another meme

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was getting ready to graduate from high school in a month. At my all-girls Catholic high school, all classes ended the month before graduation and we were allowed to wear "regular" clothes for the first time during school hours (instead of uniforms). It was a fabulous month, full of parties and events.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
I was working at a job that I disliked, waiting to hear back from the several law firms at which I'd interviewed, and then making a decision. I'm so much happier now!

Five snacks you enjoy...
Guacamole
Yogurt
Sliced cucumbers with lemon
Golden Oreos (yum)
Cheezits!

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics...
(I don't even know what to say for this. I know about a million song lyrics)
My Hips Don't Lie- Shakira
Wonderland- John Mayer
I'm in love with a stripper (I'm so upset that I know the words to this song)
Bad Day- Daniel Powter
You'll Think of Me- Keith Urban

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire...
Travel around the world with Josh
Buy my parents a new house close to me
Donate money to many charities
Pay off my school loans and get a PhD in History
Save the rest, I guess (I'm so boring!)

Five bad habits...
PROCRASTINATION (my worst habit)
Worrywart
Lack of patience
Messiness
Lack of organization

Five things you like doing...
Reading reading and reading
Shopping!
Sitting and talking with Josh
Reading blogs
Going out with friends

Five things you would never wear again...
Shoulder pads (stole this one from Pink Cupcake, but she is soooo right)
Biker (spandex) shorts (ick)
Tapered pants (I've seen the light, and I'm never going back)
Legwarmers (although they were mighty cool in the '80s)
Socks that match my hair scrunchie

Favorite toys...
My laptop (named lapdancer)
Television (named Wanda)
Camera (named Camille)
Do the dogs count? I play with them a lot.
Kitchenaid mixer (I love that thing)

Work has been kicking. my. ass. I think that I should be back up and running in a week or so- I hope! I'm still checking in with all of you when I get a chance, I'm just have some brain numbing from the quantity of work!

Hope you all are well!

healthy

This morning I woke up early and headed into work early, in the hopes that perhaps all this earliness will also coincide with leaving early tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.

I was rather bleary-eyed as I boarded the elevator this morning, and just when the doors were almost closed, a hand shot through and caused them to open again. A guy bounded in, gleaming smiles at me and the two other people on the elevator. He was carrying a binder in his arms and a bag over his shoulder, and I grumpily looked at him, wondering how he was looking so cheery at 7:45am.

He turned around to face the doors as we climbed to his floor and I looked down at his binder, and there, nestled on top of his papers, was his breakfast.

A Red Bull.

And a package of sugar coated donuts.




Now I know.

while we're at it

Since I'm confessing things that make me want to throw things at my husband, I might as well tell you about another one of my pet peeves.

Every night, when I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, Josh INSISTS on coming in at the same time. This results in us fighting over the one sink and one faucet. This wouldn't be as big of a problem, if I didn't want lukewarm or warm water, and he wants freezing cold water.

You have to picture this- I start brushing with lukewarm water. He walks in, switches to cold, turns off the water. I have to turn warm water back on, and before I'm done rinsing my toothbrush, he switches to cold. Then I switch back to warm to rinse my mouth. He turns back to cold, but I still have to wash my face. At this point, I always get pissed. I try to turn it back to warm, and he won't let me, so I have to stand there and either start washing my face with cold, WHICH I HATE, or wait until he is done before I can switch it back. This drives me BONKERS. I just want him to wait the 30 seconds until I am done with the sink and then he can have it! But he refuses to listen, even when I've begged him to just give me my one minute of bathroom peace. Then he insists on peeing before I can pee, and I have to wait for the toilet too.

Is this because I am an only child? Am I so used to having my own sink and toilet that I can't learn to share? Tell me I'm not crazy. Or if I am, at least tell me nicely.

If you read a newspaper headline about a man beaten by his wife with her toothbrush, you'll know who it was.

food thief

I have so much to tell you, but I'm too tired to do it right now. I will try to post tonight, if I can stay awake that long.

Quick question, do any of your significant others insist on tasting whatever you are eating? Even though they've tasted it 5 other times and disliked it all 5 other times? And you know they are just wasting your food or drink, and it makes you want to fling your juice at their heads?

No? Just me?

spring!

Last summer, I ordered a bag of blue, purple and white bulbs that were delivered in the fall. Of course, we had plenty of perfectly pleasant fall weekends for me to plant them, but I waited until the very last available weekend. I ended up planting 40 bulbs in the growing dark, with frozen fingers, knowing that the first frost would come that night.

When I got back from vacation in March, I found that several of the bulbs had sprouted. Thankfully, only the crocuses fully bloomed, and were able to survive the freezing temperatures since then.

This week, the tulips have bloomed and the hyacinths are poking out of the ground, ready to bloom at any time. I planted most of them in that plain patch between the sidewalk and the street, and today I saw a couple outside bending over and admiring them. There are flowers up and down the street, but perhaps these were a surprise in such an unlikely place. The ditch where normally you see a tangle of weeds and and tree roots, instead full of new life.

The frozen fingers were totally worth it.

To those of you who celebrate Passover, I hope you have a joyful and peaceful Pesach.

how about a pretty picture to distract you?

This week is KILLING ME, so I shall push off posting for another little bit with this meme that I said I would do a month ago. Work is nutso, and I've been feeling a bit under the weather, and this week is also Passover so my inlaws are coming to visit, and my house looks like I dumped all the closets out into my living room. Help me?

Seven Things To Do Before I Die (umm, this is really hard!):
1. Have a child (by any means)
2. Travel to Egypt
3. Live abroad for a lengthy period of time
4. Become a professor
5. Write a book
6. Love myself and stop criticizing
7. Be happy

Seven Things I Cannot Do:
1. Hurt someone intentionally
2. Be confrontational
3. Hit someone
4. Stop procrastinating
5. Sleep without a blanket
6. Skydive, or do anything that has to do with heights
7. Be away from Josh for a great length of time

Seven Things That Attract Me to Blogging:
1. Clearly, the fame.
2. Sneaking a peek into someone else's life
3. A creative outlet to my often uncreative worklife
4. The friends!
5. The wonderful writers I read daily
6. The advice and comments
7. Umm, the fame again?

Seven Things I Say Most Often:
1. Motherhumper! (I say this one a lot)
2. Sweetie, can you...?
3. Tango, NO!
4. Look at what Murray (or Tango) is doing!
5. I love you!
6. Tout de la fruit (when I say goodbye)
7. Ojo! (I say this with a smirk and pulling down the edge of one of my eyes- it means "watch it!" in Spanish)

Seven Books I Love:
1. A Gift From the Sea
2. The DaVinci Code
3. Harry Potter(all of them)
4. Pride and Prejudice
5. Dereliction of Duty (made me love history)
6. The Secret Garden
7. To Kill a Mockingbird

Seven Movies/DVDs That I Can Watch Over and Over Again:
1. Dirty Dancing
2. Notting Hill
3. Sex and the City Seasons
4. Friends Seasons
5. Lord of the Rings
6. Scream
7. The Exorcist

And now seven other people need to do it, but I have no idea who has and hasn't done it. Someone? Anyone?

honestly, what are the odds?

We had a work event last night- an associate appreciation night at a nearby restaurant, complete with appetizers, unlimited free drinks, and a very funny comedian. I was fairly surprised that the firm would hire a comedian to do a show, considering that there were only about 50 guests in our private room at the restaurant. It made for a very personal show, with the comedian making fun of my work colleagues and picking people out of the crowd to poke fun.

This was a totally different atmosphere for a comedian than I'd ever seen. I knew everyone around me, making it all the more funny when he made a joke about them. It was quite easy to crack jokes when everyone's profession was things like "tax attorney" or "patent attorney" or "private equity attorney." I thought I might pee my pants when he asked one partner what he did, and when he moved onto the next partner he said "I do his leftovers." I knew what he meant, but the comedian's reaction was to point out how dirty our law firm apparently was.

I've been trying to cut out what little alcohol I do consume, for obvious reasons, but at the same time, I'd prefer not to raise any questions at firm functions. With the free flowing drinks, everyone had loosened up and the tables were peppered with martinis and mixed drinks. For that reason, I had Josh go to the bar for me, and order a Coke with grenadine- otherwise known as a Roy Rogers. Basically, a Shirley Temple, but with Coke. I figured that the Coke would disguise the absence of alcohol and no one would be the wiser.

Meanwhile, the comedian was circling the room, cracking jokes, asking where people went to school, etc. At one point he came around to us, asked Josh whether he was a lawyer and then congratulated him on marrying one instead. He asked my name while I was laughing, and then moved on. A few minutes later, though, he came back around to me, and did you guess yet? Asked what I was drinking.

I could. not. believe. it. What are the odds? Before I could answer, Josh piped in with "Roy Rogers!!!" and the room exploded with laughter. At this point, I started laughing too hard to answer when he asked me sarcastically what was IN a Roy Rogers. With tears streaming, I covered my face with my hands while the laughter increased. Finally, I managed to squeak out that it was a Coke with grenadine, and frankly, I've never heard my colleagues laugh as hard or as long before.

For the rest of last night and most of this morning, my emails have been peppered with references to "good old Roy" and those I work with have told me that I'll never live it down. People don't make fun of you unless they like you, right? Sigh.

finding enough

The night before last, Josh's aunt invited me to a women's Passover dinner. For the last 15 years, they've been meeting in the week or two before Passover actually begins to have a seder dinner together, laugh and share their thoughts on the roles of women in Judaism. I was excited to have been invited, and I had a wonderful time at the seder. It closely resembled a traditional dinner, but with a greater emphasis on women in history, and how the lessons of Passover tie into the world today. For example, instead of just listing the traditional plagues in Egypt, like floods, locusts, etc., the plagues were related as events today such as limited abortion rights, domestic violence, an emphasis on unattainable ideals in the media leading women to have plastic surgery or suffer from bulemia or anorexia. I found the whole thing fascinating, and made all the more special since Josh's aunt and her friends had put the whole thing together themselves years ago.

One of the themes mentioned was also the idea of having "enough." Enough money, enough success, enough beauty, enough power, enough of whatever it is you need to make you happy. If you are always focusing on what you don't have enough of, whenever you actually get it, it still won't be enough. So you must learn to view the blessings in your life as enough- somehow.

This is incredibly difficult, of course. If anyone knows how to easily internalize that value, I'm all ears. I know that I have been battling my own demons of having enough for years. In the moment that we were reading these passages, I kept thinking about my internal obsession with being thin enough. I've touched on it before, and it takes a great deal of willpower for me to look past whatever flaws I see and focus on the positive.

Weight or size numbers don't matter, because this obsession isn't rooted in logic. I can tell myself logically that I am relatively thin, but when I look in the mirror and think that my pants look tighter, or that my thighs look thicker, it makes me want to scream. The only thing that has worked as of late, is the realization that when I look back on pictures from college, or pictures from my honeymoon, I see that in fact I was thin, and I still thought I looked fat at the time. In pictures from a spring break trip in my sophomore year of college, you can see my collarbones jutting out above my tanktop, and my ribs show in my bathing suit. Before I got married, I lived near Central Park and ran two and a half miles every morning before walking over a mile each way to work. I forgot to eat for several days in a row before my wedding day, and yet, when I got pictures back from my honeymoon, I was disgusted with the way my hips looked in my bathing suit. And that was 20 pounds ago.

I could strive to maintain an unattainable 20 pounds less, or to wish for a smaller size, or a different shape, or I can tell myself that as I look back now and see that I was just fine then, I am just fine now.

I stopped preventing Josh from snapping pictures of me in my bathing suit when we were in St. Croix, because in 30 years I'm sure I'll look back and remember what a nut I was to think I was overweight. And even if I don't, I owe it to myself to stop obsessing about it. My children might enjoy pointing at their mother's old-fashioned bathing suit and floppy pink hat and laughing. I have to believe when Josh says I am beautiful, and I have to accept that no matter what I do, there will be good and bad parts of me. The good has to be enough for me.

I am enough the way that I am. I have to learn to find enough in every area of my life.**
______________________________________
** Obviously, I'm talking about finding enough in a life with no serious problems. I hope this doesn't come across as my trivializing people's lives who do face difficult times.

a morning for brussels griffons

(Scene: In bed, Sunday morning, Halloweenlover stirs)

Tango: I saw that! She is up! I will go jump on her face!

Murray: Snooze...

Tango: Darn it, her face is under the pillow now. I will frantically dig against her ear until she gets up. Scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch.

Murray: Zzzzzzzz...

(Halloweenlover lover gets up, goes to the bathroom and climbs back into bed to sleep some more)

Tango: Why must she torment me like this? I saw her get up. I must start playing now. I will climb on Josh's chest and stare at him.

Murray: Oh boy! Oh boy! She's up! Hurray!

Halloweenlover: Enough! Time for bed. Lie down!

Tango: I will not lie down. I will sit and glare at you, and lift my front right paw and shake dramatically in protest.

Murray: Oh boy! Oh boy! We're going back to bed!

Tango: Stupid dog. We must engage in silent protest. Do not get under those covers! I mean it! Stay awake!

Murray: Snore...

Tango: I will pace the bed until someone gets up. I need my ball and duck and monkey. I cannot live for another moment without my stuffed friends. This is torture.

(Josh gets up for the day. He offers to take Tango off the bed, and Tango runs to retrieve the stuffed fish in the hallway, and runs back to the edge of the bed, begging to be put back onto the bed.)

Murray: (moves further under the covers)

Tango: Ha! I will drop my wet slobbery fish onto her neck until she wakes up. I will not play with Josh! She must get up! She will listen!

(Slobbery fish dropped onto neck, stuffed under pillow, pressed into face)

Halloweenlover: (groaning) Okay okay, let's go downstairs.

Murray: Oh boy! Oh boy! Time to get up!

Tango: I am victorious again.

(Scene to be replayed Monday morning)