December 18, 2007 | Health is overrated, Job? Huh?

Today I am busy bemoaning the fact that I am sick (it was just a little cold until I wrote about it yesterday, at which point the fickle hand of fate gave me a mighty FLICK towards it being something much stronger and yuckier), and this morning after I got the kids off to school I sat down to work. And after about ten minutes, our internet went out. I am tired and cranky and hopped up on Sudafed, so I did the only logical thing: I whined until Otto said he’d take care of it.

He poked and prodded in our office, and then decided that it was indeed the cable company’s fault, nothing we’d done or any sort of hardware problem here. So he called them up.

I listened as he grew more and more aggravated, wading through their various menus. (more…)

December 17, 2007 | What do I do all day?, Ottomatic For the People

Did I mention that I have a cold? Because I do. I think I’m dying. It is very sad.

I will miss me.

(Do you hear them? In the background? Those are teeny tiny violins, playing beautiful music in honor of my sore throat and reversion to 5-year-old maturity level when my nose is stuffy.)

Oh, FINE. I suppose I’m PROBABLY not actually dying. In fact, I’m that sort of really unsatisfying sick where you just feel crummy and gross, but deep in your mucous-covered heart you know that without a fever or whatever you really just have a cold and should suck it up.

Of course, I’m sick because I have a million things to do this week. (more…)

December 15, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Haven't been hit by lightning yet!

A few days ago Chickadee kept saying GORGONZOLA over and over, until Monkey started doing it, too, and before long they were both in the kitchen, bouncing up and down, chanting “GOR-GON-ZO-LA! GOR-GON-ZO-LA!”

“Why are you doing that?” I asked. (Because I am foolish and expect my children to make sense, even though nearly ten years of experience has never borne out this hypothesis in the slightest.)

“I don’t know,” Chickie replied. “It’s just fun to say. GOR-GON-ZO-LA!”

“GOR-GON-ZO-LA!” Monkey added, for good measure.

“Do you even know what gorgonzola is?” I pressed.

“Yes,” retorted Chickadee, full of indignation. (more…)

December 14, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Health is overrated

A few years ago I was getting new glasses for Chickadee—whose ocular health I attend to with a smothering level of unwavering attention, owing to the pediatric ophthalmologist who saw her when she was a wee tot and assured me that it was good we were there, otherwise she MIGHT HAVE GONE BLIND in that one wonky eye of hers—and it occurred to me that MY glasses were sort of old. So I browsed around and found some frames I liked and when the optician asked if I had a current prescription I said—because my health is important, y’all—”Well, I can see okay out of these ones I’m wearing now. Can you get the prescription off of them?” And he did.

As a result, I am walking around in a prescription that is around six years old. I don’t want to get all technical on you, but in optical parlance that’s considered IDIOTIC, and so it came as a surprise to no one except me when I started having a lot of trouble seeing these last few months. But after endless weeks of squinting at the computer screen and daily headaches, I ran right out to see the eye doctor. (more…)

December 13, 2007 | Retail Therapy, Haven't been hit by lightning yet!

I am sincerely afraid to open my Discover bill this month. Oh, it’s true that I never spend much on anything. But a little here, a little there… it adds up, particularly when getting ready for Christmas. And a 1,000 mile car trip with two kids. And when finding such awesome deals at Amazon that I cannot possibly let them pass by.

At this point I am pretty sure that my UPS man curses my name every time he pulls up at my house. (But, hey, it’s not MY fault that when you order a tub of Legos from Amazon, they send each brick individually, for a total of 750 boxes on the doorstep.)

This is, of course, why the bathroom pipes staged a coup; because it’s a truism that you never find yourself in the middle of an unexpected home repair when you have some extra money lying around. It’s as if the appliances sense that you’re low on cash, and suddenly BOOM! everything breaks. I have been stopping on every trip through the kitchen to whisper sweet nothings to the washer and dryer, so great is my fear at this point. (more…)

December 12, 2007 | Health is overrated

So, in the last post, there, someone left a comment that said something along the lines of “GEEZ, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TELL US WHAT HAPPENED WITH YOUR ULTRASOUND?” And I felt all warm and fuzzy, because I realized that you truly care. Or at least that I’ve reached my goal of being so completely inappropriate and shameless that now when I don’t regularly update you on my boobs, you start to worry.

(My breasteses; let me show you them.)

I actually forgot to write about it because the whole thing was so anti-climactic, and also because I have been busy, you know, with things other than my mammaries. I have been, um, curing world hunger! And educating the downtrodden! And looking at faucets! And buying stuff at Amazon! (more…)

December 11, 2007 | Ottomatic For the People

Last night as Otto and I lay in bed talking, I knew today would be a special day. What I did NOT know, at that point, was that it would start with me finding a small waterfall underneath my sink. That was… rather more special than I had anticipated. (And by “more special” I mean “especially sucktastic.”) Nevertheless, that faucet has leaked (the actual faucet part, not the pipes) ever since we moved in, and I have been ignoring it, and I guess at some point last night it just snapped and went all Glenn Close on me (”I’m not going to be IGNORED, MIR!”) and this is what I deserve.

Yes. I deserve soggy spare toiletry items under the sink, because I am cold and unfeeling and all of that.

Anyway, that’s not actually what I wanted to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you—and let’s just pause for a second here, while I put on my most blissful, sappy face—is that Otto and I have been married for seven months today! (more…)

December 10, 2007 | What do I do all day?, It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

Woo! My weekend simply flew by, because that is what happens when you have an active social schedule the way that I do. It’s not easy being a socialite, but somehow I manage it.

Come to think of it, I suspect this weekend was a year’s worth of weekend excitement, owing to the fact that most of the time I consider it a busy weekend if I get up off the couch long enough to look for more snacks.

Anyway, I bid farewell to my usual level of sloth these last few days and was VERY BUSY and as a result, I now need a weekend to recover from my weekend. Um. Hmmm. Seems like this could be a problem, what with it being Monday and all. Oops.

I shall bravely soldier on, stopping only to nibble on leftovers in the fridge! Because I am a trooper that way! (more…)

December 9, 2007 | Haven't been hit by lightning yet!

I am home just briefly inbetween church services—this is the morning the choir is doing our cantata at church, and in addition to the service for which we usually sing (the NORMAL PEOPLE service), I had to go sing at the early service (the BUTTCRACK OF DAWN service).

Part of my problem really embracing this church has been that I am terribly homesick for the choir I sang in at my old church, for various reasons. I had thought it was mostly because I miss my friends, but there’s more to it than that.

Like today, for instance. We’ve performed the cantata once and we’re about to go do it again… and I have to say, I think that with a month or two more of rehearsal, we’ll really have that puppy nailed.

Yeah. (”Dear Jesus, Sorry for making your birthday tuneless. We tried. Love, The Choir.”)

December 7, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

I joke about how I work in my pajamas all the time, but actually it’s not a joke. I’m a sloth. Sorry. Also, I have very comfortable pajamas.

So this morning I sent the kids and Otto on their merry way, and sat down (in my jammies) to start working, and I was about a paragraph into my first project of the day when KABLAM! something, um, blew up outside. And everything in my house turned off! And the answering machine started clicking and beeping, which Otto tells me in device parlance means MY! BACKUP! BATTERIES! ARE! DYING!

I am not an electrical expert, or anything, but it seemed bad.

After calling Otto (because he promised to love, honor, and FIX EVERYTHING), I called the power company. And they said, “Ayup. Something happened over there. We’re not sure what, yet.” And given the GOBS OF CONFIDENCE that instilled in me, I immediately hopped in my car and drove to my nearest coffee shop. (more…)