lunch lady

Since my cat was a tiny kitten, she has had an obsession with playing with my hair while I try to sleep at night.  Dinks tends to get carried away playing in my hair and gets so excited that she usually ends up trying to pull out strand by strand with her razor sharp kitten teeth.  This hurts me so.  I wake up in the middle of the night to the feeling of having my hair ripped from its follicle almost nightly.

I've considered wearing a shower cap to bed.

new

Sara made me change my blog background and layout.  She said the previous green background looked like vomit and made her not want to look at it.  So I changed it.  Eh.

THE ROBE

Two Christmases ago I had a phone conversation with my mom who is the head of the gift-giving and buying committee.  I go straight to her and she tells me every Christmas or birthday what to get for each person since she usually has the inside deets into what they want.  This particular Christmas, my mom specifically told me to buy my little brother, 13 at the time, a new robe.  

Since he was a little lad, my brother could be seen lounging in a robe.  We called him a young Hugh Hefner but that's not really funny since, you know, he doesn't live around any Play Bunnies but instead just lives at home with my mom and stepdad.  In most of the pictures I have of my bro that are taken from home  he's usually in a robe.  He started to outgrow the one he had had since he was like, 5.  The sleeves were no longer full and instead only covered three fourths of his arm.  The length of his old robe no longer came down to cover his legs but instead barely covered his thighs.  So my mom decided it was time he got a new house coat even though I'm pretty sure my brother could have gone on wearing it without noticing it had gotten smaller.

I shopped around and decided it was time for my brother to have something fancy.  Something plush and warm.  A little sophisticated.  Something Italian.  

If it was Italian it had to be good.

I paid an arm and a leg for the upgraded robe.  I wrapped it lovingly and put a sweet card on it.

It was a dark blue Alfani robe with deep pockets that made me want to crawl inside and live and eat cookies and drink milk.  I almost wanted one for myself.

My brother ripped open the package I gave him on Christmas morning and grinned from ear to ear while putting it on over his pj's.  He wore it all day while he played video games and while we ate Christmas dinner together.  Week after week, my mom gave me updates and told me I had made an excellent choice, as my brother hadn't really changed out of his robe except to wear school clothes.  

I was proud.  

Then the molting happened.

My mom called me about a month later.  "Where in the hell did you get that robe from?"  

"It came from Macy's.  Why?"

My mom said, "It's starting to shed.  Your brother wore it so much that it started to smell so I had to wash it.  Now it's shedding."

"What do you mean it's shedding?  I paid good money for that thing.  It's Italian!"

She told me the robe was a piece of crap and that the shedding was getting all over her stuff.  Apparently, the robe had begun to "pill" and tiny balls were beginning to form on the robe and then the tiny balls were coming off on the sofa, rug, bedding, carpet, faces, etc..

The molting, pilling, shedding, and general decompensation grew worse and worse as my brother continued to wear the robe like a daily uniform at home.  The more he wore it, the more it needed washing.  The more my mom washed it, the more the robe willed tiny balls on my family's belongings.  

My mom called me, alarmed.  "That robe you bought for your brother is shit!  Tiny balls are getting in my carpet and we've started threatening to spank your brother if he doesn't clean them up!"

That's what my brother fondly refers to as "The Harvest."  Annoyed with my parents' screams and slightly scared of their threats of beatings, he spent the majority of his free time picking up the robe's insensitive fabric balls all over the house.  He tried vacuuming the balls.  He tried a lint roller.  He tried a fabric shaver.  He tried getting the balls one by one out of the carpet with tweezers.  He refused to give up wearing the robe so the shedding never ceased.

My stepdad intervened.  Enough was enough.  He went to the mall and bought a new robe.  A cheap robe.  My parents called me on speakerphone to tell me that my robe had been replaced.

My robe was tossed outside.  My parents fondly refer to this as "The Banishing."  No more robey balls.  My brother happily wore his new robe and never even missed mine.  My parents warned me never to buy another robe for my brother again.  I pouted and acted offended that my Italian designer robe had been treated so poorly.  It wasn't the robe's fault.  Surely it must have been a user error.  Had my mom not washed it so insanely, maybe it wouldn't have pilled up like that.  My skin would start to molt and shed, too, if it was repeatedly washed on the Heavily Soiled cycle.  Maybe, if the robe had been cleansed using the GENTLE cycle with a little TLC it wouldn't have retaliated like it did.  

So another Christmas went by and there was no robe-giving on my end.  I think I ended up sticking to gift cards.  Safe choice.  Whoever heard of a gift card trashing a house?  Nobody could complain this way.  Use gift cards to buy your own damn lounge wear is what I say from now on.  Well, I don't say it out loud but I certainly think it!

It was cold outside.  Slightly raining.  My mom walked me and Gizzie to my car parked outside her garage to say goodbye before I left to head home.  Gizzie sniffed the air and wandered over to a wooden bench next to my mom's rose bush I gave her for Mother's Day a few years ago.  The bench was covered with a frozen blanket that had been tossed outside haphazardly and gotten wet.  We turned to see Gizzie instantly hike his little leg, peeing on the frozen blanket that was halfway covering the bench and almost touching the ground.

"What's that?"  I asked my mom, drawing my nose up in disgust.  The blanket looked tattered and torn and abused.

She laughed and clapped in delight at Gizzie's choice to hike and pee where he did.  I couldn't figure out what was funny.  

"That's THE ROBE!!"

things I like today

* Last night I had a date with a Blue Moon, some Panchos cheese dip, and Dateline.  It was deeeeelightful.

* I've spent the majority of my day lying in bed, listening to the rain, and watching Karate Kid.  Heaven!

* The breakfast paninis at Miss Cordelias are amazing and never get old.  Saturday tradition!

* I'll probably skip the gym today.

* I hope it rains all weekend so I won't feel guilty about lying around.

* Coffee in bed

* Panchos cheese dip for lunch?

chilly willy

go away!

Cold weather makes me crabby patty and apparently, make everything rhyme time.

Doo doo.

netflix, we need to talk

First, let me preface this by saying that I have waited an obscene amount of time to start the True Blood series.  That's because I hate watching series unless I can see it from the beginning and I procrastinated watching it through Netflix.

Finally, I ordered the first disc but let it sit around for over a month before I got around to watching it.

Disc one, which is Season 1 and only has the first two episodes, was SCRATCHED.

I got to watch the very first episode (HOOKED already, folks!) but when I went to watch the second, the disc was damaged.  Not cool!  I waited all this time and I finally got around to it and it's all just a tease!

When I went to the Netflix website to complain, the stupid site was down for maintenance.

Commence temper tantrum!

UPDATE:  Netflix is awesome!  When the site came back up I notified them that I had a bad disc and they had a new replacement disc in the mail later that afternoon!  I watched half of the second episode before I fell asleep drooling on myself but so far I really like the characters.

Y Challenge!

Almost done!

Each year, the YMCA gets New Year's Resolutioners the opportunity to keep their promises by offering their members the Y 30-day Challenge.  So from February to April 4, members who go to the gym and work out at least 30 times in this time period win a free t-shirt.  I signed up this year, not because I had made resolutions but because I needed to hold my lazy ass accountable and GO.  It's been a funny experience.

I'm not motivated by the free shirt but instead by the disappointment and guilt I know I'll feel if I let myself down and don't go.  Going to the gym 30 times isn't hard, right?  Wrong.

There have been days when I leave work and feel like barfing because the last thing I want to do is sprint on the treadmill again.  Other days, riding my bike or walking my pooch sounds way more fun than cycling on the stationary bike yet again.  But I do it.  And I'm so glad I have.  Only about 2 more weeks and the challenge is over!  Being at the gym has forced me to see familiar faces over and over again and it's fun learning people's names and getting into a routine.

So that's why I've checked-in constantly at the Y on my facebook account.  Just trying to keep it fun so I don't quit when I'm this close to finishing.  Yesterday was especially hard because everybody was outside jogging and walking and riding bikes.  I sludged (is that a word?) to the gym, hopped on the bike, and pedaled for 30 minutes dreaming about being outdoors.  So when I got home, I decided to walk Gizzie at the park by the river for about 45 minutes or so.

Being active has helped clear the winter out of my head and made me feel more productive.

Okay, off I go.  Again.  TWO more weeks!

Later taters,

J

screwed in a wink of an eye

About a year or so ago my friend April was trying to randomly sell some Avon stuff.  Kind of grandma of her, right?  Anyway, she got into bringing some samples to work with her and handed me a gift bag filled with some eye ointments and other lotions that I never used.  She also included this weird thing that was called an Avon Wink Eye Sheet or something like that.  I threw it under my sink with the rest of my didn't-quite-make-the-cut-makeup and forgot about it.  It looked insane--like the makeup my piano teacher, Mrs. Patsy, used to wear while chain-smoking and tapping her foot to the metronome while I practiced Moonlight Sonata for my competitions.  Her makeup was always pancake-thick and made her look like a corpse.  She kept a bowl of Jolly Ranchers by her door for her students and I always shoved handfuls of the grape ones into my pockets.

Anyway, the makeup "sheets" were scary.  They looked like this:

In fact, this was the exact color scheme that April had given me.  Scary tan and taupe-y frosty colors for old ladies.  Sometimes when rummaging through my old makeup I would pull it out, consider trying it, then toss it back.  Except today.

Today I was feeling adventurous.  Today was the day to WINK!  I pilfered through some old makeup and played with some bronzer.  Then I experimented with some old forgotten-about bare minerals powder and played with that for a bit.  Please note that this was right before I was getting ready to go to the gym.  So I stood at my mirror in my running shorts and red top with New Balance shoes, standing on my tiptoes and playing with my makeup for no reason.  Then I came across the Instant Eyeshadow Sheet.  It was now or never.

I read the directions which seemed simple enough.  Tear the thingy in half, place it over your closed eyelid, rub rub rub, then remove.  So that's what I did.  I rubbed until I was positive that the makeup had transferred perfectly to my eyelid and removed the sheet.  I found what looked like a tranny staring back at me.  Something had gone horribly wrong.  Half of the eyeshadow was either above my eyebrow or below my lower lashes and what WAS on my eyelid looked like a cluster&*#$.  So not only did I have bronzer and powder all over my face, but I was headed to the gym with this crazy eye makeup that looked like it had been applied by a blind clown.

Folks, stay far away from this gimmick.  I PROMISE no matter how little you know about applying makeup, you can do a far better job yourself than this crazy application.  I thought about washing my face before my gym routine but ended up doing lots of blending instead.  Probably not the first time I've looked like a weirdo at the gym.

Probably not the last.