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I’m Gonna Be an Aunty Again

August 1, 2006 By

My sister is having another baby. With her history with the last 2, Bubba and Messy J, it’s a bit hard to be excited for this baby’s future, but I’m still excited because it’s a baby! She found out last week she’s having a girl, and the baby is tentatively named Mia Rose. What a sweet name, I’ve never had a problem with the names she picks out.

That’s about it for now, my sis is currently talking my ear off, right after I got it to stop burning from my mom talking to me for an hour. Can’t anyone get any work done around here?

Filed Under: Family

Random August 1st Post

August 1, 2006 By

First of all, I’d like to say Happy Birthday to my niece, Messy J. Even though she’s only 7 and has no clue what a blog is and would be bored silly if she ever ready my blog, I hope she gets the good birthday vibes. I did call her, and she sounded soooo sad and then said she wanted to get off the phone, so she hung up on me. That’s ok, it’s only a matter of time before she won’t ever get off the phone. Plus, I get to see her next week – yay!

I came across a woman the other day who made me feel really good about my body image. As I was waiting to exit a parking lot, a woman walking on the sidewalk is exactly the kind of person that someone with body image blues should see. She was about 4 feet wide, wearing a long skirt and red shirt. The shirt in no way would be considered cropped or belly baring, however, her belly was flopped way over the waistband of her skirt, and was flapping about violently with each step. My flab still continues to defy gravity, so it left me feeling really good.

I chatted online with Bubba this morning. It was weird, my mom had him signed in on her computer because his AIM account automatically signs in and she has no clue how to change it. So I was chatting with her, she took a pee break, then I went to say something else to her and all of a sudden was talking with Bubba, who was at home and not at his Amma’s house. Bubba is quickly monopolizing all my vacation time. First it was Canobie, now he wants me to take him to a movie too. I’m sure he’ll think of many more things to do between now and then. Not to mention I have tons of family and friends to visit and only 6 short days to get it all in. Next time I definitely have to take a longer vacation.

I did get up on time this morning, and got to work on time. It didn’t feel good, but not any better than sleeping in. My eyes were still a scary shade of bloodshot red. I never got my salad made last night due to my blogging obsession but I did manage to bring lunch today, so I won’t have to spend money. I’m not working tonite so the plan is to go straight home, blog for a little while, eat dinner, watch Seconds From Disaster on the National Geographic channel, then go to bed. I do love my blog, I keep it up nearly all day long just so I can stare at it and constantly check my favorite blogs for updates.

Ok, time to tear myself away from this thing long enough to get a little bit of work done. I’ll be back later, you can count on that!

Filed Under: Family, Happy Birthday

Never Grocery Shop With PMS

June 12, 2006 By

I have no further comment regarding the title of my post.

When I got home from the office tonight, there was a note taped to my door from management. It reads:

Dear Resident,
In an effort to improve our community we will be power washing and repairing stucco on the buildings to prepare them for painting. This will start tomorrow June 13 and continue until the work is completed. Please remove everything from your patios and balconies and keep them empty until we are completed. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Sincerely,
Resident Administrator

Dear Management Office of My Apartment,
Since I have no patio or balcony, just like the rest of the apartments in my building, I will kindly disregard your note. However, I will be sure to remove the welcome mat from the carpeted 2nd floor landing that I enter my apartment from, just in case you want to pressure wash that. I’ll also be sure to keep my windows closed until you are finished with this. Although you failed to mention the effect that pressure washers have on open windows, I am well aware of the consequences, which thanks to your oversight, many of my neighbors will find out about the hard way. Thank you for your irrelevant advance notice of upcoming cleaning of my non-existent patio/balcony.
Sincerely,
Apartment ###

Now, for the rest of my to-do list. Besides the few things I still have to get to increase the functionality of my apartment (like a lamp for my computer area so I can see my keyboard), there are many things I need to do to minimize stubbed toes and make it look a bit more inviting. So, here goes.

*Finish contacting people about my change of address
*File stuff and finish organizing desk area, since it’s all unpacked
*Get out the instruction book and attempt to figure out my stereo
*Failing that, get a friend over here who knows about stereo stuff
*Properly make my bed so I don’t have my comforter and blankets on the floor
*Organize closet since I haphazardly hung everything when I moved in
*Keep up with cleaning and chores
*Start unpacking my decorations and figure out where they will go, then put them there
*Continue to purge unnecessary items
*Email Helen at church and tell her that when she changed my address, she added me to the mail merge twice, so now I get 2 newsletters
*Go thru my inbox, print/save what I want to keep and delete the rest
*Call cable company when they are open and tell them again to add my email address to my new account. It’s only my spam email address, but still!
*Go through my favorites/bookmarks and clean those up
*Re-learn meal planning so I can better plan and budget for meals so I don’t have to rely on so many hastily purchased crap food meals (and PMS related junk food binges)

Is that all? I hardly think so, the list seems awfully short for everything I feel like I need to do, but then again with the hours I work (nearly 60/wk) I guess it IS a huge list. I’m starting to feel like my end-of-summer goal date for being settled, with the above-mentioned hominess, is a bit ambitious.

I’m really looking forward to my visit back to New England in just under 2 months. My mom will be holding a birthday party for Bubba and Messy J, since my visit will be right in between their birthdays. I can’t wait to see them. Bubba, being the pre-teen that he is, is online a lot but can’t quite hold a conversation with his Aunty, since his typing skills are similar to that of many people his age. You know what I’m talking about – the kind of internet-speak that leaves literate adults like myself saying, “WTF? R u stupid or wat?” Messy J, on the other hand, is more interested in the physical world around her and is still a bit too young to grasp the virtual world, and therefore talk to her Aunty. I give that one a few more years before I start getting incessant messages from her in the same kid internet language I don’t understand. Being a girl, I’m sure I’ll get many more messages from her than I do from Bubba.

My mom is looking forward to that favorite New England pastime, antiquing. Seems every time I come to visit there’s an antique shop or fair she wants to visit. Now that I’ve been away for awhile and and starting to suffer the effects of too many big box stores and not enough old anything (and no, old people in the line at the buffet don’t count), this time I’m actually looking forward to it. But even though the town she has in mind is rather small and isolated, I fear it will take about 3 times as long as I want it to, so I should try not to make any plans for that day. I also have friends to visit and food to eat.

Oh yes, food. I mentioned in a previous post that one never things about being able to find their favorite foods when they move to another part of the country, and it’s one thing I’m looking forward to when I go home. Cheap lobster. Top-split hot dog buns (there, I said it – I’m from Massachusetts!). Good Italian food. Mom’s cooking. Dunkin Donuts and Au Bon Pain. Farm stands. Roast Beef Sandwiches. Newbury Comics. Oh wait, that last one isn’t food! But I still need to stop in for a wicked good time and cheap CDs that are hard to find at the big box stores. And yes, I wear my Toothface T-shirt proudly!

Ok, now that it’s getting late and I still haven’t relaxed yet today, I should probably do that so I can get a halfway decent amount of sleep. I have to work both jobs tomorrow, and apparently a higher up manager will be in the store tomorrow so I’ll need to be prepared – dressed 100% according to dress code, perky and ready to sell sell sell! Joy.

Filed Under: Family, Food, Shopping

Who Forgot to Build an Ark?

May 16, 2006 By

The great New England Flood of 2006 has been felt all the way in the desert. I’ve been reading the news and gawking at the photos posted online, and I knew that my dad’s garage has a tendency to flood up in the spring and during heavy rains, but I’ve never seen this before. Business will recover fairly quickly, but WOW! is about all I can say. I’ve never seen the water come inside before. Take a look:

Filed Under: Family

All About Birthdays

May 9, 2006 By

My birthday is coming up, and while I was reading a blog that mentioned something about a birthday, I was reminded of one time I decided to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It was his 26th, not a notable birthday by any means. But since Officer Friend is approximately 2 months and 23 days older than I am, I decided to make fun of the fact that he was aging faster than me. I bought a 4-inch decorated cake from the supermarket, managed to fit “Happy Birthday Officer Friend” on the top, and put 26 candles on it. Now, that many candles on a larger cake would have been no big deal, but on a cake that small, it produced one large flame, lots of black smoke, and left a sheet of wax on the top. I had to open the window to prevent the smoke alarm from going off, which was not pleasant in the late weeks of a New England winter.

Within the past decade, both of my parents have celebrated their 50th birthdays. Of course, with a milestone birthday such as this, one must be given a surprise party. My dad’s was pretty typical of his gatherings, and the surprise would have gone off without a hitch were it not for my impatient nephew, who was not quite 6 at the time. About 10 minutes before getting ready to leave the house, Bubba asked, “Papa, when are we leaving for your surprise party?” So, 2 years later when my mom’s milestone birthday rolled around, it was decided that the best way to protect the top secret plans was to keep Bubba out of the loop altogether.

My mom’s party was very well planned, and boy was she surprised. See, she was planning on going down to the mid-Atlantic states to visit her oldest brother, whose birthday is less that a week from hers. They would be going to a classic, popular steak house in the area for dinner. I called up my uncle and we got our evil heads together and decided to invite a few more people along – mostly relatives in the area whom my mom didn’t get to visit with very often. Also along for the ride was my stepdad, who pretty much never made the trip to visit the relatives, and my sister, who also didn’t get down there often, if at all.

I managed to use my busy schedule and lots of errands as an excuse to not meet my mom at the house before heading to the restaurant, which was important since I had my sister and stepdad in tow, and we also stopped at Great Auntie’s house to pick her up. We gathered at the restaurant and waited for everyone else, and I was to get a call from my uncle when they were on their way – he would call with the ploy that he’d be putting in his name for a table. Everything went smoothly. My mom had Bubba with her, and he was really clueless. When they walked into the room, my mom blurted out, “What’s my husband doing here?” as we all yelled SURPRISE! Oh, it worked, she was surprised. After threatening me a few times, we had a grand old time, Mom got to catch up with relatives, and I kept all the organizational things under control.

My own birthdays have been memorable, but in a I-wish-I-could-forget kind of way. There was the year I came home to an apartment I was sharing with one of my best friends and found my birthday card ripped up and a note that said to get out. There was the year that my then boyfriend left a message on my answering machine saying I was no longer welcome in his life. There were a few others that weren’t quite so bad, but now I don’t place too much emphasis or expectations on my birthday. And no, I don’t want to explain these incidents and rehash the past. I’m just trying to get through each and every day and trying to make it a good day, whether it’s my birthday or any of the other 364 days in the year.

Now, getting back to the surprise parties. My mom made many threats that evening, mostly hinting at her need for revenge. The following year, I was getting ready for my move to Las Vegas, so I wanted to have a party, a combo Going Away/1st Annual 29th Birthday party. Since I had sold my home, my mom would be hosting this party. I had lots of things to do, so I gave her a guest list and how to contact these people. Then, a few days before the party rolled around, she tried her best to be sly and ask me if I could come over on Saturday afternoon with a really vague mention of something to do. I told her it wouldn’t work – for one, I had given her a guest list and told her when to hold the party. I also wasn’t going to let my guard down anytime soon, so if she wanted to throw a surprise party for me, wait about 20 years. I might let my guard down by then.

So she moved on to my uncle. He was turning 60 that year, so mom thought she could exact revenge on him for his part in the planning. I told her not to do it, once someone is past 50 it’s just not safe. My uncle may still be a world traveller, but I know his ticker ain’t what it used to be. I love the guy, and I want him around for many more years. So I did what I could to diffuse the surprise element. Go ahead, call me a spoiler, but I only did it out of concern for his health. If he was younger, I ‘d be all for it. But I also wanted to prove to my mom that she will never be able to plan a surprise party as well as I can.

When I was in high school, my mom wanted to plan a surprise party for my stepdad for a milestone birthday he was having. She invited his twin brother to visit us from his home in Moose-land, so Uncle Brother and his wife came down and the 4 of them went out to dinner. For some odd reason, Stepdad actually believed that I was staying home to study on a Saturday night. Fool. I’ve heard enough stories about him in high school and college to know that he’s seriously losing it if he bought that. What I really did was let in guests, go with one of the guests to pick up a keg (at 17, there was no way I could do this myself), and set everything up. Meanwhile, Stepdad and Uncle Brother ate pretty much everything on the dessert cart. (I have previously mentioned that my stepdad is a human garbage disposal; that trait is also seen in his twin.) When the group arrived back at the house, no one noticed the unusually large number of cars parked nearby. And the guests of honor certainly didn’t smell the chocolate sheet cake that was permeating the air. Also not noticed were the large number of people hushing each other in the dining room, until stepdad walked in and everyone yelled out the obligatory surprise party greeting. After recovering from his near heart attack, he turned to my mom, told her he hated her, and made a vow to himself to be a bit more observant about things.

Here’s what I’ve learned about surprise parties and how to have a successful one:
1. Micro-manage the details. It’s the only way to keep everything under control and keep the cat in the bag.
2. Be careful when involving minors. It might be fun to let the kids in on the planning because they get so excited, but their innocent honesty is just the sort of thing that will spoil things here.
3. Never attempt revenge against a master surprise party planner. You’ll never get it.
4. One self-adhesive Depends undergarment can hold a very large amount of beer.

About birthdays in general, really, they aren’t that important. It’s just another day that just happens to be listed on your driver’s license, so don’t let expectations get you down. Don’t rely on others for the best birthday ever, and don’t let people who inadvertently (or purposely) ruin your day with seriously bad timing get to you. Get over it, get drunk and eat fattening food, and feel better tomorrow – or the day after, once you get over that hangover.

Filed Under: Family, Friends, Happy Birthday