What A Difference A Decade Makes

December 31, 2009 at 3:32 pm (Family, General Gobbledygook, Pets, Weightastic)
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Tonight’s the end of a year, and the end of a decade. The year sucked, so I think I’ll focus on the decade instead.

Here’s how it went….

Had a roommate, got a boyfriend. Lost the boyfriend, got him back, traded the roommate for a live-in boyfriend. Got a kitten, lost the boyfriend, watched the world explode, lost my mind, got a new apartment, got some antidepressants and a new perspective.

Got reinvolved with ex-boyfriend, drank in bars with friends, found a therapist, got rid of the ex once and for all. Lost my job, cried on a friend’s couch, then found a new, better job. Broke my ankle, hung out on the internet, met a random dude who lived in Sacramento, got off the antidepressants, got another cat. Sent a LOT of emails to the random dude, gave him my phone number, met him in person.

Had a lot of sex.

Went to a million weddings. Memorized the freeways between San Diego and Sacramento, flew on a lot of Southwest Airlines planes, admitted the random dude was my boyfriend. Went on vacation with him, met my Internet Doppelganger and walked all over Boston. Moved the boyfriend to San Diego, took him to meet the rest of the family, stunned when he didn’t run away.

Went to Washington DC, met more of my Imaginary Internet Friends, not knowing they were the tribe I had been looking for. Cut my hair, colored my hair, rinse, repeat. Got a new job, made more money. Met my boyfriend’s extended family, amazed him by not running away. Walked the Breast Cancer 3-Day, fucked up my feet, got a MRSA infection. Boyfriend tried not to kill doctor for hurting me.

Welcomed 2005 with the boyfriend and the two cats in the same tiny one bedroom apartment in the sketchy neighborhood. Paid off my car! Went to Wisconsin, got drunk, got cold, got engaged. Pulled off a miracle with Weetabix and threw the very last JournalCon in San Diego. Walked the Breast Cancer 3-Day again, managed not to mess up my feet.

Planned a wedding, planned a honeymoon, tried not to have a nervous breakdown. Contemplated eloping and implications of changing my last name. Decided that no one else’s opinion mattered and did what I wanted. Married the random dude, had an awesome wedding, went to Costa Rica.

Changed my name, watched my husband get laid off, hated my job. Apartment in sketchy neighborhood got robbed, lost all our honeymoon pictures (and iPod and computers and Playstation and sense of security). Fell down, broke my wrist, had surgery, got disabled. Liked my job again, husband got new job at my company, but we still prayed for 2006 to end, quickly.

Went back to Wisconsin, celebrated 1st wedding anniversary, thought about major life changes. Became a Big Sister, got an adorable Little Sister, quit all my other volunteer activities. Picked a surgeon, got approval, got weight loss surgery. Lost a lot of weight, really super fast. Started working out, started freaking out, walked the Breast Cancer 3-Day one last time, and finally walked all 60 damn miles.

Wisconsin brought me back again, and we planned our escape from California. Decided to go back to school, questioned my own sanity as I struggled through accounting, suprised myself by being good at the whole MBA this. Got a tiny, flea bitten, mangy kitten, fell in love, questioned my sanity again. Tiny apartment in sketchy neighborhood got more sketchy.

Got a new job, left the safety of my Giant Company for the do-goodness of Tiny Biotech. Made more money, went to Chicago, dressed up in a slutty costume and made out with Jesus. Fell in love with My Tribe a little bit more with every passing year. Went to a million baby showers, threw a million more.

Made new friends, found our doppelganger couple at Laura’s wedding, went to Vegas, went to Wisconsin,welcomed Niblet to the world. Decided to move to the suburbs. Drove across the country with my best friend and her pug. Swam in a pool in Vegas with some of the best people on the Internet or in the world. Got a dog, fell in love with her, watched husband fall in love with her too. Finished another year of school, realized I was almost done, started thinking maybe this whole MBA thing might work out overall.

Watched 2009 kick all of my friends and some of my family and shook my fist in impotent fury. Found a new therapist, ran into old Therapist at coffee shop, marveled at how infinitely different my life and my self are from when she last saw me. Realized I am a lucky, lucky girl.

Rang out the old decade with my champagne in the air and my heart full to bursting. Rang in the new with hope for something better for all of us.

Happy New Year, to you and yours with love.

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She’s Kind of An Asshole, But I Love Her

December 29, 2009 at 7:03 pm (Friends)
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Back in 1999 or so, when I was 24 and bored and dumb,  I went through a phase that involved a lot of first dates and a lot of…discovering my sexuality, we’ll say. (I think I jokingly called it my Slut Phase at one point, but have since reconsidered that classification.) Anyway, one night I went on a date with a guy that I knew was not the right guy for me, and I knew I was not the right girl for him. But we were in Old Town and had dinner and some margaritas and then decided to head down to a local pub that served beer by the yard in these ridiculous tall glasses.

And so we drank a couple yards of beer and talked shit to each other and flirted despite ourselves. Eventually we’d had enough to drink so we went out and started wandering around Old Town trying to clear our heads enough to drive home.  It was cold and a little foggy and around 1am so there wasn’t anyone around when we wandered into the little cemetery that is right smack in the middle of Old Town. We ended up sitting on a bench, bullshitting and flirting and being drunk. One thing led to another (as it does when you are 24 and dumb and drunk), and then we quickly progressed from making out to searching frantically through my purse for a condom.

Afterwards, we were wandering back to our cars and Nick (that was his name, by the way) was walking the opposite direction when suddenly he stopped, turned around and said “I’m going to tell my grandkids this story someday.” Creepy, yet flattering.

I, of course, told my best friend a mere 6 hours later. (It would have been sooner but she objected to 2am phone calls if I wasn’t bleeding or in jail.) Laura was positively shocked, because in the 16 years we had been friends I was always the Good Girl. Scandalous liaisons in shadowy public places were more likely to be a story from Laura.

Fast forward 10 years to last week.  I’m at work and my cell phone rings.

“So I’m down in Old Town with the kids,” Laura said “and I’m in this little cemetery….” (Here’s where she started snickering.)

“You are such a brat!” was all I could say since I was at work. She just laughed and laughed.

“I want to see the famous spot where it happened!” (Insert peals of laughter here.)

So I told her, because it was kind of funny that 10 years later, she’s down there with her stepkids telling them “Oh, let’s go look at this cemetery” just so she can taunt me about a hilarious, stupid, daring thing that I did when I was young and dumb. The bench isn’t there anymore, but Laura still is.

This summer, she and I created yet more memories to add to the pile when we drove across the country to bring her back to San Diego, just us and the pug. Sophie has been having play dates with Auntie Laura and Ike and Tina, the Puggletarys. We started working out together with Sheila, and she’d make me lunch once a week or so. She’s pregnant with her first baby, my little niece or nephew.

She and her husband are moving to Kansas City for a year, so he can do school at the Army War College. It’s the third time she’s moved since she met him; such is the price of being a Navy officer’s wife. They leave in two days, the morning of New Year’s Eve.

I know we’ll still make time to call and make fun of each other, because we always have despite living miles and miles apart for the past 10 years. And I know I’ll see a lot of Kansas City over the next year, but my heart is still breaking, just a little.

At least she won’t be able to call me from any memorable cemeteries in Kansas City.

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All Alone

December 16, 2009 at 3:01 pm (General Gobbledygook)
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Tonight something will occur that hardly ever happens, an occurrence that is so rare that there are some who do not believe it actually ever happens.

Tonight, I will be going straight home from work and I will spend the entire evening ALONE. 

Each of those things happens occasionally on their own but almost never do they happen simultaneously. It’s my own fault, really. I tend to have things scheduled for after work almost all the time; school or time with the Little Sister or working out with Sheila or getting together with a friend or babysitting or running errands all over town. And if I’m not running errands then either Kevin is beating me home or he is walking in right after me and we are having a bunch of togetherness time (and by that I mean sitting around trying to decide what to have for dinner and discussing how adorable our dog is).

So the fact that the only thing I have to do today is pick up some dry cleaning around the corner from my house and then I am home ALL NIGHT by myself while Kevin is bowling is absolutely mindblowing. I can have cereal for dinner if I so choose! I can walk the dog and clean the bedroom and watch episodes of “Melrose Place” without shame!

I can also bake up the 8 batches of cookie dough I have hanging out in my refrigerator. Kevin has declared my cookie baking A Sickness (as opposed to merely one of my Issues) so the fact that I get to spend all night being crazy baking woman without him shaking his head at my insanity is superfantastic.

Really though, it’s the being alone part that I love the most, more than the “being able to do things without head shaking” part. I’m an extraordinarily extroverted person, I’ll admit.  The term “social butterfly” could have been coined just to describe me. I thrive on talking to people, on telling jokes and sharing stories and building rapport with new people. I like dressing up for parties and dressing down for movie nights with friends, I like having a whirlwind schedule as long as it’s filled with things that are fun for me. But even extroverts reach their limits sometimes, and as much as I thrive off of contact with other people, I desperately need time to recharge myself.  And I’ve found that the best way for me to do that is to be in my home, alone and able to do whatever I want without consideration for the other person who lives there.  I need time to walk around without pants, watching bad TV and eating food straight out of the container rather than trying to be civilized.  I guess it’s kind of a psychic “letting down my hair” thing.

Just don’t expect any footage of me dancing in my underwear and socks.

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Things I Should Have Done

December 14, 2009 at 4:09 pm (General Gobbledygook)
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I should have gotten up early and gone for a run, in the cool of the morning the day after a big rainstorm.  Instead, I took advantage of the fact that there was no dog that needed to go out and no cats stomping on my bladder and I slept in until 10.

I should have unpacked everything from our overnight jaunt and gotten started on the laundry.  Instead, I ate a Lean Pocket  for lunch and took a two hour nap with my dog and my husband.

I should have cooked dinner before Kevin headed out to bowling.  Instead, I watched DVR’d episodes of “Ghost Whisperer” and “Melrose Place” while he microwaved himself some corn dogs.

I should have swept and vacuumed and cleaned a bathroom in anticipation of this weekend’s open house.  Instead, I cleaned up the kitchen so I would have room to make cookie dough.

I should have written a blog entry. Instead, I ogled David Boreanaz’ abs on an episode of “Bones” that I hadn’t  watched yet.

I should have studied for the final I’m taking in a couple of hours.  Instead, I sat on the couch, a small dog in my lap and a cat on either side of me and I subsisted on processed food and Diet Coke for a day.

I should have used my Sunday more efficiently. But I really can’t think of anything I could have done to make it better.

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A Girl And Her Dog

December 12, 2009 at 12:48 pm (Family, Pets)
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Two years ago, a clock started ticking.  My biological clock decided to ignore the whole baby thing and focus itself on dogs.  Big dogs, little dogs, puppies and adult.  Fluffy, short hair, yippy, drooly, you name it.  If it was a dog, I wanted it.  If I saw a puppy, I got this craving in my gut that made me consider grabbing it and running far, far away.  Remember that dog food commercial about dog adoption, the one where the dog says “I’m a good dog, I just want to go home”? That one made me cry more than once.

I begged Kevin to let me have a dog on a near daily basis, despite the fact that we were living in a tiny one bedroom apartment with three cats already. (Three cats who I love and adore, but they did nothing to make me want a dog any less.)  He kept being rational and saying no; something about it not being allowed on our lease and the apartment being too crowded, blah blah blah.  I return, I pouted and whined for two years. (The man is kind of a saint.)

But then earlier this year, a friend called me and told me that the complex she was moving into had an apartment open…2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, cathedral ceilings in the living room, and best of all? No pet limits.  We could keep all three cats AND get a dog.

I signed the deposit paperwork a few days later.

We moved in at the end of May and if I could have, I would have picked out a dog within moments of unpacking the last box.  But I had to wait until my summer of travel was over.  So two long, interminable months later I dragged Kevin down to the county animal shelter to look at dogs.  And in the very first cage in the very first kennel we walked into we found her:

They had named her Poquita; she’d been in the shelter for a month, and they had found her roaming the streets.  She had this worried look on her face when she looked up at us; we found out later that the worried look is her default look.  The shelter people said she shouldn’t go to a home with small kids because she had a defensive fear response.  (We have since discovered that she is just fine with small kids.  Grown ups who are strangers  still make her nervous though.) But we took her out into the “get to know you” pen and she wandered around sniffing things and laid in the sun and let us pick her up and gave us a look that said “You’ll work for me.”

So we signed the paperwork and they spayed her and sent her home with us, anthe first thing we did was change her name to Sophie.  And within 72 hours, she had inserted her scrawny little 10 pound self right into our hearts.  Kevin, who had insisted upon saying that any dog we got would be MY DOG (as opposed to the family dog), picked her up one day and said “I’m going to hold you because you’re OUR DOG, not just HER DOG.” And with that, it was done. Miss Sophie, the funniest,cutest little Chihuahua Dachschund ever, was part of the family.  And all of a sudden my life was all about dog toys and crate training and sweaters and training classes and dog park.

And I have never ever been happier.  Sophie and Vivi play with each other all night, every night.  We come home and she leaps around us with such unbridled joy that I can’t help but smile, no matter how bad my day was before I got home. She comes with us to brunch, and people ooh and aww over how cute she is.  At the dogpark, she has a best friend named Noodles, an Italian Greyhound who is the only one that runs as fast as Sophie.  Her pack includes Laura’s two pugs, and she is the boss of them.  The only cat she is afraid of is Riley, which is hilarious because he is the most chicken cat in the world.  And we’ve fattened her up to a respectable 13 pounds.

She’s curled up right next to me right now, which is her default position if I am sitting on the couch. (She’s dreaming of  I think, because her feet are twitching and she lets out a yip every so often.)    Every time we leave, she gives us a look we call The Face.  She loves us more unconditionally than we deserve, and she’s so, so happy.  And it may seem like we did a really good deed by rescuing a sad little shelter dog and making her fat and happy, but really, she is the one doing the good deed because she’s the one who completed our little family.

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Vanity, I Haz It

December 11, 2009 at 3:05 pm (Absurdity, General Gobbledygook)
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Fact: false eyelashes were invented by D.W. Griffith, because he wanted to give his leading lady a more dramatic look.

Why do I know this? Because I’ve spent the last 20 minutes watching how-to videos on applying false eyelashes.

And the reason I’ve been doing THAT is because tomorrow night is my company’s holiday party, and since it’s at a Very Fancy Resort, I am taking the opportunity to be Very Fancy. Little black dress, sky-high call girl stilettos (like hooker heels, but classier), dramatic makeup….and false eyelashes, I decided.  Of course, I am not someone who wears false eyelashes on a daily basis because really, I have decent enough eyelashes for every day; they’re long and easily curled and look great once I toss some mascara on them.  They’re just not all LUSH and DRAMATIC and FULL, and if you saw the call girl stilettos, you would agree that I need eyelashes that are LUSH and DRAMATIC and FULL to keep up with them.

Luckily, I am staying at the resort where party is taking place (free room goes to the meeting planner, hells to the yes!), so I can start trying to apply them like…an hour before the party starts.  However, my contact at the resort mentioned something about having champagne waiting for me in the room so it may end up being a drunken, mascara clouded disaster that will never be spoken of again.

Wish me luck!

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I’m Not Drinking The Water, That’s For Damn Sure

December 10, 2009 at 2:58 pm (Family, Friends, General Gobbledygook)
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I had lunch with a dear old friend yesterday, a friend I manage to see maybe once a year despite the fact that we now live about 20 minutes from each other (as opposed to the 70 minutes it used to be).  And in the course of talking to her, I asked if she had gotten on the kid train yet (she’s been working on her Ph.D for years now, which is her own fault for deciding to study Native American autistic children).  I just….had a feeling.  And sure enough, she’s pregnant! And she’s due in July!

Also due in July? My BFF, Laura.

And Jackie’s daughter-in-law.

But! Before the July Trifecta, there’s this:

Due in January: Coworker #1

Due in February: Bunco Friend

Due in March: Coworker #2 & Coworker #3

So as of today, I have seven good friends having babies before the end of the summer of 2010.  The thought of seven baby showers is making me feel very much like my darling (my friend’s daughter & my adopted niecelet who I adore) Niblet in this picture:

Because seriously! I don’t have enough time to knit blankets for all of them and don’t even get me started on how exhausting baby showers are to throw (I’ve thrown FOUR this year, I think I’ve done my duty).  (Okay, so out of the seven, I’m only going to be throwing one baby shower and that’s Laura’s because….well, she’s my Laura. Never mind the fact that she’s going to be LIVING IN MISSOURI by then.)

So this is me, whining over the fact that I will soon be surrounded by adorable babies who I will get to snuggle and spoil and play with and then hand back to their parents when they get fussy.

Okay, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all.  But I’m still not drinking the water.

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Just a Number

December 9, 2009 at 6:17 am (Absurdity, Weightastic)
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As anyone who spends more than 2 minutes around me knows, I work out with this insanely enthusiastic (and effective) trainer named Sheila.  She’s like the most peppy, friendly, masochistic drill instructor ever. And I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit scared of her. So when she announced that she was doing this pedometer challenge thingy and then said that I BETTER BE PARTICIPATING, I strapped on the pedometer and dutifully kept track of all my prancy steps for a week. (She also bribed me with the possibility of a free month’s worth of workouts so it was totally worth it.)

There was just one little thing; I also had to enter my starting and ending weight on the tracking sheet. Now see, I don’t care about Sheila knowing how much I weigh because hell, I started working out with her 3 weeks after my surgery so she knows where I started from.   So yesterday on my way out I tossed it on the scanner and emailed it to my personal address so I could send it on to Sheila.  Except it never got to my personal email address because duh, it’s only set up to send things to email addresses on the network.

Instead, it printed out a nifty little scan of the tracking sheet, complete with my email address and yes, my starting and ending weights.  And this morning, I found it sitting face up right on top of the copier.  The copier that everyone in the company uses, that everyone walks by a million times a day.  The onlything that could have made it even MORE AWESOME is if someone had been nice enough to highlight the weight numbers and then stuck it on the bulletin board in the kitchen.

Oddly, I was less embarrassed about the whole thing than I would have expected. Rather than a panicky “OMG THE NUMBER!! THE NUMBER IS OUT THERE!!I DIE NOW!” the thought that crossed my mind was “Wow, I’m a dumbass. Meh.” And then I went back to my coffee and the intricate little tables I needed to re-create for some FDA documents today.

Apparently, somewhere along the way, that whole “the number on the scale is just a number” thing has gotten into my brain and I finally, FINALLY believe it, and that is awesome. (Alternatively, I just hadn’t had enough coffee for my panic response to kick in correctly, but I’m going to claim it as a victory over My Issues anyway!)

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Fashion Plate

December 8, 2009 at 6:07 am (General Gobbledygook)
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I like to joke around with Kevin that I’ve been aging backwards while he ages forward.  It’s not just the obvious things, like the fact that I have no grey hair (thanks, L’Oreal!) and he is rapidly developing that refined “grey at the temples” look (he blames most of those greys on me, which is probably true).  It’s things like…my wardrobe choices.  I look back at pictures of myself from the late 90′s and I cringe.  I mean, I know my fashion philosophy at that time was “get things that fit” but man, that still doesn’t excuse the denim “mom dress” I wore as a student teacher.  I looked like a damn extra from Big Love, for crying out loud!   And yeah, I was fat but I had options.  I just never figured out what looked good on me, what felt right and moved with me.  And I certainly wasn’t going to dare to follow a trend like bright colors or patterns, because that would draw attention to me.  I was using my clothes to hide, not to stand out.

That’s all changed over the past couple years.  Drop 100+ pounds and you need a new wardrobe.  And I needed mine pretty damn fast.  Once again, my fashion philosophy was “anything that fits” but this time, I was shopping in friends’ closets.  My best friend wears bright colors and patterns, so suddenly I was wearing bright colors and patterns.  Another friend a friend with funky good taste in clothes, let me pilfer her closet and take home BAGS of clothes and all of a sudden my closet looked like it belongs to someone young and exciting with a sense of trends.

And I didn’t have a clue how to wear any of it.

So I started with the shirts, adding their patterns and colors in to my rotation with jeans and black pants.  And then the pencil skirts found their way into the mix.  Then I decided I needed some boots to go with one of the skirts, and a dress to go under one of the sweaters and all of a sudden it all started to click.  Funky wasn’t entirely me, but some of the new trends started catching my eye. Classic looks were a little too boring, but I liked the elements of them…who doesn’t like a crisp white button-down shirt? (My best friend, that’s who)  Add to this the fact that suddenly, I could afford to shop more (because well-made plus size clothes are quite often pricey, I didn’t buy very much very often) AND I had 10 times as many places to shop and suddenly, it was a whole new ballgame.

I went shopping with a new appreciation for the cut of a dress, the way shirts skimmed over my shape, the way a sweater could change the look of an outfit.  And last year, when I finally hit The Stopping Point, the size and shape and place that I have every intention of staying at or below for the rest of my life (knock on wood), I had the perfect wardrobe for me.  Lots and lots of dresses (oh, I love dresses), lots of jeans and shirts to mix and match and dress up or dress down, accessories that ranged from being all funky and “NOTICE ME” to classic understanded strands of pearls.

This is basically a really long-winded way for me to say that I look really cute today.  In fact, I look really cute almost every day because I finally, FINALLY have a good grip on what I like to wear and what I look good in.  Today’s outfit? Knee-length A-line denim skirt, long sleeved white v-neck tee, dark turquoise long cardigan and knee high black boots, all topped off with this awesome crazy scarf that I made a few years ago. (And a bunch of jewelry, because I do like to sparkle!) Tomorrow, I think I will go with my gray Mad Men-esque dress with the 1/2 sleeves, the black patent pumps that make my legs look AWESOME, and my red long wool coat.  And I will look cute all over again.

Maybe someday my unadulterated glee over looking cute will ease up a little.  In the meantime, I apologize fror my adorableness.

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Fall in the suburbs

December 7, 2009 at 7:05 am (General Gobbledygook)
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The weather today was decidedly gloomy, with clouds and wind and the promise of a storm that is sure to hit tomorrow morning right before I get to the freeway during my morning commute.  My morning commute will probably be hell because of it, but I decided to enjoy the weather today anyway.  The gloom made it possible to sleep in so long that my back hurt, and the animals were all in bed with us being snuggly and sweet and making me forget that they are all little asshole pains in the ass.  (Case in point: Sophie POOPED IN FRONT OF THE CASH REGISTER at Petco today, and I was mortified.  At least it was in Petco and not at my favorite brunch place though!)  Anyway, I was supposed to have lunch with a friend but life happens and she had to cancel so I decided that today was a chili kind of day.

I make this crazy version of chili that involves 4 kinds of beans and ground turkey and corn and chicken apple sausage but I didn’t have any corn or sausage for some reason (there was a long debate over whether or not Kevin ate the corn; he still insists he didn’t but I don’t think the cats have figured out how to use the can opener yet so…I’m just saying, the can of corn I bought didn’t walk out of here on it’s own).  And yet, the chili came out freakin’ fantastic and I scarfed it down like I hadn’t had a meal in weeks.I don’t know, maybe I just needed more protein in my diet or something.

I also made some kick ass cornbread to go with it, because come on, you can’t have chili without cornbread.  I think it’s against the law or something.

Cornbread is not that difficult of an idea, really.  But for some reason it decides to do whatever it wants when I make it.  Sometimes it’s too dense and sometimes it’s too sweet or too salty, or it cooks up too moist.  But today, it was perfect.  Just fluffy enough and crispy on the edges and hot so the butter melted right into it.

Needless to say, I totally took a nap right after I ate because holy cats, it was good.  But chili and cornbread is nothing.  While the cornbread was baking and the chili I was simmering, I took things another step further and made some applesauce out of some Granny Smith apples that were just about to turn.  I am a kitchen goddess! See my mad skillz!

Okay I’ll admit that the applesauce? Is totally super easy and I have no idea why I don’t make it more often.  I mean really, the hardest part was peeling all the damn apples, and even that wasn’t that bad since last year I finally gave in and bought a decent peeler.  Anyway, now I have chili and cornbread to look forward to for lunch tomorrow, and homemade applesauce with Fage yogurt for breakfast. And I am absurdly satisfied with myself over it.

I really should spend more of my Sundays cooking.  Good for my soul, good for our bellies.  And great for my kitchen cred.

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