Feb
27
February 27, 2007
Pardon the post title, we’ve been making our way through Season 3 of Arrested Development lately and I have this need to randomly blurt quotes from the show. Musty old clap-trap, ha ha ha ha HAAAAA.
Thanks in part to your encouraging comments I called and made an appointment for the owner of a cleaning service to come by and “evaluate” our house tomorrow. I imagine I will clean up a bit before she arrives, because that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Cleaning before the person comes by to see how much cleaning they’ll need to do? Anyway, she seemed very pleasant and professional on the phone and her business got very high marks on Angie’s List, so hopefully it will all work out nicely. Unless, of course, she enters our house and immediately screams, “My god, you people are animals! ANIMALS!”, then takes off running, her sensible heels clattering along the driveway and a wisp of dog hair blown along in her wake.
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Here’s a short iMovie video of some random Riley clips we’ve taken over the last couple weeks (pardon the cross-post if you already saw this elsewhere). I cannot believe how big he’s getting. I mean, this was just, like, four months ago!
(Music: “Helicopters”, M. Ward.)
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Hey, remember that diet I was on? Well, that whole thing sort of went to hell. There was birthday cake and some damn-the-diet restaurant outings and a whole weekend of we’re-on-vacation excuses and, ugh.
I realize that while it’s sometimes interesting or inspirational to hear about someone’s diet success, it’s beyond boring to hear about their failure, but I felt duty-bound to confess my lack of progress on this front (plus, this isn’t exactly the Bob Loblaw Law Blog, ha ha HAAAAAA!). Just in case anyone mistakenly thought I had dropped those extra fifteen pounds. Because: no. They are still there, the fifteen pounds. In fact, they may have invited some friends over, which, frankly, I thought was quite rude.
Dimpled asses: cute on toddlers, not so much on 33-year-old women.
So! What next. It seems I need something more structured than a general vague promise to eat better. I’m leaning towards Weight Watchers, since I like their sane eating plans and their obsessive little online tools, but do any of you have any recommendations for (non-crazy, ie forget juice fasting and the like) diet plans that worked for you?
Feb
26
Unclean! Unclean!
Filed Under Uncategorized | 40 Comments
February 26, 2007
When we lost power in the December wind storm (the storm for which there was a naming contest! And dammit all to hell, I missed the deadline! I wonder if “The Big Wet Sloppy Blow Job” would have had a chance?), JB immediately purchased a heavy-duty generator because by god his family was going to stay warm if this ever happened again.
We woke up this morning to a dark and frigid house, and JB somewhat sheepishly informed me that while the generator was waiting patiently in the garage for just such an occasion, it was missing some kind of critical power cord that our electrician hadn’t delivered yet.
The chug and rumble of a nearby generator was audible in our silent household, and JB raised his fist and shook it. “Nemesis,” he snarled, referring to our neighbors to the south who have great landscaping, always go the extra mile with their holiday lights, and apparently own not only a generator but a power cord for it as well.
The electricity came on right before I left, which was a relief but didn’t give me enough time for a shower, which sucked in a big way because I didn’t shower yesterday, either, and while I can personally deal with one day of unwashed hair by telling myself it’s good to skip a shampoo every now and then—at least that’s what all the magazines say and they wouldn’t lie, would they?—a second day is just disgusting. I blasted my head with spray-on powder, which, according to the packaging is supposed to absorb oil and help you “extend a blowout” (which I assume is referring to a stylist’s work on your hair, rather than the type of blowout I’m much more familiar with), but there is only so much Bumble and bumble can do, you know? I’m oily and limp and repulsive, and just for extra shits and grins I have a zit right smack dab in the middle of my face, below my lower lip. It’s so obnoxious I’m tempted to give up entirely on concealing the fucker and dab it with glitter instead. (“What, this? Oh, it’s my labret piercing.”)
My hair is filthy, and my house isn’t so great, either. I am going to call a cleaning service this week, I think, because I cannot stay on top of it. It’s all I can do to maintain a relatively low level of clutter and chaos and keep deadly bacterial toxins at bay, and I want a cleaner house that that. I could spend more time doing it myself, but let me tell you, I got down and cleaned the living room hardwoods yesterday by scooching around on my knees and using, gag, vinegar, and afterwards a husband, a toddler, and a dog merrily trampled through with dirty shoes/paws, and I thought to myself, Self, this is bullshit.
I want someone else to do the deep cleaning, because 1) that’s not how I want to spend my time, and 2) when I do spend the time, I turn resentful and screechy and naggy about it, and I don’t like acting like some cartoon character who just needs a rolling pin to complete the cliché.
Plus, like I said I’m barely able to keep things going as is. In one non-workday I might have time to clean the kitchen, the living room, and clear off the dining room table. Then I make dinner and we feed Riley, and there goes the kitchen. One hour passes, and the table is covered with magazines, newspapers, laundry, coats, laptops, groceries, receipts, mail, and toys. Another hour after that, and the living room looks like a Toys R Us exploded and shot toy-shrapnel onto every available surface, there’s a four-inch layer of dog hair on everything, and somebody has spilled milk on the couch.
It’s like being on a gerbil wheel, forever moving but never making actual progress. I don’t know when people make time for things like cleaning tubs, toilets, shower stalls, waxing floors, and so on. Before you ask, JB pulls his weight around the house and then some, but he’s not the go-to guy for, you know, vacuuming.
So: a cleaning service. I think it’s time.
(Why is that so embarrassing? It feels like admitting that I can’t be bothered to wipe my own ass and thus have outsourced the work.)
P.S. I have a question for those of you who might technically inclined: on this website, when you view an individual blog entry the sidebar—when viewed by some computers—drops down the to bottom of the page, rather than hovering over there on the right in a helpful manner. This is especially annoying now that I’m taking the time to update the sidebar when I’ve updated these blogs. It doesn’t seem to do this from the main page, so I’m guessing there’s something borked in the “Single Post” WordPress code, but I don’t have the foggiest idea how to fix it. If you can see this issue, and you have some ideas for me, will you let me know? I’d be super grateful.
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