Fish

We're having fish tacos for dinner.

I'm ready for my head to stop hurting. I'm dealing with angry back muscles which is causing me to have the tension headaches. Bangin.

Whatever. I'm sleepy. Lazy. I've been working out and it makes my body mad. I know that I should be cleaning or something, but I just want to lay in bed and make T keep me warm with his nuclear heated body. (He hates that.)

Our carpet needs to be vacuumed. It looks like a Jackson Pollack painting.

Annnnyway. Nap time.

Ugh

I have a lot of chores to do today. I don't want to.

Going for a run actually sounds more appealing. That should tell you something.

My throat feels weird. Like, my ear is clicking for no reason like there's fluid involved, and that tonsil feels like there's a hard something stuck in it. This is also the ear that has the super thick eardrum, since I exploded my ear drums as a baby when my mom took me on a flight to Tennessee. I water-pik-ed it, now it just feels coated and weird. Whaaaatever.

So I'm working out. And I didn't die. Like, the last time I did this particular work out, T had a super amazing asthma attack and I nearly vomited. No near vomiting this time.

Good side effect--I don't want to smoke. I had forgotten! Exercise=My body says "fuck that shit!" to smoking. WHY DIDN'T I REMEMBER THIS SOONER! I got in the shower with T (save water!) and had the super awesome "sense of smell from when I quit smoking", which is to say, normal, everyday smells that wouldn't bother me at all become totally caustic. T's soap seriously made me like, gag and my eyes water and I literally shoved T out of the way, doused my hair, leapt from the shower, flinging doors and windows open to try and air out the joint.

T stood there in the shower, water running, curtain akimbo, shivering in the new found arctic breeze I had created. "Honey? You're not....Pregnant, are you?"

"NO! It's your soap! It smells like chemicals!"

Thus ensued a long talk about smell and smoking and how there is really no way I'm pregnant right now, thanks.

So I suppose now I'll do my dishes or something. Sigh.

The 1st

It's the first of November. Huzzah, or something.

T and I have decided to go head to head in a "Biggest Loser" competition that I am doomed to lose, but I'm doing it anyway. After our trip eastward, we came back and our pants didn't fit. We weighed ourselves. There was some swearing.

So I came up with the idea--Whoever loses the most weight between now and the first of the year (awesome timing. Holidays, etc) gets to pick what we do for our birthday. He wants to go to Vegas, I want to do...something. Idk, go to Vegas too. But whatever, whoever wins calls the shots on the trip.

T can lose weight like nobodys business. I, however, can pack it on like no tomorrow. Seriously. He changes 1 thing in his diet, and whammo--he's 2 pants sizes smaller. Meanwhile, I'm working out, eating no sugar, drinking gallons of water, watching carb intake etc, and I lose 2 pounds and am angry all the time. The only time I have had success losing weight was when I stopped eating. Like, seriously. When I was working night shift pastry, I didn't eat, really. Slept through the eating hours, would eat one small thing, and then go bust my ass at work. Weight just fell off me (like, 30 pounds) and it was easy! I wasn't hungry! Hooray!

But then I went back to being a human and the weight piled on like the Griswolds into a station wagon.

Whatever. We need to eat better anyway. I'm sure that part of the reason we got porky out east is all the freaking crap we ate while we were there--the salt, the processed food, the sweets, the SALT.

Mostly, I'm just tired of hating myself. Hating my body. I have seriously tried EVERYTHING (diets, exercise, cardio, weights, on and on and on) with reasonably small success. It's discouraging. I'm not asking to weigh 110 pounds again, but I would like to not be embarrassed for my husband to see me naked.

Whatever.

Also: Time to quit smoking. Time to quit smoking! I may as well punish myself on all fronts. The last time I quit I gained a shitload of weight, so I may as well do it while I'm on the super awesome diet/exercise regimen. And lose no weight. (But at least not gain any.)

Yeah. Done smoking, I think. (I think. I've said this before.) Please don't preach at me, kids, I know that it's disgusting and will kill me and all that. So is being a fat ass.

I guess now that I don't have a job to worry about, I have the time to dedicate to not slowly killing myself in 9 different ways. Not like I have anything better to do.

I mean, if I'm not contributing to society in any way, I may as well look ok doing it.

(I played the bass clarinet, Brian.)

Hall-er-weenie

So it's Halloween. We bought candy to hand out to the, like, 5 kids we expect to get this year. We didn't carve pumpkins like last year (did I post pics of T's Death Star pumpkin? Because we're dorks. Also--He was Freddy Mercury. Awesome, awesome, awesome.) and we're not dressing up as anything other than lazy ass newlyweds who can't be bothered to wear real pants after 7pm--So, ourselves.

I used to LOVE Halloween. It was my stepdad's favorite holiday, he loved to prank me and my mom (I thought it was far more hilarious than mom did, of course), to do weird stuff to my friends (rigging up a net filled with god-knows-what to a trip line over our heavily wooded, 1/4 mile long drive way that would expel it's foul contents onto whichever car tripped said line.....It was hilarious until my friend drove me home in his dad's '69 Camero and we got to wash a car at midnight) and generally had a great time, even though we never got any trick-or-treaters.

Anyway, he's not here to rally the troops (but if he decided to make a cameo, today would be a fitting day to do so.) and I really just don't care any more.

I hate all holidays, which is something that I've touched on here before. It's like a slowly descending scale--Halloween, eh. Thanksgiving, ugh. Christmas? UUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHeh. (That's the sound of apathetic hatred, which is my newest fave oxymoron.)

Whatever.

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My house is dirty. I just need to get off my ass and do something about it (the kitchen and bathrooms are clean!) but the idea of folding that much laundry makes me shudder.

Yesterday was my official last day at the bakery. Everyone (aside from the people that matter) accused me of having a 'bad attitude', which, in my brain, doesn't even scratch the surface when it comes to my feelings on that place. Whatever, I'm free, I'm unemployed. Unemployed. Sigh.

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So in the magic that is social networking, a friend of mine from long, long ago has resurfaced. We were like, best friends as kids. Sat next to me in band (this now makes me still friends with all 3 guys that were in my section in band through Jr. High and HS. Says something about the power of dorkiness.) for years. We then went through puberty, stayed friends, only now we were make-out buddies, as teenagers are wont to be. (I remember he had braces and that caused a few problems. Ha!) He played football with T, we were all friends, and this was a long, long time ago. (I thought we were all friends. More on that in a moment.)

I haven't spoken with this person for very nearly 10 years until a few days ago. When I came back to watch my class graduate from my old school (I was already all grad-u-ma-cated and stuff from my new school in the state we don't mention) I ran into him there. He had just finished his Freshman year of college, blah, blah, blah, and he said to me: "I think our friendship would really benefit if you sucked my dick."

Thus ended the friendship.

I ran into him a few years later when I was in the middle of my beautiful and tragic love affair with drugs, and he didn't recognize me.

Anyway. None of that really matters.

So he appears on my friend request list on said social networking site. I agree to be his friend. He pops up in my chat screen thing. Tells me he's married, (to a child, imo, but that's neither here nor there.) he's just quit working as a sous chef, he lives in the city. He wants to get together with T and me, wants us to meet his wife, to catch up. I think this is a fine idea.

I mention it to T.

T, as we all know, is a calm, kind person. Very logical, doesn't let his emotions sully his actions. He rarely loses his temper, never gets vindictive.

Aside from now.

I tell T, and he FLIPS OUT! It was hilarious.

"Oh, we're going to meet them. Yes. And we're going to look HOT and I'm going to show him FINALLY that I WIN and he SUCKS and you and I are MARRIED and there's nothing he can do about it and we OWN our HOME and we had a REAL wedding and we have a NICE CAR and you have an AWESOME wedding ring and YES. When does he want to do this?"

I stood there in stunned silence.

"Honey? Is there something you're not telling me? I thought you were friends too....?"

"NO! The entire time I've known him! It was always 'Anything you can do I can do better'! You're the ONLY girl I ever dated that he didn't date too! And he tried to date you! Tried! Lorded your friendship over me! Rubbed it in my face after we broke up! Tried to outshine me on the football field! Got a scholarship to a big deal college and rubbed that in my face too! A GOLF SCHOLARSHIP!!!! GOLF!"

Rather than telling T that golf is a real sport and yes, you can get college scholarships for that, that no, I didn't date this person, that I'm sorry for everything he put him through, I said nothing.

After a few minutes, I said, "Honey. Do you really want to see him again, for old times sake, like I do, or do you seriously just want to lord our life over him? Because, well. Uhm, I don't know if that's the best idea."

"WE ARE GOING. AND WE WILL LOOK HOT. And yes, we are going for old times sake, with a SIDE OF I AM BETTER THAN YOU."

So we are. Sigh.

I think this is really funny. I shouldn't, but I do. I had NO idea that these two had anything but ok-ness between them, that I had factored into this in any way.

Idk. Maybe it's not a great idea. But I actually would like to see him (especially since he's no longer asking me to fellate him in order to remain friends) and catch up. And if T comes away from it with a little more confidence, an old 'score' being settled, in his mind, what's the harm? So long as he doesn't explode at dinner or something.

Weird.

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I cried at a high school football game last night. It was T's baby brother's last game of his senior year, and they were playing the rival school. They introduced the senior band members, cheerleaders, and football players, and their parents. I remembered when that was me, sitting in cold bleachers with my friends (stand partners with my maid of honor, actually), being rowdy (it was pep band. It's part of the deal) watching my future husband play football. How different I was then, how different we all were. How my parents would come to the games to hear the band, to watch us do field routines, how I had my whole life ahead of me.

And then, watching T's mom and brother walk out onto the field arm and arm, watching him give her flowers...Yeah.

So dumb.

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In closing, this picture makes me laugh until I cry. Have fun!

Hey, ho, Way to go......State that we were visiting

So we're back.

The trip was long. Travel-wise, anyway. We went to two extra states (Kentucky and Minnesota) for plane changes and layovers, we flew over ten hours in 4 days. Ugh.

I learned something about myself while we were gone.

I am an elitist and a snob. About food.

This place--So much white food. Everything prepackaged, processed, premade. Plastic cheese, premade frozen mashed potatoes, margarine. White bread. Ice berg lettuce. Fried everything. I cooked a lot while I was there, but it was hard because if I didn't go to the store myself, I was left with weird ingredients that I'd never heard of that only resembled what I needed in color. (I was asked to make pumpkin cheesecake. I asked for maple syrup and solid pack canned pumpkin. I received Log Cabin maple flavored syrup and pumpkin pie filling (pre sweetened).) It was interesting. (Oh, and there is a dish called 'Baked Steak' that is just that--only it's steak, covered in 6 cans of undiluted full salt golden mushroom soup and then baked. To say I was thirsty is an understatement.)

I loved T's family. Hilarious, angry people who chain smoke, do crossword puzzles and drink. How T's dad fits in I'm not really sure.

Grandma was SO happy. I made her birthday cake. (We put a 9 and a 2 on it, rather than 92 actual candles. She thanked us, as she wasn't even sure that she could 'blow out two candles and keep her teeth in'.) She was so happy to see T and J, to meet me, to see our wedding photos. She showed us this giant box of pictures of all of T's siblings from birth to now that she has kept for the last 40 years, T's parents wedding photos, pictures from when T's dad and his sisters were kids growing up. She told us about when T's oldest brother was born (the only kid born there), and T's dad had to go right back to work, leaving T's mom alone with the baby. Grandma was there, she didn't want to interfere, she said, but R (the baby) did nothing but cry, and cry, and cry. Nothing T's mom did would quiet him, and she was so exhausted. So grandma went and took the baby, telling T's mom to go to bed and get some rest, not to worry. She took the baby, wrapped him as tight as she could in a blanket and sat in a rocking chair singing to him. (A lullaby she remembers, that she sang to us right then and there) Finally the baby went to sleep and she took him to his bassinet in the bedroom where T's mom was passed out asleep, fully clothed on the bed with all the lights on. She covered her with a blanket, turned out the lights, and was happy.

Then she told us about how she rocked and sang to all the kids when they were babies. How each one of those kids were blessings.

This is stuff that J and T had never heard before, that they were blessings, that their grandma sang to them and rocked them. That someone had saved pictures of them from birth and remembered each one.

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I got to see the world's largest basket. That's something. I was rather excited about the whole thing.

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There is MORE work drama, but I'm not really feeling like going into it right now. Mostly I'm just happy to be home, in my freezing cold house watching Intervention in my bathrobe.

It's the Final Countdown

i just wrote a whole post about tomorrow being my last day and telling you where were going on our trip. Blogger ate it.

see you kids tuesday!

Parasitic Dystopia

I'm awake. J is at work, T is sleeping. I'm essentially alone in the (now clean-ish) house drinking coffee and watching a show about parasites and becoming more terrified by the moment.

The message of this show, other than fear mongering, is "Don't use dirty contact lenses! You can get a horrible parasite and your eyes will fall out!" "Don't walk barefoot in subtropical climates! There's a parasite that will burrow through the soles of your feet and kill you!" "Don't get a tick, you'll die!" "Don't eat sushi, you're bound to get intestinal worms and die of peritonitis!" and all I can do is think about all the sushi I ate while barefoot in Hawaii, my eyes enveloped in potentially hazardous contact lenses.

I'm reading "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood, because, you know, dystopian societies where women are considered less than men, cattle, essentially, breeding stock, is totally uplifting and just what I need right now.

My other option was to re-read "House of Leaves", which is the scariest book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Seriously. Most people I know that have read this book either couldn't finish it because it was too hard, too weird, too scary. One of my friends who read it still has nightmares about it.

I slept with the lights on, within visual range of my mom, the entire time I was reading this. I powered through it in hopes that the ending would make it end, and I was wrong.

It's a good book. Anything that successfully makes you feel something, well, it's a success.

I'm watching The Graham Norton Show, which is a show that I love more that I should.

I'm still not feeling any better about anything, really. But whatever.

I made jam last night and I don't think it's going to gel. So I made syrup. With fruit bits in. Sigh. At least I have that much more room in my freezer now.