Seth MacCarbonell

So, in my dream last night this guy's mind:

(for those of you who don't recognize him, it's Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, and the future god father of my funniest child)


Was in this guy's body:

(and for those of you who don't recognize him, it's Richard Alpert from Lost, and the future guy I make clean my house in one of those little French maid outfits)



I actually threw my cell phone across the room when my alarm went off because who in the world would want to wake up from that!?!

Family Guy! In Nestor Carbonell's pretty, eyelinered frame! I don't even care that his name is Nestor. I'd repeat that all day if he asked me to.

Go ahead and click to make that picture of him bigger. "Hi there," he says. "aldk aslidr kalsdiuf" and then you can't understand the rest of what he says because you just melted into a puddle of Lost-never-aging-mush, and you just know he's gonna do something really, really hot, and suddenly you're pregnant. With twins. For the third time.

Or maybe it wasn't the melting that made it so you couldn't understand. Maybe it was because he was saying something to you in Spanish, and suddenly you're not only pregnant, you're also learning how to make tortillas on a stone just for him wearing nothing but cowboy boots and a sombrero. Then you realize pregnant-cowboy-boot-sombrero combo might not be the most attractive, especially since those boots are going to make you seven inches taller than Nesty (that's your nickname for him), but it's ok, he'll be distracted by the fresh tortilla gloriousness, and then you'll ask him to do Stewie's voice while telling you what happens in this season of Lost, and all the worlds collide into a perfect symbiosis of TV and sexy latin guy magic!


**sigh**


I'm gonna go take a nap and see if I can will it to happen again. If only you could tivo your dreams. I'd be all over that shit.

Well, with this one anyway. The one I had last week where I was stuck in the La Brea tar pits, calling out to the woolly mammoth's to help me - that one I would skip.

Dinner Out

Sometimes with my brother it's not all trying to jump out of moving cars, or stripping naked in public places (oh, I haven't written about that here yet? That'll be a whole different blog, but lets just say that when my brother gets upset he tends to strip off his clothes, sometimes ripping off my mom's, or mine, or my sister's, or a complete stranger's, as we try to wrangle him into stopping. Because being naked? In public? That makes everything better. Ask my mom. She looooooves it. She loves it the way I do when people threaten me with larva, or ticks. Little woodland ticks, in my b*#thole. That specific threat was in response to me threatening "Oh I'll show you a bush." Then, "That was the first time I've ever been threatened with pubic hair!" Oh yeah, "Give me a few months, it won't be the last!") (Then some crying.) (Yes, I was drinking, but the crying was from laughing. Mostly.)

Ok, so he's not stripping off his clothes because he likes the feel of the fresh morning market air on his skin, he's usually doing it because he's horribly frustrated and confused and upset, and he's tried all, ALL he can to communicate what he wants us to know. But he can't communicate, because he's autistic and disabled x1000, so he's staring at us, and we're staring at him - both equally frustrated with the fact that we got height instead of the gift of mind reading, because good lord would that help us right now, and height, height didn't get us a pro-basketball career, height forgot to piggyback a little skill with it; and it sure as heck isn't helping the fact that no matter how hard Michael stares into my eyes the answer does not appear suddenly written across his retinas. (Totally freaky but that would be awesome! I'd probably have nightmares and/or scream but I'd still wanna see it like, "Michael say something. . . AAAHHHH!. . . . Ok, say something else. . . AAAAAHHHHH!")

Usually, or at least hopefully, before he reaches clothes-off or jump-out-of-moving-car levels of frustration something will happen, something will click in our brains and we'll remember, or we'll figure it out, and I'll go ahead and dot the 'i' on the grocery list because Woman, you can't spell 'tortilla' without the i dotted!, or I'll run back in the house and grab the Classified section of the paper he forgot in there because How'm I supposed to pick out my mansion if I don't have the Beverly Hills homes for sale section?!

And when our brains aren't in mind-reading mode we rely on his word book. My mom (the mother to beat all mothers, especially when it comes to ignoring the doctors and letting them know her son was going to be able to read goddamnit) made this word book for him, that he carries around and points to things he wants, or uses it to make us sing to him on command. (Who's the sucker now? I'm going to go ahead and say it's probably the girl singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious seventeen times in a row while in line at the grocery store.)

But the last time we went out to dinner we forgot to grab a word book, which sucks because it's helpful to know that he wants to hear us talk about the Texaco station, or the Arco station and not have to guess at it (What, you don't love gas stations? Maybe not, but say Texaco a hundred times and watch your brother light up with a smile stretching from here to Idaho - you'll love everything about gas stations. You'll even start doing your shopping there in the little mini-marts so you can grab some napkins with the logos on them for him.) Anyway, we forgot the book like I said but decided we were too far to go back for it, and hoped that maybe handing him the menu would suffice. It didn't. He was not fooled. No matter how many of the i's were dotted.

So, my mom pulls out a blank notebook and a pen and we just start rattling off things he might like, and when we say something good he points to the pad and we write it down, thus creating a primitive version of his word book. Or what I like to call, his vacation-book, because in this version it was all just fun things he likes to hear us say or sing, it didn't have anything to do with chores, or jobs, or any of that boring stuff his real book has.

That woman - my mother - is a genius. Because there was no jumping out of cars, and there was no public nudity, it was just pure communicative happiness. Like, he saw her pull out the paper and the pen and was like, "Finally! Now you're on to something people. Now someone get me some milk to go with these tortillas."

Here he is with his makeshift book while my mom still poses the benefits of the menu's wordage.



Finally putting down her menu, Michael lets my mom holds the book and then he asks her things. Lots of fun things that make him laugh, which makes me laugh, which makes E laugh, which makes the people around us start laughing - and the infection of him spreads throughout the restaurant and no one is really sure why.



And here his is admiring my amazing penmanship, and the fact that I love him enough to do the logo for Texaco, AND the logo for GE. I'm so glad he doesn't like Starbucks cause that mermaid girl would be hard to draw on a whim.



So anyway, it turned out to be one of the best dinners in a really long time, for no reason really. The food wasn't anything special, they messed up part of our order, and I sneezed into the community salsa bowl - but the smiling, and the laughing that came from hearing me sing the theme song from Sesame Street eight times before launching into a botched version of Muppet Babies was enough to make all of our hearts swell and burst and flood the restaurant, out into the street with such good feelings that the air around Michael actually sort of glittered. Or glowed. Something shiny.

And then I sang the Mickey Mouse Club. Because he asked me to.

Prescription For Health, Sort Of

For someone who is not, you know, dying of cancer or treating a highly infectious disease, I go to the pharmacy a lot. Well, it seems like a lot, it's really three times a month - which according to my sister looks like if I forget to take one of my pills my arms will fall off.

So, I decided to cut some of them out, because they're not all for keeping my arms attached, they're mostly for anti-baby, anti-herpes virus. (Not on my vag Richard Alpert! I mean cold sores. We can still make love without fear of STDs!)(And by love, I mean hardcore frenching) (down there)(just kidding) (oh my god my little cousins read this now and I feel like I have to censor myself. I'm not gonna - you guys should stop reading if it's inappropriate ok? I didn't mean hardcore frenching. I meant sex. With a fictional character from a tv show based on the idea that it's going to try to explode all of America's brains so that they don't have to actually explain anything that happened with the g.d. Oceanic Six.)

Anyway, unfortunately I didn't think through my plan of weaning myself off things one at a time very well. Because if I was a smart man I would have started with the most embarrassing and then worked my way down to a thyroid prescription so low it practically just stops by in the morning to wave and make sure I still have a thyroid gland in there. But nooooooo, I do the dumb thing and save the most mortifying for last. And it never, ever fails that when I go to pick up this prescription it's the cute pharmacist boy who appears out of nowhere. All month its a gaggle of girls until I go in and then suddenly it's this boy. And it's not like I want to date and/or make out with him, he's like 18, and he's not even that cute it's just the fact that it's ALWAYS him and he ALWAYS has no idea who I am, and then when he goes to get my prescription he's all:

"Last name?"

"Stern."

"Just this one-Oh. . . ah . . . just the one?"

"Yes, just the one."

Then he looks at me all weird, like checking my face and he sees I don't have a cold sore, so it's got to mean that the prescription is for something lower, and he scans down to my pants for a split second (yeah, because my vaginal herpes is going to shine through my jeans!) and then puts on his face mask and gloves and hands it to me by his fingertips. Usually I just turn bright red, take the thing and run, but I had a glass of wine in me last night, and that mixed with the three beers I was a little more chatty than I should have been.

"I don't have herpes."

"Oh, what?"

"I mean, I do, clearly because you're holding my Valtrex prescription out for God and the rest of the world to see, but it's not for what you think it's for," I turn around to the line behind me. "It's not for down there, ok everyone. It's just for when I get stressed out. Or sunburned. On my lips."

"I didn't think that."

"You didn't?"

"No, you look clean."

"Well, that's totally inappropriate and weird. But thanks."

Oh eighteen year old pharmacy kid, maybe customer service isn't for you?

So, I worked the wrong direction. But soon enough I'll be off everything and I won't have to see Pharmacy boy again - except for when I go to get my diaphragm prescription filled and he and the rest of the staff gather around to discuss it at the loudest volume possible, before telling me this isn't 1955, and I should get back in my time machine and see if Doc Brown can fill this.

200th And Just Getting More And More Embarrassing To My Future Children

So, apparently this is my 200th post! I don't know why I'm mentioning it except that other people do on their blogs, and that 13 year old girl in me who shaved her legs with Suave hair conditioner, because her friends did, is coming out in me.

Come to think of it, the 15 year old girl in me who (fake) smoked pot on the way to school because her friends were, and then spent all of Spanish class (because even though she wasn't stoned, her friends were) trying to convince Sr. Welch he should reenact the scene with her in Grease 2 where Stephanie Zinone and Michael are riding on his bike and she climbs around while they're doing like 95mph, with a desk and two chairs, but he didn't because the bell eventually rang, is coming out in me too. I'm sure in his heart there's nothing he would have loved more than to lose his job because a (fake) stoned 15 year old student wanted to stradle him while singing Cool Rider.

Oh, and the 27 year old girl in me who let some Puerto Rican guy with a belt buckle that spun instructions (classy) pick her up and carry her around (the whole while screaming, "I don't think I like this!") until they got kicked out of the club because her friends wanted her to do it ("I don't care if you like it or not. He's picking you up! Let it happen! For us!"), they were in relationships and she wasn't, and apparently what her coupled friends want to do vicariously through her is be picked up and thrown around a sweaty dance floor while shouting out a request for the DJ to play Tootsie Roll just one more time, is also coming out in me. Not make out, or back it up - that wasn't happening, they just wanted me to be picked up. My friends are weird.

Or the 28 year old girl in me who got her nose pierced on the island because her friends were, well actually her friends weren't but they wanted to and couldn't because of their jobs, so they were all, "You can do it! You don't have a real job!" and so she paid the seventy bucks to get it pierced and then promptly took it out 24 hours later when they left the island and returned to real life - a painful seventy bucks, but a boatload of fun pictures where she looks sort of Indian. And or Indie. She's coming out too.

Hmmm, I'm not really as malleable as this is making me seem (slash feel) right now. I just really like making sure people are having a good time. At my expense. Or my Spanish teacher's job security. (Kidding. I secretly really wanted to do all of those things. Including the time I broke into a stranger's house because my friends wanted to see what it would feel like to kick down a door.) (Just kidding again Mom, that never happened.) (Except it totally did, and I still feel guilty and like any time there's a knock on the door it's the cops coming to arrest me for getting my shoe prints all over a door in 1992.)(I'm pretty sure the door was unlocked and slightly ajar when we "kicked it in".)

Anyway, to celebrate here's a little video that never ever fails to make me happy, and is total and complete proof I don't just do what my friends do, because this - this little gem has threatened to ruin many a friendship, but I would never, ever give this up. Or acknowledge Grease as the better movie. Because it's not. And I would totally get 'Grease 2 Forever' tattooed on my chest!

You know, if my friends said I could.

Work Computer, You're My Only Friend

So, my work computer is sort of old. I think it used to be one of Becky's old girlfriend's, that we bought for like $50 bucks off her. (So not only is it an old computer, it's also a gay one.) For the most part Jen3 gets the work done, but sometimes it shuts down on me completely, or flat out refuses to switch to an excel spreadsheet when I've got "Fun facts about balls" googled on my homepage, and the entire office gathers around my desk for our Tuesday morning meeting, at which point I start wildly clicking the "X" as if the harder my pointer finger hits the mouse the faster the page will close, but then it gets the stupid bracketed {Firefox Not Responding} warning at the top, and I'm all, "I know firefox is not mother f responding! Why do you think I've been clicking so hard?!" and then I switch to clicking on the open tabs bar, and Excel won't come up, not even the letter I've been writing to Gige on Word will come up, even though I don't want anyone to see that either but at least a word document is better than a highlighted, ". . .the average testicle is 2.5 inches long by 1.25 inches wide. . . " (in case I need to make one?), and suddenly everyone is there and I try to block my screen with my body, but they're all standing and I'm sitting, so I throw my sweater over it, because it doesn't occur to me til after I've ripped off my hoodie and thrown it monkey-like at the monitor that it might, just maybe, might've been easier and less crazy to just turn the monitor off.

The meeting proceeded and of course the second it was over and I unzipped the hoodie from Jen3 everything was neatly closed, and tax returns were just doing themselves. Which was sucky, because I had actually been working all day. Working a lot, I had just taken a second to google some stuff that had been on my mind, and low - two seconds into my break the above happened.

So, it was all fine and dandy but then, almost immediately we had another little sub-meeting. Of course we did. We have a conference room by the way, but for some reason the gathering happens by my desk. (Jen3 wills them there with her mind power?) And I don't have anything inappropriate open, I'm fully prepared, and somehow suddenly in the middle of the meeting the printer right next to me start printing manically and all I can think is, "Oh god please don't let that be from my computer, please don't let that be from my computer." And everyone stares at it and someone looks down at the little screen and says, "Jen3. Whose computer is Jen3?" And I look around like, "What's a computer?", and then everyone is gathered around and I know it's gonna be just pictures of fun facts about balls, because clearly with my luck the text will have been changed to an accurate form of wingdings, and it'll be neatly titled "Amy Wanted To Know About This On Company Time".

So I reach over and grab the ONE HUNDRED AND SIX page printout and ho - l - y jesus.

They're totally blank.

Just 106 hot pages of nothing.

"What is it?" my co-worker asked.

"It's nothing they're blank."

"Why're they hot?"

"Because they just went through the machine."

"But there's no ink on them."

I could be wrong, but I don't think the ink is what makes them hot. But I zip it, cause I was just looking up facts on genitals.

"Why're they hot?"

"Oh, I accidentally hit the warmer setting. I just wanted to heat up some paper."

Ok, that was not as long as I wanted to keep it zipped.


So, I don't know what was going on. I don't know when I hit print on anything, but I sort of have a feeling I accidentally pressed it when I was crazily trying to close firefox and that Jen3 was just looking out for me. Like its way of apologizing for the earlier meeting; and that time last week when it shut down JUST BEFORE I hit save on something I'd been working on all day.

Although I'm fairly certain that shut down was because someone decided to make coffee when the copy machine was running. This is an accounting office from the 70s people, not an electric factory. We have to do one thing at a time or the island is gonna shift to the wrong time period.

Way Better Than Saying Something Weird Like Tinkle

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Game Day At Our House Has A Lot More Hard Core Cheating - Usually From My Mom Even Though She'll Deny It Til The Cows Come Home

So I went to my cousin's baby shower last week, and out of the fifty something people that attended either me or someone in my family won all of the game categories. At first I thought it was because we're just all really competitive when there's no alcohol around, but then I realized, nope - we all just like to cheat.

It's not like we planned it, and it's not like we were playing a scam on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or anything, it was just light cheating. Like, so light I announced I was doing it as I was doing it just so I wouldn't get in trouble. (Because I like living on the edge, but am still too afraid I'll get detention, or worse a C in one of my classes, like they'll go back and retro-grade me somehow, and my High School GPA will dip down and I'll never move out of my Mom's house and will have to go on welfare and eat only bologna for a week straight and start hooking just to get by.)

Anyway, after the party I was mentioning to my mom how I won the make-a-play-doh-baby-blind-folded game, and then she launched into how she won.

". . . blah, blah, blah and that's how you win by cheating!"

"Wow."

"I know, pretty cool right?"

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Longer than you've been around."

"Nice Mom. I don't think I've ever seen you do anything bad. You feed the meter next to you just in case."

"Well, that's the thing, the best part is, it's not technically cheating. It's just tilting the odds a little. And you can't put this on your blog."

"Of course not."

"This is just me as a mother passing down my knowledge to my eldest daughter, that she has to take to her grave."

"It's not that serious is i-"

"TO YOUR GRAVE!"

"Ok! Sorry!"

"Oops, I think I just ran a red light."

"This is a tender moment we're having."


And really, I didn't cheat. That much. We had to be blind folded and make a baby and some baby stuff out of play doh, but they didn't say human baby.

So, here I am explaining to everyone that I'm going to make a panda baby. And Becky and DD are thrilled with my explanation of how I'm going to fashion the tummy out of some white doh.



And this is how it turned out. It was much cuter than the picture makes it seem.



Here's an example of what the other teams came up with. Clearly, panda-baby is cuter than pink-blob baby.



Uh. . . also, I inverted panda baby's head colors. He's like an x-ray-head panda baby.

No photos please!!!

My birthday is coming up people. . . I'm just saying. I want one.

It's just like having a puppy! But it's sort of a bear.


So then we won!


And I kept the blindfold on my head like that way too long. I took it home with me, just in case I ever want to test my skills and challenge myself on my off time. Watch out future baby showers, and possibly my future children's kindergarten classes! I'm gonna play-doh the shit out that game.

Ok, the real winners are these guys - because in that polka dotted belly is a little girl that's gonna be cute and awesome, and incredibly science-class inclined. And when she's old enough I'm gonna teach her how to play games Auntie Lori's way. And then how to celebrate with a box of chilled wine and some Cold Stone, Auntie Amy style.

Good Morning To You Too, Hole Where My Pocket Used To Be

Do you ever have one of those mornings where you can't remember if you put on deodorant, let alone pants?

I got into the car this morning, hair curled, shoes tied, makeup on, all that, but something felt wrong.

"Maybe that's cause it's 6:15 in the morning," I grumbled to myself. "Six mother fucking fifteen." I like to talk with a Samuel L. Jackson accent when it's early in the morning. Crystal loves it. "Mornin puppy dawg. Let's get this potty time buuuuuuullshit over with, this mother fucker has got to get her ass to work."

So, I start the car and look away from the clock to my pants. My pajama pants. My flannel pajama pants, tucked neatly into my socks, where I put them while I was tying my Vans on.

Awesome.

Good thing I checked, otherwise I would have had a really awkward time trying to explain to the auditor why it is I had the clothes-version of a mullet on - Business on the top, party on the bottom. Now lets get this fact checking shit on the road Mr. Aud-i-tor, mama's got some mother fucking instant oatmeal to eat.

But It's Just Sort Of Expired

Sometimes I eat string cheese I find in my purse six hours after I put it there simply so that I can tell Gabi I just did that. Because it freaks. her. out. She would check the expiration date on tap water if it had one, and when we were in Fresno she complained the milk tasted too milky. (That doesn't have anything to do with expiration dates, I just thought it was awesome of her. This milk is too milky! The bed is too bedy! And my hair is too hairy!) I only tell her because it cracks me up how much she gets the heebie jeebies from it, and since she doesn't have any siblings of her own, I have decided it's my job as her friend to antagonize her in an older sisterly way. It takes some of the pressure off Becky, and give me the same sort of giggles I get when I come back from the bathroom, hands unwashed, and let my mom know I just peed and didn't wash my hands.

Don't get me wrong, I totally believe in sanitation - I shower every day, I brush and floss, I wash my hands after I take out the trash, I practically boil them if I touch chicken, and sometimes even after I touch cooked chicken (thanks to Home Ec circa 1992, chicken = disease, salmonella, and possibly HIV. Oh, Mrs. Matthews I love you for teaching me how to sew a pillow that looks like a pig, but I hate that you made one of my biggest fears raw meat; now my future husband will have to learn how to survive on nachos alone.) (Don't worry John Krasinski, I will learn how to make some sort of stew before then!), but I guess I don't get too worried about missing a hand washing here and there, or eating warm cheese because it's really not that bad.

Some people like to tell me that will all change when I have children. That suddenly I'll be obsessed with expiration dates and hand washing and general cleanliness of my cleaning supplies themselves. But a) I'm not pregnant; and b) I don't think it's gonna really change my mind that much. I mean, how can you actually make sure everything is super clean before it gets near your baby? Plus I heard nursing mothers put cabbage leaves in their bras, and weird lotions, and stuff that you should not be putting around your boobs - roots and things. What am I supposed to do then? Wash my nipple every time before it goes in for a feeding? No. That's crazy talk. I'll tell you what's gonna happen - that sucker is going straight from my baby daddy's mouth into my baby's. If anyone needs to worry about cleanliness it's the lucky dude who decides to knock me up then have up-top sexy time in between baby naps. Because do you know where that child's mouth has been or what's been in it? Yeah, I don't either, that's the point.

Ok, I might wash my hands a little more, but I refuse to throw away milk five days before the expiration date. I'll just freeze it and save it for later. Maybe something to mix the formula with.*


*kidding

Rainy

I love when it rains here, mostly cause it never happens so when it does So Cal-ers go ape shit crazy and start wearing wellies and carrying umbrellas around inside their houses (my OCD with bad-luck-avoidance just FREAKED OUT), and people suddenly think driving is a sport wherein you try to avoid each individual rain drop by swerving out of the way of the rain and into each other, like bumper cars in a pinball machine that's been filled with water and Botox and Wee Man from the Jackass movies (he lives here and seems to be everywhere you ever want to go, including setting up his own taco shop where the Taco Bell used to be that I single handedly kept in business from 1994-1999). And yes, I'm from here but I handle the crazy differently - I drive like an 80 year old at the nice pace of 15 mph, and I brake if I see a stop light five miles ahead.

So, since it took me forty five minutes to drive the three miles to my work this morning, I got to see a lot. But my favorite wasn't the guy who strapped an umbrella to his dog's back for their morning walk - which really only protected the back half of the dog - it was a woman I saw getting off the bus. She missed the last step, like completely missed it, almost as if she just shut her eyes and jumped, and then fell straight into a pool-sized puddle, flat on her back. My instinct was to leap out of the car to help her - I mean, I was only going like 5 mph, I could just roll out - but then she started laughing hysterically flapping her arms and pretended to do the backstroke. Then came the fake synchronized swimming moves. Then some more backstroke. I'm pretty sure if the bus didn't have to move, and if she hadn't just realized she was soaking in a pool of brown acid rain water, it could have gone on like that forever.

Oh my gosh I love her so much. And if I didn't have to keep my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel to avoid imminent death by rain-driving, I totally would have taken a video of her. And then asked her to marry someone in my family so we could be related.

Note:

If you get into bed with a glass of wine and an episode of Cougar Town on your laptop, and wake up hours later with the whole situation still spread out like that, it IS perfectly ok for your sister and dog to be judging you, but also they should be admiring of how you managed not to spill a single drop because you thought this might happen and so you wedged said glass under your arm propped up with pillows. Way to go you!

(I actually woke up a half an hour later - just enough time to not have to watch Courtney Cox ruin Monica as my favorite - and cheered for myself a little bit. I don't ever not spill! Sometimes I just look at a glass from across the room and it knocks itself over. And I don't ever fall asleep with lights on, when there's still wine to drink, so clearly starting eleven hour work days again is hitting me harder than I thought.)

P.S. I can't use the word 'situation' now without thinking of Jersey Shore, and how much I wiiiiiiiiiish I could pull off a seven inch hair poof and battling on anything that might resemble a dance floor. While I was in Fresno this weekend I demonstrated battling for Gige, starting with beating up the beat and moving on up to all the fist-pumping, GTL body-flailing glory* and I totally think I'm ready! I especially love the part where the guys lift up their shirts on the dance floor to show the girl they're dancing with their bodies. What are the girls supposed to do to that? Applaud?

The 30 second mark is where the magic happens:



*GTL stands for Gym, Tan, Laundry - which is apparently the Guido creed for looking hot. Go to the gym, go tan, make sure your clothes are clean. I wish this show would never end.

Fire Engine Red

I got nothin against working early. (Thousands of my English teachers around the world just cringed and died a little inside at that sentence structure.)(And then my college friends cringed at my use of hyperbole.)(See that! Hyperbole. I did learn something in grad school Mom!) In fact, I like to get to work early because I tell myself it means I get to leave early. Get in at 6am - well then I get to leave at 3pm and have the whole afternoon to myself! But it never works that way because 3pm will roll it's pretty little self around and I'll be balls deep in some sort of tax something and suddenly it's 7pm and I'm starving because all I've eaten since breakfast is a half a pound of See's candy and some gum. So, I aim for 8am because it's early, but not so early that by 7pm I want to saw my own arm off so I have something to chew on on the ride home.

But, calling me at 6am to see if I'll be in soon? Too early Boss-Grandma. Too early.

But I answered, because I'm a sucker, and explained I'd be in as soon as I went for a run.

"You're going to run? It's pouring."

"I have a boob shelf now."

"What?"

"What?" Note to self: don't answer phone and try to talk to your grandma at six am, you will be inappropriate.

"Just get in as soon as you can. Make it a short run."

"Fine I'll just do ten miles then."

"Amy Michele, I swear to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. . ."

"I'm kidding. I'll be right in."

**click** she hates goodbyes.

"I love you."

So, I got in super early only to find out she'd called someone else in early too and now she didn't need me. And so, in retaliation, I painted my nails at work. On company time. Take that early-waker-up-er!

It's small and weird retaliation, but it made me feel better. (And just to be clear, the nail painting took all of sixty seconds. It was clear polish I found in the first aid drawer we have here - because chipped nails is a bigger emergency item than band-aids I discovered last week after an encounter with the stapler and some lotion.)

When my mom rolled in at her usual hour of 11-ish, I told her about the horrid call time, and she nodded sympathetically - being my mom, letting me vent - and then after I was done, told me how her client called her at one am to let her know about something she forgot to tell her. ONE. IN THE AM. This is taxes people, not organ transplants. Trust me, even if it was organ transplants you don't wanna be waking me up to tell me which lung it was you needed, because I'm gonna forget and then I'm probably gonna make a your-mom joke to it while I'm scrubbing in.

I'm bringing in some red polish tomorrow, just in case. That should take at least two minutes. Two minutes of pure renegade painting. You don't wanna mess with me - I take it out on you by making my hands look better. And giving my future therapist a lot of weird things to work through.

New Boots

So, I'm wearing boots right now that, I shit you not, make me so tall that when I just went into the bathroom I inadvertently saw over one of the stalls and looked a small Filipino woman in the eye as she pulled her pants down. I swear to God it couldn't have been avoided unless I had gone into the bathroom with my eyes closed to start my bathroom-napping just a few seconds earlier.

I was so embarrassed about just seeing her naked from the waist down that I started blabbering apologies all over the place while still standing there, glaring down at her from atop my gigantor perch above her stall door like some sort of creepy behemoth of a woman who goes around using her height to check up on the goings-on of office building bathrooms, and maybe the occasional bedroom window or two. She quickly said it was ok, and then when I looked away she proceeded to start peeing (probably out of fear) and so I took my cue and walked into my own stall while looking down at my feet the whole time.

We met back up at the sink, where I apologized again and pointed out that I wasn't used to my new boots, and I love them, I love them so much, but two inches taller makes me very weird.

"I mean, even sitting on the toilet felt awkward because my knees were all up here, and I'm used to them right about here." I demonstrated while standing, what it might look like if I was sitting, to this poor, poor woman who was probably four foot nine and afraid I was going to either knee her in the face or follow her around and hoover gigantically all day.

I let her go, then got out of there quick with my hand over my eyes because someone else walked in and I didn't want her to sit down and look up to see my head floating above the door like some sort of human Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.

These are the new boots and I love, love, love them. I just need to figure out how to work myself in them.


And no, you don't need to adjust your screen. That is the actual color of the chair in my cubicle. And that tropical floor? That's the actual carpet. My office: where the 70s went to Vegas and and stayed at the Tropicana - for life.

Phonetography

So I was really excited about this picture I took with my phone (otherwise known as: the phone that sends people three of the exact same text or none at all just to make me seem vaguely like a psycho when I'm responding to things like a request for dinner - "I vote for m.f.ing MEXICAN food dang it! And I left my underwear in the kitchen." "I vote for m.f.ing MEXICAN food dang it! And I left my underwear in the kitchen." "I vote for m.f.ing MEXICAN food dang it! And I left my underwear in the kitchen." Note: No one wants to get that text three times, and my underwear were there because I didn't have anywhere else to let them dry after I washed them. Note #2: Those are not my only pair, I wasn't underwear-less, I was just taking note of where I'd left them.)

Anyway, I was excited about the picture because there was this weird blue haze in the air when we went out for breakfast the other week, and my phone captured it! But I noticed my screen was a little messed up, like there's this black spot on it, but I thought, No worries! I'll email it to myself and all will be well with the blue haze picture!




But the black spot wasn't just on my phone! It's some weird glitch that stuck when the picture was taken, or not a glitch, but as if it was blurring out something inappropriate to children on Becky's chin. (Makes sense, that is where she keeps her porn.)

So, I have to get a new phone soon. Because censoring my sister - not on my watch Verizon Wireless! Her chin can get naked and be derogatory to women other minorities if it wants to be. You know, just so long as it's not hurting anyone, and I can take a decent picture.

String Cheese and Capri Sun Was On The Previous List

This morning I was cleaning out my pockets and noticed my grocery list from yesterday, the list didn't seem odd to me yesterday but this morning I gave myself a dirty look and shook my head in dismay at . . . myself.

Ralph's: (It said, because apparently I need reminders of where to buy groceries)

Raisin Bran
Fudgsicles!

That's it. That's all that was there, raisin bran and a very excited fudgsicle request. Because I like to eat like a six year old. The good news is, if a kindergartner comes wandering into my yard all disheveled and hungry I'll have plenty of string cheese and popsicle-like things to feed him.

Ok, that's a lie, those weren't the only two things on the list. At the bottom of the post-it there was this:
porn (soft)

Yeah, and that's why I was shaking my head at me, because I added a joke item to my own list. Not even like tacking it on to my sister's, which is what I really wanted to do, but didn't because she wasn't sitting near me when I thought of it. My jokes are getting lazier and lazier.

In other news it's raining this morning and I went for a run anyway because I love running in the rain (ok, and I love running past the army base because they always cheer for me - as if running in the rain is the same thing as risking my life for my country! If that gets them proud wait til they see me taking out the trash in my socks!) Anyway, when I got back I noticed I was soaked all over except for the middle section of my shirt. Like, from just under the boobs to my waist was totally dry - which led me to the only logical conclusion - my boobs are big enough to act as a shelf!

"F yeah! I have boobs that can block rain!" I yelled to Crystal (the dog), and then did a little dance of breast-victory around my kitchen while eating a spoonful of peanut butter (I showed the spoonful to my boobs first and said, "This is for you.") Crystal didn't give me the sort of reaction I needed, but I was still sort of happy about it when I went into work so I decided to tell one of my co-workers about it because I have to listen to her talk about mattress shopping for fourteen hours a day so she can hear this.

"And it was totally dry! From here, to here."

"Huh."

"Pretty cool huh?"

"Well, are you sure you weren't just hunched over when you were running?"

"Yes I'm su . . . wait."

"Let me see your stance."

"It's like this."

"Jog down to the end of the hall."

"But I just got coffee."

"How can I tell then?"

"Fine." (**jogs to end of hall**then back**)

"You're pretty slow."

"I'm at work."

"Still."

"Was I hunched?"

"Oh, totally."

Well of course I was hunched over! I have shelf-like boobs. Rain-stopping boobs. Boobs that look deceptively tiny, especially in a smashed-them-down sports bra, and even more so in real naked life, but still! Clearly I was hunched because of them, so my theory still stands. And later, at lunch, you better believe I'm gonna be checking to see if any crumbs get stopped by those suckers. Anything can happen.

Sleep Deprived

I get insomnia once in a while, and it always varies between popping up once a month or so, or a few times a week. I'm on a few times a week kick right now - which is fun for my laundry and tv show catching up, but not so fun for the people who are trying to explain something to me at 3pm while I slowly let my eyes droop, just for a second, until I'm woken up a few minutes later with my head on a three ring binder and some paper clip imprints clearly formed on my forehead. Actually, that only happened once, after that I took my sleepy time in the bathroom, cause nothing says exhausted like taking a nap while sitting on a public toilet.

Anyway, last night was one of those nights, and once I realized I wasn't gonna fall back asleep by counting backwards from a hundred (Mom, that doesn't work - I think that was just your sneaky trick to make sure we could actually do something like count backwards) I got myself a big glass of warm milk (wine) and settled in with Anna Karenina (7 episodes of Modern Family). It usually takes a few hours but I know it's time for me to try and go back to sleep when I'm giggling so much at my laptop that I start to drool.

It may seem slow but I just got drooly-giggly again at work at around the 1:15 mark so it's totally worth watching the whole clip.


So, needless to say I was a little out of it this morning and decided I needed to stop and get coffee because I couldn't even get my brain functioning enough to want to remember where we keep the filters. But after I stopped and got my coffee I had that feeling - you know, that feeling you get when you're fairly certain they gave you decaf instead of regular and you now want to march back into the coffee shop and make that 16 year-old barista stare at the dark circles under your eyes until he starts to cry.

Plus what the heck is a 16 year old doing at work at 8am? Why isn't he at school trying to mack on Cindy in the back of the band room where they store the large instruments before first period?! I didn't march back in and make him stare, but I did ask why he wasn't in school (young man) while he was scraping the whip cream off my latte (because it's the new year so I can have a toffee nut latte, but I can't have the whip cream - ah, girl logic.)

"Mack on?"

"You kids don't say that anymore?"

"No. And we don't wear bell bottoms either."

"These are boot cut!"

I go in there a lot so it's ok that he talked to me as if I was an elder, I forgave him. And then he explained he was in fact 19, and gay - no Cindy, no high school band macking. It's probably for the better, I told him. Those band room romances only last so long, and then there's imminent heartbreak and pretty soon someone's emptying their spit valve into your Pepsi when you go to get some more powdered donuts at snack time.

"I wasn't in band," he said for the third time.

And I don't normally admit I made out with boys who said they wanted to 'warm up' for trumpet/sax/something-blowy practice with my mouth, but that's what two and a half hours of sleep will do to you. It makes you admit to virtual strangers how geeky you really are, and then later - not much later, like, thirty minutes later - makes you seriously consider the benefits of sleeping pills. If not for your health, at least to help keep your street cred in check.

Oh Yeah, I'm Totally Doing It Again, But With A Helmet Next Time, And Maybe That Mesh Body Armor Knights Wear

Christmas time with my family is . . . there wasn't as much alcohol as there was last year so . . . this might be the fact that my present to myself this year was to have Jack in the Box seven days in a row, but things were a little nicer and a little weirder than usual.

I love my family. I really do. I really, really love them. I do (she says repeating it as a mantra, a reminder to herself that she does not want to go looking for her birth parents, but does in fact love when her grandma's house narrowly escapes catching on fire because the 70 degree day wasn't enough - the people wanted to start two fires at the same time; and she loves when her little brother decides to try and jump out of the car doing 50mph just to make Christmas eve interesting, and then because said brother is still trying to wildly jump out of the car and, I don't know, run around on the highway spreading the Christmas spirit (?) she and her sister spend the majority of the evening standing in the cold in nothing but flip flops and t-shirts, waving to the passerbys and shouting, "No, no, we're fine. That's our brother we've got locked in there. Merry Christmas!"; and she loves that her cousins got her noise stoppers for her bedroom door so that she can't hear when the dog pukes just outside her door as a little wake up present for her feet.) (Apparently she also loves talking about herself in third person.) (She's so obnoxious.)

Anyway, I love my family, but there are two times a year that I'm so overstimulated with the 20,000 people crammed into one room that by end of day three of this the familial joy and love fest has started to wear off and is slowly replaced with a deep urge to commit a major crime and then act out in the prison mess hall so I can get some solitary confinement.

So what do I do for some peace and quiet? I decide to go hurtling down the side of a mountain with my feet trapped into long, sliding things they call skis - I call sticks of terror - and nothing to hold onto except two long poles I discovered are really good at swatting away children you don't want to murder with your 90 mile an hour, six foot one, a hundred and blah blah body. You know how James Bond says his body is a weapon? Or maybe it's ninjas and not James Bond. Well, mine is too, except less in a sleek and sexy strong sort of way, and more in a flailing, awkward blinding sort of a way.

The woman teaching me to ski was soooo nice, and soooo patient with me, and repeatedly let me crash into her at the terrifying speed of 5 mph. That sounds pretty slow but 5mph in my head, and with my complete lack of control over my own limbs, can turn into 75mph and gliding treacherously like a flying squirrel with my jacket puffed up to the perfect sail-like size over the middle of a cavernous glacier headed toward my rocky death in about 2 seconds flat. In fact I narrowly escaped one such death in which I almost went off a cliff by making the graceful move of going crotch first into a tree, and probably would have impaled myself on a stomach-high branch if I hadn't tried to use one of my, uh, ski canes (?) as a weapon to attack the branch as I fell to my back and slid with my legs in a position I haven't used since prom night into the huge trunk of the pine tree. (If I get pregnant I hope they look like him.)

(Just kidding about the prom night thing, I'm pretty sure I just curled up in bed with Gige that night and let her boyfriend share the other bed with mine because they both passed out before we even made it to hot tub time - but did manage to wake up in time for Denny's the next morning, during which we ordered seventeen plates of Moons Over My Hammy and then stopped for Taco Bell about an hour after that. *sigh* I miss teenage metabolism.)

Anyway it was a really great experience - life danger or no. And I just kept telling myself that if these three year olds zooming past me could do it then I could at least try to go down again without wishing I had some sort of harness they use in plays to make people look like they're flying. Plus when I actually let myself get a little speed and found that I didn't immediately explode and die it was so much fun. Totally terrifying and awesome all at the same time, which I quickly realized is not unlike spending lots of quality time with my family. They are terrifyingly awesome - with the added bonus of not leaving me bruised and shaking from fear at the end of the day. You know, most of the time.

Job (dis)satisfaction

Recent phone call with Gabi. Because if you can't call your friends crying about how old they are getting, then they're not really your friends.

A: Hello?
G: Hi.
A: Who is this?
G: What do you mean who is this? It's Gabi. You've had caller ID for like 20 years.
A:You don't call me though, it's usually only texting. How do I know this is really Gabi?
G:You want me to prove it?
A:Gabi doesn't call me!
G: Fine. In High School you were once in Gige's Dad's house and right before your Mom came over you were-
A:-OK! Stop right there. I believe you.
G: Are you sure? Cause I just remembered something else about that day.
A: I'm sure. What if your man secretary hears you?
G: He'll probably want to meet you.
A: With the amount of snot that was involved he probably won't.
G: What?
A: What?
G: We're not talking about the same thing.
A: I think we are.
G: Ew.
A: This is why we only text.
G: Are you at work?
A: Yes. Are you?
G: Yes. I hate it here. It makes me . . . (**muffled sobs**) ... my life is like... and everything is speeding up. My boyfriend's getting older. And you. . . I mean you're gonna be thirty!
A: What?
G: Thirty. You're gonna be thirty, my boyfriend's gonna be older. . .
A: Oh, I heard you. How come you're not getting older?
G: I'm always gonna be younger than you.
A: Ok. (**shaking it off. she's upset.**) So, I'm gonna be thirty - I'm still your friend. We still have fun right?
G: We cry and eat.
A: Well, half of that is fun.
G: We don't even eat as much as we used to.
A: Speak for yourself. Plus, we don't cry as like a thing we do together for fun. It only happens when you're at work and you start conversations like this.
G: It's sucking out my soul.
A: Yeah, that's the fluorescent lighting.
G: I'm serious.
A: So am I! Those pipe lights are like that scary octopus lady from The Little Mermaid who sucks out the voice of Ariel; except they suck souls and make you look like you just threw up a few times and then washed your face with gifilte fish.
G: Pipe lights?
A: That's what you chose to focus on in that sentence?
G: Hang on. . . (**to her fancy walkie talkie**)Yeah whatever, arrest him, don't arrest him, I don't care.
A: Do you need to go arrest someone?
G: Nah, whatever he stole probably wasn't that big.
A: At least you take pride in what you do.
G: I can't arrest everyone who steals! I'd have to fire 90% of everyone who steps into the store, employees included.
A: Well, that might be a good way to get out of working there now wouldn't it? You can't come to work if everyone is in jail.
G: . . .
A: Gabi?
G: Interesting. . .
A: Better than my second idea. That one involves a small fire in the children's section, and a goat.
G: I could just arrest everyone . . .
A: And then your job would be finished.
G: Oh my gosh I'm so happy. How come I never thought of that?
A: Well, I am always older than you.
G: Thank god for that.

Happy Christmas Eve!

My favorite Christmas present so far:



The best part about this was that right after I got it I had to call my sister and say, "When did Chanukah start? Is it over? Do you spell it with a 'c' and one 'n'? Or a 'h' and three hundred 'k's?"

"It ended already, it started on the 11th."

"Wow super-jew, way to keep up with things."

"I do have a hebrew tattoo remember?"

"So does Posh Spice."

"Ok, it's pre-printed on my work calendar."

"Awesome."

"I am gonna make fried matzo on Christmas eve when Dad comes over to celebrate."

"There see, we've fulfilled out duty then. Maybe I'll see if he wants to play dreidel with us."

"Do you remember the rules?"

"No, but I figure if I just start shouting out all the Yiddish words I remember and throwing gelt at everyone it'll seem like we're doing it right."

"I'm in."

"L'chaim."

"Uh. . . that's a toast."

"Goyim."

"Amy. . ."

"Shiksa."

"Oh, Jesus. . ."

"Anne Frank."

"Too far."


So, we might not get to the dreidel or even be able to talk my Dad into putting on his yarmulke for the spirit of things, but there will be lots of fried crackers soaked in eggs (oh my gosh, don't judge it's surprisingly amazing) and my Dad will be playing every Christmas song on the planet for us on his guitar while we get drunk on non-kosher wine, and watch Babes in Toyland - the Annette Funicello version - and have to listen to my Dad tell us again how he used to have such a big crush on her. It's not Christmas until your Jewish father is singing Jingle Bells and blushing about a Mouseketeer, while your brother is making the bells strung on the tree play Silent Night at an insanely high decibel as some sort of horrible back-up to your dad's acoustic guitar, and you and your equally tone deaf sister get just tipsy enough to join in for the "harmony" but end up stopping your dad dead in his tracks to cover his ears in mock pain, and even your brother focuses on you long enough to sign, "Stop please", which you do because I mean c'mon - you've just offended the boy who thinks New Kids On The Block still kicks ass - that's gotta be some bad singing.

It Does A Body Good

I just found a note stuck in the middle of my important work papers that just says:

"is awesome form of nutrition. is breastmilk!"

I cannot for the life of me remember writing this, but I'm almost 100% sure I wrote it yesterday. (You know, due to the date written in the corner.) I'm pretty sure it was a basis for a discussion I was having in my head with Gige about breast feeding. I like to have discussions with her with myself first, playing both sides, because now that she's a mom she's super busy we don't have a lot of time to talk, so when we actually get voice contact I like to bring something up that I don't have to get a ten minute rambling start to*, I want to be prepared for all her logic and well thought-out-ness. It's sort of like how I get pumped up to get into an argument with my Mom but on a much lesser scale. My mom goes into an argument knowing she's right and never, NEVER, loses. Even if she's wrong she somehow spins it so she's right. She's like a politician trying to avoid a sex scandal, only most of the time she's avoiding acknowledging that it IS embarrassing that she wears a pillow case over one of her arms when she drives. A pillow case. Over her arm. WHAT. Who does that?

"I don't want to get a sunburn."

"You're in the car."

"The sun is still shining isn't it?"

"But you're just going to the grocery store, what is that - like a three minute drive?"

"I have very delicate skin."

"Mom, couldn't you just use sunscreen?"

"I don't want to be sticky just to go to the store."

"What about long sleeves?"

"I'm hot, and what about my hands? You want them to get skin cancer?"

"No, I-"

"Are you saying you'd rather I get melanoma than wear the pillow case to spare you some embarrassment?"

"Well, no, that's not what I mean-"

"I love you Amy. I would give you my pillow case if you needed it."

"You would?"

And then suddenly I'm deeply touched my Mom would give up her protection, I feel four and like she's just picked me up from Kindergarten and carried me all the way to the car because she knew I needed an extra long hug after the whole running out of milk money, and peeing a little bit on my shoes thing because the Kindergarten bathrooms are different from our home bathrooms and I got nervous and missed. And somehow I'm tearing up and telling her I love the pillow case idea, I really love it, and end up wearing the matching one to hers as we head to 7-11 for some Chocodiles and Dr. Peppers. She's sneaky. Very, very sneaky.

(*This is good in theory, but it never works. When we actually do talk I tend to hit sonic levels only dogs can hear because I'm so excited to hear from her, and by the time we're both calmed down from our giggling and best friend love pouring, it's time for her to pump or for me to eat so we have to hang up.)(Because me and four-month-old are on the same schedule.)

Anyway, what I meant to discuss with Gige yesterday before we got all caught up talking about firecracker pork, was the fact that she and her husband seem very set on denying the fact that they have ever, maybe even just on accident, tried her breast milk. Like not even a little drop that spilled out. I think I would totally lick that up. I mean, I eat food I drop in the street, that's gotta be worse for me right? Last time I asked the husband he looked at me like I'd just asked him if he tried his own poop. I did not ask that - poop eating is gross - milk though, milk is perfectly normal. Babies live off it for goodness sake! Like my note says, "is awesome form of nutrition. is breastmilk!"

I started to get all worried and embarrassed though (with myself, because Gige wasn't actually saying anything back to me - and even if she was, she would never make me feel bad about wanting to try her breast milk) (I mean. . .)(no she probably wouldn't make me feel bad about that either - but let the record show, I don't want to try her breast milk, I want her to try her breast milk.)

There's a whole world of people out there who are so relieved right now that she got stuck with the job of being one of my best friends and they didn't.

So, I'm feeling really weird about this, because it is weird a little bit, but I've never had a baby so I don't know. So, I do the logical thing and text my mom who's working her a off ten feet from me.

TXT: thanx 4 getting the irs to fax me that stuff ur the best. also, did you ever try your own breastmilk, like even just on accident?

And then I watch her from behind a potted plant while she reads it and I see her face go from amusement to slight disgust, and then she began rubbing her temples, which is a reaction to me she does a lot lately. But then she looked up and saw me peeking out from behind a fern where I was starting to giggle, because breaking my Mom's concentration is hard to do and making her giggle at the office is even harder, but she kept looking at me and her face started to break, and reluctantly, against her will, a huge smile broke out and she started shaking in silent giggles, and the fern started shaking wildly because I was laughing and holding on to it, and she calmed herself down enough to look up at me, nod slowly and mouth:

"Of course I have."

Of course she has. She wears pillow cases for goodness sake. And apparently now so do I.