not that you asked...

Last week: In a nutshell, and with lots of colons : : : : : :

Last-minute flights to Detroit, the Motor City: 1

Notice before last-minute flight to Detroit: 4 hours and 10 minutes

Number of client meeting participants who fell asleep and snored loudly during emergency client meeting in Detroit: Only 2

Hours of writing work left to complete due to emergency flight and client meeting in Detroit in addition to regularly scheduled work: At least 10

Number of extra vacation days haggled out of company vice president due to emergency flight to Detroit and last-minute client meeting and oodles and oodles of extra work NOT INCLUDED in my job description or compensated by my feeble salary: 5

Drinks bought for me by a male coworker and delivered to me via flight attendant en route home from Detroit: 1

Drinks accidentally sent from same male coworker to where he THOUGHT I was sitting but where a very overweight, unfriendly man happened to instead be sitting, just a couple of rows behind me: 1

Number of times I have told that story to other people at work: Countless

Spider crickets killed by Formula 409: 2

Spider crickets killed by the Dyson All-Floors Vacuum with hose attachment: 3

Spider crickets killed by size 10 shoe: 6

Spider crickets poisoned by lethal doses of insecticide bought at Home Depot and sprayed generously around the entire foundation of the house: HUNDREDS

Featherbeds retrieved from the attic to combat sub-40 degree temperatures and drafty 1970’s home construction: 1

Comfort factor of featherbed and down comforter and the sheer delight of being enveloped in a sandwich of goose all night long: UNIMAGINABLE

Number of days featherbed has been implicated in work tardiness: Going on 7

Anticipated number of trick-or-treating children coming to our door tonight: 1

Anticipated number of trick-or-treating children coming to our door tonight with teeth that will allow them to actually EAT the candy and not just gum it and slobber all over themselves: 0

Bags of Nutrageous (gross) candy chosen simply because I will not be tempted to eat them myself: 1

Halloween parties attended over the weekend: 1

Cans of whipped cream needed to simulate foaming at the mouth in order to complete Dave’s costume: 1

Number of people who correctly guessed he was dressed as Mad Cow Disease: Around 10

Number of people who then asked Dave if they could milk him: Everyone in the freaking room

Poses Dave struck for pictures with a man wearing nothing but a leopard-print thong: 2

Minutes I spent laughing about this: 153

Times I was hit on during said party: More times than I’ve been hit on in the last year

Times I was hit on during said party by anyone I found remotely attractive or coherent: ZERO

Amount of money I spent on a talking plush pony pogo stick only to discover I was one of 15 cowgirls that showed up at the party: $8.96

Number of discussions I participated in at the party that centered around eels, funnels, someone’s brother in the bathroom and one really nasty referee: 1, and trust me, 1 was enough

Hours I spent thinking about posting to this blog even though I swear I was having a really really great time: More than I care to admit

The death of me

Today I went home for lunch and as a result, I am officially boycotting my entire kitchen until SOMETHING DRASTIC AND IMMEDIATE IS DONE. That to you, Mr. Dave, means a) no meal preparation, b) no clean dishes, c) no beer retrieval, and d) NO GROCERY SHOPPING until our home is 100 percent spider cricket proofed and I feel safe walking around without having to have every light in the house on for fear of not seeing them and instead FEELING THEM throwing their creepy, hybrid little bodies against my own. I’m gagging just thinking about it.

I’ve mentioned that we’ve been spotting them increasingly often throughout the house, but lately every single time I walk over to the kitchen sink, there has been a giant, mutated one big enough to wear doll clothes lurking inside, just out of sight. Today I walked to the sink slowly, just knowing that one of those suckers would be in there. Of course I screamed bloody murder as soon as I saw him anyway, regardless of my preparedness. He was tucked into the rounded corner of the sink, facing me and making it nearly impossible for me to aim Dave’s shoe at him without a 98 percent probability that he would see me coming and would launch himself in another direction altogether. There was probably also a 98 percent probability that my klutzy tendencies would send the shoe flying right through the window if I panicked, which I was absolutely 100 percent guaranteed to do. I’m really really good at panicking.

So the shoe option was out due to said cricket’s precarious location, as was the “wash him down the sink with the water from the dog’s bowl” option which I tried yesterday but which only resulted in me practically electrocuting myself when the water splashed all over the toaster oven (which was functioning at the time) and then onto the floor. (Yesterday’s cricket’s fate was eventually sealed successfully with Dave’s shoe.) We didn’t have any insecticide on hand, but we DID have 409, so I backed a few feet away, took aim and pulled the trigger repeatedly.

And then I had to writhe and wriggle my way through the house screaming and taking off all my clothes (except I couldn’t get my pants off all the way because I still had my boots on) and shaking my body in a very unattractive, spastic, convulsive kind of dance that included the use of both my hands to muss and tousle my hair to the point of needing professional help and then screaming and screaming and screaming because the damn thing LAUNCHED ITSELF RIGHT INTO MY FACE. My FACE. My face! The face that is ON MY BODY AND IS NOT COVERED BY PROTECTIVE CLOTHING OF ANY KIND. People, I run between three and five miles a day and I am sitting here at work feeling my muscles start to get seize up and get sore from the violent thrashing I did trying to remove that creature from my person.

After the thrashing, I called Dave nearly hysterical, actually crying, rambling over the phone about how I refused to live like this anymore, how I couldn’t live like this anymore, how I JUST WOULD NOT LIVE LIKE THIS, which in light of recent major tragedies around the world may have been a bit of an overreaction. I managed to put my clothes back on (minus my sweater, I was afraid the cricket might somehow be attached to it somewhere) before Dave got home, but I was certainly not putting my happy face back on and I think he could tell by the look I gave him that I was not kidding around and that if this infestation went one step further I was OUT OF HERE.

He laughed at me, but he won’t be laughing long! Let the boycott begin!

Home again home again

Our anniversary weekend celebration in New Mexico can now be officially declared successful. Though the weather was horrendous on Saturday (rain, rain, rain… and oh! more solemn, steady, freezing cold rain), Sunday dawned bright and cloudless. The pleasant weather trend continued until right about the time we arrived at the airport on Tuesday which is when the heavens opened and torrential downpours were brought once again to the Land of Enchantment.*

We’re tired today, our plane didn’t get in until 12:30 last night and we opted to watch the in-flight entertainment rather than nap. Will someone explain to me why everyone raves about the movie March of the Penguins? As a loyal Animal Planet viewer, I understand the value of truthful and honest nature reporting. However, I am unable to understand why everyone was so captivated by a movie wherein penguins are seen discovering and then poking at their dead, frozen young. I couldn’t watch half the movie for fear of seeing penguins get eaten by seals, penguins wandering off alone to die of starvation or penguins trying to steal each other’s babies. Yes, yes, the babies were cute, but apart from that, there was no warming of my heart the way the misleading TV advertisements promised there would be. There was not even any penguin frolicking! IT WAS DEPRESSING. I know, real life and all that crap. Sorry, but I’ll take the frolicking any day. The frolicking is what sets mediocre animal movies like March of the Penguins apart from true, genius masterpieces, case in point The Adventures of Milo and Otis. Dudley Moore** could totally take Morgan Freeman any day.

Anyways, the real point of this post was to tell you that we had a great time. We stood 800 feet above a gorge, we hiked through an Indian ruins on top of a mesa, we ate our weight in spicy green chile and we laughed and laughed and laughed some more and then we got pulled over by law enforcement. We also stopped at Sonic five times in four days which may be some kind of new world record for Cherry Limeade consumption. We also drove through such desolate and rural areas that we were each at one point forced to eliminate waste in the great outdoors, the World’s Bathroom, if you will.

Tonight I hope to upload some photos and tomorrow I will hopefully be able to write down some funny moments from the trip, although I will do my best to exclude all the ones that cast me in a not so favorable light, such as when Dave tried to convince me that elk eat squirrels and uh, mildly succeeded. That’s the true mark of a happy marriage, the ability to laugh often and while pointing at your spouse. Happy Anniversary, Dave!

* I swear, that’s really what it’s called. New Mexico: Land of Enchantment. I enchanted the pants off of Dave by asking him how enchanted he was with New Mexico every 15 enchanting minutes.

**Uh, that is, if Dudley Moore wasn’t dead. It is unquestionably depressing to Google Dudley Moore in search of his photo and find his OBITUARY instead. So I guess TECHNICALLY, Morgan Freeman could take Dudley Moore, what with Dudley being decomposed and all. But he can’t take him in spirit!

***Edited to add: Photos are now posted.

Waxing poetic

T minus 15 hours until our trip and I’m SO DONE WITH WEATHER. Twenty percent, 10 percent, 40 percent I DON’T CARE ANYMORE. You win, weather. I can’t worry my pretty little head for one more minute over your impending, isolated, scattered thunderstorm doom. Dave and I have already packed so that tonight he can play an early round of poker to win me some Santa Fe jewelry money and so I can be free to try to bum a gratis meal off my parents. The camera is loaded with a fresh memory card and batteries, the books have been chosen (I chose this book and this book primarily because they don’t weigh a lot) and I have officially begun salivating just thinking about the culinary adventures that lie ahead for us in the Great Desert Southwest. I will be back on Wednesday with good stories, I can feel it in my bones.

In other, less urgent and more disgusting news, I think today might be the two-year anniversary of my very first bikini wax, which I decided was unequivocally necessary before our wedding and two-week Mexican honeymoon extravaganza.

Of course, had I known that by the end of that two-week honeymoon my husband would accuse me of losing control of my bowels in our bed and upon the very fresh, very clean, VERY WHITE hotel sheets, I might not have considered the bikini wax to be such an essential part of honeymoon preparations. In fact, if I had been just a bit more clever, I might have spent the time I reserved for the actual waxing (25 minutes) and recovery (four days) wisely buying a variety of diarrhea-suppressing medication.

The pain of the wax and the ripping off thereof wasn’t what seared an image into my brain that I can still recall with clarity exactly 730 days later. I have quite an impressively high pain tolerance and though the waxing process can be clearly categorized as “dreadful,” it wasn’t the kind of pain that would necessitate passing out or screaming or sobbing uncontrollably while huddled in the fetal position on the floor.

No, what sticks with me is the fact that I was lying complacently on the table, having been asked to take off my skirt and underwear, clad in only a white, long-sleeved, button-down shirt and KNEE-HIGH BLACK BOOTS. It was like some kind of demented Catholic schoolgirl fantasy in there. What made it worse was that I nearly clonked the waxer in the head with my clunky boot heels each time she asked me to move my legs in any direction. There was much ducking and weaving to avoid contact with my gigantic feet on her part; much giggling and blushing and dying of embarrassment on mine. I was SO OBVIOUSLY a first-timer. If she has since begun asking her clients to remove both their skirts AND their footwear, I’m sure it was because she survived a life-threatening waxing session with me.

The weather demands one more obsessive-compulsive check before I am out of here and onto bigger and (hopefully) better things. Be back on Wednesday!

I only wanted rain LAST weekend

T minus three days until our trip starts and I am slowly driving myself clinically insane checking weather forecasts. Sadly, I can no longer remain steadfastly loyal to weather.com, as their stupid, stupid forecasters have shown me nothing but angry, sideways raindrops falling from angry, gray clouds. I instead have pledged my undying love to any weather website that promises me fair skies and only a 10 percent chance of precipitation. I don’t even care if they’re LYING. Is it too much to ask to just want to see cute little graphics with blue skies and a big, cartoonish yellow sun plastered onto them? I don’t even care if they’ve gone so far as to draw a SMILEY FACE on the big yellow sun, which normally would make me want to vomit. Just PROMISE ME SUNSHINE, people. I can’t very well hike through ancient Pueblo cave dwellings or drive skinny little cliff-hugging highways to see panoramic views in the pouring rain, can I? No, in fact the only thing you can do really well in Santa Fe in the pouring rain is shop for beautiful turquoise jewelry and I can assure you that would be a really, REALLY bad idea given our current checking account balance and Dave’s attention span even on well-medicated days.

Update: The National Weather Service is now calling for partly cloudy skies, highs in the low 60s and 10 percent chance of rain showers from Saturday through Tuesday. Acceptable, I suppose, but unfortunately, I’m going to have to ask them to do a tad better.

In other news, the same damp and rainy conditions that I was so thankful for last weekend have also regrettably forced a terrifying number of camel crickets to move inside our house and take up residence. I have swiftly killed each and every one of them successfully by smashing them with shoes or newspapers or, in one ultra-dramatic case, an entire fridge pack of Coke with Lime that Dave purchased in error, mistaking it for regular Coke. (Apparently, the bright green stripes and the detailed drawing of a juicy, squirting lime on the side of the box were just not enough for differentiation purposes. He did, however, manage to find the newly redesigned box of Fresca.)

Update: The National Weather Service has changed their forecast to now reflect a disheartening 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms on Saturday and Sunday. And they changed their little sunny graphic to one that features gigantic, threatening thunderstorm clouds. Stupid jerks. As a result, accuweather.com will now be the weather website of choice, as their forecast reflects a much more positive outlook, the worst of it being the possibility of a thundershower on Sunday, highs in the mid-60s and clouds and sunshine on Monday and Tuesday.

As of yet, I haven’t had any issues with carrying out Murder One when it comes to the crickets, at least not mentally. Physically, they can be a bit of a challenge what with all that hopping and jumping and banging themselves dramatically into walls. I also have a bit of a problem with the transporting of their little bodies to the trashcan morgue without the aid of 4,000 paper towels to prevent me from feeling them ooze and twitch in my hand. As a result, I have been summoning Dave to various rooms to remove carcasses in the last week. And up until yesterday, all body smooshing and carcass removal was limited to the downstairs bathroom and dining room, to everyone’s great relief.

But then yesterday morning, I found one halfway up the stairs. I shudder thinking about how the house will lie unattended Saturday through Tuesday and that by the time we return, those dirty creatures could be so familiar with the upstairs portion of the house that they could be tucking themselves into bed with us on Tuesday night. The only halfway decent thing I can think that would come of this entire situation is that maybe all that dampness and resulting abominable cricket infestation would necessitate the complete renovation of our kitchen, complete with maple cabinets, hardwood floors, Corian countertops and glossy new appliances including one of those stoves with the smooth cooktops that don’t smoke like crazy as ours happens to do if you drop a few pieces of Pasta Roni between the electric coils. (Dave is rolling his eyes right now.)

Update: WEATHER SUCKS. Anyone have a poncho I could borrow?

Rainy days and mental illness

It is going to rain here all weekend long and I am SO FREAKING RELIEVED.

The month of September in the DC area was the sunniest and driest on record and it completely stressed me out. For some bizarre reason, I carry the knowledge of each upcoming sunny weekend day like a heavy, awkward burden—as though it just might be the absolute last one I ever see. On Fridays, with the promise of a sunny Saturday hanging over my head like a guillotine blade, I feel obligated to spend most of my workday eluding actual, billable work and instead, spend my time searching online for active, exciting outdoor pursuits that I can drag Dave and Hambone to so that we won’t waste a minute of the gorgeous weather lest we really regret it come winter! As if the simple memories of sunny, pleasant days are all we’ll need to propel us forward through a gray, dismal, below-average-temperature-and-above-average-precipitation winter.

But thankfully, this weekend’s gloomy forecast is assurance that nothing is expected of me beyond oversleeping, overeating, and undershowering. Which is good, because all the thinking and planning I would have devoted today to the anxiety-ridden cause of a sunny weekend I have to devote instead to the planning of a little getaway vacation that Dave and I are taking next weekend.

Vacations tend to bring out the worst in our relationship. Dave and I always have a great time while we’re actually participating IN the vacationing, at least for the most part. True, we have had your everyday typical vacationing disagreements (I have mentioned the memorable Throwing Of The Room Keys With The Brass Bar Keychain At Your Head Because You Misplaced The Rented Moped Keys In Mexico OF ALL PLACES incident before, and there is always the legendary tale of The Time Dave Got Extraordinarily And Unamusingly Frustrated With Me Because I Would Have Rather Peed My Pants Than Get Yelled At For Standing Up In The First-Class Cabin Before The Fasten Seat Belts Sign Was Turned Off) but they are usually short-lived and minor. Our vacations are always, always fun and fondly remembered.

The preparation FOR the vacation, however, is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY. I am not even going to try to deny that I’m nothing short of over-the-top anal-retentive when it comes to the planning process. I know I am, to put it mildly, a freak. But a freak who is ALWAYS THINKING. For instance. I start monitoring flights six months out. I make packing lists. I devour restaurant and hotel reviews like I would a new Harry Potter masterpiece. I make MORE lists. I revise the FIRST set of lists. I gather advice from people who have been to our chosen vacation destination. I arrange for someone to take care of the dog and the cat with eight weeks to go. I get the suitcases out of the attic about six weeks before I need to start putting anything in them. I refrain from wearing items that I am considering taking along with me so that I don’t have to do a last-minute load of laundry before the trip. I choose the books I will take on the plane with the utmost care, carefully choosing ones that aren’t too short, too long, too lighthearted or too embarrassing to be seen reading. I charge the camera. I coordinate my outfits so that I only need to take one pair of shoes. I check accuweather.com’s 15-day forecast six times a day to ensure we have the correct weather information to pack correctly.

In short, I get prepared. FOR EVERYTHING. In quite a mentally-ill kind of way, I’ll freely admit.

Dave, on the other hand, lives in some kind of alternate universe in which he refuses to believe vacation even exists until 8 hours before the plane takes off. Dave can’t even be bothered to get remotely excited, much less vaguely interested, in our destination until he absolutely MUST, which is usually when he has to read the signs pointing to the rental car desk when the plane lands. You can imagine how difficult this is for me, as I have been reveling in, reading up on and practically MARINATING myself in information about this vacation for HALF A DAMN YEAR.

This time around, I can’t really complain. The past two years of marriage and the fights we’ve inevitably experienced before EVERY SINGLE TRIP have taught me that I should just be happy to research my little heart out without expecting Dave to get excited about what I’ve got planned for us until we’re actually there and he can see it with his very own eyes. And Dave, bless him, has learned to simply answer “Yes, of course!” whenever I ask him if he’s excited about our upcoming trip, even though he’s probably about as excited about it as he would be about giving himself a paper cut in the groin.

This marriage thing? I think we’re doing ok. And I didn’t even plan it this way.

pedicure, awkward

The story of The World’s Most Awkward Pedicure^TM begins innocently enough. Angie, Steph and I showed up a little after noon last Sunday for our appointment at the nail salon right down the street from Angie’s house. There were only three nail technicians working, and there was already someone in one of the spa pedicure chairs, regardless of the fact that we had made an actual appointment, a “reservation for services,” if you will, just the day before. Tell me what is the point of making an appointment if you have to wait when you get there anyway? There should be a whole CLASS in nail school that you have to take (and PASS, I might add) that revolves solely around the necessity of and etiquette surrounding appointments and the holding of them.

Angie and I were ushered into two chairs pretty quickly, so we left Steph to continue pondering her polish selection at the front of the store. Without supervision. And just out of our field of vision.

Evidently, shortly after we turned our backs and stepped away, Steph got into trouble (as she is wont to do) by pulling a bottle of nail polish off one of the rickety old revolving plastic trays and finding that the top wasn’t screwed on. At all. The bottle landed on the floor and splashed a section of the carpet with bright pink polish. Steph had already gotten some nail polish remover to try to blot it up, and while she was working on the carpet, the owner came over. Steph apologized to her for the accident and suggested that they wait for the polish to dry before trying to remove it, as rubbing it would almost certainly just grind it down into the carpet even more.

Of course, all Angie and I could determine from our places in our chairs was that something had happened that 1) involved Steph and 2) had made the owner of the salon very, VERY unhappy.

Unhappy enough to walk over to Steph a few minutes later and berate her to her face. Loudly. AND IN ENGLISH, oddly enough. And, oh yes, in front of EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE PLACE.

“You ruin CAHPET! You ruin new CAHPET I just have install! And you no say SORRY! You jus RUIN CAHPET and no say sorry! Even two- and tree-year-old know to say sorry! You rude! You ruin store! I very upset! You no offer to pay or clean up!”

Steph was understandably both livid and humiliated, having already apologized numerous times for the accident, apparently without ever being heard apologizing or giving advice, or being seen down on her knees scrubbing at the floor. We got out of there as fast as humanly possible. That is, as humanly possibly fast as you can when you’re waddling like idiots to protect your wet toenails from smearing. We complained the whole way home about the downfall of common courtesy and the sheer idiocy of having carpeting in a nail salon. Carpeting! In a NAIL SALON! Has no one ever SPILLED ANYTHING IN A NAIL SALON? Where the products you work with on a daily basis are LIQUIFIED?

By the time we got home we were laughing about it and were sorry that we hadn’t thought quickly enough to have Steph put the stupid nail lady in the basket hold so that Angie and I could punch her in the face for being so rude. (Basket hold = JOKE THAT NEVER ENDS.)

Angie and I, being the awesome and loving friends that we are, comforted Steph by reminding her that although her pedicure got all smeared up and she wasn’t able stick around long enough to get her fingernails done, it was ok because her glass-eyed boyfriend probably wasn’t going to be able to see them anyways.

Aren’t we sensitive?

Good news

Our good friends Stacie and Pat learned yesterday that they’ll be having a baby girl in March. If it was a boy, I had planned buy him this and some of these, just for the sheer pleasure of hearing Pat giggle uncontrollably, just like he does if you make a joke about poop.

But since it’s a girl, we’ll just go with this one. A bit more tact, as she is no doubt destined to grow up to be a Proper Southern Lady. I honestly don’t see how she can avoid it, what with having such sophisticated, refined parents.

          

Congratulations, Haynes family!