Those who falter and those who fall

May I have your attention, please? Attention, please.  I have accomplished a great feat of laundry tonight.  And juggling.  I would appreciate it if you would hold your applause until the end.

After three months of living in this apartment, doing laundry in the dank smelly basement with a folding table (that I don’t use) that has a ring of dirt on it (from a potted plant, maybe) and a floor that I know has flooded at least twice since we’ve been here, I have FINALLY managed to do a complete load of laundry (complete meaning both washers followed by both dryers, since they are NOT full-size units) WITHOUT dropping a single article of clothing on the gross, icky floor.

Your applause would be welcome now.

I will admit that it was a close thing.  One pair of my underwear landed on my shoulder on its way from the dryer to the laundry bag.  My shoulder is infinitely more preferable than the floor, so I forgave it.

Usually, a sock lands on the floor and I start yelling (“EW!  Grossgrossgrossgrossgrossyuckewgrossugh”) as I swoop down to pick it up (hopefully not dropping anything else in the meantime) and shake it SO very forcefully.  The yelling helps de-grossify it, and the harder I can shake it, the more I’m convinced the grossness falls away.  I have not yet resorted to running anything through the wash again, but it’s only a matter of time.

It’s too soon to tell if I have crossed a threshold, but now that I’ve managed to set this record, I’ll work twice as hard to defend it.  No more clean clothing of ours will hit that disgusting floor.  This I swear.  This I swear by…the stars.

Another mystery solved

Yesterday, I explained where your missing socks are (too bad they can’t carry cameras – their vacation pictures are probably pretty good), and today I got a request to find out where the missing mittens are.  Mittens are pretty much the opposite of socks, right?  Socks go on your feet, mittens go on your hands.  Total opposites.  Socks run away and have adventures, but mittens aren’t like that.  They’re timid, fearful.  They have self-esteem problems.  All they want to do is hide (the LAST thing they want to do is go out in the cold and have snowball fights), and the ones that go missing are the ones that have wished SO hard for a good hiding place that they’ve turned themselves invisible.  Your mittens haven’t gotten lost or run away – they’ve disappeared.  You’ll find them if you feel around for them, but you’ll look pretty weird when you wear them outside.  Well, maybe not weird.  Bare hands don’t look weird.  But if you’re wearing invisible mittens you’ll have flipper hands (like The Penguin!), and that would be odd, so yes.  Weird. But warm!

Have a heart.  Leave your mittens in the closet.  They’re happier there.

I don’t feel any different

I am officially a resident of Maryland now.  I was a Virginia resident for 12 years.  TWELVE.  So this is big.  My car is registered and titled in Maryland, I have Maryland plates, I have a Maryland license, and I have registered to vote in Maryland.  Maryland Maryland Maryland.  Maryland, My Maryland, which is apparently the state song.  (I had to google that.  Never heard of it.)  Maryland.   That is not my favorite state name.  Lacks imagination.  Even Virginia required a teensy bit of imagination.  (Sorry, Maryland.)  I do think, as far as state names go, that Maryland ranks above New York, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey.  At least the North/South states (and West Virginia) started out as one state.  Splitting and taking a whole new name might have been traumatic.

Boat envy

Spending time in downtown Annapolis means spending time looking at boats.  Big boats, little boats, fancy boats, plain boats.  Mostly fancy boats.  And I like boats.  I don’t want to own one, but I’d like access to one.  Who’s got a boat and lives near me?  I need some new, useful friends.  (Sorry, guys.  You just don’t cut it anymore.)  I need friends with a boat, friends with horses – these could be the same friends, but I’m afraid they’d get tired of me.  Tired of me personally, tired of me using them for their boat and horses…I can be pretty annoying sometimes.  And demanding.  But I’m also fun and lovable!  (I don’t want to turn my new friends off too soon.)  Come, new friends, find me!

You know what would work?  Old friends, buy a boat! And some horses!  I’ll love you extra much.  And in return, I will….um….read to you?  Yes, I’ll read to you.  I’ll fold your laundry.  Do your dishes.  And exercise your horses!

Sometimes you feel like a nut

(Now I want an Almond Joy.)

A friend at work asked me what kind of degrees my interns usually have (or are working on).  Most of them (I’m including interviewees, too) are IT-related, but I’m considering hiring a guy with a sociology degree and a minor in religious studies.  I told my friend that; his response was to tell me I shouldn’t hire another religious nut. (He was clearly joking – no need to be outraged on anyone’s behalf.)

“Having a minor in religious studies does not make him a religious nut.  Wait.  “Another” religious nut?”

“Yeah, like yourself.”

“How, exactly, am I a religious nut?”

“You don’t celebrate Christmas.  Or decorate.”

“I’m an atheist.”

“My point!”

“Are you kidding me?  That might make me an anti-religious nut.  But I’m not militant or anything.”

“I didn’t say you were militant.  Just a nut.”

It was a ridiculous conversation, but there you have it.  I am a nut.

What? Never mind.

Guys, Advil actually works.  (They are not paying me to say this.)  By the end of today, I ached all over.  No idea why.  My legs ached, my lower back ached, my shoulders ached, my head ached – really, all over.  I took Advil before I left work, and by the time I got home, I didn’t hurt anymore!  It’s amazing!  A product that actually worked as advertised!  Modern medicine – it’s a wonderful thing.  Maybe I’m just super-tired and somewhat delirious (NOT from the Advil, I’m certain, and probably not from the one glass of wine I had with dinner) and a little punchy, and you know what?  Maybe I’ll go to bed instead of finishing that thought because I’m pretty sure it didn’t have anywhere to go.  Really – who writes a blog post about the miracle of Advil unless they’re being paid for it?  (I’m not being paid for it.)  That’s just weird.  Hush now, and go to bed.  Okay.

Whoops

We forgot to have pie on Pi Day.  Oh, well.  On the other hand, today was the first Saturday of the rest of our lives.  (Last Saturday we were still moving.)  We got up and went to the gym, then went to Panera for breakfast (and tried to play on our laptops, but their Wi-Fi is really slow), then home to do random stuff (like get clean), then to the grocery store because we’re – wait for it – COOKING DINNER tonight.  Fajitas, if you must know.  We went to the Giant across the street.  That trip reinforced what I already knew – I need to go to Wegmans to buy produce and meat and really anything that should be fresh.  I can still go past a Wegmans on my way home (I have several route options now), and I will be visiting it more often.  Losing Wegmans may very well be the hardest thing about leaving the area.

Yeah TOAST!

Warm toast is one of the best smells.  Have they made a candle scented like that yet?  Probably, but why don’t I have one?  Hm.  It would make me hungry.  I should stay away.  If you love toast, too, children, please enjoy the following video (introduced to me by our very own Sparky).

 

Support your local muppets

I found how muppets earn extra cash!  If they live in this area (and many others), second jobs may be necessary.  In their off-hours, when they’re not taking Manhattan, capering, or hanging out with kids (none of which pays much, I’d imagine), they’re washing cars!

Tell me those brushes couldn’t be the cousins of these guys…

Yiiiiiip yip-yip-yip-yip

I would TOTES* pay more for car washes if the muppets sang me a song while they did it.  In the meantime, this will have to do.

*I apologize for my unironic use of “totes”.  I got carried away by my enthusiasm for muppets.

Painful chocolatey goodness

We woke up Sunday morning with nothing in the house for breakfast (not unusual, as I’m sure you’re aware).  We debated the usual breakfast options (Panera vs. Starbucks, most of the time), and then one of us (can’t remember which one of us – might have been me) suggested Cocoa Puffs.  I love Cocoa Puffs.  Decision made.  We went to the store solely for milk and cereal.  (We were not about to be distracted by anything with any nutritional value.)

What I had forgotten about Cocoa Puffs, right up until the first spoonful, was that they kind of hurt.  They’re really rough on the roof of your mouth.  Totally worth it, though.  So good and chocolately and they turn the milk into chocolate milk!  It’s great.  So I hunkered down mentally and enjoyed my Cocoa Puffs.  The roof of my mouth had time the rest of the day to settle down.  Until the first crouton on the caesar salad I had for dinner that night.  Oops.  And ouch.

Winter musings

I should love February.  It’s got a three-day weekend in it, it’s short (a plus in winter), and oh, yeah – it’s got my birthday in it.  If anything would be make like this month, that should do it.  But it’s DREARY.  Winter is still here and the sky is always gray and it’s still cold and just yuck.   Yuck and ew.  My birthday only helps for a couple of days.  It doesn’t make me stop wishing February would just end already and let spring get here faster.  Of course, then I’ll be disappointed by early March.  I’ll be all, “Yo, March!  What’s up with this cold weather?  Don’t you know it’s supposed to get warm as soon as you get here?  What’s wrong with you?  WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?”

A solution: move south.  Or west.  Likelihood?  Very very very very UNlikely.  Besides, I don’t hate winter.  It’s just not my favorite season.  I like it in small doses.  I like it when I’m warm and dry and cozy inside and looking out on the nasty and wet cold weather.  Fires in fireplaces are nice – I wouldn’t get that if I moved somewhere without winter (well, I wouldn’t appreciate them as much).  And snow is pretty, until it gets gray and slushy.  I can pretend I’m a tracker when I see rabbit footprints in the snow.  Snow makes me wonder what a real tracker would make of Riley’s footprints now that he’s missing a foot and has an odd gait.  I don’t find myself pretending or wondering those things when there’s only mud or sand outside.  Maybe I would in sand, but it would be about birds, not rabbits, and they’re not as cute.

There – I can be positive about winter.  Was that convincing?  Maybe I need a daily mantra.

Winter’s not so bad.  Winter’s not so bad.

No, I need it to be more positive.

The sun’ll come out tomorrow.

Nope.  Too positive.  Also untrue.  Also also, no need to burst into song.  That could get awkward, especially at work.

Turn that frown upside down!  Turn that frown upside down!

Psychotic.

This might not work for me.  I just googled daily positive affirmations, and oy.  So not me.  Maybe the bursting into song thing is better for me.  I could go with Oklahoma (Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day) or Mr. Rogers (It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood) or Sesame Street (Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away).  Or Dean Martin (Good morning, life).

Whoa – as I was typing this, the sun came out.  Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up.  (Okay, sure I could, but that would be cheap, and I will not stoop so low.) Aaannnd it’s gone.  But hey, it was there for a few seconds.

Food decisions are hard

I almost wish I didn’t care how food tastes.  This is not a diet post (I can handle eating normal portions (and handle it when I eat other-than-normal portions)).  This is about decision fatigue.  There are too many choices!  Every day I have to make a decision about where I’m going to get lunch, and every night, John and I have to decide what we’re having for dinner.  We have too many choices and too many decisions to make.  We bring it on ourselves, I know.  We NEVER go to the grocery store, so we have almost no food in the house.  If we had food in the house, we’d have fewer choices about what to eat (which would make the decisions easier), but getting food into the house involves making choices about what to get, and – WORSE – it means making choices about what we’re going to eat DAYS IN ADVANCE.  That’s just crazy.

If all food tasted the same, this wouldn’t be a problem.  Somebody should get on that.

Bloodsuckers

Last week was a bad week for me – I lost a lot of blood.  I managed to get through two thirds of the summer bite-free, and then I had to go and spoil it by forgetting the bug spray at an outdoor evening work function.  I went straight from work, so I was wearing jeans and a shirt with sleeves to my elbows, but that wasn’t enough protection. Oh no – I ended up with FIVE mosquito bites.  Where?  On my feet!  And one on my pinky finger.  I hate mosquitoes.  As if mosquito bites weren’t bad enough, I had to have blood drawn the very next day.  Not for one test, no.  I was having a whole bunch of tests redone, so I went to the place (The lab? It’s not really a lab.  They send the blood off to a lab.  And it’s not a doctor’s office.  Whatever.  The place.), and the guy (the phlebotomist – that’s a great job title) looked at the order with the LONG list of tests (they were testing for 13 things, I think) and pulled seven tubes out of the rack.  SEVEN tubes.  That’s SEVEN VIALS of my blood he had to get out of my arm.  And I was fasting!  AND I had to go to work when he was done.  Inhuman, that’s what this was.  Inhumane, maybe.  Because I’m human.  Not an alien, not a robot.  Hm.  Maybe that’s what they were testing for.  Maybe I’m NOT human.  Mom, Dad, is that ice storm birth story just a cover for how you REALLY got me?  I’ll have to check those results carefully.

Do they really say it that way?

I was listening to the radio in the car the other day, and I heard a commercial for the National Association of Realtors.  Except they didn’t say it that way.  Not the way I say realtor.  Not the way anyone I know says realtor.  You know, like realter.  Kind of.  Anyway, no.  The guy on the radio announcing the official name of the organization over and over again pronounced it real-tor.  Over and over again.  Tor.  Like the rock formation.  Or the publishing company.  I assume that’s how it’s pronounced.  Tor.  Like or.  Four.  Bore.  Core.  If tor is pronounced “ter”, then I’m just going to keep saying it the wrong way ’cause that’s ridiculous.  But when it’s at the end of a word?  And that word is realtor?  Please.  Real-tor.  As if there are fake tors out there somewhere.

Reminds me of these guys.

Slow week

People annoy me.  I had lunch today with someone I’ve barely seen or talked to in months (we don’t work together anymore), and it was kinda good and kinda awful.  Awful like I don’t want to talk to her anymore.  Good like it was nice to catch up, but awful like after about 20 minutes, I couldn’t handle listening to her (and didn’t want to share anything from my life, either).  Lunch ended eventually, though, and I got to come home and relax a little and then I got to go to yoga and relax a lot.  And now I have to give Roxy her medicine (her 5 tons of medicine), so I’m off.  Sorry for the lack of entertainment going on up in here.

Blah blah, complain complain, shut up already

Riley is going insane, I’m freezing to death, and I think I just heard “Gangnam Style” coming out of John’s office.  The world is ending TONIGHT.  Hug your loved ones and duck and cover.  (Isn’t that what the Mayans said to do?)

Riley has been one uncontrollable bundle of annoying energy today.  If he could focus that energy on keeping me warm, I could handle it, but instead he’s been bouncing off the walls while I sit at my computer and shiver.  The thermostat says it’s 67 degrees in here.  I don’t see how it could be. I’m so COLD.

[Pause while I wrap myself in a blanket.  It’s times like these when I wish I had a snuggie.  Kind of.]

Just got distracted by Bookshelf Pr0n and Better Book Titles.  And my fingers are too cold for typing.  So…sure, I’ll publish this disjointed and not very entertaining blog post.  Don’t judge me!

Only at my house

Background: Yesterday evening, I got up to make some tea.  (Good background, right?  I mean, that really sets the scene for you, doesn’t it?)

Me, to John: What size mug?

John: Mexican.

Let me explain.  We don’t do sizes the normal way when it comes to mugs.  Oh, no.  Small, medium, large, tall, grande, venti – those are not descriptive enough. Here’s a selection of the mugs we use most often:

  • In the front row, from left to right, we have littlest and little – these match our dishes.  We’ve had them since we got married.
  • In the middle row, also from left to right, the answer to the mug size question is college (the last remaining dishware from our college years – I think the rest of those dishes went to Tom after we graduated), Jess’s (no one uses those but her), Mexican (we bought them  in Mexico, I swear), and big Mexican (same as the others, but bigger)
  • And in the back row, we have the more obvious self-explanatory descriptions: Superman, Beatles, Mad Hatter

We have entirely too many mugs.  Okay, now I need to know how many.  Hang on.

You can let go now.  41.  We have 41 mugs, not counting travel mugs.  And how many people live here?  Yeah.  TWO.  Ridiculous.

Falafel and I are taking a break

I’m always disappointed by falafel.  I get it every once in a while, but I never end up happy about it.  Today’s lunch was a falafel, hummus, and cucumber wrap.  Should have been delicious.  It sure sounds like something I would like.  But it was so very BORING.  Part of the problem may have been that there wasn’t any actual hummus in the wrap.  It was more like a hummus-flavored watery mayo.  The other part of the problem was that the falafel was only so-so.  I’m not trying to say that all falafel is boring.  I’m very willing to concede that I’ve never had really good falafel.  I certainly hope that’s the case.  Knowing that there is good falafel out there in the world gives me strength.  Or hope.  Or something.  But I think I’m done with falafel until someone I trust gives me a recommendation.

Also, the nice man who makes my salad at Panera recognizes me and waves when I walk in the door.  It’s time to start grocery shopping again.