Feb
20
Shortcuts
Filed Under Uncategorized | 31 Comments
February 20, 2007
This is probably a horrible thing for me to confess, but I am disappointed by the latest news on Britney Spears, because I was really looking forward to hearing about her next bizarre public behavior. Where else would she vomit? What other body part would she tattoo? What else, for the love of god, would she shave?
Also, I can’t help wondering why some celebrities choose to make their downward spiral so easily photographed. Why isn’t this girl back at her mansion swilling Everclear directly out of the bottle and making the instantly-regrettable decision to buzzcut her head (”Shmaybe I’ll look like Demish SHMOORE”) in the privacy of her own home? Did she really want everyone on earth to see full-color images of her lumpy, plucked-chicken bald head and glazed expression? Britney, did your vagina teach you nothing?
Okay! I can’t believe I just typed that. Moving on . . .
I noticed something this morning as I was driving to work, stuck behind a ridiculously slow-moving car on the 520 onramp and angrily brandishing my middle finger in protest while not-quite-tailgating them: my car has made me kind of an asshole driver. The Touareg wants to be driven fast, and if some jackoff is in the way, the Touareg wants me to shoot them the double-eagle-salute and aggressively encroach on their tailpipe. It’s kind of a Christine thing.
Truly, though, the traffic around here is enough to make anyone go slowly insane and eventually start killing people with their demonic, sentient car. I sat in three different areas of standstill traffic this morning during my nearly 40-minute drive, and it wasn’t even rush hour. If Workplace really ends up moving to Magnolia (this now seems up in the air, and I’m rudely hoping the deal falls through altogether) I don’t quite know what I’ll do. We wouldn’t move—JB’s office is near our house, among other reasons—and I wouldn’t want to quit, but I also don’t want my commute to take up multiple hours out of my day. This is a situation I’m hoping magically resolves itself via some unforeseen deus ex machina, because I have no other solution.
Speaking of not moving, we are tentatively planning a second remodel on the house. The previous work expanded a bedroom and bathroom and added a garage, this would expand our kitchen and add a living room/office space. If you’re into floor plans, here’s a look (click to embiggen):
(The new area is the dark outlined section on the bottom left.)
It’s kind of . . . well, batshit insane is one phrase that comes to mind, to be doing another remodel, but at least in our neighborhood it appears to be a Savvy Investment Activity, if you can live through it without murdering each other, which, since this one involves the kitchen, may be the caveat that kills us. So to speak.
To recap, then, I may have both a heinous commute and a torn-apart house to look forward to this summer. Why, it’s enough to make a girl want to shave her head! Instead, we’ve shaved the boy. I’d post a photo, but he does have kind of a plucked-chicken look to him. Maybe he deserves some privacy.
Nah. Behold!
Have you seen my hair? It was just on my head, I swear to God.
Feb
19
Returned to sender
Filed Under Uncategorized | 55 Comments
February 19, 2007
One of these days I’m going to pay for a housekeeper to come in while we’re out of town and clean the house from top to bottom, then turn on the heat a few hours before we’re due to arrive—and maybe have a crockpot simmering, too. That would be a nice change of pace from what we always come home to: a chilly, dog-hair-coated mess, with the inevitable disturbing aroma wafting from the fridge and the breakfast dishes growing mold in the sink.
Sure, I could try and clean before we leave, but preparing a thousand travel-friendly meals for Riley to methodically reject one by one keeps me pretty busy, you know?
Even though we returned to the predictable domestic disaster (hey, guess who left a load of wet laundry to fester all weekend long? High five!), it was worth it to have our little getaway. We had a great time in Bend, helped in part by the presence of JB’s parents, who were staying in town with a friend and were happy to hang out with their grandchild on several occasions so JB and I could run off and engage in hot, adults-only activities, such as eating in a restaurant without a kid’s menu.
I really think Bend would be a great place to live. If JB’s workplace had an office there—oh, man. We’d be there in a heartbeat. I love that whole area, especially the smell, that high country pine/sagebrush that envelopes you whenever you step outside. There’s so much new housing and yet all those planned communities look fantastic, not cookie-cutter ugly, but house after house of faux-Craftsman-style designs that remind you of ski lodges. And every damn corner of town has a knockout view of the mountains.
Maybe if we are really lucky we can invest in a vacation home there someday. It’s a long drive, yeah, but Bend’s got it all: skiing, hiking, camping, fishing, snow in the winters, hot sun in the summers, the High Desert museum (hello, PORCUPINE exhibit!).
Speaking of the drive, to my unending surprise it wasn’t that bad. I had a bottle of gum-flavored Benadryl at the ready (with some half-formed, hazy notion of squirting it at Riley from my position in the passenger seat, sending a sticky arch of fluid through the air until it magically landed in his mouth, instantly sedating him) but as long as I remained Johnny-on-the-spot with a series of distractions (at one point I produced a metal whisk I’d squirreled away in the bag of toys, and it was received with great pleasure, because it was a UTENSIL, one he’d NEVER SEEN, HOLY SHIT, and I bragged for maybe 30 miles about how I was such a fucking genius for packing a whisk, talk about thinking outside the box, plus, if we needed to? We could totally make whipped cream!) things stayed fairly non-screamy. I’m not ready to test my toddler-entertainment skills on, I don’t know, a 9-hour JetBlue tarmac delay or something, but we did pretty well this time around.
Photos!
Looking out the car window on Highway 97.
Riley chilling with some of the many, many toys we brought. Also, I can tell by looking at this he was about to say “BA!”.
Go team DORK!
Just one of the bazillion eye-poppingly gorgeous mountain views.
The boys thumbing through that barn-burner, Maisy Drives the Bus.
On a short hike near the Deschutes river.
Drake park.
The view from our condo.
Driving home over the pass—this was the most snow we saw all weekend. Bend was nearly 70 degrees on Saturday.
A few words about this photo: I did not actually consume that giant porkout piece of chocolate cake by myself (that’s half of a cake, which was presented to me along with a whole pie, for murky reasons I didn’t quite understand), and that’s not really a male stripper hired to gyrate in front of me while I died of embarrassment (it’s JB’s brother, who came by for a while on Saturday to wish me a happy birthday. While gyrating).
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