Manners please! Aisle Four!

Last night I reluctantly stopped at the grocery store on my way home even though I was in a DayQuil fog, and it hurt to hold my body upright. (Damn you mid-winter cold!) I was walking down the dairy aisle on my way to pick up yogurt when, “EXCUSE ME!” was shouted at me, in a ridiculously loud voice. I quite literally jumped and made a slight yelp. It scared the shit out of me. A hunched over, very old man pushed past me in his tweed newsboy cap and tweed sports coat and waddled his way in front of me.

I was immediately annoyed. It was quite rude. Not only could he have passed me on the right or left (I’m not so wide that I take up an entire aisle), but it could have been requested in a quieter and much more polite tone—one that didn’t make me jump six feet in the air. To make matters worse, we were heading toward the same goal, and he really only arrived five seconds prior to me. So, why the rush? Apparently he was there to pick up cottage cheese with fruit, which I overheard while the grocery store employee was assisting him.

I really hope that when I’m an old lady, the only thing lighting a fire under my butt and causing a big excitement in my day won’t be cottage cheese with pineapple.

Currently Feeling: Tired of not having any sick days.
Currently Anticipating: Getting this long, meeting-filled day over with.
Currently Wondering: How things are going on that little boat in the middle of the Bering Sea.

Sunshine, roses and lollipops

I finally ran into the evil child and her mother on my way home from work today. After two months of screaming, stomping, yelling, pounding her feet against the walls, fit-throwing and “I HATE you mommy!”s at 2 a.m., 4:30 a.m., 6 a.m. and basically every hour of the day, I was beginning to wonder if she resembled a little beast with hooves. She was, just as I suspected, dirty-faced and scraggly-haired. I made a point to look exceptionally frosty toward the mother and then glared at the little girl as I walked past. (Yes. I am 26.)

“You’re a good little girl! Aren’t you?” the Worst Mother in the Universe said to her child. “You smiled like a good little girl, didn’t you!”

She was trying to make a point.

And now let me make mine.

There is no way that your child is the definition of a “good little girl.” You have a serious case of denial, lady. Your child, in fact, is the devil.

Just admit it. Then have her exorcised from your apartment.

It’s only the natural thing to do…

Some Postman is Grooving to All Our Love Letters

Last night I received a card in a pink envelope, sent to me from Alaska, with a cute little crooked heart drawn on the front.

Sarah took the words right out of my mouth, “That heart is the cutest thing ever,” she said as she handed me the envelope. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything more boy.”

I smiled and nodded, and finished my dinner before going into my room to open my letter in the privacy of my own thoughts.

Even in these times with email, Blackberries, Facebook, text messaging and MySpace, there’s just something really special about receiving a letter, snail-mailed, in someone’s handwriting.

I can only hope he thinks my hearts are just as cute—the round, girly ones in pink and red—when his captain brings him his mail. Lol.

Currently Feeling: Like. Time. Is. Dragging. On.
Currently Anticipating: Watching the rest of Season 3 of Lost so I can get caught up for the premiere!
Currently Hating: Achy bodies, headaches and coughs.

An Open-Ended Letter to Cigarettes

Dear Cigarettes,
I used to refer to you as my boyfriend and didn’t know how to quit you. But, I finally beat you down. Sent you packing. Told you to take a hike and didn’t look back. I don’t need you, your approval or your unrequited love! It’s been 60 days, cold turkey. Oh, how happy I am without you. Let me count the ways:

• My clothes don’t stink
• My coats don’t stink
• My hair doesn’t stink
• My car doesn’t stink
• I don’t walk into a restaurant or bar with a cloud of smoke around me
• I no longer sit and think about you the whole time I’m at dinner or out with friends
• I no longer have to be “that girl” who needs to excuse herself from social situations to step outside
• I don’t have to feel weird, hugging my parents or having them ride in my car, thinking they can smell you
• There aren’t mounds of ash on every surface of my car anymore, and I can sit through traffic without feeling like I’ll rip my hair out if I don’t have you around
• My friends no longer wrinkle their noses at me or give me disapproving looks because of you
• I don’t have to hide or feel self-conscious in any social situation, whether it is with a cute boy, at work, with strangers or friends
• I’m not spending an extra $25 plus on you each week
• I will no longer be spending four-pack, quick-death weekends with you at the Gorge
• As each day passes without you, my lungs and my health are getting increasingly better
• Quiting you is no longer a huge “To Do,” hanging over my head
• I won’t be that 60-year-old lady with wrinkly skin and a scratchy voice
• I’m just happier!

Thanks for the couple years you were around, but I won’t be needing your services anymore.
-20-Something

Currently Feeling: Severely boy malnourished.
Currently Anticipating: Getting back on the work-out horse this week.
Currently Loving: My mom’s chicken verde chili she sent home with me!

Toilet Talk

Growing up, my dad used to get all in a huff over the amount of toilet paper our household went through.

“You only need two or three squares!” he’d exclaim.

Two or three squares?! I’d think to myself. Two or three squares is most definitely not enough toilet paper. So, I went merrily on my six-to-10 square way. After all, it’s not like he could really monitor my toilet paper consumption.

I have come to the conclusion, however, that my dad is totally right. Women use faaaarrrr too much toilet paper. It takes 71.48 people to completely utilize a single roll of toilet paper. (#) I’m assuming, if the sample pool was just women, it’d take four.

In the bathroom at work, I always hear women in the stall next to doing the following:

Rustle, rustle, unravel.

Tear.

Rustle, rustle, unravel.

Tear.

Rustle, rustle, unravel.

Tear.

Tear.

Unravel.

Tear.

Rustle.

Tear.

SIX?! SIX lengths of toilet paper is what you really need to go to the bathroom? I mean sheesh. I’d think by that time you’d have a bowling ball-sized mound of toilet paper to wipe with. Clearly unnecessary.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll shout over the stall, “You only need two or three squares! Two. Or. Three!”

Currently Feeling: Like it’s not Friday. But it is. Yippee!
Currently Anticipating: Project Red Dress tonight with Sarah and her coworkers.
Currently Loving: Broccoli with chopped walnuts and Parmesan cheese.

New Financial Genius: Mint.com

Thanks to the insider knowledge in my email in-box every day via Daily Candy, I was recently introduced to a new Web site (still in Beta form) called Mint.com

No, not a breathfreshener, herb or condition. This “mint” refers to money… And the Web site is created to personally track all of your accounts (bank and credit cards, loans coming soon) and spending habits. Lurv it! The best feature is by far how it categorizes your purchases as they come in (gas, coffee shops, shopping, groceries, restaurants), tracks your monthly spending in a pie chart and then creates monthly budgets for you, based on your spending. Each month you can track your budget, how close you are and how much you go over it:

You can also track on one page the money in your bank account, how much money you have left on your credit cards and how much you owe. It then tells you the state of your financial health:

Obviously, my financial health could use a little work. I’ve decided that while I’m now in my (GASP!) late 20s, it’s high time I started tracking my spending habits—immediately. As of now, they ridiculously sway in the direction of too much dining out and too many bar tabs. Go figure.

The site really is great, but if it could only magically pay my bills and put more money in my bank account, then THAT would be genius.

Oh money… can’t live with it; can’t live without it. Or, is that men?

Currently Feeling: SOOOO unproductive and bored.
Currently Anticipating: Checking out a new bar and solo artist in lower Queen Anne with a few of my girls tonight.
Currently Dreading: The next three weeks without phone contact.

Wearing Underwear is So Uncool

This weekend my little sister (19 and in a sorority at Washington State University) came and stayed with me for some sisterly girl time.

“I’ve stopped wearing underwear because one of my friend’s read that it’s supposed to give you cellulite,” she declared while we were getting dressed and ready Saturday morning.

“What?! You. Stopped. Wearing. Underwear?! Isn’t that a little weird?” I replied.

“No,” she said. “In fact, I don’t really know any of my friends who do wear underwear.”

Great. Twenty-six years old, and I’m already super uncool because I wear underwear.

Currently Feeling: Bored and stuck.
Currently Anticipating: Snuggling with slippers and sweats tonight. It’s cooold!
Currently Hating: That I can’t kiss Mike.

Things I’ve Learned This Past Week

• I can be really good at sticking to goals I set, if I really want to be. And crossing things off a list of goals feels really, really amazing. This past week, I focused on my list of goals for the next two months. I have feng shuied my bedroom into a clean and organized living space that I surprisingly want to hang out in. I get a little smile on my face every time I open my makeup drawers and see everything arranged in neat little organized rows.

• A made bed with crisp and cold sheets is so much nicer to crawl into than a wrinkled, unmade mess.
• In life, there are some people that you love so much, you just want to fold them in a protective layer of love and hope nothing ever happens to them. But, there are some things that can’t be helped and can’t be changed. When these things happen to someone you love, it’s really painful and opens a floodgate of hurt and anger. All you can do it hope that in the end everyone will be okay.
• I am, and always will be, a lover of books. When I’m not engrossed in a really good book, I feel like a little part of me is not quite right. I rediscovered my reading bliss this weekend and finished “My Sister’s Keeper,” which made me ball like a little baby at the end. And oh, it felt so damn good.
• Even if pounds are not immediately shedding, I feel 100 times better when I’m eating healthy, wholesome foods. I started phase one of South Beach again last Wednesday, and avoided carbs, sugars and drinking for the majority of the last five days. I did fall off the no drinking wagon last night, however. Big time.
• When you don’t eat carbs and you drink vodka in large amounts with a belly full of cheese fondue, it’s a bad combination. This combination, in fact, might lead one to tell everyone she’s with how bad she wants to have phone sex with her boyfriend. Phone sex? Since when have I ever been into phone sex?! It also might lead to disclosing other embarrassing tidbits of information that no one needs to know, a phone call to the boyfriend that one might not remember, and a 3:30 a.m. puking mess on the bathroom floor. Please take my advice and don’t ever ingest the following recipe: One Sparks at the movie theatre, one chocolate martini, glass of white wine, two pots of cheese with cauliflower and a Brie platter at happy hour, one single tall vodka diet that was too weak with three double tall vodka diets, some hot cashews and a few bites of fries at the bowling alley, finished off with beef bites, another glass of white wine and another double tall vodka diet at Peso’s. BAD combo.
• Sundays with really good girlfriends, a cheesy romantic comedy at the theatre and girl talk at happy hour are THE BEST. I would not survive without days like these. Oh, and “27 Dresses” is a really, really great chick flick.
• My Dolphin Sisters are absofuckinglutely fabulous. I already knew that. But, when your friends do things for a guy you like just because you like him, it reminds me how important my happiness is to them, which takes my breath away. To have Larisa have her 5th grade class write letters to Baby Daddy and Vanessa make Valentine’s cookies to put in the box of stuff I’m sending him, well, just because he’s my boyfriend. Now, that’s friendship.
• Sometimes, even when you’re as popular as me (!LOL!LOL!), it feels really amazing to be a nerd. I did absolutely nothing more than sitting home, reading and watching “My So Called Life” this weekend. By choice. And I was absolutely okay being home alone on Friday and Saturday night. I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to say that.
• Finally, I want to know who the hell Tino is in “My So Called Life.” You never see him, but everyone talks about him, and he pretty much solves everyone’s problems. He knows all the great parties and has all the answers. I want my own personal Tino.

Currently Feeling: A little sheepish.
Currently Anticipating: Talking to Mike tonight.
Currently Reading: “What is the What” by Dave Eggers.

Late afternoon, at the coffee counter

I just ventured over to the sink and coffee area in my office to rinse out my Tupperware from my lunches in the last couple days, (a rare occasion that I get around to this before they’re so crusted and moldy that it’s more beneficial to just throw them away) and to grab a late afternoon cup of coffee.

An elderly lady who I’ve never seen at work before, probably in at least her 60s, approached the sink just as I did.

“It’s about that time of day, huh?” she said to me in a cute little old lady voice, in reference to washing our lunch dishes.

“Mmm hmm,” I agreed and moved over to pour myself a cup of coffee, only to find the carafe was empty.

Argh! I swear this happens to me at least three times a week. Three years out of college and two years past my days as a barista at Tully’s, and I’m still making everyone else’s coffee. Common courtesy, people!

“Well you got here just in time to refill the coffee!” she exclaims.

“I know; lucky me,” I replied. “It is my opinion that this should be done by the person who used the last of the coffee.”

“Yeah, but I bet it was a boy, from what experience tells me…” she said with discern as she walked away.

I laughed. We never will lose that cynicism for the opposite sex, now will we?

Currently Feeling: Impatient sprinkled with a few drops of relief.
Currently Anticipating: Girl Power Hour tonight at Solo.
Currently Listening To: Mike’s techno mix he made for me.

P.S. I updated my link lists to be alphabetized, and my blogroll includes a couple more blogs I’ve been reading lately…

An Open-Ended Letter to Myself in the next two months

Dear Self,

You have recently discovered, again, that having a boyfriend is time consuming. Somewhat exhausting. Having a boyfriend who is leaving and trying to squeeze in as much spare time with him as possible is just Plain Crazy. Now, suddenly having all the time in the world to do stuff that you’ve neglected and the days stretching ahead with not much planned, feels odd. I know you haven’t quite known what to do with yourself the last couple days cause you’re used to being busy. Let me refresh your memory with the mound of unfinished business or things that have been shoved to the side in your boyfriend and holiday haste. Here’s what I’m looking forward to you focusing on in the next couple months, Self:

• Actually using that elliptical trainer you received for Christmas three times a week. Cause it’d just be tragic and embarrassing if you let it turn into a dust collector like all the fat people who think buying a piece of exercise equipment will solve their lifetime of laziness and Cheeto-bag eating.

• DEEP cleaning your room, including all surfaces that have rings from glasses of red wine, sparkles from spilled makeup and food smudges from late-night drunken binges on inappropriate things like Top Raman. This Deep Cleaning might also include organizing your room, which has done nothing but drive you crazy lately. Organizing might include: sorting through the dirty clothes mixed with the clean clothes on the floor and putting them away in their respective spots; finding every shoe from the missing pair and putting them in your shoe rack; finally putting your Halloween costume away in the box; hanging up the six jackets that are piled on your desk; picking up the laundry that has been hanging in the laundry room for a week and bringing it upstairs; folding all your socks and finding the missing pairs that have been shoved into your sock drawer every time you’ve done laundry for the last eight months; hanging up each of the 20 plus earrings that are all piled on your nightstand right now and not hung in their color-coordinated respective spots in your earring organizer; throwing away all the makeup, eyeshadows and lip glosses that have been in your makeup bins since college and YIKES, high school; and sweeping every nook cranny and surface of the hardware floors that has little particles of dirt you drag into bed with you every night.
• Get back into cooking and eating healthy. Stop going out to expensive, unhealthy dinners and pull out those cookbooks you’ve had in the cupboard, collecting dust for quite some time now. Use your crockpot. Focus on jumping back on the South Beach bandwagon and sticking to it. Cause you know, Self, that you refuse to be one of those “I got fat cause I’m comfortable in a relationship” people.
• Work your little butt off to finish the birthday gift for your Dolphin Sisters that you started, gasp, more than a year ago and haven’t looked at in at least nine months. It is, after picking it back up yesterday, quite thoughtful and will be amazing when it’s done. You owe them to finish their gift the second year around.
• And hey, Self, here’s a great idea. Why don’t you go back to being the person who actually finished a book when they picked it up? You’ve left unfinished books left and right since September. They all seem to grab your attention for a short while, but then you get busy and bored with them. I’d like to see you finish ONE if not FOUR books in a row without giving up.
• And you know what else, you’re rapidly reaching 3,000 photos on your computer that are bogging down your hard drive, making it slow and annoying to use even though it’s only two years old and it’s a glorious, long-lasting MAC. These photos are all your memories, laughter, friends and fun for the last four years. It’d be a shame if they all of a sudden, one day, were swallowed by the sad Mac. You should probably look into cataloging them onto DVDs or CDs and cleaning up that beautiful computer you spent a small fortune on so you can be a little more happy with it’s performance as of late.
• Oh, and hey, Self. How about that new job?

Yours truly,
20-Something

Currently Feeling: Sigh. Back on Phase One. Booooring.
Currently Anticipating: A relaxing three-day weekend with my sister, friends and a good book.
Currently Loving: That I checked off the Deep Clean last night (up till ONE-THIRTY AM) and have a sparkly new room.