone soon. At the rate I'm going, they definitely will be gone soon.

___________________________________

In other news, I still can't figure out how to edit my website. Help, world!!

2008-10-24T13:48:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a rough day, which consisted of the following:

1. IUD insertion

Yep, that about sums it up. It ended with a wheelchair trip to my car and about 6 hours on the couch. Of course now that I have it inside me, all I can find on the internet are horror stories about it. I guess that's the internet for you. I HOPE thats the internet for you. Anyway, I would regale you with the entire gruesome story about how it was inserted and why it hurt so bad but I'm of the mindset that your blog should never contain the word "cervix" in reference to medical procedures that you have recently endured. Maybe not even then.

So thats my excuse for not updating yesterday, the other days I have nothing to offer except that my life isn't that exciting.

__________________________________

Yesterday Jess called to ask if she thought she and I were "high maintenance." Initially (and reflexively) I said "Of course not, we are the perfect girlfriends and any man would be lucky to have us." That's what you're supposed to say, right? But then I got to thinking, and halfway through our ranting and raving about how low maintenance we are I realized the following:

There is no way we are low maintenance.

Not in the conventional sense, anyway. Nope, Jess and I do not belong in the Complete Low Maintenance Woman aisle at the woman store. Heres what happened to me on Wed. which confirmed this forever and ever amen:

C wanted to go grocery shopping instead of getting a pumpkin from the quaint and charitably oriented pumpkin patch at the local Lutheran church and instead of being cool and all "oh ok, I guess we dont really have food and the DO sell pumpkins at the grocery store", I cried. CRIED. "ONLY PUMPKINS GROWN AND HARVESTED BY NAVAJO INDIANS WILL DO!#$!@#$"

I'm sure there are some examples of how she's HM as well. Probably something to do with needing her space and insisting that she spend all her money on shoes and demanding that her landlord do silly things like fix her heat. Silly landlords. Maybe I'll call her tonight and ask for some examples.

Me, I'll chalk it up to hormones, that usually does the trick.

___________________________________

OK, this blog entry gets longer and stupider by the minute, so I guess that means it's time to go home.

Gah I want to go home.

2008-10-21T13:32:00.001-07:00

Ok, stop coming over here to ask me if your project or done, or "how's it going?" or "how much longer do you think?" You know who you are. Dammit, woman, I will finish your project, and when it's done you'll know about it. Honestly, I'm not over here goofing off instead of doing my work. I'm not going to finish it and completely fail to tell you that its done. SEEM AS HOW WE WORK WITHIN SPEAKING DISTANCE OF ONE ANOTHER.

I'm sorry, but when this happens I simply cannot conjure up any niceties for my coworker.

____________________________________

If you can't already tell, today has been a frustrating day at work. It started out with a powerpoint about firm policy and ended with a packet about tax and bankruptcy law. Oh, add my seventy dollar flash template which is completely unintelligible to me.

gah.

2008-10-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Why doesn't what I think ever match what comes out of my mouth when I'm trying to be professional. Just a second ago I was going over a draft of a thing (those are technical design terms, btw) and this is how it went:

HER: Well, let me show this to Tessa and we can put our heads together (side note: people in offices are always "putting their heads together" for one reason or another. perverts.) and come up with any changes, but this looks great!
MY BRAIN: Thanks, I'll look forward to your email!
ME: Bye bye!!

Bye bye?! What, am I five?

Tally-HO.

2008-10-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Today is slow at work. I think deep down in my subconscious I knew it would be when I woke up. Cause pretty much the worst idea I could think of was putting on heels and nice clothes, so now here I am at work, SERIOUSLY pushing the issue of the "business casual" workplace. Are topsiders business casual? Maybe if you're someones dad, and you work in a yacht store. I'm also wearing a zip up hoodie, which is perhaps better suited to picking apples or raking leaves than it is for my conservatively dressed office. It's got toggle buttons too. I stole it from Callie who is unfortunately in France and can't defend herself from wardrobe theft. Hey, that's what happens when you leave your cute navy hoodie with toggle buttons at home instead of taking it with you to France.

______________________________

Today I thought very briefly about starting a blog about a made up life. "Wouldn't that be fun!" I asked myself, and the answer I eventually came up with was, "No, you cannot even make a blog about your own life interesting." So I abandoned this idea. But I was talking at length with a dear friend of mine who has an extremely cute and precocious baby, and it seems like she has a lot more that she could blog about that would make for cute/funny/interesting/relevant entries. In my made up life I would probably have the following attributes, which I have noticed make for great blogging from my extensive and unscientific survey of the blogging community:

an extremely smart and sassy child
a waaay more interesting job
a hybrid SUV
a polygamous relationship
lots of money

Well, thats all I can come up with right now, so maybe I'm really NOT ready to start a blog devoted to my imaginary life. It would be very short.

_________________________________

Speaking of polyamory (as one tends to do), It's come to my attention that an acquaintance from college who was...ahem...predisposed to such a lifestyle has recently given birth to a baby girl. This got me thinking about what I would do if my mother was polyamorous (SIDE NOTE: I'm assuming amorous is spelled like glamorous. Naturally) like the women in the aforementioned forum. I just hope this girl hasn't named her child Loki Xaiel Sunshine Zeus, joined a commune and started exempting gluten from her diet.

This is how I previously envisioned people who co-breastfeed their children. Now I know better after a great deal of research, and it's possible that the people next door, right on sleepy ole' Indiana Avenue. Their children might be the very same that are selling homemade apple pie on the corner and catching fireflies in the twilight. I'm kidding of course. The kids next door are probably selling crack and catching diseases in the alleyway. And not just at twilight. They're also probably a member of a polyamourous family though, but not in the hippie, free-love, slightly mysterious way. If you know what I mean.

______________________________

I had an eventful weekend, thanks for asking. On Friday in the middle of my workday, my grandfather had a (now dubbed) minor heart attack, which left me a blubbering mess at work until five when my ~~work ethic~~ fear of getting fired finally released me to go home with no repercussions. Then we realized he was ok but there was NO WAY I wasn't going to go see him. You just never know with these things, right? Life is too short.

I did acquiesce and allow C to play in his long awaited baseball games on Saturday. That's right, I said baseball gameS. Baseball games which took like eight hours. I mean, I like baseball as much as the next girl, and I especially like it if C is playing and lookin' all cute in his uniform that he designed, and lovingly cradling his new baseball bat (which he polished at least three times pre-game to 'remove ball marks') at the plate. It really is cute. I put up with it for eight hours (with a three hour lunch break) but only because I love him a lot. I even put up with the annoying brats at the baseball diamond that absolutely will not leave Oliver alone. SAMPLE SCRIPT OF ANNOYING BRATS:

Kid1: Hes so cute!
Kid 2: He has a long nose...
Kid 1: ...but his tail is so little!!
Kid 2: Why does he have little feet?
Kid 1: Why can't I walk him?
Kid2: Sit Oliver! Sit!
Kid1: Do you love him?
Kid2: Why is his mouth so big?

....And so on and so fourth until I want to be all "I don't know, why is YOUR mouth so damn big?!" Oliver is a pretty good sport for the most part, but secretly I know he wants to bite their faces off.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, my weekend. We eventually got to my parents house, Grandfather was released from the hospital "As right as rain". And then I bought a car. No biggie. It only took looking at about 15 bazillion different cars before I ~~got sick of looking and just got something already~~ found a beauty. Ok seriously, it is a really nice car, and its the best one I found for my extremely limited budget. And yes, it is an SUV. But it's a SMALL SUV, and I only drive one mile to work anyone. Ok, its more like three miles. Even so I probably should be trying to reduce my carbon footprint and not drive at all to work, but when I wake up in the morning the absolute last thing I want to do is walk three miles in business casual. We're talking dead last, like:

THINGS I WANT TO DO WHEN I WAKE UP:
1. go back to bed and/or
1.a: win a million bucks
2. snuggle with C
3. win a million bucks (addendum, see 1.a)
4. eat
5. shower
6. take the dog out
7. Actually wake up.
8. walk three miles.

See? Dead last. Plus I pay 60 bucks every damn month for parking and damned if I'm not going to damn near abuse that privilege. Why yes, we do park free for every single Cardinals game.

Anyway, the car. The car!! The dealer says it's a "light bamboo", the website says "light tundra" and mazda says "light cypress". Draw your own conclusions:

Heres a sunroof so I can soak up as much sunshine as possible since I spend most of all day locked away.

This is the big picture.

Yep, it's got buttons too. Thanks for this picture, car dealer.

A close up of the paint job so everyone can make an informed decision about the true color.

The dash board. In "deep slate".

Cup holders and such, but check out those mental hospital/nursing home grade rubber mats. Hoseable!

The storage area. Obviously I need maximum area for clutter. KIDDING! Maybe.

Additionally, check out the website for the dealership where we got it.

The Car

Make sure your sound is turned up for the porn quality music that goes with it.

"Hey baby, you wanna come over to my place, check out my 1997 lexus? Do the numbers? Yeah, you know what I mean. "

The only thing left to do is name her. I'm pretty sure it's a her. Boy cars arent "tundra", "cypress", or "bamboo".

Annnnnnnnnd I'm back.

2008-10-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

Honestly? Sometimes I just get in a funk and I don't feel like documenting my day anymore. It might have something to do with the fact that theres only so much I can write about name tags and attorney bios before I fall into a deep depression. And previous to last week, this was how my days went:

7:00 AM: alarm 1 goes off
7:10 AM: alarm 1 goes off
7:15 AM: alarm 1 goes off
7:20 AM: alarm 1 goes off, C puts phone on vibrate and sticks it in my pillowcase.
8:20 AM: wake up, take a shower
9:15 AM: roll into work.
9-10 AM: read the news, drink slim fast.
11 AM - 5 PM: make nametags.

See? That was even boring for me to write so I can't imagine how it is to read. Lately, I have make some pretty flashy nametags though. My best nametag work ever, I think. Heres a sample:
I dare you to tell me that isn't the best lookin' nametag you've ever seen....

....Thats what I thought.

All this makes me think maybe I should post some of my REAL graphic design, because belive it or not sometimes I do things that aren't as banal as nametags. That would take a lot of work, I think. Maybe that's a post for another day.

_______________________________

So, the previous section of this post might have gotten you wondering why up until a week ago my life was so boring, where henceforth it ceased to be so. Well, I've whipped up a little illustration to tell you, since words don't really do it justice. And why not?
Here it is:
This graphic effectively makes my accident look a lot worse than it was, since in real life it happened at a stop light and I'm pretty sure his truck was going less than one mile per hour. But STILL. Poor Stoie was grossly mismatched.

Now I'm on the hunt for a new car and let me tell you how much I hate it:

ALOT.

I'm conflicted about the role of the men in my life in my search for a car. I mean, who's right is it to say that I can't just stroll into Ye Old Joe Sixpack (haha) Car Shoppe and pick out the first car I like? But noooo...C wants spreadsheets and research and all the men want me to do something called "The Numbers". I still haven't figured out what that is. I sort of halfheartedly did a spreadsheet, but let me tell you...I didn't like it.

I'll keep everyone updated on this situation for sure, including copious pictures of new car.

___________________________________

Today in between jobs at work I'm reading a forum for polyamorous and polyfidelous (?) families and let me tell you, this is blowing my mind. And I'm not even a close minded person, but I'm starting to think maybe I am. I mean, I just wasn't aware that something like co-breastfeeding existed. And Five adults sleeping in the same bed? Naming your children after common weather patterns? Maybe it's just not for me, but I would have a hard time explaining how I came to name my children Loki, Xaeil, Sunshine, Rainy and Breezy.

I guess I'm just the most boring person ever.

psssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

2008-09-18T07:29:00.000-07:00

_____________________________________

I keep having this recurring dream (as in, I've had it three times now) where C and I are given a mechanical baby to see if we'll be good parents. It's very realistic, ok?! Anyway, in the dream I keep forgetting to feed and change the baby. That's it...you were expecting something more interesting?

Also, last night I did NOT have the baby dream, but I did dream that I had to do portraits of an ugly girl in the dark. Trust me, as a portrait person, that's as bad as it gets. And it was very realistic...I woke up thinking "I HAVE GOT TO EDIT THOSE PICTURES." Not a good way to start your day.

___________________________________

Over the weekend I used that compound W stuff to burn off the ~~wart~~ abomination on my hand and now it looks like something straight out of the book of revelations. I'm telling you, it's rough. This is the SECOND time I have attempted to singe this thing off my hand to no avail. Oh, of course it gets smaller every time. It "retreats" for a while, if you will, but let me tell you, it only retreats in order to formulate a new plan of attack and regain it's strength because it is STILL NOT GONE. I have (probably) scarred my hand for a very long time and for WHAT?

I wish I had thought to document my problems on camera, because that would have made this post a lot more interesting, but for posterity's sake, I've taken a picture of it now...after two burnings and two fairly painful and disgusting blisters...

Of course I edited it (duh?) because I am a photography dork and the work camera is painfully outdated and stupid and fat and ugly and takes horrible pictures. So the end result is that this looks a little worse than it does in real life. BUT ONLY A LITTLE WORSE! And do you see the white dot in the middle there? Do you see it?! That's a pretty big damn wart for one thats been singed off (literally, the process involves a singeing noise that is, when typed out, literally this: "psssssssssssssssssss") twice. Twice I gave myself frostbite and this is what I get. The opportunity to do it a third, glorious time.

________________________________

In other news I also have PMS and hate the following:

my sweater
my cubicle
paper
Windows XP
Microsoft Office 2002
anything that is not a snickers bar.

2008-09-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

Ugh my room is so messy and so is my house but DAMMIT its not my mess and I don't want to clean it up this time. Of course, that is exactly what I will end up doing.

Lord, make it stop.

Things I Did Today:

2008-09-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

Mailed snarky postcards to my pals in SC
bought wart freezer-offer to once and for all put to rest the abomination on my hand....and in my haste decided to do it in the car on the way home.
froze off a lot of perfectly good skin
marveled at THIS dirty house:

You guys, that's someone's LIVING ROOM.

ate dinner at california pizza kitchen and immediately regretted that decision
did some yard work
put on my snowflake nightgown 'cause its cold.

KICKBALL HERO update

2008-09-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Recently, C got asked to be the interim captain of the Kickball Team while the real captain is away. I thought it was nice of the guy to add "you AND KATE played well this weekend" in the text of his email. Yes yessss you and Kate played well, but Kate is clearly not fit to lead.

It's ok because:
A. I don't know any of the rules of kickball anyway. Not one. "Hey, you uhh, yeah you...why dont you play...farthest away from the home plate thingie and try to score some baskets?!"
B. Extreme prowess in kickball / leadership skills sort of are a turn on. Childhood game mad skillz turn you on? What do you think of THAT Freud?!
C. I just know he was secretly SO proud to be asked.

___________________________________

Today I've been listening to music in my kyoob (hows that for phonetics?!) without my headphones on. I don't give a shit if no one else wants to hear my "Wilco / The Who / Dreams of Northumbria / *Insert obscure dulcimer player here* Plays Bach Classics!" playlist? Whatever, office. Everyone needs some Northumbrian pipes and dulcimer in their day. Happy Friday!

__________________________________

Speaking of work, how come I never fuckin' win the Denim Day drawing?! Each and every friday I faithfully put on my "finest denim" just like the interoffice memo says and I still get no love.

That being said, I wish every day was Denim Day.

Sassy.

2008-09-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

This week, upon coming out of my house to check the mail on a particular beautiful, crisp and cool fall day, I discovered the following on my front stoop:
Except it was half eaten, sitting there looking bloated, pale and sad on my doorstep. At first this was alarming, because, as my most paranoid roommate informs me, there has been a rash of "people hanging out on other people's doorsteps" in our neighborhood and obviously we'd been hit.

But then I got to thinking. What do we have to fear from the mysterious lover of spicy prepackaged pickles? I won't lie, our doorstep is inviting, probably there is no more perfect place to enjoy a giant dick sized "sassy" pickle. And I mean that...on so many different levels.

I do wonder what interrupted him mid-pickle revelry and caused him to cast aside such a friendly pickle, with her sassy flower peddler hat and pink Carmen Miranda shoes. ON MY FRONT STOOP.

Seriously, the ultra-ghetto sack of douche that caused me to have to endure the stench of spicy pickle on my doorstep in the midst of the most glorious fall day of the year better not come to my door asking to shovel my snow or clean my car anytime soon. "Ding Dong! Do you need your sidewalk shoveled for $25?" "Did you eat a pickle on my doorstep this past September? Yes? Then no, I don't."

runez

2008-09-10T08:13:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I got a heinous project on my desk at like 4:59.09 pm so that's what this morning's project is. It involves a lot of numbers and my Least Favorite Program Ever: Excel.

Anyway, I wish I could type to you, friendly blog, but my to-do list is actually longer than a post-it today - so long, in fact, that I had to transfer it to Outlook, which is officially teh no. 1 most office-y thing I've ever done.

ta ta!

Looking for my SOLE-Mate

2008-09-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

My favorite part of this post is the Tennyson quote at the bottom...I wish my right shoes were old soles like this person's....

My name is Right Shoe. I am a right shoe - Skechers circa 2003. I lost my "sole" mate on Saturday in Otay Mesa. His name was Left Shoe.

You see, my owner, Left Shoe, and I were skydiving together, and as the chute opened, Left Shoe, my partner of 5 years, went flying away. I knew this would happen... I tried to tell my owner to tie us better, but he just wouldn't listen. (My owner has been learning how to speak Shoe... but talking to him is mostly like talking to a brick wall)

Left Shoe and I have been inseparable these past few years, ever since we got identical Made In China tattoos. It's like we were made for each other; we were even the same size & color, and we enjoyed the same activities. We traveled everywhere together, and we were even planning on going to Japan together in September.

Some people say Left Shoe jumped on purpose. Sure, we weren't in our prime anymore; Left Shoe especially got a lot of comments about being tattered and over the hill. But I know Left Shoe and he wouldn't do that to me. It was a bad day for Left Shoe because in the morning he stepped in gum, and then later he stepped in an unknown substance on the port-a-potty floor. But he was fine, and was excited to go skydiving. Left Shoe was resilient like that.

I really miss Left Shoe. I've come to terms with the fact that I may never see him again. But I really just want to know what happened to Left Shoe... Did he land in a lake? or did the winds carry him out to sea? or did he leave a little crater somewhere from the impact? or maybe he burned up on re-entry in a blazing fireball of glory.

If you know anything about what happened to Left Shoe, please contact me. I know I can't hope that Left Shoe is still alive, but I just want to know what became of Left Shoe...

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson

All my thoughts & prayers,

Right Shoe

early tuesday morning.

2008-09-09T08:17:00.001-07:00

C got officially laid off yesterday so it's time to batten down the hatches I suppose, for the shit-storm of poorness that is surely coming to our household. Sigh.

Anyway, to add insult to injury he got stuck in the airport while dropping off his shit, so I decided to cook him dinner to make him feel better. I had a very elaborate menu planned; pork tenderloin, delicious salad, rice etc. but in the end I scrapped it and went with the following:

pizza-dillas
beer
ice cream

...which seemed to make him feel better. Probably way more than pork tenderloin would have.

________________________________________

Recently I went into the bathroom and on the way into the stall I swiped a catering menu from a local restaurant that was just sitting on the little table outside the stall. SIDE NOTE: WHY is there a table and chairs in the bathroom? The bathroom is not a parlor. Anyway, I figured no one else was in the bathroom so someone had left it but SOMEONE WAS.

So anyway, I felt really guilty about taking their menu to read in the stall, so I stayed put while they washed their hands and such and listened to them shuffle around looking for their menu.

awesome. just....awesome.

2008-09-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

Today is a Semi-Slow Work Day, with enormous bouts of work coming in 10-15 minute spurts. So anyway, on one of my off-spurts™ I discovered THIS, which is the most amazing craigslist discover yet:

BEST OF CRAIGSLIST:

1. Very Exciting Gravel Giveaway - about 1/2 yard!
Well its about to happen again...it's going to snow and it will cover the gravel pile in my driveway. I will then be fooled into thinking that I or my wife was too lazy to totally push the snow out of the driveway and cleverly left piled it kind of out of the way.

Not this year! No stinking way! For I am taking action and going the distance! I am saying to the whole world via this posting on craigslist that the pile of gravel is up for grabs! Hey, are you the right person for free gravel?

Things to consider:

-Moving gravel is a great work-out. I'm big and strong today thanks to my gravel moving routine.

-Kids love gravel. I am constantly telling all sorts of kids to get away from my gravel/snow pile. SHOO!

-Go Green. Go gravel.

-Women love gravel. I often look out the window to see my wife looking over the gravel pile and shaking her head in amazement.

-Gravel has staying power. Its has stayed in my drive way for two years!

-Food and drink taste better after moving gravel.

There are more considerations, obviously. But you also need to know that the gravel that will allow to finally finish that project and one-up your neighbors before fall comes is located at:

[ ADDRESS DELETED]

Bring a shovel, your vehicle and all the excitemt you can muster! It's gravel!

Thank you.

2. Live in Nanny needed for 4 kids (pls don't call them "precious ones") AKA The Best Nanny Ad Ever. EVER.

My kids are a pain in the ass. Just in the past hour, i have had to tell each one to do something more than once. oldest: can i have soda? it's just a sprite? please? can i? no, no and no.

the next one...don't even get me started. seriously.

the twin six year olds: one wanted dessert before her dinner was over, one kept wanting to know why I wouldn't let nine year olds swing her around by her limbs. (the fear of a dislocated shoulder did nothing.)

Please help me.

I can be a tad difficult to work for. I'm loud, pushy and while I used to think we paid well, i am no longer sure. i work from home, so you get the pleasure of being hounded by me all day long. and, you get to pretend to like me, because i am deeply sensative. (but well dressed and a know it all, a winning combination I assure you.)

If you cannot multi task, or communicate without being passive aggressive, don't even bother replying.

If you are the type who doesn't notice crumbs on the table, skip to the next post, because crumbs are a deal breaker. they put me over the edge.

i have all sorts of theories on how to stack my dishwasher, and if you are judgemental about ritalin for adhd, or think such things are caused by too much sugar, again, deal break city.

You do get a separate entrance excellent studio on the ues. you do get air conditioner and internet connection and cable. even hbo. and showtime. you can bring your spouse, roommate or partner, but sorry no kids. If you ask, can i bring my kid, the answer will be...anyone? anyone? No.

If you can cook, all the better. otherwise, i'll teach you all sorts of things about pasta. (Here's a freebie, butter and parmesean, mmmmmm)

If you know anything about chess and violin i will be impressed.

We are not snobs, which is good. but then again, my kid sometimes swears to make a point. (We're working on it, but halfheartedly, because, well the apple doesn't fall far from the fucking tree.)Although I am told they are all very bright, they have not mastered the use of the oh so complicated napkin. This is a napkin Junior, say it after me...Nap Kin. Good boy.

i am not looking for Super nanny, or anyone who wants this job because they will love my kids as if they are their own. you won't. really. they are infinitely lovable, but trust me, they're mine and you will move on when your journey with us is over, and save for some funny stories and a delightful email every now and again, you won't grieve. Nor will we. (okay, we did all grieve a few of our past sitters, oddly they were all named Sarah or Kate, or Nikki. And Leah. Leah was delightful, even if she did drop my twin babies off our couch during a family gathering. Good times.

I don't want someone who has a lot of theories on the right way to raise kids, because in the end,
I'm just a woman doing my best. I'm willing to learn from you, or anyone, but not so much about how i should parent my spawn. teach me to knit. introduce me to yoga, the white stripes, russian literature or the best place to get a burger in the village at 2Am, but do not tell me to put star stickers on a good boy chart. stickers irritate me.

If you are fundamentally unhappy with your life, you will be more unhappy if you take this job, so do us all a favor and get some treatment or move to the Rockies, but do not apply for employment with us. Also, if you suspect all wealthy women are frivilous, we are not for you. I do not want to hide my occasional bergdorf shopping bag.

If you smoke, please quit. don't apply either, but please quit. i have known too many people diagnosed with cancer this year. Even if you are a judgemental nanny 911 wannabe, no one should have to endure some of the things I have wittnessed.

You gotta be able to drive with a valid license, but if you've ever hit a human,move to the next post. You won't have to drive in the city, but if we go to our weekend place together, or if you make it to the summer and still work for us, we need you to run into town to get some pink milk, so be able to drive a mini van.

Can you swim? Swimming is good.

If you do drugs or drink enough so that you are grumpy in the morning and grumpier at night prior to that next cocktail, call AA, and peruse craigslist childcare positions when you have a year sober. I'll probably be looking again, and now is the time for you to focus on yourself anyway.

I need a team player. I need someone to back me up when it comes to remembering when the library books are due, and whether i have rsvped to that birthday party yet.

Help me dear G-d keep track of our skim milk supply and also, also, also, what should I make for dinner tomorrow night?

the hours are 7 in the morning to 8:30 in the morning. We'd be in it together, getting the kids out with clean faces, brushed teeth and some food in their bellies. Doesn't that sound easy? Doesn't that sound doable?

Then come on back for a fun filled afternoon 2:15-8:15 of activities and playdates and snacks and dinners and homework and riveting conversations about global warming, hannah montana and guitar hero.

When you do get to go home (to that swanky studio and possibly a significant other or buddy) your time off will be respected. If I would like you to give extra hours, i'll ask. if you say yes, you get paid 15/ hour. if you say no, I will not fire you or hate you. Except if it is a school holiday or if i have a sick kid, then i might ask, and unless you have a final exam worth 2/3 of your grade or tix The Lion King, you may need to help out.

Okay, if you're still reading this ad, it means:
a) i am a halfway decent writer and maybe i really will get that book deal i'm yearning for
b) you need a job desparately
c) you think this just might be destiny, and that you could be one of the few, the proud, the potential babysitter of our dreams.
D) you want all the information about job requirements, so that you can write me emails about how I should stay home with my kids otherwise they are going to grow up to be sociopaths. (If my pen pal is out there, wassup? Found love yet? No? How 'bout that.)
best of luck to all of you in your search for a job. Seriously. Job searching sucks. No two ways about it.
RLS

3. Manly Bike For Sale!

Bike for sale

What kind of bike? I don't know, I'm not a bike scientist. What I am though is a manly guy looking to sell his bike. This bike is made out of metal and kick ass spokes. The back reflector was taken off, but if you think that deters me from riding at night, you're way wrong. I practiced ninja training in Japan's mount Fuji for 5 years and the first rule they teach about ninja biking is that back reflectors let the enemy know where you are. Not having a rear reflector is like saying "FUCK YOU CAR, JUST TRY AND FIND ME".

The bike says Giant on the side because it's referring to my junk, but rest assured even if you have tiny junk that Giant advertisement is going to remain right where it is. I bought this bike for 300 dollars from a retired mercenary that fought in both World War 1 and World War 2 and had his right arm bitten off by a shark in the Phillipines while stationed there as a shark handler. When he sold it to me I had to arm wrestle him for the honor to buy it. I broke his arm in 7 places when I did. He was so impressed with me he offered me to be his son but I thought that was sissy shit so I said no way.

The bike has some rusted screws, but that just shows how much of a bad ass you are. Everyone knows rusted screws on a bike means that you probably drove it underwater and that's bad ass in itself. Those screws can be replaced with shiny new ones, but if you're going to go to that trouble why not just punch yourself in the balls since you're probably a dickless lizard who doesn't like to look intimidating.

The bike is for men because the seat is flat or some shit and not shaped like a dildo. If you like flat seated bikes you're going to love this thing because it doesn't try to penetrate your ass or anything.

I've topped out at 75 miles per hour on this uphill but if you're just a regular man you'll probably top it out at 10 miles per hour. This thing is listed as a street bike which is man-code for bike tank. The bike has 7 speeds in total:

Gear 1 - Sissy Gear
Gear 2 - Less Sissy Gear
Gear 3 - Least Sissy Gear
Gear 4 - Boy Gear
Gear 5 - Pre-teen Boy Gear
Gear 6 - Manly Gear
Gear 7 - Big Muscles Gear

I only like gear 6 and 7 to be honest.

Additionally, this tool of all immense men comes with a gigantic lock to keep it secure. The lock is the size of a bull's testicles and tells people you don't fuck around with locking up your bike tank. It tells would-be-thieves "Hey asshole, touch this bike and I'll appear from the bushes ready to club you with a two-by-four".

Bike is for 150 OBO (and don't give me no panzy prices)

4. Ferocious Attack Kitten

Ferocious attack kitten is available for adoption to any home willing to accept him.

This destructive kitty has been trained as a proud warrior and will fiercely defend your house, even against you. Well-trained since 10-weeks of age to attack anything in his presence, he will protect your family from evil things, including the following:

* insects
* other trained attack kittens
* babies
* toilet paper
* anything under a blanket
* unwanted house guests
* paper bags
* floor rugs
* Chuck Norris
* Feet.

Great with children (assuming you don’t like the children). Probably best used for professional catfighting. He is housebroken, but only because he wants to be. This attack cat has trained himself to seek out his food anywhere you hide it and rip the bag open to feed himself, great for those who travel extensively. Also trained to drink water out of toilet bowls and dishwater from items in the sink. Knows how to open some doors. He will find you wherever you hide.

Neutered (trust me, you wont want to him to procreate). Has not been declawed, but you'll figure that out really fast.

Understands and responds to a variety of vulgar and profane verbal commands. Has a very soft and furry belly, like a teddy bear - however he will bite your face if you try to touch it.

Willing to accept trades. Potential adopters must have experience with trained attack-kittens... please be prepared to show scars.
For the love of God, someone please take this thing out of my house.

5. The Fridge Doesn't Come With a Pedigree!\

Dear Crazy-As-Bat-Shit-Lady:

I am honored that you chose my ad for a mini fridge out of all the ads you could have chosen. It makes me feel good that my mini fridge will be supplying you with the ice cold beverages you've obviously become accustomed to.

Next time you answer one of my ads, please note the following:

1. I am not Home Depot. If you travel thirty minutes to pick up a bulky 40-pound object, please come prepared with the necessary items you'll need to secure it to your vehicle. Yes, I have rope. I have a lot of rope. I have many different colors and sizes of rope. No, you can not have my rope. The ad said I was selling a fridge, not a fridge with rope. Nor was I selling a fridge with padding so that the pleather seats on your piece of crap car don't get marked up.

2. What part of 'buyer must pick up' in the ad was confusing to you? Yes, I have a vehicle. No, I don't want to haul your fridge all the way to East BumbleFuck on the hottest day of the year. No, I'm really really sure I don't want to do that. No, really. I'm sure.

3. Please call me only once with ALL your questions. I left for the day, and had 5 messages on my answering machine, the last one was at 10:30 pm. Frankly lady, you were sounding a bit too crazy by the end of the day. It's a fridge. A small metal box that keeps shit cold. I don't have the fridge's family tree. For all I know the fridge's was conceived by a slutty young Maytag that graced some hillbilly's side porch. I don't know the exact age of the fridge. I bought it a few months ago, I used it for a couple of days, ok, I lied, I used it a whole week. The fact is, you're not buying a race horse, you're buying a used fridge.

4. No, I will not knock $10 bucks off the price of the fridge because your anal retentive eyes picked up the ittiest, bittiest hairline scratch from across my driveway. I'm not making judgements on you, but I'm pretty damn sure Donald Trump didn't send you across the country to pick up a used fridge for Trump Towers. Though I'd wager the whole concept of the mini-fridge bar is a familar one to you.

5. Yes, you can unplug a fridge without any harm to the fridge. Believe me, the fridge is fine. The manufacturers have figured out a way to extend the life of a fridge that has been unplugged. Yes, I'm absolutely sure of that. No, you did not have to leave 2 messages about your concerns with the fridge being unplugged, and frankly it was a little embarrassing having the same conversation with you in my driveway where my neighbors could hear.

6. No, I don't have the operating instructions. I can write them down for you though: Plug fridge in. Open door. Put crap inside. Take crap out when it's cold. Eat or drink crap.

7. I am not a fridge pimp. I don't have any more fridges at that price. No, I don't know where you can get another fridge at that price. Yes, I know it's in great condition for the price, and I'm sure you'd like your other crazy-as-bat-shit-mini-fridge-buying-friends to have one just like it, but this is all I have. Here's a thought, there's this online classified ads website. Yeah, you may have heard of it, it's called CRAIGSLIST. I dunno, maybe, just maybe, in this great land of ours, there's another mini-fridge being advertised there.

8. Please remove my phone number from your address book. I think our relationship is over. Oh, and if you've added me to your AIM Buddy List, please delete me. Please. I beg you.

Yours truly,

The mini-fridge seller

KICKBALL HERO.

2008-09-08T08:23:00.001-07:00

This morning I am in my own little world, and as such when a co-worker walked by me and said "Hey" I responded like this:

"Mmm-hmm!"

NOW WHAT?! I couldn't have picked a more heinously dismissive way to greet my coworker if I HAD thought about what was coming out of my mouth.

"Hey kate"
"mmm-hmmm...you go ahead and SAY hey, because you know what? I'm not going to say it back."

Gawd. I guess I could always shoot her an email but "hey, sorry for saying mmm-hmmm to you in the hallway" seems...obsequious, at best. The best I can hope for is that she heard my follow-up "Hey", which my brain DID authorize to come out of my mouth.

______________________________________________

C and I didn't go to the DirectBuy Showroom on Saturday because we had KICKBALL PRACTICE. You may be laughing but anytime that there has been at least fifteen years between the first and next time I did something I deign to need practice. Naturally I'm AWFUL. This is what my "coach" said when I failed to get on base for the 6th and final time:

"You're the most consistent kicker we've got!"

Thats great...except everyone on the team is the most consistent kicker we've got. It's not like this is fast pitch kickball. It's not like the kickball is made of lead and traveling at seventy five miles an hour.

In addition to just being plain awful and not knowing any of the rules I managed to injure myself about ten minutes in to practice. And we all know how big of a baby Kate is. Let's just say that you never want something as innocuous as kickball to result in a desperate bargain with god on the field to not pass out.

Here's an action shot:

Look at that form! Notice that although the ball is well on its way to being caught by the opposite team and hurled to first base, I am still in no way moving forward. In fact, in this picture I appear to be moving BACKWARDS.

To contrast, I'd like to post some action shots of C, who proved to be nothing short of a kickball hero:

Here he is, taking it in the face for the team. Even his bandana looks way cooler than mine. All this being said, I like the slow-mo effect of the ball hitting his cheek and the ensuing shock wave traveling across his face. Very dramatic.

Here he is literally diving for the base as the oafish other team tries in vain to get him out. Only C actually has grass stains on his kickball jersey.

And this is an action shot of C making his THIRD homerun in one game. Even the girl from the other team is impressed. And check out our stoked teammate.

PS: Hi Cal!

2008-09-05T12:26:00.003-07:00

I see that someone from France has checked my blog which can only mean....Callie!

Congratulations! YOU have been chosen for the DirectBuy Showroom Experience!

2008-09-05T11:57:00.001-07:00

Jeez, I just haven't felt like writing these days. One, it's been really busy at work. Like, really really busy. I guess that's not such a big problem. It's all pretty interesting stuff...not TOO much bullshit. Two, C's been furloughed, so he's home a lot, so I don't have endless stretches of time at night to catch up on my blogging. Three, my life is just really boring. Nothing exciting is happening, not even in the bathroom at the office, which is where I find a lot of my inspiration.

Honestly, these days, people just go in the bathroom, do their business and come right out. It's excruciating.

_______________________________

Speaking of the bathroom, however, today after lunch I had to go, but I had my shoes off. On a side note, the shoes I'm wearing today are the Most. Uncomfortable. Shoes. I've ever worn. Hands down. I feel like even if they had made them out of fiberglass and razor blades and scorpion stingers they still might feel like angels wings compared to how they are right now. But they're cute, and I bought new clothes last night, and they are currently the only pair of brown shoes I own that aren't tore up in at least one place.

Anyway, so, I took them off because they hurt even when I'm sitting at my desk (!!!!!) and then all the sudden I had to pee so bad I couldn't stand it. Needless to say, I strongly considered running down the hallway of the conservative law firm that I work for and going to the bathroom with no shoes on, but I thought better of it. Having done that it took like TEN MINUTES to strap on my heinous shoes, all the time bent over and daring my bladder to explode.

________________________________________

I made the awful mistake of giving the DirectBuy Showroom my work number. I'm not usually one to buy into TV infomercial bullshit like this, but I REALLY need a new bed and I don't want to A. drive to Chicago for IKEA or B. spend a lot of money. Anyway, I underestimated how very serious these people are about selling deep discount furniture. You'd think it was a discount showroom for cancer cures or something. Listen, I appreciate fervor for slashed prices, but enough is enough already.

Anyway, stupidly I filled out an online form, because in order to get into the top secret showroom you have to have an invitation and an appointment. And this lady calls me and gives me this total guilt trip about how I can only bring C and we have to have our IDs and birth certificates, hair samples, medical records, tax forms and proof of income (this one we actually do have to bring) and are we SURE we can make it on our appointed day, because if not we'll be stealing -literally STEALING- the opportunity to buy quality furniture at closeout prices from another family.

Of course I was like "sure whatever, we'll be there" but now I think we probably wont be there. Partly because we have shit to do tomorrow and I don't have money for a bed right now anyway, and also because if the sales people at the DirectBuy Showroom are anything like the woman on the phone, I will instantly be so irritated by them that I won't buy anything on principal.

What started all of this is that the f-ing DirectBuy Showroom lady JUST called AGAIN to confirm our appointment. In the middle of my work day. So I picked up the phone, let the sounds of my busy office fill the receiver, and hung up on her. Is that serious enough for you?!

________________________________________

I think I mentioned this, but I bought Oliver a new bed; it's like a sleeping bag for dogs that he can burrow inside so he won't shiver all night and make me feel like an asshole in my nice warm bed. Anyway, it came and it turns out that he is just. too. dumb. to figure it out. This morning, even after I spent a long time last night showing him the opening and gently ~~guiding~~ shoving his little nose inside I woke up and there he was...on top of the bed and shaking like a leaf. It must be hard to be so dumb. Seriously.

_________________________________________

Well, I'm sick of writing for now.

Snoods for Oliver.

2008-08-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

So...today is Friday and its about to be a long weekend so I am extra extra unmotivated to do anything.

_____________________________________________

My office is right by the conference room and for the last twenty minutes the phone has been ringing and ringing. This is the sort of thing that is just going to drive me to take my computer, bash out my eighth floor window and leap out after it. Maybe thats a little melodramatic but it IS intensely annoying.

____________________________________________

Today I got paid so of course I immediately bought Oliver the following things:

a "snuggle sack." Doesn't that just SOUND like something Olibur needs? I thought so too. Also, it benefits me in that he will no longer have a pillow and C's old college comforter as his bed. NOT exactly the most fashionable interior design. Plus in addition to the fact that I hate looking at what is essentially an enormous pile of flea infested blankets in my bedroom corner every day (side note: I can't just put it out of the way, because little dude has to be within arms reach of us when he sleeps) I also can't stand the fact that oliver has to get up four times each night to paw around and reorganize his "nest." Also, he's pathetic when he can't get the nest right, and he's shivering because the blankets are all tangled up underneath him. Next time I get a dog I will try not to get the biggest weenie ever.
a "snood" which is short for "snuggle hood", I presume. I'm not sure what looks stupider, Olivers fishing hat or this:

I'm pretty sure the snood is warmer, since it was created with warmth in mind, whereas the fishing hat was created with making oliver look stupid in mind. Keep in mind, Olivers snood is not gay pink and purple plaid, but manly forrest green, as are all his winter coats and apparel.

___________________________________________________

Ok, maybe more later.

Ode to Dinah Lou: nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnol89

2008-08-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

I was having a sort of blah day, and then after Colin left our g-chat to shower, Dinah Lou typed this message to me:

D-LO: nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnol89
ME: get off the keyboard, kitty!

nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnol89....if you say it outloud it sort of sounds like dinah lou yowling at you plaintively. Also, this is what "nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnol89" would look like if you took a picture of it:

Scary right? Oh Dinah Lou, you really are the best kitty ever. I'm not even afraid to say that if I had to grow up and be a cat lady with ANY CAT EVER, it would be you...and we could yowl plaintively at one another until we withered away.

ughhhhh go away August 26th, 2008.

2008-08-26T13:31:00.001-07:00

Today is one of those days when no one seems to be communicating correctly. Everything I do has issues because of communication errors and it's MAKING ME MAD.

*update* now my Outlook is down. I don't know whether to be happy about the brief respite in work duties or mad because this is one more lapse in communication making this the longest day ever.

PS

2008-08-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

In my intoxicated state on Saturday, I broke one of my shoes, and instead of waiting until I was home to inspect them and see if they were salvageable, I threw them in the parking lot trash can and now they're gone forever. And then I ate two soft tacos from taco bell in the span of like 45 seconds. Between walking shoeless from the parking lot dumpster to the car from inhaling taco bell, who knows how many toxins I put in my body on Saturday?

_____________________________________________

The last word for Monday is:

Wine-Cooler [wahyn-kooler] noun: See "Delicious."

All the gay in my house must be wearing off, because this drink is actually GAYER than anything the boys will be caught with. That's right, I'm drinking fruitier drinks than all the gay men in my house combined.

A case of the Mondays :(

2008-08-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend C and I went rollerblading in the park with Oliver, as part of our recent pact to be more active. Turns out this is a worthwhile endeavor, because all three of us are apparently in the worst shape ever and turned out getting our asses 110% kicked.

It doesn't help that I can't stop, slow down or turn sharply on rollerblades. Forest Park is full of hills, many of them featuring hairpin turns that intersect with busy roads. Oh, sure, there are concrete barricades where each path intersects with a road for people like me, but when you're coming down a hill or around a corner at an uncontrolled speed of approximately 500 miles an hour, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter if you hit a barricade or an oncoming car. Needless to say I ended up hiking down most of the hills with my blades on while C went screaming ahead of me. Oliver stuck with me because he's recently become Fat in Italian Greyhound terms. Which means he looks normal, but can't run 35mph for 12 hours straight anymore.

This prompted me to research "fat italian greyhounds" and this is what I came up with:

Excuse me, but if these animals were human women, I would probably trade bodies with them. They look good to me. Plus, if Oliver needs to take several long breaks and a dip in the pool mid-workout, thats great with me. "But C-eeeeeee, Oliver is tiiiiiired, he needs to rest!" The other upside to all this dog fatness is that it's obscenely cute/ridiculous looking when C has to carry Oliver up the big hills at the end of the workout. You haven't lived until you've seen a grown man roller blade up a hill with a little dog cradled like a baby in his arms, ears flapping in the wind.

________________________________________

I've just learned that the only other woman in my office who is of childbearing age is trying to conceive. Anyone who knows me knows of my irrational hormones when it comes to babies. My brain is barely powerful enough to control them. But of course a baby is the absolute third worst thing that could happen to us right now (the first and second are death and being fired). Right? RIGHT?! The following account of my weekend is probably among the top five reasons why I shouldn't even think about babies.

______________________________________

MY WEEKEND:
1. went rollerblading
2. got challenged to get drunk.
3. got drunk.
4. watched lord of the rings.

Mama said there'd be days like this

2008-08-21T14:34:00.001-07:00

Some days I just want to tie on an apron and a bonnet and run joyously out into the meadow (loosely speaking) beneath the arch and gather daffodils. This is NOT one of those days.

I think I need to start eating breakfast or something, because anything that I have to do before lunch time is about eleventy-seven billion times harder. Today I was reminiscing with C about the days when I could stay up for two days without sleep or food and still be conscious and mildly functional. These days if I don't get 10 hours of sleep and three meals a day ON TIME, there's hell to pay.

This entry isn't really panning out how I wanted it to. The good news is that I just added the word "eleventy" to my computer.

________________________________

Last night I bought C a *new* grill off of craigslist for his birthday. It's a nice grill, I guess, or at least it used to be before it sat in someones garage. It's good that C is so into the concept of fixing things up. Anyway, consider this a place holder for this grill that we will someday be able to afford:
I will refrain from posting a picture of OUR grill until it has officially been Fixed Up.

Anyway, now it is time to go HOME! And tomorrow is Denim Day! It's the little things in my life right now, it really is.

(The Viking E-Series, shown in it's natural habitat.)

Normal Husband-like behavior.

2008-08-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me as of late knows how much I hate elevators. I have special disdain for the people on the floor below me because EVERY TIME I get on the elevator, thinking I'm gonna be able to just ride up to my floor, one of those annoying hippie architects has to come rushing up and stick their little messenger bag full of blue prints or what have you in the door. Why are these people wasting my time? Can't they just walk up eight flights of stairs? KIDDING. Kinda. I think I would be a lot more tolerant if the first six floors weren't used as parking, and therefore not an issue. But because of that, the seventh floor is the only thing between me and a stop-free ride to my office every morning.

Also, this afternoon a lady got in and had that annoying habit of smacking her lips and swashing her saliva around in her mouth for no reason. She also felt it was necessary to stare blatantly at my shoes the entire time. I tried to back into a corner and pretend I was invisible but no dice. She just turned around and kept staring. How are these people even functioning in the real world? What is it about the elevator that makes people act like rejects? Honestly.

Anyway, enough about that.
__________________________________________

I read this other girls blog today and it inspired me thusly:

LOVE: this gorgeous, fall-like weather
HATE: the horror-movie-esque number of fleas that come with it.

LOVE: my job
HATE: being the lowest person on the totem pole here.

LOVE: C
HATE: that he can't find a job that will get him money while he's furloughed.

LOVE: ice cream
HATE: that theres free ice cream that I can't justify having in the lobby

LOVE: my job
HATE: STILL not having enough money to buy myself things.

__________________________________

Speaking of the ice cream social in the lobby, I wasn't sure what was going on until the elevator came and an absolutely inane number of secretaries, etc (all women -- draw your own conclusions) got off and went streaming for the ice cream. I'm talking about like thirty women at a time. It was insane.

__________________________________

All in all, this hasn't been the best day ever. It hasn't been the WORST day, but it definitely could have been better. I will now interrupt this blog entry for a healthy dose of Feeling Sorry For Myself (FSFM):

This morning my now ex-roommate once again displayed an unnecessary level of asshole-ity. He of course can suck my proverbial wang, but it still made me ~~blindingly irate~~ mad.
Thinking that the shoes I wanted to wear were in my car already, I left the house without shoes on, only to arrive at work with no shoes. So for the first half of my day I had to wear a pair of shoes that had been in my trunk probably since like 1999 (incidently, the last time they were in style was probably 1999 as well) and also looked like I had pulled them out of a dumpster to boot.
Then when I got back from lunch I had to pee BAD, so I ran into the bathroom, but the hook on my slacks was welded shut by dragon fire or something, and I could NOT get my pants off to save my life. Sooooo that sucked.*

*Yes, I did eventually get my pants off without the use of the jaws of life.

_______________________________

I realized I haven't reviewed the latest gem on Yahoo Answers lately, so here it is:

Is this normal for A Husband?

I find my Husband Dunkin with his member in a bird feeder! I find him with it in a hole in the wall of in our den! I found him with it in a doughnuts when we buy them from Dunkins Doughnut'! He even has placed his member into a drain in our bathtub!

Im afraid if he sees a gofer hole he might place his member into it and get bit! I feel it is a danger for him to be doing this, how should i tell him to stop?

TREE CAM Issue 2

2008-08-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

...aaaaaaand heres our tree now!!!

TREE CAM Issue 1

2008-08-16T18:44:00.001-07:00

So C and I have been undertaking the massive, longterm project that is revamping our yard for the past oh......nine months. When we started it was literally a patch of dirt and now it's got grass and flowers and bushes and herbs. Basically I'm making it sound like a literal garden of eden...which it is, compared to what we started with. (A side note: Tonight, C and I chopped up the one tomato which has managed to make it to maturity and ate it. It was about one and a half inches wide and VERY delicious. Anyone who has ideas as to why none of our other combined fifty feet (no lie) of tomato plants has produced fruit will be handsomely rewarded. With profuse thanks.)

Anyway, when we were digging up the yard to plant sod, I was busy brutally murdering any plant that had managed to put down roots in anticipation of our new lawn, and C being the gentle hearted guy that he is saved a single maple tree from doom, waxing all the time about how we shouldn't kill trees and generally being the cutest man alive. SO. I let him plant said maple sapling (which was one of about fifty eleventy billion others that sprung up in our yard) in an empty pot, thinking it would probably shrivel up and die like most everything I try to grow.

WRONG.

That tree is pretty much thriving. Now I'm all attached to it, like it's some symbol of our relationship and how it's growing and thriving even though cynical people thought it might shrivel up and die. I know, I'm the sappiest person alive. I even gag myself sometimes. But in my defense, my family has this big thing with trees...my parents planted a seedling at their first house that is taller than the house now. All of the grandchildren on my dads side have trees planted in their name when they're born to commemorate their growth and what not. You know...the whole "putting down roots" theme. It's big with my folks.

So at long last I give you TREE CAM. This is our tree when we first planted it:

In the next installment of TREE CAM, I will post a picture of it in it's current state, in its new snazzy pot. Yes, we're putting it in a pot because I can't bear to part with it now. Sad? Perhaps. Ok, perhaps very sad.

Patron Saint of Patience.

2008-08-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

The thing about having a significant other who you live with is that eventually you're going to collide with them on some issue. I'm not saying that C and I fight very much, or that when we do fight its about anything big. Usually I can't even say that they qualify as honest to goodness fights so much as they are spats or disagreements. Usually its something like:

ME: I left you a whole list of things to do today (laundry, feed animals, do the fuckin' dishes) and you're telling me that you couldn't do any of them because you were mowing the grass?
HIM: ....The grass was long!

Of course any man reading this probably understands how it could take all day to manicure our coffee table sized yard, especially when you factor in mandatory sports center and baseball uniform washing and ironing breaks.

That's just it though. Eventually, though you love them and have an inane desire to take care of them and keep them happy and well fed, their Inner Co-Ed Intermural Baseball Star is going to collide with your Burgeoning Housewife Living with Five Men.

Today, however, my BHLWFM was ready for a fight when his ICEIBS used my freshly washed and dried turbie twist and my favorite new cloth belt to tie a target bag full of ice to his shoulder. In the bathtub. This is how it went:

ME: Are you using my clothes to ice your shoulder!?
HIM: I had to use what I had! We need to get some ace bandages in this house!
(IMAGINARY ME): Right after we get food and light bulbs and medicine and toothpaste and...
ME: You have to use what YOU have, not what I have!
HIM: It'll be fine, you can just hang your belt up and it will dry!
(IMAGINARY ME): No, YOU can hang my belt up, right this instant, while it is still dry, because Ace bandages cost....well, I don't know how much Ace bandages cost because I fucking hate sports, but it can't be as much as my new belt TAKEITOFFRIGHTNOWORIAMGOINGTOHAVEANANEURYSM.
ME: Give me that belt right now so I can hang it up.

If there is a patron saint of being patient with your boyfriend, sometimes I need him to reveal himself to me in the bubble residue he leaves on my bathtub wall. Or something.

All this being said...I love him a LOT. Any other man I would have already eaten alive, and yet somehow I am still able to peer through this crap and find it endearing.

Branching out.

2008-08-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I took C out to dinner at one of our favorite spots, The Burger Bar in the Lumiere Casino. I figured with him getting laid off and all (fuck you, airline industry) that I could take care of the dates for a while.

Anyway, the Burger Bar is a wondrous place, where you can order a burger with practically ANYTHING on it. It's man heaven, for real. Where else can you order a burger with jalapenos, salsa, onions, pickles, fois gras, kobe beef, shaved truffles, lobster and seven kinds of cheese? Actually, that sounds really disgusting, but you never know with men and burgers, you just never know. Naturally I always order the the gayest burger on the menu (veggie burger, ciabatta, pesto, prosciutto and mozzerella) and C, even though he can get ANYTHING on his burger, usually gets the following:

Angus beef
White bun
Cheddar cheese
bacon

I mean C'MON. You can get that shit at burger king. You could probably dig that cheeseburger out of a trashcan. Bums eat more exciting cheeseburgers than that. Prisoners probably have better food in their mess halls. Somalians probably have better burgers in Somalia (antelope? fuck yeah!)...ok you get the point, at the cost of my being progressively more and more NOT PC.

My point is, this time I said "C, maybe on the eve of your furlough, you should branch out in honor of your life taking a fucking u-turn." He agreed with me, which I didn't expect, because usually his response is something along the lines of "why should I branch out from perfection?" or something ridiculous like that. THIS is the ca-raaaayzee burger concoction that C put together:

Angus beef
White bun
Pepper Jack Cheese
Jalapeno Bacon

!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

_______________________________________

Speaking of the airline industry and how much it can go fuck itself, that shit is hindering my chances of getting THIS engagement ring:

How is C supposed to come up with 84,000 dollars to get the ring of my dreams when hes not flying any damn airplanes?!

JUST KIDDING. Plus, that thing is so grossly humongous, it's hideous. PLUS with 84,000 dollars you can buy a whole damn house. You could either have shelter, or that ring.

All this goes to show you how being desperately poor will put things in perspective for you, because all I can think about is how much car insurance I could buy for 84,000 dollars.

multinational

2008-08-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

Props to the people in Canada, England, the Dominican Republic and Israel who are reading my blog. Truly, is there nothing better to do in these places? No props to US readers, because there really ISN'T anything else to do here.

Meow.

2008-08-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

During my lunch break today I read about a cat fashion show recently held in NYC. I couldn't imagine that there are more than about three cats on earth that would put up with that shit (one of them is Ethan, my roommates cat, see below), so I looked it up and APPARENTLY, there's a whole subculture of people devoted to dressing up their cats. And no, neither me nor my roommate belongs to said sub-culture, despite what the pictures suggest. My research seems to suggest, based on pictorial evidence, that despite the alarming percentage of human beings who delight in regularly outfitting their cats, approximately 0% of the world's cat population (aside from Ethan) does more than barely tolerate the world of "cat fashion." I've posted the following pictures, most indicative of my research findings.

PHOTO ESSAY TIME:

~~Double~~ Triple whammy: pink, dress, leash. Look at this cat, truly he is experiencing the perfect storm of humilation.

Not only does this cat have no hair, but he is wearing a feathery hat, which looks agonizingly like something he would like to chase and destroy. This cat posture says to me: "my spirit has been defeated. "

DO NOT WANT.

This kitty is desperately trying to maintain a modicum of pride through her posture and refusal to look at the camera.

All of this in stark contrast to the dog fashion models:

"if I humiliate myself, you will give me a cookie/ham/pepperoni/"

PS: the title of this post is totally lame, i know.

fallfallfallfallfallfallyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayFALL!

2008-08-11T13:48:00.001-07:00

Can it be fall now? Please please please please please PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE? Today the weather is some kind of otherworldly level of gorgeous, even though its the middle of August. It's clear blue and breezy enough to feel like fall is just around the corner, even though my mind says that this is clearly some sort of matrix-like illusion and it's really 178 degrees outside. Things SHOULD be bursting into flames and turning into piles of ash on the streets and instead i feel like i should be bundling up and doing something fall-y...liiiiike carving a pumpkin or hiking or something.

SPEAKING OF FALL:
If I could instantly be transported to anywhere ~~on earth~~ (*edited for accuracy), here is the list of where I would go.
1. The Vatican Vaults (unfortunately, there are no pictures of said vaults so I used my graphic design powers to imagine what it might look like)

2. Outer Space: (provided I was outfitted properly)

3. Rural Great Britain:

4. Big Sky Country:

5. Annnnnnnnnnd this lodge, in Branson MO:

You don't know how much I need to be sitting on those porches and drinking some hot cocoa frolicking in the leaves. You just don't know.

ALERT: sappy romantic moment contained herein.

2008-08-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

Confession: I reaaaaaaallly love it when C calls me Katie. Which is irrational because Katie is my name (well, Kate). ~~All the fucking time~~ sometimes the amount of silly irrational things that he does that make me happy are just too much for even me to handle, so I can't imagine how people reading this must feel. Too bad for you, coming expecting snarky, cynical commentary on things like salad ingredients and office tom-foolery, and instead getting a big fat healthy dose of lovey-dovey.

I'm not sorry :)

impostor lettuce.

2008-08-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

I just remembered that I had an AWFUL dream last night that isn't fit for public disclosure. I think it's still affecting me because I'm just not in the greatest of moods. As evidenced by the fact that both of my posts today are labeled "gripes."

__________________________________

It is after much research (google: "spiky lettuce" "kinds of lettuce" "spiky looking lettuce leaves") that i've found out exactly what kind of lettuce absolutely DOMINATED my greek salad today and made it almost inedible.

The culprit? Mizuna Lettuce.
Whoever came up with this bull-crap has my eternal scorn. This is not salad material. I didn't pay nine dollars for a salad so that the sun dried tomatoes and kalamata olives could get all tangled up in this despicable web of lettuce impostor-y.

So anyway, now that I've completely wasted my lunch break looking up lettuce, I suppose it's back to work for me.

_______________________________________

Oh! I just remembered...in my lettuce research frenzy, I found this:
Which is a billboard for mcdonalds (incidently, I just typed that MicDonlads, which is way better), and words are made of REAL lettuce. Hopefully it's mizuna lettuce because otherwise that's a horrible waste of lettuce. Probably why my salad was so short on real lettuce is because the powers that be are wasting it on billboards for disgusting micdonaldz salads. I OBJECT.

A list I will continue to edit as time goes on.

2008-08-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

Things I like:
Soft lips lip balm
Sweet tea
Buffalo Chicken in pretty much any capacity
England
Blogs
Oliver and Dinah Lou
C.
craigslist.com
riesling, amaretto sours
google maps street view
grapes
grape flavored gum
raspberries
BLUE LOBSTERS:

Things I hate:
fleas
rotten food
my period
being poor
the bullshit thats currently posturing as sweet tea in the breakroom.
feeling sick
when the cats shit on the laundry room floor.
the unwarranted negative reaction im currently having to blue cheese, which I usually like.
worrying
airlines
coming home to a heinous messy house that im sure will not be cleaned.
Mizuna Lettuce:

Eh.
my new gum - wild blueberry twist, if you must know - which I also usually like.

elevator brats.

2008-08-07T08:13:00.001-07:00

gripe time:

Why do people get into the elevator, see that the button for their floor is clearly illuminated, and then proceed to push it again. WHY?! Is the pre-existing push not good enough? Is this some sort of vestigial urge left over from when they were annoying brats who had to push the elevator button themselves or die?

Obviously, I have very little tolerance for the whole elevator experience. Probably because my expectations are so high. Is it too much that people not speak, breathe, or move while they're in the elevator with me?

Answers to the following questions welcomed and appreciated.

2008-08-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, someone tell me who the impish, rule-breaking rascally lawyer is who stole the sign for the women's bathroom on my floor! You jokester! No...you HIPSTER. Now you have a hip, stolen sign from a reputable location to put on your bathroom door in your loft downtown. I wish ~~every single asshole under the age of 23~~ I had thought of that while there was still a sign to steal...

_____________________________________

ATTENTION: As of this weekend, I have been in St. Louis for a year. A whole fucking year. How is this possible? Perhaps I should report it to Parallel Universes Weekly, or whatever the hell that magazine is that's currently hidden in my bottom drawer.

____________________________________

Today I was marginally distracted by Yahoo Answers which is an awesome website to go to if you, like so many others, wonder:

DID SHE PLAY ME? READ DIS S*** I'M CONFUSED I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK
Help Plz! How do you dispose of a 200lb animal?!
My homie is gonna start a gang. should I quit the one I'm in now to join his?
***Bonus! Answer for interested parties: I would suggest allowing your homie to start his gang and then act interested.
How do other girls fart silently?
Why don't people like Asians? WHATS WRONG WITH AZNS?!
Magik. How can I learn it?
16 (II) The magnetic flux through each loop of a 60-loop coil is given by (8.85t - .051t^3) *10^-2T*m^2, where the time t is in seconds. (a) Determine the emf as a function of time. (b) What is the EMF at t=1.0s and t = 5.0s. Would the EMF as a function of time be -N times the derivative of the flux equation?

All questions for the ages, for sure.

I'm cool, I swear.

2008-08-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

Not wanting to dispel any notion that I am the Office Dork and officially the Least Professional Person Ever, today someone came by my desk and there I was (middle of my lunch break, but still), in the middle of reading Breaking Dawn, the latest installment in the teen-vampire melodrama manifesto, with my legs akimbo and my shoes scattered all over my cubicle. And this is what she said:

"That's very ladylike, Kate."

"Well fuck you very much", I ~~should have~~ said.

________________________________

What's with the big "Tampon Taboo"? I myself have fallen prey to it. Not wanting to carry a visible tampon to the bathroom with me, I find myself stuffing it up my sleeve, in my waistband, in my bra...it's a little ridiculous if you ask me. It's not really any more weird to carry a tampon in full view to the bathroom than it is to drop it out of your bra or your sleeve, which is a definite risk if decide to go that route.

Then again, the people in my office might not be surprised if a tampon fell out of my sleeve, to them that probably seems like something I might do.

_______________________________

All this talk of me being uncool makes me a little uncomfortable, like those two people from Maryland who viewed my blog might think I'm uncool and not want to view my blog anymore.

10 REASONS I'M COOL:
1. I listen to Wilco.
2. I listen to SonVolt, which is pre-wilco wilco.*
3. I'm a graphic designer
4. I own many pencil skirts
5. I live in a city.
6. I use curse words and still manage to look educated. I think.
7. ~~I own a hip, expensive, inbred dog.~~
8. ~~I have commissioned artwork from a local artist~~
9. ....of my dog.
10. I have a snarky blog.

*The rest of this list may or may not be negated by the fact that after I typed number's one and two, I had a hard time coming up with any more reasons why I was cool, which may or may not mean that the only credit to my coolness is the fact that I listen to Wilco. You decide.

ATTENTION. NEW LAYOUT.

2008-08-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

*OMG I forgot to mention my new layout, in case you didn't notice.*

Well, that's about all I have to say about that. It's a new layout, and it's rexie pie. Hurray!

a smattering of things

2008-08-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to Oshkosh for the airshow, and I will admit that I went with very low expectations about my enjoyment level, because honestly Kate + Airplanes (quite often) = clutching the hand of the fat stranger in the seat next to me. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised, because it was quite a good time.

_____________________________

The Red Cross is holding a blood drive this year in my building and I have several factors to consider while I decide whether or not to participate. LIST TIME.

PROS
1. I have a rare-ish blood type, despite what the impertinent nurse-in-training waiter said at TGI Fridays when he overheard me bragging about my rare-ish blood. Maybe that guy should spend less time in his nursing school text books and more time looking up blood types on wikipedia.
~~2. Super fun way to spend your lunch break!~~
3. I get a free ice cream cone from dairy queen.
4. I get a free ice cream cone from dairy queen.
5. I get a free ice cream cone from dairy queen.

CONS
1. Needles.
2. I ~~might~~ will definitely pass the fuck out.
3. Giving blood blows because that shit hurts.
4. I will not get a free t-shirt like I used to in college.
5. Thinking about it will totally ruin the first half of my Wednesday.

So there you have it, I guess I have some serious thinking to do.

_______________________________

C and I went to some dive-y Chinese restaurant for lunch. Somewhat expectedly, it was chock full of secretarial pools in all shapes and sizes. In fact, the only people in there that were NOT in the secretarial pool were C and me, and one other couple who had recently won the Intergalactic Most Annoying People Ever 2008 contest.

I guess for the talent portion of IMAPE2008, they just sat there and bitched about how hard it was to date and how all the men and women they dated were total losers. Loudly. Anyway, script time:

MAN (thin, pocket-protected glasses clad pleated pants): so after we ate I asked this chick what she wanted to do, and i gave her a whole list and she said, 'I dunno, you decide' so I just took her home because she obviously didn't know what she wnated to do and she was SO UPSET with me! what was her problem anyway?
WOMAN (mousy, wearing metallic shirt with shoulder pads): omigod! what a bitch!
why are some girls so needy?

Anyway, it went on and on with stories like this until they finally, FINALLY left, leaving me thanking every available deity that I no longer had to potentially date men like that.

First of all, that womans problem was that she was obviously out on a date with someone who didn't have a big enough dick to decide where to go. And whatever, that shiny mousy bi-atch would totally do the same thing.

_____________________________________

Maybe more later...

duh.

2008-08-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

SLEEP APNEA BOOSTS DEATH RISK

But it's unclear whether treating the breathing disorder cuts the danger, one expert says

Posted August 1, 2008

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) -- The interrupted nighttime breathing of sleep apnea appears to increase the risk of dying, Australian researchers report.

Earlier studies have linked sleep apnea to increased risk for death. However, these studies were done in sleep centers rather than in the general community. This new study suggests that the risk is present among all people with obstructive sleep apnea.

__________________________________

OTHER THINGS THAT BOOST YOUR DEATH RISK:
1. Life

my blog speaks...in haiku

2008-08-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

randomly generated haiku from my blog (titles added by yours truly):

Things not worse than exercise
body blast: which is
worse being plagued by blood
sucking insects or

Our mutual feeding schedule has gone awry!!
i was feeding her
and vice versa but it
has been a while

A list of perversions:
sitting on my face
or how kittens sound or what
love feels like on me

XXXDirty Dentists 3XXX
you didn't floss thats
thirty lashes with the tickler
for you tonight slave

Please, there are too many unwanted flea pregnancies in the world...
fully intending
to demand an iud since
i hate rotten fleas

The monster in your closet makes a mistake.
creature that will stand
behind the closing doors and
say oops loud enough

Stressed about orgasms
no idea the
mental anguish that i go
through when i'm finished

The ice-fisherman's kinky lover
get tied up and put
on an ice fishing hat
i'd like to kick it.

Haiku² for kafrinrosefindaw
was that it doesn't matter if my baseboards are dusty or i
@

Created by Grahame

DO NOT WANT.

2008-07-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight we flea-dipped the cats and the dog and I cant decide which is worse: being plagued by blood-sucking insects or flea dipping three unwilling animals. I think it's a draw.

All this is because Oliver is harboring a literal flea civilization with flea governments and flea literature and little flea scientists. The other night he decided at four AM that sleeping with mom and dad was a lot better than sleeping on the floor so he crawled in bed between us (yes, my dog is a toddler...that will never grow up.) Anyway, I'm sure theres a nightmarish horror movie out there somewhere about what ensued: I woke up every thirty minutes for the rest of the night COVERED in bugs. Just thinking about it makes me want to fucking take a cheese grater to my skin.

ANYWAY. Here's pictures of the Fuck-You-Fleas-A-Rama 2008...

This is Dinah, mid-wail.

Ethan is obviously guarding the portals to hell.

This is about three seconds after Olivers bath, I'm not sure at this point he remembers what happened.

These are disgusting super fleas STILL alive after sitting in insecticide and hot water for about fifteen minutes. I'm not even sure I would survive that, and yet those fuckers were climbing up my bathtub wall when this was taken.

In addition to the flea dip, I also sprayed enough poison gas to ensure that I have brain cancer and my children have webbed feet. I guess the the only point I'm trying to make here is that there better fucking. not. be. fleas. in my house.
_________________________________

Speaking of pets, in closing I'd like to give homage to our guppy, Tanya. Tanya came with a husband, Hank, who sadly passed. After Hank died, we sort of forgot to take him out, because honestly, it's like this fish tank is invisible. I can. not. remember to take care of it to save my life. Maybe because I neglected to ever buy plants, or bubbly treasure chests or really anything for it except fish. Anyway, Hank was flashy enough to remind me, but Tanya is pretty much the same color as the water itself...drab gray.

I know, I know, I'm a horrible pet owner. How am I supposed to someday take care of a baby if I can't even remember to clean the guppy tank.

But wait!

I haven't told you Tanya's fate, and that's because that bitch is STILL ALIVE. For a while there C thought I was feeding her and vice versa but it turned out really that no-one has fed that damn fish for months. MONTHS.

You know those little glass balls you buy at Sharper Image with the little perfectly balanced ecosystem inside? I'm telling you, that's what I've got. A much grimmer and less artistic version. And not worth using as a paperweight.

I leave you with this thought for the night:

VERSUS

I think it's close, I really do.

panic attack!

2008-07-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, I decided no more "work grievances" posts because I'm afraid (perhaps not unfounded-ly) that someone at work in a position of power will find my blog and think that I hate my job and fire me.

ATTENTION: I DO NOT HATE MY JOB.

I suppose I AM really good at bitching about the little things that annoy me, but as a whole, I have a great job and I work with great people. No, I'm not just plugging my job so anyone reading this will not fire me. I really do not take advantage of what I have. I like to think, despite the boring shit, that I work hard so I can move on to more exciting stages of my career at the firm.

There, I feel better.

YESSSSS!

2008-07-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

Movie Reviews

Here it is ladies and gentlemen, proof that my blog is not uneducated drivel.

PS: C had NO CAVITIES. And he didn't even get tied up and whipped until he begged for mercy. What kind of lackadaisical dentist is this, anyway.

_______________________________________________

Someone just walked in and needed to show me something on the internet, so the harry potter story preoccupation is probably out of the bag. I should probably relax and realize that the current level of nerdity that i reside in hovers around me like a pink, glittery immature cloud at all times, and people that works with me day in and day out are eventually going to notice it. Should I embrace my Sci-fi tabloid-harry potter fanfiction-romance novel-wikipedia articles about the tudor dynasty reading self? Probably. It's probably worse when I try to hide it like a hideous deformity from the self-assured, well-dressed, ladder-climbing women in my office.

WOW thats a lot of hyphens.

______________________________________________

There is a sign on the mens bathroom that says "DO NOT ENTER." in handwritten scrawl on notebook paper. We all know what this means...I want to enter I MUST ENTER!! On the one hand it could be a juice office sex scandal happening right under my nose, but on the other (considerably less appealing) hand, it could be a...juicy office sewage backup.

Either way, I cannot deny that I am legitimately considering entering the mens restroom at 2 pm on a Wednesday. I am just that nosy.

blog OBSESSED.

2008-07-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

Lately I find that I'm a little obsessed with my blog. Something great happens and normally I'd call my mom or C, but recently (and by recently, I mean, in the last week or so) the first thing I think is "I have to tell my BLOG." Really, who is even reading my blog? No-one probably. I'm rushing to tell a server somewhere about my life. I feel like sometimes I can read over my past blogs (and keep in mind, the majority of my blogging (2002-present) resides elsewhere on the internet and is not part of the work related drivel contained herein) and in a sense they are talking back to me. In the sense that I read them and they say "can you believe you actually thought people might care about this angsty bullshit at one time?" I'm banking on the fact that someday sheer volume of posts will culminate in some sort of complete, rich Portrait of a Blogger as a Young Woman.

I wonder how people get into these big networks of bloggers. I notice all the "famous" blogs I read are all linked in with other famous blogs, and they all read each others blogs and have blog bookdeals and attend blog conventions or whatnot.

___________________________________

Today C went to the dentist for the first time in probably.....ever. I'm exaggerating of course, but it has been a while. Why are men so afraid of the dentist? I've been talking this over with some of my girlfriends, and so far this is a universal trend. This morning all I heard was how the dentist was gonna lecture him and get mad at him, and I'm wondering, what sort of dentists did all of these dentophobic men attend as young boys. I'm imagining a giant conspiracy ring of leather-clad sado-masochistic bondage dentists/dental assistants: "you didn't floss? thats thirty lashes with the tickler for you."

Some guys might be into that though, so thats a good business prospect for all those kinky girls who are also interested in dentistry.

___________________________________

Abbreviations.com is a great website, and probably not blocked by websense (I was just imagining if it WAS blocked by websense; "Your network administrator has blocked the web category 'abbreviation websites'..." hahahaha) , for any~~dork~~one who's curious about all the things your initials could stand for, or if you're immature like me you'll search "SEX" and "FUCK" and you'll find that the letters "SEX" are actually pretty useful.
For instance:
SEX is the airport code for sembach, germany.
SEX also stands for the Scientific Experimental Xylophone and Sexually Educated X-men.
FUCK isn't that interesting except for there are THREE universities with the acronym fuck, whcih is AWESOME. I don't feel like typing them, but I swear its true.

__________________________________

I keep trying to open new tabs so people who walk by my office won't be able to read the embarrassing ones ("harrypotterfanfiction.com :: 50,000 HARRY POTTER STORIES" and "What does FUCK stand for?" are the most offensive/abjectly humiliating if you must know.) So now I have 12 tabs open for things like " The New York Times online" and "The Economist" Hopefully people will be so blinded by my largely intelligent web browsing that they will fail to notice my humiliating harry potter story addiction.

Ok, off to work.

2008-07-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm officially ripping a subject from another blog that I read. SORRY I'M SO UNORIGINAL AND BORING.

Anyway, Google decided to throw some sort of contest for the children of the world proper (ahem...the united states) to ~~draw all over~~ redesign their logo.

Here's the link:
doodle for google

My general first impression was: why the fuck did they put so many entries of the google logo made with hands. Yeah yeah, what if the world needed a helping hand. Would they turn to google for said helping hand? I think not.

All in all though, my hands down favorite was this little gem, obviously they are lacing school lunches with hallucinogens these days:

What if I can fly through the peaceful gardens freely like a butterfly? What if I could swim in the blue ocean like a beautiful mermaid? Google is like a rainbow that can take me whenever I wan to go.

yeaaaaah man....what IF I could fly through the peaceful mermaid like a beautiful garden....i mean swim in the blue butterful mercean like a freeful peace? yeahhhh

My second favorite is:

What if fish could think?

Accompanied by this artwork, which was obviously drawn by michael of florida's teacher/mother/art major at the local college:

Except now that I look at this, I'm disturbed by the fact that the fish has one human arm and decidedly humanoid features. Probably this fish can think because he's half human. So in closing, the bigger question is: What if...fish and humans melded together? That's something for you to google the next time you get bored.

this about sums it up...yep.

2008-07-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Man, I wish I had some candy. I'm not even really frustrated with anything, I just like candy. Some would say it's psychological, I would say to them: give me some bloody candy and shut the F!$% up.

Sorry about the bloody candy image, and also sorry for not writing out "fuck."

2008-07-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Just a second ago I cussed heavily at the vending machine for not taking my dollar, even though my dollar is 3/4 ripped in half. I might as well try to shove saran wrap or packing bubbles into the vending machine.

Just to give you an idea of how today is going.

If I were a unicorn.

2008-07-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

Today I saved my old blog from doom by downloading the entirety of it (2002-present) onto my computer. At first I thought I would slowly import old blogs into this one and date them retrospectively (see labels: retrospective posts) but that got old, and now there are only a few, very random posts from the past, not at all indicative of my general mindset or state of being during those times. Now it exists only as a massive, dense block of unformatted text with smatterings of html tags throughout. I bet my children will be doing nothing short of clamoring to read it.

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I'm always super annoyed by people on the elevators at work. Perhaps today more than other days, because for the past week or so I've been exhausted and in a fog. But the thing is, there are at least eight elevators in our particular bank of elevators, servicing only floors 6-16. Thats more than one elevator per floor so WHY THE @#$% DOES EVERYONE NEED TO JAM INTO THE SAME ELEVATOR?! I know I should be a dutiful office citizen and hold the door for people who are too fucking lazy to call themselves an elevator and wait for it, but I don't. There I said it. I don't hold the elevator. I'm not even one of those people that will stand behind the closing doors and say "OOPS!" loud enough so the person who is left behind will at least think you tried.

Here's what came up when I googled "crowded elevator"...discuss:

The lumberjack depiction is pretty much my favorite, but the toy unicorn spearing what appears to be hitler is definitely a close second. If only the hitler doll was instead the middle aged secretary who today said "beep beep beep!" as she literally backed into the crowded elevator, and the unicorn doll was myself, then indeed the second depiction would be an accurate presentation of a "crowded elevator." Yes, maybe we SHOULD install a back-up warning horn on you so we can all be on the lookout for you when you back your ass into the elevator.

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not newsworthy.

2008-07-28T09:19:00.001-07:00

Lately when I read the news I bypass every single front page news story and go straight for the celebrity gossip or science/health news. Does that make me the shallowest, most useless person in my demographic? Probably. I just can't stand to hear anymore about how oil prices suck or 156 dozen people died in a suicide bomber attack. It's like a very boring, repetitive novel. One that I buy because I think it would make me look (more?) intelligent if it was sitting on my shelf, while simultaneously praying that no-one asks me about it.

I swear I'm intelligent, I swear it.

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This weekend C and I gave Oliver a bath, shined him up and put on his best, snazziest harness to go to the park. Here's some clues as to what happened there:

In case you're wondering, that's a dead toad, Oliver, and the angel of death playing a flute made of a femur, chronologically placed. The femur flute (FF) really has nothing to do with it, but the smell of death does.

Well, back to work.

Requisite Survey...that I never finished from May.

2008-07-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

You are not allowed to have a blog if you don't post at least one survey. True story...they will arrest you. Hey, I'm just doing my civic duty.

A is for age:
23

B is for beer of choice:
I dunno, something fruity.

C is for career right now:
Graphic designer

D is for your dog's name:
Oliver

E is for essential item you use everyday:
Photoshop

F is for favorite TV show at the moment:
The Office, but its quickly losing ground.

G is for favorite game:
Cranium!

H is for Home town:
St. Louis, Missouri

I is for instruments you play:
Piano, voice

J is for favorite juice:
currently: Pomegranate Blueberry

K is for whose butt you'd like to kick:
secretaries

L is for last place you ate:
TGI Fridays with C and parents.

M is for marriage:
Yes! YAY!

N is for your nickname

Katie Rose

O is for overnight hospital stays:
Nope, I'm HEALTHY.

P is for people you were with today:

C, C's parents, people from work.

Q is for quote:
There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters. -ATE

R is for Biggest Regret:
None really

S is for status:
katie rose: CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE THERE ARE 45 MORE MINUTES IN HER DAY.

T is for time you woke up today:
8:15 am, yes, i am the master of getting ready with haste

U is for underwear you have on now:
the kind I wear when C isn't home haha, my oldest softest pair.

V is for vegetable you love:
sugar snap peas.

W is for worst habits:
bein a bitch, updating my blog at work.

X is for x-rays you've had:
ultrasound.

Y is for something yummy you ate:
something yummy i ate when? in my whole life?

Z is for zodiac sign:
Aries.

That was a lot more boring than I thought it would be.

Oliver goes Ice Fishing

2008-07-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

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This morning took Oliver out to pee and went back to bed for a while, and when I went out to the garage to go to work, I discovered it had been pouring rain all that time, and there was Oliver, looking pathetic and dumber than usual with his little soggy ears plastered to his face. I wish I had a picture of it, but instead I'll have to make due with an equally stupid picture of him, all dressed up for a hard ~~day of ice fishing~~ winter in st. louis.

Sometimes I wish I had another dog to keep him company (although, this feeling never lasts more than about as long as it takes me to go outside and witness the destruction he's wrought), since it's apparent to me that he's excruciatingly bored/cooped-up/lonely/sad in the backyard all by himself. Recently he's taken to attempting to jump our eight foot plank board fence. Since Oliver is more like a giant, fifteen pound flea, and less like a normal domestic dog, this is entirely possible. C and I have witnessed it if you want further proof. Other things that he does include making nests out of trash and his dog house bedding, pooping all over the garage, eating his bone on top of my car and dumping his dog food all over the porch. He's so charming, sometimes I can't stand it.

But really, I do love him a lot. How can you not love a creature that will willingly put on an ice fishing hat in the winter because he's ACTUALLY that cold? That's right, you have no recourse.

centipedes

2008-07-25T10:47:00.000-07:00

Today I'd like to address the vile nuisance known as the house centipede:

Anyway, back in lovely, vile centipede-less South Carolina, I was oblivious to the fact that such a thing could, and would infest my living space at some point in my life. I mean, bugs I can usually deal with. Spiders are gross but manageable, roaches are disgusting...but manageable. This thing? This thing I can't handle. Lucky for me it's so bloody common in households across America that it warrants a name like "House centipede" which I think is deceiving. Other creatures that have names that accurately anthropomorph-ize them are:

HOUSE cats
LAP dogs
SEEING EYE ponies (yes, they really exist, maybe cute enough to warrant a separate post)

Actually, I couldn't really think of that many examples of anthropomorphic animal monikers, but the point is, all of those things are cuddly, and respond to reason and affection, and most importantly, DON'T HAVE FIFTY SPIDER LEGS.

I looked them up on the website, and it says that they are "harmless nocturnal predators." Forgive me, but you don't often see the word "harmless" cuddling right up next to "nocturnal predator." Who trusts everything they read on the internet anyway? This bogus piece of fiction had lots of comments on it about people that welcomed house centipedes into their house, even one guy that found one in his bathtub, and instead of smashing it into a zillion atoms like a normal human being, he laid the beast out on a paper towel and blow-dried it until it came back to life. That's right, that asshole gave him little centipede CPR and released it back into his home.

To make up for douche-bags like that, I always give them the violent, merciless death they obviously deserve. I would rather have pregnant spiders released into my home than these little shits.

cant be bothered

2008-07-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Today I got to "escape" work and go to the gynecologist. Yippee! I guess I'm finally getting around to that "important" list of things to do with my money that I posted a while back. Anyway, I went in there with guns-a-blazin, fully intending to demand an IUD, since I hate birth control that requires me to do...anything. I just want it to sit up there and do what it's supposed to until I decide to reproduce. I can't deal with this "take a pill once a day at 1:57.09 p.m. shit. As you can probably guess I didn't even get around to suggesting the IUD and they put me right back on the ring. I can sort of already see where this is going:

1. Dr. puts me on the ring.
2. I get frustrated with it because it falls out all the time.
3. I have a couple panic attacks about being pregnant because I forget to put it back in or something. Not that this is any different than my normal monthly panic attack about pregnancy.
4. I stop taking it altogether because I run out of my trial pack and hate it so much that I don't want to get my prescription filled.
5. I go back to the dr. to complain and she tells me i need to try the ring. (see step one)

Maybe everything about the ring is circular and unending.

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

2008-07-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Today has been so busy that nothing worthy of pithy commentary has happened. I had stuff in my inbox when I got here at nine and I literally have not had a break since then. I'm about ready to bash my head in. On top of it all, I'm running a fever of...ready? 99.6!!!!! Now, don't everyone panic and call 911, I'm not dead yet.

But seriously, any fever at all is notable for me, since my body is like the human thermostat. That's a whole point above where it should be! Esp. since I've been running said fever since Monday.

Thats really all I have to say.

Oh yeah, fuck name tags. Fuck 'em, I say.

Sexy Rexy

2008-07-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

Today in addition to work I:

looked up information on multiple births
participated in an online photoshop contest (DORK)
read the comics
spent copious amounts of time on craigslist looking up the following things that were for sale:

birdcages
old wedding dresses
washing machines
houses
briggs and stratton engines
horses and ponies
Nigerian Dwarf Goat
mountain bikes

Admittedly, perusing craigslist always starts out innocently enough. "Oh, Rex needs a bigger cage, the lawn mower is broken and my friend needs a new washing machine." I'll leave it up to you to try and discern what particular train of thought got me from washing machine to Nigerian Dwarf Goat.

________________________________________

I've started working out again and last night I got hooked into "BODY BLAST" which is about exactly as awful as it sounds. I reckon they got the name from the fact that after you complete "Body Blast" you will probably feel like your body has been "blasted" by something heavy, like an anvil or an artillery shell. I probably shouldn't have started my workout regimen back up with something with that name but when I was invited to the class by a woman who is at least 168 years old, the two shreds of pride I had left at that point wouldn't let me refuse. Needless to say, that old woman quickly showed me that I am a weak, flabby person who doesn't deserve to be 23 and in the prime of life.

_______________________________________

To finish, I must report that baby Rex: (see below - to refresh your memory)

Is now teenage Rex, and while no longer requiring bi-daily feedings, is now what C affectionately calls "a little shit." I'm sure that moniker has been accurately applied to teenagers throughout the annuls of history, but probably none so accurately as it is applied to Rex. For something that gets toys, food, treats, accesories and attention galore, he sure does a whole hell of a lot of hissing and biting and generally telling me where I can stick it. Not unlike a human teenager, I would imagine.

Pretty much the only endearing thing about him at this point is that he has learned the following:

Cat Call
"Seventy Six Trombones"
the beeping on the microwave

Maybe the third one is somewhat less endearing than the other two, but still. He is also molting and thus in addition to his unending bad attitude and incessant cat calling (also not unlike a human teenager, I suppose), he looks like we put him in the blender. I promise we didn't, but I can't promise that we havne't thought about it.

NOW, it's five o-clock.

Katie Rose...has overcome her writers block.

2008-07-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

I so phased out for a while. You know what's pathetic? I actually felt guilty for leaving my newborn blog all alone and un-updated for all that time. I guess I just wasn't ready to commit. It is sort of odd how my desire to write came rushing back though. I mean, just two minutes ago I was standing at the paper cutter, cutting 150 teeny tiny tags to be tied around customized firm sunscreen, now I'm all hot to trot for writing in my blog.

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One of the things I've noticed that I do a lot at work is go to the bathroom. Never before has the bathroom been such a haven. I don't know for sure, but I think I may subconsciously drink approximately 12 times as much as I do at home in order to legitimately have an excuse to go to the bathroom about every hour.

This bathroom talk has reminded me of what is perhaps a major discrepancy in the moral compass of our office, as a whole. That discrepancy concerns: The Handicap Stall. In my frequent trips to the bathroom to kick back and relax, I've noticed that there is a quiet, desperate war being waged in my office for the handicap stall. I've noticed women waiting when the other stalls are empty so they can use it. Luckily there are no handicapped people on my floor, that I know of, and thats probably for the best, because I don't think these women are going to defer to anyone as unimportant as a legitimate handicapped person any time soon.

My last bathroom observation (then I swear I'm done) concerns hand-washing. See, I have this phobia that someone in the bathroom will catch me not washing my hands when I'm finished, which I usually do...if I'm actually using the bathroom. You have no idea the mental anguish that I go through when I'm sitting in the stall, texting away or reading a book or sewing on a button, and some secretary comes in to do her thing. NOW WHAT? Usually I try to wait the other person out, but if that doesn't work I'm stuck in my little bathroom charade, making a fake flush and fake rustling my clothes around, and if I'm lucky enough to have gotten the handicap stall, fake washing my hands in the sink.

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Well, off to finish work, because it's almost five!!!!!!!!

hahahahaha

2008-05-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

This just in:

"Europeans get drunk 'to have sex'", courtesy of the BBC world news day.

"Young people were also more at risk of unsafe sex while
under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the study found."

"Drunkenness and drug use were found to be strongly associated with
an increase in risk taking behaviour and feeling regretful about having sex ."

Duh?!

Wow. Is it even possible to have a slow news day in EUROPE? How can the world news be allocating reporters to something that anyone who ever went to college already knows?

holy crap why isn't it the end of the day?!

2008-05-08T14:02:00.000-07:00

So last summer I worked in a hypnotists office as an office manager. My old bosses email is still in my contacts list, so it shows up in my google chat box. Currently, his away message is: "mesmerizing." What does that mean? Is something mesmerizing HIM, or is HE mesmerizing something?! I find it fascinating that with this man, both are possible.

Thats it, I have no more witticisms for today, unless you find sitting at your desk and checking the clock every 13 seconds amusing enough to write about.

new computer

2008-05-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

I FINALLY got a new computer at work.

In other news I've recently been informed that Rex needs to be hand fed twice a day. I wasn't planning on hand feeding anything in my life until it was either A. a human baby or B. my parents in a state of advanced old age. And even then, both of these situations would involve beings with more reasoning power than a baby cockatiel. I would sincerely hope so, anyway.

_________________________

I've gotten a little sick of people coming into my office and making comments about how dark it is. It's dark because I asked the maintenance guys to take out the bulbs in the hospital quality x-ray strength florescent light over my head so my retinas wouldn't burn out of my head while I worked. But even with the light bulbs out, its not THAT dark. Excuse me if I haven't been working here long enough to forget what sunlight feels like on my face, or how kittens sound or what love feels like.

That may be a little too bleak of an assessment of my workplace. But the point is, I have a big window in my cubicle. Sure, it may not overlook a field of daffodils (actually, my view is an abandoned apartment complex and some rooftops), but my computer desktop IS a field of daffodils, so that combined with the indirect, grey city light coming through my window is enough to sometimes make me think about something other than the fact that i sit in a cubicle most of my day.

Well, back to work...sigh.

hates flight attendants

2008-05-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Ok...I dont HATE flight attendants. I just hate that they get to spend so much time with MY C. It's not that his loyalty is in question, it never has been. I know it's just his job, I know he wants to come home. It's just that if any girl gets to spend a spring afternoon on the beach with him, it should be me.

I WILL get used to this, but I didn't expect the first trip to suck so much. :(

I have no other news except I am STILL doing these heinous nametags.

Sometimes choir makes me want to stab myself in the throat...

2008-05-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

...but then I remember that I really do love to do this. Just not with 50 other pan-diocesan church ladies who want to be sopranos but can't so they're stuck in the alto section, croaking away. This does not inspire me to "lead the section," rather it inspires a sort of sleepy, lackadaisical approach best summed up as "lead yourselves, dammit."

Ok, this makes me the worst section leader ever, but I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way in dio choir, judging by the fact that I'm one of the only section leaders who actually shows up for dio choir. It's just that when its nine forty five and some church lady raises her hand to ask why measure 67 was conducted in six eight and not three four, i want to throw her into the pits of hell.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.

____________

Also, I'm distracted by my messy house, of which cleanliness is is no way affected by the three boys that currently live here. I'm hoping Downstairs Dan (DD) will help me lay the smack down. He likes clean things, right? The problem is that the house has to be immaculate for the coming of Daniel's Mother, Southern Woman Extraordinaire (DMSWE). This means she has about the equivalent of 12 times the amount of housewife points as any woman west of the mississippi. Or the appalachians. Or really, Charleston SC.

So please no one tell me that it doesn't matter if my baseboards are dusty or I might have an aneurysm. Me and all my pets will probably get cancer from coming in contact with so much Scrubbing Bubbles, but I don't care.

BITCH AWARD, MAY 2008: Some guy let me cut him in line at the grocery store because I was carrying an eye dropper and he assumed I "had a sick baby at home." I should have said "no, this is just to feed my god forsaken baby PARROT, so you can go ahead and buy food for yourself" I'll let you guess what I actually said. Still can't guess? Well, it was something along the lines of:

"Oh, thanks, thats really nice of you *insert worried mom face here*"

I don't even want to talk about how boring my day was.

2008-05-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

In other news, I'm tracking C's flight and he's currently making circles in a CRJ about a hundred miles from his destination. This is exactly why I should NOT be tracking his flights, because there are no good reasons in my mind to be making circles in a commercial jet when you are that far from your destination.

I hate airplanes.

things to do at work

2008-05-06T08:50:00.001-07:00

_________________________

C started work today!! He's the cutest airline pilot in the entire universe and don't you dare try to dispute it:

You'll have to excuse this photo, because it was tragically early for me and I couldn't operate a camera, apparently.
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The last couple of days at work I've been doing two big ongoing projects. Wow, that sounds important Kate! Wrong. The projects consist of:

Making Nametags for Mix and Mingle Events

You may think that this job wouldn't take two days, but you're absolutely wrong. These people are SERIOUS about nametags. Serious enough to designate the job to their graphic designer. The thing is, I've never really been all that serious about nametags myself, or really even thought about them come to think of it. The most memorable nametags I've encountered have been of the "Hello My Name is: *insert something witty or gross here*" variety. Most of the time you don't see people walking around an event going "hey, have you seen these nametags? These are slick."

This is what I get for being the most junior, youngest, greenest person in the entire company. I'm not complaining because I can finally afford to go to the dentist and buy things like...a cockatiel because my new salary. But still...ok maybe I am complaining.
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SPEAKING OF BUYING THINGS WITH MY NEW SALARY

Ok, I admit that with my first paycheck I did approxamately zero percent of the useful things I needed to do.

Things I needed to do with my money:

Go to the OBGyn so I don't get pregnant
Go to the dentist so I don't become toothless
Go to the optometrist so I am not blind
Take the animals to the vet so they don't get rabies
Register my car so I don't get arrested.

Things I did with my money:

Bought a swimsuit
Bought a lamp
Bought green sheets
Bought a skirt and a shirt for work which I immediately hated the second they came out of the box but will keep anyway because I have the crappiest work wardrobe ever.
Bought a cockatiel
Bought sound blocking headphones so people will leave me alone at work during my lunch break.

I realize that the Things I Needed to Do list includes lots of scary words like "pregnant" "toothless" "arrested" "rabies" and "blind" and the Things I Did list includes lots of useless words like "lamp" and "cockatiel" and basically all of the words on the list. But it was my FIRST PAYCHECK. Anyway, I have another one coming next week, it'll all be ok.
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I'll leave you with a picture of Rex. No I don't want to talk about how impulsive this was.

bad literature update:

2008-05-02T14:38:00.000-07:00

yesterday after blogging I DID hide my romance novel and my science fiction tabloid, but today someone came in and opened my drawer, and there they were for the whole world to see. :(

Seventy Six Trombones in the Big Parade

2008-05-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today for a brief interlude I spent some time looking up cockatiels on the internet and thinking I might want one. When I was little I had a cockatiel. His name was Merle and he was awesome...so I got to thinking about how I'd like to have another Merle and teach him to cat call and sing Seventy Six Trombones. I also got to thinking about how it was my job to take care of Merle and he died, so I obviously wasn't doing something right. Lastly, I got to thinking about how the last bird I got was brutally devoured by Oliver.

Maybe I shouldn't get a bird.

Also, this brings to mind how little actual work I did today.
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There's a warning on my keyboard that says:

"Some experts believe that the use of any keyboard may cause serious injury."

That seems like a pretty serious warning for something as innocuous as a keyboard.

Other things that can cause serious injury:

knives
guns
skydiving
crop dusting
working in a chemical plant
nuclear meltdown

Time to go home, thank God.

lunchroom thief.

2008-05-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

So I used to blog a lot. A LOT. I have blogs that go back to 1999 on my old journal, which I suppose I will slowly but surely transfer over to this one. Man, I was a weird kid in 1999. That was almost ten years ago...jeez.

Anyway, now I have a new blog, which is supposed to be a grownup blog, one that reflects the fact that I am employed in the graphic design industry by making subtle but striking changes to it's layout (which I shamelessly pulled off of a very obknoxious website.)

The bottom line for today is: I am too poor to look professional. I used to think I was a good dresser, but this office has quickly set the record straight. These women always look nice (read: expensive) and business-like, and then theres me...over in the corner cubicle, desperately trying to pull myself together. True story: Today I had to sew up the zipper of my cheap Target skirt because it broke in the car. I'm glad no one was around to see this.

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The other day a woman came into my office while I was reading one of those cheap tabloid magazines about UFOs and supernatural phenomena. Usually if that happens I just flip the magazine over so no one will see me A. not doing any work or B. reading about a house in suburban texas which is apparently haunted. I can't decide which would be worse for people to witness....anyway, on this occasion I didn't flip it, I stupidly set it out right in front of her face. This is the issue about psychic martians too, with a feature about the supernatural location of disneyworld and something called "elephant birds." All of this sounds suspiciously like a story I wrote when I was ten and nobody liked me. Anyway, now I've hidden the book behind my speakers, next to a romance novel I stole from the cafeteria. As a disclaimer, we have a little "library"section of our company cafeteria, which is full of romance novels, but I suspect theyre just for looks since I never see anyone (but me, apparently) reading them. And for good reason.

This just reminded me that I need to hide my little romance/supernatural psychic martian book orgy so they don't find them when they switch out my computer this week.

____________________________

Lastly, speaking of stealing from the cafeteria, I have to confess that I stole someone's Lean Cuisine the other day because I forgot my wallet. I'm not even sorry, because everyone here makes more money than I do anyway. I made sure I hid the box inside another box in the trash can. So that makes it ok.

The End of a Story

2007-11-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

Sometime later, she awoke, sweating and uncomfortable. The house was moist and hot like a greenhouse, and she recognized the earthy smell, like that of a spring, at once. She straightened and in the corner she saw Bill, in his shirtsleeves and slacks, one leg folded casually over the other. His hair was brown and well groomed. She could make out the outline of a wallet in his front pocket. He was absently stroking a hibiscus blossom which opened underneath his fingers. As always, the edges of him seemed to bleed into the air like watercolors.

“Evening, Gloria.” He said. His voice seemed to echo only in her head, bypassing the empty room that lay between them.

“Oh Bill, I’m so glad you came.” She breathed.

He nodded and smiled, uncrossing his legs and rising from the chair. Crossing the room, he noticed the turtle in the bowl and gestured towards it. “From your daughter.” He stated matter-of-factly. Gloria started to lament the creature’s neglectful death but she stopped when she noticed the turtle swimming happily in it’s tank. She stood and reached for him. He smiled and turned away, looking out at the garden filled with blanket covered plants. For a long moment he was silent, facing the dark window and scratching his chin. Then he spoke.

“Your daughter means well.” He said simply. “She misses her mother.”

Gloria nodded. “I know.”

“Of course you do.”

A late season aster leaned towards his outstretched palm and burst into full bloom. “

Your wild rose seems to be dying…” he said.

“I can’t make it grow, I’ve tried everything. Sometimes…” she trailed off.

“…it’s the only thing that gets you out of bed in the morning.” Bill finished for her. He nodded solemnly in the direction of the garden as if he were a doctor making a diagnosis.

The sun was rising but it had not yet appeared over the frozen fields. It was casting reverse shadows on the lawn, and with a start she noticed that the blanket had blown off of the wild rose. Where had once stood the sickly unwilling bush was now the greenest and most vibrantly alive plant in her garden. She inhaled sharply. Gloria approached the window and put her hands to it, the glass steaming under her fingers. Bill was beside her radiating heat like a fire.

“I have to go now.” He said.

“So soon?”

He nodded and strode into the foyer, putting his hand on the knob. A potted peace lily on the door stoop rustled pleasantly as he passed. When he’d left, Gloria felt sleepy and alive. Swaddled by her warm house she settled back into her arm chair and slept, unburdened.

When she woke it was fully light outside. She had slept soundly and felt rested. Her answering machine was blinking urgently on the table beside her chair and she stretched to press the button. First was a message from Alexis.

“Mom, it’s me. Are you still asleep? Crazy night or something? Anyway, listen, the doctor had to move some less urgent cases around but he can see you today at eleven forty five so give me a call so I know you got this in time.”

Gloria checked the clock. It read 12:34 p.m. The second message was also from Alexis.

“Mom, it’s eleven fifty two, or something, and the doctor just called. He said you weren’t at your appointment? What’s going on? Why aren’t you answering my phone calls…” her daughter’s voice sounded worried and Gloria felt a pang of guilt. “…anyway, I think I’m going to skip class and come check on you because I’m worried. I’ll be there soon.” There was a click on the tape as her daughter hung up and then the machine was silent.

With a start, Gloria remembered Bill’s visit and the miracles that her daughter would not be able to ignore. In the corner the hibiscus flower had opened with the sun. She rushed to the window to view the miraculously blooming rose. The blanket had indeed blown off, but the rose was not in full bloom as she had remembered it from the night before. The frost had killed it, and it stood withered in the lawn. What sickly foliage it had possessed before had frozen and become brown. Gloria felt an epiphany start to creep into her mind like a vine. She turned slowly to inspect the turtle bowl and found the creature inside as dead as it had been the night before. It’s limbs had seeped from the confines of the shell, the stagnant water in the bowl covered by a thin film. She reeled in the kitchen and forced herself to sit down. She could not cry. She thought of her disappointed daughter, coming to check on her as if she were a sick child. Beside the turtle bowl was the bottle of pills that Alexis had set out for her. A good mother would take those pills. She reached for the bottle, opening it on the table. The pills spilled out and she took a handful, popping one resolutely into her mouth. She thought she could feel it seeping into her, and one was not enough. She took a second, a third, and then waited. After some time the room wavered pleasantly and she took another, and another until the bottle was empty. Now the room was no longer concrete. In the back of her mind she remembered that Alexis was on her way and would be there any minute, but it no longer mattered. She stumbled to a potted plant and kneeled beside it, laying her cheek against the warm soil in the pot. She was aware of Alexis bursting through the kitchen door, the welcome bell ringing hysterically but it sounded far away and unimportant. Alexis pulled her from the plant and shook her.

“Mom! Mom! Wake up..” she was shaking the empty pill bottle in front of Gloria and it left orange streaks in the air. The edges of Alexis had started to bleed like Bill’s did when she dreamt of him visiting her from the other side of the grave. That’s ridiculous. She thought. People don’t visit you when they’re dead…

“People don’t visit you when they’re dead, Alexis.” She heard herself say.

“Did you take all of these pills?!” Her daughter was yelling, still shaking her. She could see Alexis crying, and she remembered that she couldn’t recall the last time she had seen her daughter cry.

Gloria reached for her daughter to comfort her but the room was swelling, hot and moist. Plants burst to life and vines climbed to the ceiling. She turned to her daughter to say “See? It was true all along.” But Alexis was nothing more than a smudge of light

Three Nights for Three Women

2007-11-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

This is what it is.
A different poison,
not quite as strong.
Sweeter.
Slower to take effect.
She feels good,
but I think you've
got the wrong idea.
This isn't what she does,
It's the delusion talking.

Careful scribe:
if you love words so much
they may come and nest in you.

Morning After Makeup

2007-10-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

This is thought
rushed away leaves
in a gutter
stripes like wounds
of light on your back.
This is the anti love.
They visit each other
and that is where
this morning was birthed.
This is self,
not self,
two for one
while it rains outside your window.

Purify me
proclaim ignorance
After all, it was nothing.

On Purpose

2007-09-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

We floated onceon the bosom swell of the Black River

It nursed us when we were children

and now we meet here again

but oh this is not the sticky rapture of flies

and germs and mud that used to swaddle us.

Here it is always white; impossibly deep white.

I am here to provide the river memory.

Perhaps it is the only part of you that is preserved,

and I am here to dredge it upfrom your sandy core.

Two Songs Rewritten for the Tunes Sake

So I haven't felt like being an exhibitionist lately...

SORRY.

hurray, it's the holidays.

Jury Duty.

Lets have babies!!

The Bean Trees

I am thankful for: my spam folder.

1 BEER CAN, DAYTONA 1991 H.D.!! - $10 (St. Ann)

Used underwear panties boxer briefs undies - $40 (NYC brooklyn manhattan)

I swear I wrote this two days ago and didn't finish it.

ok Ok OK, I'm updating every day starting.......NOW.

booze and hors, here I come.

A Partial Christmas List for My Millionaire Friends.

file this one under "boring ass posts"

OH (cold) SNAP

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE THURSDAY.

I feel upset, so will you sing a Nickelback song to me please?

What is the best website to date teen girls in Oman ?

What will the plot of the next cat porn, starring Adam and Sophie, be?

NaBloPoMo

Heck is for people that don't believe in gosh.

*Insert Olympic Theme Music Here*

Happy Halloween.

It's fall again

Gah I want to go home.

gah.

Tally-HO.

Annnnnnnnnd I'm back.

psssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Things I Did Today:

KICKBALL HERO *update*

Sassy.

runez

Looking for my SOLE-Mate

early tuesday morning.

awesome. just....awesome.

KICKBALL HERO.

PS: Hi Cal!

Congratulations! YOU have been chosen for the DirectBuy Showroom Experience!

Snoods for Oliver.

Ode to Dinah Lou: nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnol89

ughhhhh go away August 26th, 2008.

PS

A case of the Mondays :(

Mama said there'd be days like this

Normal Husband-like behavior.

Is this normal for A Husband?

TREE CAM Issue 2

TREE CAM Issue 1

Patron Saint of Patience.

Branching out.

multinational

Meow.

fallfallfallfallfallfallyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayFALL!

ALERT: sappy romantic moment contained herein.

impostor lettuce.

A list I will continue to edit as time goes on.

elevator brats.

Answers to the following questions welcomed and appreciated.

I'm cool, I swear.

ATTENTION. NEW LAYOUT.

a smattering of things

duh.

SLEEP APNEA BOOSTS DEATH RISK

But it's unclear whether treating the breathing disorder cuts the danger, one expert says

my blog speaks...in haiku

DO NOT WANT.

panic attack!

YESSSSS!

blog OBSESSED.

this about sums it up...yep.

If I were a unicorn.

not newsworthy.

Requisite Survey...that I never finished from May.

Oliver goes Ice Fishing

centipedes

cant be bothered

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Sexy Rexy

Insert Olympic Theme Music Here

KICKBALL HERO update