hurray, it's the holidays.

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!

Lets have babies!!

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.

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. 

 

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

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.

*Insert Olympic Theme Music Here*

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

Tally-HO.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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".

KICKBALL HERO *update*

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.

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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!

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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.

early tuesday morning.

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.

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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.

KICKBALL HERO.

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.

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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.

A case of the Mondays :(

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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 1

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.

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.

ALERT: sappy romantic moment contained herein.

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 :) 

blog OBSESSED.

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.

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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.

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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 anydorkone 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.

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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.

hates flight attendants

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.

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

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.