Lions and tigers and hairs, oh my!

Something has been bothering me for quite some time now… and while it might be a little too crass for some of you, I just have to bring it up.

It has to do with bushes. No, not George, although he’s bothered me for quite some time also. The bushes I’m talking about are approximately half a foot south of your bellybutton.

What I’d like to know is when it went from being socially acceptable to have a big, hairy bush to NOT being socially acceptable. Because I’m pretty sure the latter is much more the case now.

I think about this all the time when I’m at the gym. I try really, really hard to not pay attention, but most the time, the sizes of bushes in the locker room freak the shit out of me. Bestie Amanda and I were recently talking about this – there are women at the gym, sometimes even in as early as their 30s, with an embarrassingly amount of pubic hair, and I just.don’t.get.it. Are 20-somethings the only generation who are concerned with this? Do you become unconcerned as you get older? These ladies walk around, proud as hell, boobs flapping and four inches of puff. (One time, I caught a naked lady in front of the bathroom mirror, leaning over and washing her armpits. So not only was she showing her bush to all, but her boobs were flapping back and forth from the scrubbing momentum. It was slightly disturbing – end tangent.) I’m not all about the nakedness in the gym locker room. I tend to be a little bit more discreet. But if I did prance around naked, I wouldn’t be sporting a bush the size of the Tongass National Forest.

I can’t exactly place my finger on when I learned that trimming was expected; I just knew. Clearly, however, it wasn’t this way a short time ago. When, exactly, did society’s norm transition and how the hec did something like that come about? I mean, I’m sure you’ve all seen 80s porn movies, a big bush was popular back then! Is this similar to the fad of shrinking women? Like how in the 1800s it was popular to be all rotund and squishy, and now being bony and poky is popular? Are little girls going to start needing Brazilians at age 12?! (Or age 10, whatever it is now with all the hormones in meat).

The whole thing kinda grosses me out – and conversely, if you’re a guy. The same thing is expected. Let me let you in on a little secret – I’ve had countless conversations with women who were appalled that the new guy they were dating didn’t manscape. That’s right manscape.
Whatever planet you came from that taught you it was necessary for women to trim, but not men, is the same planet George Bush came from, and that era is OVER.

Bush IS out.

It’s Super Bowl party time, bitches!

And that means a Sunday fun day with beer, nachos, wings, BEAN DIP, chips, meatballs and everything else that I normally wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot poll unless it were at a Super Bowl party. Ooh boy, I can’t wait!

What are YOU making? Need some ideas? Remember that really fantastic caramel corn I made for Christmas? I’m making it again, and perhaps it’d be a great reason for you to try it too. This stuff is seriously to.die.for. Baby Daddy’s dad even told him on the phone this week that they finally ate through the stash I gave them for Christmas, but they were rationing it out to make it last. I felt flattered, although I really do owe all credit to Rebecca over at Ezra Pound Cake.

Oh the joy of football and American fat food! This is the one day a year that I don’t mind sitting in a room with a bunch of drooling testosterone drones who stare ahead blankly at the TV screen without paying attention to the question I just asked you. Normally I’d threaten to cut your balls off, but not on Super Bowl Sunday! It is a day of love and thankfulness for all! (Or is that Thanksgiving?!)

If caramel corn doesn’t sound like your thing, here’s another recipe for a tasty Super Bowl treat that a friend shared with me:

Ingredients:

The Field:
1 Pound of Guacamole
15 Oz. Queso Dip For The Steelers End Zone
15 Oz. Salsa For The Cardinals End Zone
2 Oz. Sour Cream for the Field Lines

The Players:
15 Vienna Sausages
Helmets – 3 Oz. Sharp Cheddar Cheese

The Goal Posts:
1 Slim Jim for Each Goal Post
1 Oz. Monterey Jack Cheddar To Anchor (each)

The Stands:
58 Twinkies
1 Pound of Bacon
1 Bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos
1 Bag of Cheetos
1 Bag of Corn Tortilla Chips
1 Bag of Chex Mix

The Blimp:
20 Oz. Football-Shaped Summer Sausage (optional) (on second thought, no, this isn’t optional. Go buy one.)

TOTAL CALORIES: 24,375
TOTAL GRAMS OF FAT: 1,285
TOTAL COST: $86.47
TOTAL DELICIOUSNESS: 1 Billion trillion dude. One billion trillion.

(Don’t you love how this is my follow-up post to watching calories and trans fats in food. What can I say. Sometimes I’m a little manic. Stay tuned for a very important post I have planned about BUSHES. And I don’t mean political.)

Currently Feeling: Stressed out about wedding planning and hurt feelings. They always seem to go hand in hand.
Currently Anticipating: TWO.WHOLE.DAYS.OUT.OF.THE.OFFICE.
Currently Contemplating: My top five favorite bands.

Instantly spend three times longer in the grocery store!

This past weekend I picked up “Eat This, Not That” after listening to all of my co-workers talk about it (I am easily coaxed onto bandwagons). As I move comfortably and sometimes awkwardly through my 20s, I am increasingly more concerned and aware with the food I buy. Everything in my pantry and lunchbox is low sugar, low calorie, whole wheat, high fiber, blah, blah, blah. It’s sorta funny because I don’t even blink on the weekends when pizza is ordered, and high-calorie lunches and dinners are consumed. I swear that 75% of the calories that make me a little squishy come from weekend drinking and eating, but I digress.

During the week, however, I’m usually straight as an arrow with my diet. What caught my interest with this particular “diet” book is that it dissects the labels, ingredients and misnomers in the grocery store. It compares items in every part of the store that you think are healthy vs. what really are healthy. ie: “Healthy” items to avoid. For instance, instead of eating Kellog’s Smart Start Strong Heart cereal (with more than 10 itemized sugars and sweeteners), you should eat Kashi’s Vive cereal. Or that some organic, light, or fat free yogurts contain as much sugar as a scoop of ice cream or Kit Kat. Or how to pick your butter, peanut butter and cheese. It even goes through snack isles, showing the better corn chip, the better cracker, the better hot dog (Kosher beef even beat out turkey!), the better cookie.

See, the food industry has caught on that it’s popular now for items to be healthy and organic, so they “trick” you with false labels, using “light,” “organic” and “healthy” whenever they can, but to keep the taste, they make up for decreased calories by increasing the amount of sugars and additives. “Eat This, Not That” breaks those labels down, dissects condiments and meat, and explains produce, and its nutritional breakdown. The book is fascinating stuff, I tell ya.

There’s only one slight side effect to reading about all of this… Last night I ventured to the grocery store for the first time after finishing the book, and I felt overwhelmed in every isle. Everything was claiming to be healthy, and I had to pick everything up, turn it over, compare ingredients and look for hidden items like “high fructose corn syrup.” I was in every section for a half hour, if not more. I’m pretty sure the people there who caught a glimpse of me picking items up, reading, picking them up again, comparing, thought I was nuts.

I explained the book to someone recently, and they said, “Yeah, but I hesitate and wonder if I really should be worrying about this because I grew up as a kid, eating Top Ramen and Mac n’ Cheese, and I’m fine!”

Good point, I guess. I suppose it’s all relative, and if that helps you feel better after consuming the entire box of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese (something I’m known to do on an occasional basis), then FAB-u-LOUS. But I know I feel slightly better watching the chemicals in my food, and if you do to, pick it up.

Currently Feeling: Motivated.
Currently Anticipating: A double date for TheatreSports with Bestie Amanda and her boy tomorrow night, and Super Bowl parties on Sunday!
Currently Needing: To swap out my fiction book right now, I’ve lost interest in “Saving Fish From Drowning,” so haven’t been reading…next is “Save Karyn” one of the books from my favorite blogger, Karyn Boznak at Pretty in the City.

Attention all the ladies – no begging, borrowing or stealing these bags

I’m a bag girl. I love them; I buy them frequently; I owe a million; I have one in every color (because I habitually match my coat to shoes to earrings to bag). I just don’t like the expensive ones. My taste wanes much to quick and boredom sets in far to early for me to spend $200 plus on a purse.

My inexpensive bag dreams have come true.

Target recently launched their Hayden-Harnett for Target line. Ooh boy is it cute. Hayden-Harnett is a designer duo, hailing from Brooklyn New York. Their handbags, accessories and clothes have been featured in everything from Marie Claire, Shape, Lucky and In Style, to Oprah and New York magazine. I checked out the prices on their sites, and their bags average around $600.

But lil’ ole Target’s new Hayden-Harnett line is fan-TAS-tic and cheap! (About $50). Granted we’re talking real leather vs. man-made material, but they’re cute just the same. The bags have fantastic hardware detailing, and the best part – they don’t look like cheap knockoffs.

I asked for this black bag for my birthday; it arrived in the mail yesterday and I LOVE IT. My favorite part is the bright silky interior that just looks and feels expensive. Anywhoo, just thought I’d share it for all my fashionista loving ladies. Cheers!

Currently Feeling: A food hangover from my eight-course Chinese dinner last night.
Currently Anticipating: Getting the gossip tonight at happy hour with Kristen and Noah.
Currently Hating: My hair. I need a hair makeover.

No life is complete without…

…attending a Michael Jackson vs. Prince dance party.

Friday night, a great bar in Seattle called Nectar (home to my 25th silver birthday bash) had a Michael Jackson vs. Prince night.

No the actual artists weren’t singing and no there weren’t impersonators on stage, but yes it was a grand ole drunken time with 80s dancing, hip thrusts and snapping. (My new hot pink heels came in handy).

Pretty much the highlight of my weekend. Or my year (so far).

Currently Feeling: Groggy all day. I think I got too much sleep this weekend, which is a rarity!
Currently Anticipating: A BIG ole Chinese New Year dinner tonight with W and 27 of his disciples.
Currently Hating: Being in meetings all day, and getting virtually zero done off my to-do list.

A tag cloud of everything I’ve written thus far

Today I ran across a neat site – Wordle - which creates a tag cloud from any sort of text or Web site you choose. I came across it while reading an article a co-worker sent me on a word cloud analysis of Obama’s inaugural speech vs. Bush. (Yes, I’m this nerdy).

Anyway, my immediate reaction was to want to know what words would pop up most in my little homespun blog here. So, I took all the text in ALL 500+ blogs I’ve written since 2006 (582 pages in Word – that could be considered a novel, couldn’t it?!), subtracted common phrases such as “posted by 20-Something” and “Currently Anticipating/Feeling”, and I got this:

Could be an interesting point about how much our generation is said to use the word, “like.” I thought there’d be a whole lot more alcohol and sex related words, but what do I know?

Currently Feeling: A little wore out.
Currently Anticipating: Possible Michael Jackson vs. Prince party at Nectar tomorrow night?
Currently Wishing: I had voodoo powers.

Mama’s gotta eat a cheeseburger, officially

I think I realized today that I am unofficially an emotional eater.

I eat when I’m happy. I eat when I’m drunk. I eat (a lot) when I’m in love. I eat when someone sneezes. Because something even that minute makes me hungry. I eat when I see food ads. I eat when it’s in front of me. I eat when I’m bored. I eat when I’m full. I eat when I’m drunk. (Oh shit. I already put that. I must be drunk). I eat when I’m watching TV or working or typing or reading.

I also eat when I’m stressed.

My boyfriend is going through one of those major life thingies today. (Which I may, or may not, elaborate on later), which has caused a great deal of stress for me today. I tried to put it off by watching CNN and being really excited for America this morning. But even then, I was checking my phone every three minutes. Next I tried reading through the 25+ blog posts in my RSS feeder, while simultaneously checking my phone every five minutes. Then I made a trip on foot to Nordstrom’s to pick up the free make-up that’s been advertised, while checking my phone every two minutes.

I’ve done approximately 4,329 things today except work because I.just.can’t.concentrate. Ever have those days? Sometimes I worry that crane operators, airplane pilots and brain surgeons have those days, and then that’s when I start to panic about driving, flying and cancer. But that’s a whole nother post, saved for when I might want to talk about just how neurotic I can be.

So then finally somewhere between thinking about death by flying or cancer from Web-MDing myself, my boyfriend sends me a text message that’s he’s fine, but “doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Well shit. What am I supposed to do? Sit and continue to worry all day?! So, of course I sent back: “That’s ok! I understand!” But what I really meant was:

Cheeseburger.

Even though I’d already eaten my *meager* lunch of Campbell’s Healthy Request (ie: nothing but broth, that’s why the calories are so low), CHEESEburger was like mentally throbbing through my brain.
Must.eat.cheeseburger.to.survive.
Clearly this need for a cheeseburger is directly related to stress, which clearly makes me an unofficial emotional eater.

So I frantically started Googling “burger” in “said name of my work building downtown.” We have like 201 restaurants and little places to eat here, but NOWHERE that sells an effing cheeseburger.

Come on! Mama’s gotta eat.

Finally, I found a relatively nearby restaurant that sold a $12 cheeseburger because this is THE.RECESSION. and clearly restaurants need customers so bad that they’re discounting everything, or something, and clearly I don’t need to worry about living out of that cardboard box anytime soon. So I ordered and ate the $12 cheeseburger, and all 12 pounds of the fries that came with it.

And now I kinda want to curl up in a ball on my couch and…

EAT.OREOS.

We’ll see if I make it out of this one alive. I could be the next candidate for one of TLC‘s fat shows, yah know. And then you could all talk about how you knew me when I was skinny and how it all started when I became an unofficial emotional eater.

Currently Feeling: Headachy from all the carbs, probably.
Currently Anticipating: Using the free Lacome Fatale mascara I scored today. It’s supposed to make my lashes look 3D?! How do they do that?
Currently Wishing: Bestie Amanda wasn’t in the &%@$# Caribbean. How selfish of her to be vacationing when I need her!

Welcome, Obama – no hyphen, just OUR President

Today the first President, many say, who has truly united and excited America since John F. Kennedy will begin his Presidential reign. I read CNN’s Campbell Brown’s commentary this morning on the bus to work, which she delivered yesterday on MLK Day, and I thought it was a great thing to post as Barack Obama gets sworn in this morning as our 44th President:

(CNN) — Barack Obama didn’t run to be the next Martin Luther King Jr., just the next president.

But Tuesday, in that small window of time before he takes on two wars and a crippling economic crisis, thousands will look to Obama as the unofficial guardian of a legacy of justice and equality.

Many of you had the chance to watch King’s monumental words once again in their entirety Monday [here] on CNN.

His dream and his life’s work resonate now more than ever. Certainly, they resonate with the president-elect, who summoned King’s words Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial.

Obama: “Directly in front of us is a pool that still reflects the dream of a King and the glory of a people who marched and bled so that their children might be judged by the character’s content.”

In his day, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was called a great black leader. Then, in time, as the approved language changed, a great African-American leader.

It’s obvious now, all these decades later, that the adjectives and the hyphen kept us from seeing a more fundamental truth: What’s finally clear on this day we honor him, which falls on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Obama, is that Martin Luther King Jr was a great American leader, period. No qualifying adjectives or hyphen about it.

A fundamental part of King’s legacy is that his struggle allowed Barack Obama to emerge as a leader, too. No adjectives. No hyphens. Just the president.

Currently Feeling: Super nervous and anxious for my boyfriend.
Currently Anticipating: Free make-up at Nordstrom’s this morning – I’m heading there when it opens! (The benefit of working downtown).
Currently Loving: Pairing chocolate brown and black together – feels so chic, yet I used to think it was a total taboo. Man, have I grown.

ABC, 123, W-I-N-E

I love random, thoughtful gifts. My co-worker bought me these chalkboard wine glasses from Cost Plus World Market. Now I can drink out of a personalized wine glass every night, according to my mood. (Wait. Did I just admit I drink wine every night? I joke. I joke. I kid. I kid.) I’ll deny it if you tell.

P.S. I’m G $, and sometimes I call my boyfriend Rexy (anyone get the reference?), in case you were wondering.

–
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

I know, I know, I’m totally delusional

Yesterday I rejoined the “girls who tan to make themselves look feel sexier” club. My shit is pale.

Anyway, my 27 birthday this week induces a little reality – I’m not going to be young forever. And all the drinking and partying is already going to take a toll on my lovely lady bits, so I don’t want to compound it with wrinkles from tanning too. (Really all I’m worried about is the competition with my nine other high school girl friends. I don’t want to be the one to look the oldest in 10 years!) So what do I do? Well, what any logical person would do – I decide to splurge for a medium pressure instead of a conventional bed. They’re supposed to be, like, miraculously free of wrinkle- and cancer-inducing rays, right? Right. (That’s what she said.)

So I went to my usual tanning place, Desert Sun, where they always have a deal for JUST THAT DAY, which always happens to be the day I go in. I must be one lucky bitch.

I listened to the girl at the front desk tell me about all the special New Years deals they had. Payment plans, buy 20 for the price of 10, etc., etc., etc.

“Hmm. I don’t know if that’s going to work for me. I don’t have $200 to spend on tanning right now,” I explained to her.

But she continued to go on and on and on about all their deals (clearly not understanding my “no money” line because she goes to college and lives off her parents. GAWD. Those were the days!), and finally settled on what she considers “cheap.”

“Well, what we can do is split the payments up for you, so you’d only have to pay $61 this month, then we can choose whatever day you want the $61 to come out of your account in the next couple months.”

“But I have $66 in my bank account,” I finally say, to get her to jump to the deals I might really afford.

She sorta just awkwardly laughed, and continued on her tanning package bit, naming price after price for me.

“What about blah blah blah for $99 – we throw in two tans of your choice! Unless you weren’t joking about only having $66 in your bank account.”

“Nope. Wasn’t joking. $66.”

“Oh – well we can do this package for $40.”

“Nope. I need to go out this weekend.”

After which she just sorta looked at me like a nut job. Should I feel embarrassed that a 20-year-old college girl who works at a tanning salon is judging my financial irresponsibilities? Remember what I said below about a damaged bank account from “sexy suede boots, expensive makeup, luxurious lingerie and more earrings than you could count”?! I forgot to mention booze in that list. Lots and lots of booze. That’ll drain you of any sort of savings account future.

Oh, and pedicures, fancy haircuts and colors, and tanning. Basically I’m always one paycheck away from living in a cardboard box and dipping Ramen noodles in oil for flavor.

But, a girl has to have her priorities. And I’d rather look good in my 20s than retire in luxury in my 60s…

Or something.

Currently Feeling: Tired and headachy still.
Currently Anticipating: My birthday party on Sunday!
Currently Loving: My newly, organized and labeled filed bin with ALL the bills I need to catch up on. Fun!