what I've been up to

and why I'm not gonna be around much this next week.

This is the week.  D-Day, so to speak.  The week to end all weeks.   And it's not even the week of Christmas!  We've got a birthday, a car to buy, the arrival (hopefully!!!!!) of our precious belongings, a Christmas market where I hope to sell some stuff, and the ever so anticipated Christmas party at church.  

Let me tell ya, I feel like Mrs. Claus right now.  

While the elves have been painting all the choo-choo trains, I've been busy wrapping gifts for the party and teaching myself how to use my new scanner to make cards for the market.  Our little apartment looks like a Christmas wasteland right now, but honestly, I don't think I'd have it any other way. 

you're all heartless.

I think I've discussed my overactive ovaries before. In fact, I'm positive I have. Like this time. Well, they've been bad again...really bad. There are too many darling toddlers waddling around the children's section of the library every day to do me any good. (Think five year-old Indian girl, big almond eyes, looking for books on the Tooth Fairy because she just lost two teeths. Yes, teeths.)

My gallivanting in the library aside, I have a bone to pick with you, my dear friends. Yes, you. You know who are.

There are at least six of you out there right now pregnant. Rude. Rude, I say! Do you not know how happy this makes me and how desperately it makes me want to procreate?!

You just can't keep producing darling surrogate nieces and nephews for me to love and coddle and expect me to stay sane. I love you all, and couldn't be more delighted with the additions to the family, but you're heartless. My ovaries just needed you to know that.

reason number 472 why I can't bring myself to cheer for OSU

Scene: Ohio State versus Bowling Green hockey game at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio. By the middle of the second period, the score stands three to two, OSU in the lead. The game is getting more heated, tension is building. One lowly Michigan fan sits in the stands considering whether she she should cheer for OSU or not, since Bowling Green really doesn't matter, when...

Announcer: One minute left in the second period-
Entire crowd (sans one lowly Michigan fan): AND MICHIGAN STILL SUCKS!!


I rest my case.

the droids are coming to get me!

Technology freaks me out. I'm addicted to it just like any other member of my generation. But it's getting too smart for its own good.

I just received an email from my mum in which she mentioned a dinner she is hosting this week. Off to the side, my email carrier asked me if I wanted to add this dinner to my calendar. My email should not be so interested in my social life...

why I always have a tissue on hand

In the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle, there's a scene where Rita Wilson sits at a table with Victor Garber and Tom Hanks. She recounts the closing moments of the film An Affair to Remember. This part has always been particularly amusing to me as she begins weeping as she explains how the story pans out. Her voice gets squeaky and incomprehensible. This sort of reaction is something I never fully understood, so I found it humorous. Until recently that is.

I'm turning into one of those women who cries over Hallmark commercials. No joke. Lately, all it takes is a bit of news on the radio to set me off and I start crying. Sometimes it's just a delicate drop. But then, then there are my Rita Wilson moments when I full-on get emotionally involved in something for no good reason at all. Tears. Big. Fatty. Gushing-down-my-cheeks sort of tears.

What am I reacting to? The other day I began weeping over the new standards for mammograms as issued by an independent agency last week. Pushing the base age for mammograms to fifty was apparently a travesty in my life, because I all out wept while listening to the NPR report. Then there are songs like this, which make me weep no matter how many times I listen to them.

Sundays tend to be brutal for me. If I am somehow able to catch Music and the Spoken Word, the chance that I'll make it through the day without tears disintegrates into a pile of nothingness. Today I made it through my dad, the Tall Guy, being asked to speak in church on the spur of the moment. He offered his humble testimony of his knowledge of the life of Jesus Christ. I only made it through that without tears because, well, I didn't look at him through the whole thing. I just couldn't do it. Follow this up with several amazing lessons, stimulating conversation, a couple cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies, and this, and I've been crying off and on most of the day. What the heck?

dr. freud, party of two

"We have so many issues we make Time Magazine jealous."

we need forty CCs stat!

Pack. Work. Play. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Please note, sleep was not mentioned in there. Nowhere. That's because sleep is becoming a scarce commodity in my existence. Incredibly hard to come by and even more difficult to get to stick around. The cause of this malady can most likely be attributed to excessive indulgences in the realm of fun and frivolity.

The only known cure to date is an equally excessive dosage of Coke. I was an addict to begin with, but I am past the point of seeking aid. Coke is a sweet blessing from the Soft Drink Gods, fueling my very being, making it even remotely possible for me to get to work in the mornings. I still haven't found a cure for my non-existent productivity levels though...

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Have you ever seen those Windex commercials, where the window ends up so mysteriously clean that ignorant animals-and sometimes humans-end up running headlong into the crystalline glass?  Well, I am by no means the best housekeeper in the world, but a few weeks ago, I did undergo the painstaking process of washing the sliding window coming off of our dining room.   The results were nothing near the Windex commercial, thanks to unknown years of built up dirt.  But I was more than satisfied with the ample amounts of sunlight that were freely flowing into my little home.

Then yesterday happened.  During a sudden spurt of home improvement genius, my roommates and I have taken it upon ourselves to paint the main floor of our townhouse.  While taping off cabinets after work, my roommate asked if I had seen the crazy bird that kept flying into the window.  I had not.  But I looked the windows I had scrubbed meticulously, only to find bird goo splattered everywhere.  I am still wondering what was up with this bird that it left so much residue on my window.  Never mind, I don't want to know.

Later in the evening, I returned home to an empty house.  I walked toward the bird splattered window to gaze out at a lovely desert sunset over the valley only to discover a rather peculiar looking bird sitting on the balcony railing staring back at me.  Less than a minute later, the bird was attacking the window!  Unlike the hilarious Windex commercials, where the animals hit the glass and fall backwards in a moronic stupor, this bird just kept trying to fly through the window.  He scaled up and down trying to get to the table of misplaced artwork on the other side.

All I can figure is this; the bird is nuts.  Certifiably nuts.  He was the village idiot, got kicked out, and is now wreaking havoc on my at-one-time-clean window. That or he is aware of the mockery my housekeeping skills really are and is mocking me.  Personally, I think it's more of the former than anything else.  That or he has the Swine Flu.