Photos

I am still rocking the writer's block and nursing a deep-seated hatred of any time spent in front of a computer screen after the 40 hours I spend in front of one at work.  But I've been out and about and remembered my camera, so here are some recent pictures.

Feeding the new lambs on the in-laws' farm.  Ignore my double chin.


The mister competed in a mountain bike race and did fabulously right up until the bike broke.


You can't see where it broke because it was COVERED in mud.



My younger brother taking the mister's 30 year old moped for a spin.  He's single, ladies, and does his own laundry!


Artemesia in my garden.
 


The mister and I took a stroll at Minnehaha Creek.


We brought the dog.


We also brought him on a bike ride.




I learned to spin yarn on my new spinning wheel.  (I'm still learning.  I suck.)


And I knit.

Door-Knocking in Numbers

Times in the past two weeks I have been trapped in my kitchen because I wasn’t wearing pants and there were missionaries or political campaigners at the door: 3

(NB: the two escape routes from my kitchen involve going through the living room or the dining room, both of which are visible from the front door, thus requiring me to advertise that (1) I am home and avoiding the knock, and (2) I am pantsless.)

Number of pudding cups consumed while hiding in the kitchen in my underwear: 2

Times the door-knocker was so persistent I ended up yanking on a pair of the mister’s garage pants (thoughtfully left on the kitchen floor for me to deal with) to answer the door: 1

Times the door-knocker turned out to be a conservative Republican: 1

Times I told the door-knocker, snorting with laughter, “boy, did you pick the wrong house:” 1

My Greatest Skill is Denial

I go to the doctor. Every winter I get horribly dry skin on my hands. This year, it’s even worse and I look like I have the stigmata. I don’t, FYI.

The doctor thinks it’s eczema.

“It’s probably made worse by wool sensitivity. Do you wear wool mittens?”

I pause, thinking of how much wool I come into contact with on a daily basis.

“Um, I knit. Kind of a lot.”

“With wool?”

“Yes.”

“That might be your problem.”

“I don’t have a wool allergy. “

“What you really mean is: I don’t care if I have a wool allergy, I’m going to knit anyway, right?”

“Pretty much.”

(Turns out it’s probably not my knitting – she watched me knit and noted where the wool runs over my skin. The worst areas on my hand don’t actually come into contact with my knitting, so in this case, my denial was well placed.)

---

I’m knitting a wedding shawl for my friend Kate. It is, if I say so myself, beautiful. Buttery soft luscious Malabrigo lace-weight yarn, a floaty, delicate pattern that she chose out of an incredible book of designs, hours (upon hours) of work. It’s well on its way to stunning.

It also has an ink stain on it.

An uncapped pen came into contact with it and bled like a son-of-a-bitch. This happened about 2 hours ago. The shawl is 90% finished. If the ink doesn’t wash out, I will need to rip back about 45 rows (of 600+ stitches each) slice off the offending ink stained yarn, and start afresh. With 10 days left before her shower.
I’m going with it will wash out rather than the screaming, panicking and tearing around with tears in my eyes that I want to do.

---

I seem to be deluded about my ability to handle sleep deprivation as well. My new hours at work involve staying until 11:30 or midnight.

I get home by 12:30-ish, read for a little while to wind down, and get to sleep by 1:30. The mister’s alarm goes off at 6:30.

I’m an 8-9 hours of sleep a night kind of girl, but I keep thinking I can operate just fine of 5 hours of sleep.

WRONG.

I could carry groceries in the bags under my eyes. I’m bitchy, snappy, and irritable. After 6 months of greatly reducing my caffeine intake, I’m back up to 6 or 8 cups of coffee a day, most of them well after noon.
I keep thinking I’ll get so much done if I get up when the mister does. What really happens is that I get up, slouch my way to the couch and sit there, vegetable-like for several hours, maybe getting up to walk the dog or toss in a load of laundry, but mostly, sitting. Then the mister comes home for lunch, we eat, I slouch my way to the gym where I half-ass a workout. Then I slouch my way home, shower, and sit my ass on the couch for another hour before heading to work.

I’m trying a new thing this week. It’s called ignoring the mister’s alarm clock and sleeping for another couple of hours after he leaves. I’m going to follow this with getting up and actually moving around instead of laying on the couch reading trashy books and eating cereal straight out of the box.

Petty, Thy Name is Me.

I have unfriended people on Facebook and unfollowed people on Twitter for the following reasons:

• She posted daily updates on her hampsters. Wrong on every level.
• She was a Tupperware lady and every post dealt with Tupperware parties.
• He wrote in all caps all the time.
• She posted updates on her child’s bowel movements.
• He repeatedly referred to his car as a sports car. It’s a Ford Probe. He wasn’t being ironic or sarcarstic.

Random Observations

• My parents bought a Smart Car. It is essentially a rollerskate with an engine. It is tiny. And it shifts oddly. It has a manual transmission but you don’t have to manually change gears. I don’t understand. Anyway, it’s tiny and sort of go-cart-like, but it’s great for them, since my dad has a nearly 40 mile commute into work and this car gets about 45 miles to a gallon. Still, rollerskate.
  
• Today, faced with yet another gray, rainy day (seriously, there has been one sunny day in the entire month of October), I couldn’t stomach the idea of having cold, wet feet again. So I put on my Wellies. There are black with pink trim and multicolor polka-dots. MJ got them for me. I love them. But apparently other people have a hard time reconciling my late-20s lawyer persona with my goofy polka-dot rain boots. I got a lot of strange looks.
  
• My job entails working in a call center helping other lawyers with their research questions. It’s not difficult work and the days actually fly by since I’m so constantly busy. The call center takes calls from across the country (the world, actually, but I really only get calls from the U.S.). In my short time here I have learned that people from New York are really kind of rude. Well, they come off as rude to my Midwestern sensibilities, but, I guess they are really just more abrupt and less patient. And a couple of them have taken a little too much pleasure in rubbing in the Yankees win over the Twins. I told them all I was looking forward to watching the Yanks lose the Series.
  
• I also learned that I have the cutest little accent ever. I guess I sound like an extra from Fargo. And here I thought I was pretty accent neutral, other than my pronunciation of the word “bagel” which doesn’t come up all that often during research calls.
  
• I have to wear an ID badge at work, but today I’m wearing a sweater dress and I have nowhere to clip the thing unless I hang it from the hem of my dress, which would force my ID badge to dangle rather unbecomingly below my knees.
  
• I have what I call a zombie zit. It won’t die. It disappears for a little while, but it always comes back, bigger and badder. I was complaining about it to my mom, who goes, “Oh, well, not to worry you, but that’s how your dad’s skin cancer started.”
  Not to worry me?! My dad had basal cell carcinoma, which, if you have to have skin cancer, is the way to go, but they took a CHUNK out of his NOSE and it was CANCER. I’ve already had pieces of “questionable” skin dug out of my shoulders, some of which exhibited some pre-cancerous growth. I am not messing around.
  So I tried to get a dermatology appointment, but, haha, they’re booked through May. I got in to see a regular doctor, who looked at the zombie zit and wrote me two prescriptions to try to make it go away. When she found out about my dad’s skin cancer and my own issues, she gave me strict instructions to come back in 6 weeks if the zombie zit hasn’t gone away. So far, with just one day of the prescriptions, the zombie zit is looking a bit better.
  
• I got new glasses from zennioptical.com. They were $25, including shipping, anti-reflective coating, a case and a microfiber cleaning cloth. And I LOVE them. They are cute, nice and lightweight, and they fit well. I was worried that because I was buying glasses at 1/10 the price I’d pay for them in a store they would suck, but they are just as nice as the ones I’ve purchased at the optometrist’s office or glasses stores. The shipping was superfast, the customer service rep I talked to when I thought my order hadn’t gone through was very helpful, and the whole experience was awesome. Highly recommend it.
  
• I got an iphone. Or, more accurately, the mister bought one for me as a belated birthday gift. It is awesome.

It's the Little Things

It’s been awhile. I’d apologize, but I’ve been busy!

First, foremost, and most exciting, I got a job! It’s a 4-month temp job that should get me through the end of the year, with the potential to be extended or maybe (hopefully) go full time. It’s not precisely the kind of job I was hoping to get, more along the lines of pitching in the minor leagues than starting in the majors, but it is a JOB, with a paycheck and self-worth. I’ll take it and be glad for it!

Second, my little Neon, faithful as it was for the last six months, is going bye-bye. It needs some work, none of it cheap, and I don’t feel like dealing with it. So, I’m going to sell it. I picked up a used Jeep Cherokee that’s a vast improvement over the neon – it shifts into reverse and third without me muttering prayers from the driver’s seat.

Third, I got my hair done. I keep thinking my hair is either wet or greasy because it’s usually only this dark when it’s one of those two things, but I do like the darker color. More natural, less brassy.

Fourth, the mister has been wearing the socks I made for him. As the temperature dropped he dug them out of his dresser and started wearing them. He refers to them as his “real socks.” Darling man.

Yuck

In addition to my husband and brother, my house has seen a revolving population of men lately, with lots of friends stopping by to visit, help work on the mister’s Jeep or my brother’s car or hang out for movies and beer.

I have to keep stocking up on peanuts and beer, but it's fine.

But I’ve learned a lesson. Apparently peeing while standing up is a very arduous task, requiring more support than a man’s own two legs can provide.

I have made this deduction based on the proliferation of dirty, greasy handprints on the bathroom wall above the toilet.

Someone (obviously a man) is coming in from the garage, taking a leak, and leaning his dirty, grimy, garage-goo-coated hand against the wall while he does it, leaving smears and grease behind.

I have hung a note above the toilet. Do not lean a hand on this wall while you pee. If I have to scrub one more greasy handprint off this wall, I will kill you while you sleep. Also, please pee in the toilet, not on, around, or near. IN.

Men are gross. Or at least the ones that frequent my home.

Moog?

My younger brother moved into my basement. The mister and I pretty much run a bed and breakfast for various family members and friends out of that spare room and that’s fine. We’re glad the space is being used and happy to help out when we can. I mean, the next houseguest that plugs up our plumbing by flushing things that should not be flushed and costs us close to $700 in plumbing repairs is dead meat, but otherwise it’s fine.

Before my brother moved in, I was holding my own in the household battle of clutter. The mister and I are not tidy people by nature, preferring to put things down rather than put them away, but the house never got too terrible. (My friend Kate is all, “It did too get terrible, you pig, I had to sit on my hands every time I came over to keep from tidying up” and she’d be right, but she has a much lower tolerance for grossness than I do. It comes from having brothers.) I developed a system. When the house got to be too pig-sty like, I’d pick up and put away all my crap and I’d stuff all the mister’s crap into one of those Volkswagen sized Rubbermaid totes, set the tote by his side of the bed, and leave it for him to deal with. I’m pretty sure the he just rummaged through the tote until he found what he was looking for, used that item, and then set it back on the coffee table for me to scoop up again a couple of days later, but the system worked. Then I’d scrub, mop, wipe, and dust until the place at least smelled clean and the worst of the dust bunnies were vanquished.

Now, there’s another man in the house.

And you guys, I am losing the battle. My own tendencies towards untidiness, combined with the mister’s absent-mindedness and messy propensities were bad enough, but throw in my brother, and the house is a shithole. There are dirty socks piled by the door because all three of us like to take our socks off as soon as we come home. The mountain of shoes grows every day. The dishes are out of control. There are ALWAYS whiskers in the sink. I found a half-drunk beer next to the couch this morning (fallen soldier!), leftover from chili and the Twins game last night. My basement smells like boy. The dog is now dragging everyone’s underwear out of their laundry baskets and into the living room. Someone’s half-folded laundry (not mine) is on the coffee table, along with a toothbrush (also not mine). The TV remote is gone forever. There are magazines and books on every flat surface. There are now two Shop Vacs in the house.

And this is on my dining room table, on my pretty white lace tablecloth.



What the fuck is Moog, and why is there a greasy box of it in the house?

Boob Sweat

I spent much of the weekend digging in the patio from HELL in my backyard. Seriously, we haven't even gotten to the part where we put the pavers in the ground; we're still at the dig-up-sod-until-you-want-to-die part.

See, there used to be a giant maple at the end of our postage-stamp sized deck. When we bought the house there was only a stump left of the maple and the mister and I took care of that in our patented lazy-ass-homeowner way. We built a fire pit around the stump and burnt that sucker down over the course of a summer. Then, we tossed a layer of dirt over it, threw down some grass seed and called it done.

Now, years later, we cut up the mini-deck and are digging up sod for a patio. And all the roots from that maple? Well, they're messing me up. I'm doing most of the digging, but I REFUSE to use an ax to chop the roots (I'm accident prone), so I dig-dig-dig until the roots really get in the way, then I wait for the mister to chop the roots out so I can continue.

Anyway, I've been outside in the heat, the pouring rain, and the sun, digging in the yard and I am officially declaring boob sweat to be the most annoying of all feminine problems.

I'm mean, PMS sucks, and the way raging hormones can mess up my digestive tract is also no picnic, nor are high heels, pantyhose, underwires, bad hair, eyelash curlers, childbirth or the glass ceiling, but boob sweat? Yuck. The way the bottom of your sports bra gets all damp and then soaks your t-shirt so that it gets that weird line just under the bust, but no where else, the way you can actually feel the sweat pooling in your cleavage, and the way that if you shovel indiscriminately, a little bit of dirt can get in there, mix with the sweat, and create a mud puddle right there between the ladies? ANNOYING.

Confession

The mister and I recently switched garbage companies. My professed reason for the switch was cost savings. Really, though, I am lazy and was annoyed with how the other company used to just leave the cans in the middle of my driveway after they'd emptied them, forcing me to park my car along the curb, get out, walk the cans up to the house, walk back down to my car, get in, whip a U-ey, and pull into my driveway.

The new company is great about placing the cans neatly to one side of the driveway so I can still get my car up it. And, bonus! This week, I happened to forget it was garbage day until I heard the crash-bang of the truck coming down the street, and I ran outside with wet hair and my bathrobe, fresh from the shower, to drag my cans out. The garbage man met me and we joked about my forgetting the cans half the time. He smiled and said, "well, if I have time and notice you don't have them out, I can just run up there and get them for you."

Summer Memories

Sticky-sweet Kool-Aid as my brothers and I sat at our little orange and yellow plastic picnic table and had our afternoon snacks.

Getting grass stains, not just on my clothes, but on my skin.

Riding my bicycle on our newly paved road, so recently upgraded from dirt.

Riding around in the MG with my mom, top down and radio blasting Ain’t Going Down ‘til the Sun Comes Up.

The way our beagle would run along side our Big Wheels, holding onto a sock with her teeth, her head bobbing as we pedaled our way up and down the driveway.

Bike riding with Chris (who later became my sister in law) all the way to Ben Franklin for Airheads, then to Lake Marion for swimming.

Riding around with Chris’ brother (who later became my husband) on his moped, perched on his knees and squealing with laughter.

Eating home grown tomatoes like apples, just picking them, giving ‘em a rinse with the hose, and chowing down.

My neighbor’s mom banging a triangle on her porch when it was time for her kids to come home for dinner, the sound of it echoing up and down the valley.

Driving around with my brothers on the riding lawn mower and thinking we were so cool.

Going to work with my dad and riding his wheeled desk chair up and down the long aisles of the newsroom until I’d get tired pass out on the floor behind his desk until his shift was over.

Learning to drive a stick shift in the pink Geo Tracker, with the top down, on dusty country roads, grinding gears and whooping with joy when I managed to start in first without killing it.

Three-week-long road trips in the van, towing the pop-up camper, seeing corners of the country that linger in my memories.

Sprawling in the hammock with a book.

Chasing lightning bugs.

Stemming beans with my mom on the deck.

The scent of fresh cut alfalfa, sweet and strong.

Working at the country club, drinking as much free lemonade I could hold, dodging golf balls and dirty old men.

Twins games, with contraband Twizzlers and peanuts smuggled in Mom’s purse.

Rushing home in my boyfriend’s car, scrambling to make my 11:00 curfew, the heat of the day still coming off the pavement in waves .

Picking raspberries and eating two for every one that made it into my basket.

Random

I went shopping with a good friend on Friday. She’s one of those women whose style I have always admired; classic, elegant, put-together. Her clothes are always pretty, chic, and well made, and suit both her personality and her profession perfectly. What they don’t do is showcase her INCREDIBLE figure. I sort of forced her into trying on some clothes and putting on a fashion show for me, and she is rocking Jayne Mansfield-esque curves, with an impressive rack, teeny-tiny waist, and perfect hips. I have no reason for sharing this other than my awe at her hourglass shape.

My gym is trying to turn their information website into a social networking site and as a result, I cannot find the class schedule for my local gym anywhere on their messed-up website. I can find the LINK to the classes, but click on it all I want, no schedule appears. Newsflash, Lifetime Fitness, I don’t want to network socially with other gym members. In fact, I avoid doing it even when I am at the gym, thus the headphones, magazine and “fuck off” expression. I just want to find out what time Strictly Strength is.

The mister and I scored a bunch of free patio pavers. Bonus: my sister in law and her husband helped us load them in the truck. Bad news: I have to unload the truck by myself so the mister and I can go back up tonight and get some more. 200 square feet of patio pavers. Also known as an entire 7-foot pickup bed crammed full. Not fun for me.

I also need to cut the grass and work out (hello, weekend of potato salad, pies, and barbecued food, get off my ass), but I can’t seem to work up the energy to move.

After the success of my pink sweater, I’m working on another one using the same basic construction (top-down raglan) but this time it’s a green cardigan out of a heavier weight wool yarn. It’s going really quickly and so far I’m loving it. To think, I spent all the years avoiding knitting sweaters, thinking I hated it, when all I really had to do was use a different technique.

Pictures

He looks so disgruntled, doesn't he?




This used to belong to the mister's grandfather. I nearly killed myself tripping over it after the mister put it in the flower bed out front.






I'll stop drinking bottled water so long as I can do so with style.

Confession

I have used Aveda Shampure shampoo and conditioner for the last couple of years. Once I started buying the giant liter sized bottles, the mister started using it too, since there wasn't room in our tiny shower for my jumbo bottles of Aveda and his small bottle of head and shoulders.

It smelled nice, and I believed it was good for my hair.

A few weeks ago I ran out of conditioner and I just never got around to getting a new bottle of it. Unless we're in the middle of winter, with the super-dry air sapping moisture out of my hair, I only condition once or twice a week anyway because it weighs down my super-straight, very fine hair.

Last week we ran out of shampoo and I just couldn't bring myself to brave the holiday weekend crowds at the Mall of America (the mall closest to my home) to buy more, so I just went to Walgreens and bought a bottle on Pantene.

And my hair has never looked better! I'm using cheap shampoo and no conditioner, and my hair is full of volume and silky smooth. I think I might give up my Aveda habit. At least for shampoo.

A list of things that are annoying me today

Mouth noises. Chewing, slurping, gum-snapping, they all irritate the shit out of me. The dog licks things and sound of it makes me crazy. The mister will get something stuck in his teeth and rather than flossing it out, he sucks at his teeth and the noise makes me want to staple his tongue to his forehead.

The mess in my house. The mister has the entire garage, yet his crap has slowly migrated inside and is taking over the house. My office (MINE) is currently housing car parts, a shop vac, and an entire giant box full of junk. The basement has been overtaken by cabinets and shelves all housing his stuff. I have no space of my own, no place that isn’t being invaded by his belongings.

Hemp yarn. I’m knitting a little summer sweater out of a hemp/linen blend and I’m having a terrible time. The yarn is gorgeous, but weaving in ends is impossible and the yarn itself has no stretchiness, so it’s making my hands ache. If I didn’t want this sweater so badly, I’d give up.

My neighbor and his leaf-blower. At 6:30 in the morning. Blowing leaves and yard detritus into my garden.

Watering the garden and grass. Just rain already!

The fact that my mail doesn’t come until 6:00 at night, because I ordered some prints from our Utah trip and I want to hang them up.

Bathrooms that don’t have tampon dispensers.

The small yappy dog that lives behind us. He just sits at the fence and yaps and barks all day long until I think I might throw a piece of salami with a Tylenol PM rolled up inside of it over the fence.

Not being able to find a job. I got four rejection letters in one day last week. That’s depressing.

The fact that Principal Financial is holding my cash hostage and will not release it (that's a long, ugly story but the short of it is that I will NEVER voluntarily invest with them again).

Question

Is there any woman that can watch the scene in the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice where Mr. Darcy comes striding across a field at dawn to declare his love without sighing and wishing, however briefly, that that was her life?

Pride and Prejudice - Last Scene

Paying it Forward

Today, after I dropped my dog off at the groomer, I was headed up to Minneapolis to pick up a check for car repairs when I passed a car on the shoulder.

(About my car getting hit - I was parked at a curb while MJ came down from her office to go to lunch and this guy parallel parked himself right into my driver's side door. Now, I'm a bad parallel parker but even I have never been 5 feet off my mark. Rather than go through the rigmarole of filing an insurance claim, the guy offered to just cut me a check for the repairs.)

The flashers were on and the back tire was totally flat. I pulled over to help. Lord knows that could have been me, stranded and needing help, and she was standing there on her cellphone, distress signals coming off her in waves. I couldn’t drive past her. It takes me about 10 minutes to change a tire, having done it MANY TIMES on many different cars, including twice in one week on the same car. I figured I could have her back on the road in no time.

After we shoveled aside the HUGE pile of crap in her trunk (note to self, clean out your trunk in the event some stranger might have to go through it), I discovered that her spare was flat.

Shit. My good deed for the day just got a lot more complicated. I jacked up her car, pulled off the original flat, loaded it into the trunk of my little car and drove it and her to a tire place to have a new tire put on.

Half an hour later, I drove her back to her car, helped her put the new tire back on, and sent her on her way.

Get this – she was a stripper on her way to her afternoon shift. She was incredibly sweet, very grateful for my help, and eager to buy me lunch or pay me for my time.

I waved her off. I need an infusion of good karma and I couldn’t stomach the idea of taking money from a young woman that had just spent the last half hour gushing about how adorable her nine month old baby is.

But this means there will be a lesson posted very soon about how to change a tire.

For now, I want you to go out to your car and check your spare. Make sure it has air in it! If not, go straight to a gas station and fill it up, please. The Good Samaritan who stops to help you change a flat will be grateful.

Hey, at least I used my blinker

So, today I was out and about, hitting the grocery store and the bookstore to pick up the new Wendy Johnson book, and running a bunch of other errands. I was coming home (headed north on 35W, a couple of miles south of the river, for those of you MN people that care), singing along with Rihanna (please don’t stop the music, DJ, let it play). I was in the right lane following one of those massive SUVs that you can’t see over, under or around, but I left plenty of following room and was just enjoying the breeze through my window.

Suddenly the massive SUV nailed its brakes (we’re talking squealing tires and fishtailing) and skidded into the middle lane. And the moment that thing was out of my line of sight, I understood why. Some jackass had gotten on the interstate going the WRONG DIRECTION. I was just a few feet from the exit ramp, which the moron had just finished accelerating up, apparently thinking it was the entrance ramp. It was a massive Ford pickup (much like the one the mister drives) towing a Bobcat on a trailer. And he was coming at me.

I stomped on my brake pedal and yanked my car hard to the left, pulling into the next lane. I would like to point out that I used my blinker, though I might have hit it when I was already most of the way into the middle lane. I didn’t hear any horn honking or squealing tires (other than my own and, perhaps, some from the jackass in the truck), so I’m assuming I didn’t cut anyone off or cause any sort of accident.

I called 911 and the rest of my ride home passed without further incident, except for my shaking hands and the nausea roiling in my gut.

I'm looking at this as maybe the end of my string of bad luck. Sure, it was almost a horrific accident, but only almost. And if I had been driving that big Monte Carlo, I would have had a much harder time hitting the brakes and maneuvering it as well as I did the little purple car and it might not have ended as well as it did.

Teacups

Several months ago I was suffering from the worst case of insomnia I’ve ever experienced. Considering I was a very good sleeper before that, that’s not saying much, but I was exhausted. Stressed about my home life, with the mister off at school several nights a week and his own workload mounting, my responsibilities at home were growing, worried about finances, pushed to the breaking point at work, I couldn’t sleep. I’d rest my head on my pillow and close my eyes, but my mind would just whir uncontrollably.

Several weeks of crappy sleep made me moody, to put it mildly. To be more accurate, I vacillated between bouts of weeping and homicidal rage. It was fun for everyone around me.

So, I went and saw someone about the not sleeping. A short course of a sleep aid later I still wasn’t sleeping straight through the night, but I was at least getting 5 or 6 solid hours of sleep, a vast improvement.

Oddly enough, just a couple of days after getting laid off, I woke from the most refreshing 13 hours of sleep I’d ever gotten and I’ve slept well nearly every night since, despite my difficulty in finding a new job. Guess I know where most of my stress was coming from….

Anyway (I do have a talent for digression), in my meeting with the doctor before I got the prescription sleep aid that conked me out, we discussed my caffeine intake, which was impressive.

I’d start my morning with coffee at home. Then, coffee at work (either from Starbucks or the office machine). By the time lunch rolled around, I’d had about 6 cups of coffee. Then, at lunch, I’d have a Diet Coke.

I’d have another cup of coffee or a Diet Coke around 2:00, and, if the mister and I went out for dinner (which we did a lot because who had time to cook?) I’d have another Diet Coke or two.

When the doctor heard me reciting this list of caffeine, she goggled, a little bit surprised that I managed to sleep at all.

So, I began weaning myself away from the juice.

First, only one cup of coffee before leaving my house, instead of 2. Then, only two cups of coffee at the office before noon. A Diet Coke with lunch. No caffeine after 2:00 in the afternoon. Then, we bumped the after 2:00 cutoff to noon. Then, I started switching my two cups of office coffee for hot tea, which has significantly less caffeine.
I actually really like hot tea. I drank it pretty regularly at home on weekends or when I had the time to make a nice pot of it and sit and enjoy it, but found fussing with tea bags kind of annoying at work, since I had to stand around in the kitchen for 5 minutes and wait for the tea to steep, while it only took a few seconds to pour coffee into a mug and slink back into my office.

Then I realized that, oh, yeah, I hate my job, so 5 minutes in the kitchen is five minutes closer to quitting time, so making tea was kind of fun.

Then I got laid off and basically stopped drinking coffee altogether, along with Diet Coke. I’ll have a cup of coffee if the mister makes a pot, or I’ll have a Diet Coke if I’m out for lunch or dinner, but mostly I drink water, milk, and tea.

A couple of weekends ago, KVE and I went antiquing in Hopkins. I went with the hopes of finding some vintage embroidered linens and a decent dining room table (I hate mine, but that’s a story for another day). I scored a very pretty embroidered tablecloth. Prompted by a very pretty blue-flowered teacup and saucer, I also decided on the spot to begin collecting teacups.

I might as well drink my tea out of something pretty instead of one of the big, clunky ceramic mugs the mister uses for coffee.

A Public Service Announcement for Women

Warning: this post involves my hoohaa. And hair removal. If this isn’t your idea of interesting, move on.

So, boredom is my worst enemy. I tend to get into trouble when I’m bored. I tend to look for trouble when I’m bored.

This time, I decided on waxing. Of the Brazilian variety. Go big or go home, after all.

When I mentioned this to a couple of friends, they were all ears. We all deal with trying to keep that area…tidy, and we all hate shaving and the resultant razor burn and ingrown hairs. Apparently every woman I know has toyed with the idea of waxing, but lacked the courage or motivation to go forward with it.

So, I did it.

And as a public service to women like me and my friends, I’ll let you in on my experience.

I got to the salon, checked in, and perused the latest issue of People.

My waxer called me back and ushered me into a private room with a table in it like a dentist’s chair, fully reclined.

She instructed me to undress from the waist down, hop up on the table, and cover up my bottom half with a little paper blankie.

She whisked the blankie away when she got back into the room and got down to business. Half an hour later, done!

Things to know:

Yes, it hurts. Most of it is completely tolerable. A deep breath and you’re over it. Only two strips were more painful than that; the two right between my legs. Yeeearch. Those stung.

A full Brazilian wax includes getting your heinie waxed. This does not hurt at all, shockingly.

There are some very embarrassing and compromising positions involved in a Brazilian wax. Holding your own legs and crouching on all fours come to mind.

You will sweat. Profusely. Something about the pain triggers your adrenal glands, which triggers your sweat glands, apparently. The little butcher-paper liner on the table was damp with sweat and stuck rather unbecomingly to my legs when I moved. For those of you with tattoos, this is the same reaction I had when I was about 20 minutes into my tattoo.

The waxer is not surprised by anything. She does this for a living and sees all sort of stuff, so your embarrassment at sweating and/or crouching on all fours with your ass in the air is totally wasted on her.

I had a small amount of swelling and inflammation, but FAR less than I get when I have my eyebrows waxed.

All in all, not bad. And if I manage to avoid ingrown hairs, I think I’ll prefer it to shaving.

Where I went: Bare.