Happy Birthday To ME!

This week is really kicking my butt!

I thought I was being all slick putting my foot down and explaining to The Writer that I couldn't stay late for moving related activities tomorrow since it's my birthday.

No problem. Until today when The Writer asked me to come in an hour earlier than normal instead. Gross.

Oh well. Today I got to steam clean several rugs and it was kind of fun. I think I'll spend an hour or two tomorrow doing the same!

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By the way. . .my birthday is in approximately 40 minutes. I hope you don't think I'm too self-absorbed:0) I just love me some birthday!

Here's a hint of what I've spend the last several hours doing! So much gloriousness is happening in the world of sweets this weekend, I can't wait to share it with you all later!

P{ost} S{cript}: If you don't hear from me tomorrow it's just because I'm partying it up with my pals!

Reasons

Here are 5 reasons I'm really glad I'm not neighbors with The Writer and Partner:

5. I won't have to step outside and smell plumes of acrid American Spirit cigarette smoke (despite the fact that smoking isn't supposed to be allowed at the new place)

4. I won't step outside and smell the nasty smells of dog pee all over the concrete (despite the fact that The Writer committed to taking the dog for walks everyday. That lasted all of 1/2 a day)

3. I won't constantly be subjected to the sounds of the dog whining in a high-pitched, ear-splitting tone because she has separation anxiety and then gets chained outside and ignored since The Writer is often too lazy to go out and get her.

2. I won't walk into my garage to get something and find it's mysteriously disappeared (because The Writer assumes that if something left unattended it's fair game, even if it's clearly someone elses property.


1. I won't happen to hear The Writer and Partner play arguing over who's "dirtier." (This all starts innocently enough during a long day of cleaning, but turns into vomit inducing sexual innuendos soon enough)

"Don't you have to deal with all of this stuff anyway?" you ask.

Why, Yes. You are correct. Luckily, though I get to leave every day and live amongst normal people. Instead of the other way around. Hurray!

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Only one more day until my birthday

SO excited!

Squeaky Clean

I'm exhausted and smell strongly of cleaning products.

You don't have to say it, I know you wish you were here right now. . .

I hope, my lovely blog readers that you had a glorious weekend filled with friends, sun, and margaritas.

I did!
And sorry I was gone for so long. . .I now have 3-day weekends all the time as I mentioned before! I was going to post for you all yesterday, but got distracted by various time wasting activities.

. . .oh right! Back to the cleaning product shenanigans. The Move is on in full force this week. Today, I spent 3 hours trekking around the old house loading up stuff to bring over to the new house, where I then began the 4 hours process of cleaning up the new (and filthy!) kitchen with The Writer.

Despite the fact that The Writer does nothing around the house, they are apparently well versed in cleaning. Each time I finished cleaning something, The Writer would nonchalantly slide over and start checking it out.
"Is this as clean as it can get. . .?" came out of their mouth so many times.
What was I supposed to say? "Umm, no actually, I just spend 2 hours pretending to clean every nook and cranny of the fridge, and then stopped short of it being really clean."

Obviously, my answer is yes if I stopped cleaning.

I guess I better just buck up and get comfortable with that questions since I'll be hearing it for, at the very least, the next 3 days.


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In other news, my birthday is in TWO DAYS!! I'm so pumped because, as you already know, i love birthdays!!

I think I love birthdays so much because they were always such a big deal in my family. For my sixteenth birthday my mother made such an enormous cake (well, two really in the shape of a 1 and 6) that we had cake leftover for weeks, not counting the un-frosted cake frozen in the downstairs freezer for a year to come!

And every year for our birthdays my grandma would take us each out on a special adventure with her. I've been to the Statue of Liberty, twice to see the Rockettes, to a multitude of Broadway plays, museums, circuses, and every other imaginable festivity.

I can't wait to have kids, so I can make their birthday's incredibly fun. Full of partying and crazy cakes and fun adventures. I mean, come on. It's an entire day dedicated to celebrating the fact that you were born. yay.

Baking

During my days at work, trying to stay sane, I've been thinking about what I really want to with my life.

This is what I've decided.

I would love to having a baking business. Like baking cookies, cupcakes, cakes, etc. I absolutely love baking and I feel like I have the organizational and money managing skills to make it work.

Maybe when I move to Boston, I'll get started on that. After I get a real job to pay the real bills!

I want to bake things like these:

Thanks

Two more fans materialized today, and surprisingly The Writer brought one of them to add to the growing fan collection at the new place. I guess my prediction of no heat wave in the next week or so was accepted.

While at the new house, The Writer also felt that tipping over a can of paint onto a newly painted white surface was a great idea to see how the color would look next to another potential color. The can was initially closed, but of course somehow popped open spilling goldenrod yellow paint all over a shelf.

The Writer milled around in panic while I got some rags and scraped off the paint, and added water to keep it from setting. The Writer then took over and , in the midst of vigorous scrubbing, actually took off the white paint which is new and wasn't supposed to be washed for 2 weeks since it's water based.

oy vey

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I just wanted to take some space and thank everyone who's been leaving me sweet messages, and e-mails about my blogging. I had no idea when I started up that so many people would be amused enough by my antics to keep reading.

I've loved getting notes from people I haven't seen in ages, or having someone randomly mention in a conversation that they've been staying tuned. I hope you all know how much fun I'm having and I'm glad you are too!

If you're blog lurking, that's OK too, no pressure, but just know that I'd be happy to hear from you:)

Fans

This week is not going to be a good week. I have no reserves of patience to deal with The Writer and all their shenanigans. The Writer & Co. are moving in two weeks and have a bunch of stuff still to do. Or rather, The Writer still has a ton of stuff left to make me do.

Whenever I try to get The Writer in gear, there's always some ridiculous episode that brings the moving to a complete stand still.

Case in point: Today, The Writer and I headed down to the jam packed basement to see what we could bring in a load going over to the new place. I noticed five fans of varying sizes and heights sitting on a shelf and suggested we move them all over to the new place. The Writer's response? "What if we need them before we move?"

"For what?" I demanded (Ok, maybe a little too snottily. . .)
"To keep cool" The Writer says in a condescended voice.
"It's the middle of April. Do you really think you'll need five fans in the next two weeks?"

As is customary, when I ask sensible questions in the midst of an inane argument. The Writer looked at me like an idiot and then walked away and later tried to get away with keeping three fans put.

I felt confident there wouldn't be a temperature spike to 100 degrees that would necessitate the use of not one, but five, fans and loaded two more fans into the car against The Writer's orders. . .
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Here's a picture of another part of my lovely weekend before all the SNC craziness. These girls are some of my wonderful college crew and we had a fun time visiting Jenny's home at a retreat camp she and her husband work at. Isn't the lake behind us gorgeous?

With A Twist

Turns out even on my days off, The Writer can pull something ridiculous. On Friday, before leaving The Writer asked me to sent out a bunch of PR since I wouldn't be working on Monday. I spent quite awhile working on the press release, got The Writer's OK and send everything out in advance.

This morning, I received an e-mail from The Writer asking me to tweak the PR with all the changes listed in the e-mail BEFORE sending out the PR we had agreed I'd send out today????

Don't know when I agreed to work on my DAY OFF. . .especially to do something I already did.

Oh, and why did I have the day off, you ask? Well, you see, the un (ahem) I mean self-employed Writer needed an extra day tacked onto the weekend, since they now have a little side job working 3 Saturday a month. Not sure why someone who never does anything during the week needs a 3 day weekend, but we all know The Writer is the master of nonsensical.

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Now to the part I'm REALLY excited about! This weekend was so fabulous I can't even fit it all in in one post!

The major highlight besides catching up with old friends and delicious food with other friends?? Well. . .on Sunday 2 friends and I headed to a concert with Straight No Chaser, an a Capella group of 13 guys. We were in the dead last row on the balcony. Like, there were ladders and crew equipment behind us. Still, we were good sports and didn't even care because we were THERE to see the sweetest group ever!

Then, literally just as the show was about to start a stranger walked over to us 3 gals and handed us FRONT ROW TICKETS. As in, a foot from the stage. We rushed down in excitement and proceeded to enjoy the best concert of our lives! At one point 2 of the guys even singled me out to sing to me! AND we got to meet all the guys after, where they harassed us for being late, and we got to explain our good fortune to them!

I didn't get to take any pictures of them since they were so close and I felt awkward, but they took some pics of us! Here they are. See my chubby, red, 5-year-old checks and vibrant purple shirt?

click on the pictures for a bigger view!

There we are!! smack dab in the middle

our upgraded tickets!! front row baby!

and as if things couldn't get any better, we ended the evening with some superb Moroccan food. Lamb-so great

Sugar&Spice&Everything Nice

I didn't work for The Writer today, but I wanted to connect with all you lovely blog readers, since I have a busy, busy weekend and you won't hear from me 'til Monday.

If you live in NE, I hope you're living in a place that's enjoying all this lovely weather. I sure am! Spring just makes me so glad I'm a girl. We get to wear flowers in our hair like this:

and wear pink shoes, skirts, and just generally be sweet and girly. So yea, I'm clearly a fan!

After working at my other job for the morning, I headed out jogging with a friend, then took a long shower and got all dolled up for Bible study for no reason. It was delightful.

Anyone have any fun plans for the weekend?

I'm headed to New Hampshire for the night for a girls night/reunion with lots of great gals, back for a Saturday BBQ then out Sunday for Morroccan food and a fabulous A'Capella group with the roomies. They're called Straight No Chaser, check 'em out here. More on them later no doubt!

Have a glorious weekend!

Misery

I think The Writer is trying to make me into Daughter.

I haven't mentioned her much, but Daughter is my age, lives a state away, and is a glamorous model and doesn't have much time to visit The Writer anymore.

As such, The Writer has slowly begun to integrate activities she and Daughter would do together into my day. Most of the time, I try to just ignore it. The Writer is suffering from empty-nest syndrome after all and I thought it would pass.

I was wrong.

Today, after laying out the entire fun evening that would ensue when The Writer and Daughter would dye each others hair, watch Gilmore Girls, and gab. . .The Writer asked if I would dye her hair for her today.

It was probably a bit irrational, but I panicked. I started envisioning Misery like episodes, where The Writer is Kathy Bates and I'm lying in bed with broken legs while being forced to paint nails, dye hair and watch Disney with The Writer while we eat pepperoni pizza and popcorn and no one knows that I'm there and. . .OK, then I forgot what happened at the end of Misery (does that guy die???). And also a ton of people know where I am. AND since I do everything for The Writer, I'd probably be asked to tie my own hands to the bed. In which case I could roundhouse kick The Writer and run for my life. Or to my car and drive away.

I've since calmed down, but am still creeped out. Good thing I'm moving on to bigger and better things in a few months!

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. . .oh yeah, some of you might not know. I'm moving in a few months. To the big city. Not THE big city. But Boston. YAY!

. . .also, I feel obligated to mention, I probably couldn't roundhouse kick anyone, mostly because I don't even know what a roundhouse kick is, it just sounds intense.

Enter HERE to Win!

Can't complain too much about work today! Not only did I get to leave early since The Writer has a reading a few hours away (ahem, I mean leave to work from home-although I did get work done. . .honest!), but I got to take a glorious walk around town which is just bursting with spring!

The Writer lives in that rare kind of idyllic town where people don't lock their doors, middle graders can walk around town without fear of any creepers, and everyone says hello to everyone else on the street. There is even an old fashioned soda shop! Too cute for words, and I love when The Writer needs me to run errands down town!

Here are just a few pictures from my walk about:

Sorry my pictures are so sub par, but my camera is broken so I have to use my phone. Not to mention, The Writer might get suspicious if I was lugging a camera around everywhere!

Oh yea-another thing I love: All the streets around The Writer's house are named Cross Street, Church Street, Pray Street, etc. Love it.

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I have a little secret to confess: I'm completely addicted to sweepstakes. In fact, I just spent the last few weeks entering 2X a day to win a 10-day European cruise from Disney. My latest sweepstakes? An online give away from one of my favorite bloggers. If I hear of a sweepstakes it's so hard for me not to enter. I mean what's the harm and I could win an exotic trip, green car, 25K or like a boatload of cosmetics from Sephora.

So. If you have any sweepstakes you'd like to share. . .you know who'll be interested. Just leave me a little comment!

*It should be noted that despite my frequent entering, I've never actually won a sweepstakes I've religiously entered in:9(

*Also, I probably couldn't afford to accept half of the sweepstakes I enter because the taxes would be so high. But again, guess that really hasn't been much of an issue so far. . .

War Wounds

The moving has officially begun. Boxes were loaded in the car, I invariably cut myself ( see below: this always seems to happen when I'm doing some sort of physical activity at work)
and, of course, The Writer took their usual out-of-control ways to a new level. Right when we got to the houses The Writer was itching to show me the new rug they found in the basement and put in the new office. I oohed and aahed dutifully all the while slightly disgusted by the many stains strewn across an otherwise gorgeous rug.

A mere few minutes later, The Writer and I were assessing the rest of the house and what rugs should go where when they came over from the old place.

"I really want to use that blue rug stored in the basement for the office but it has that stain on it!"

"MMM," I say, "but you can clean it. So does that mean you're going to take out that other rug in the office now if you can't get the stains out?"

"Oh, definitely not! It's so nice!"

"Yea, but. . . it has more stains than the blue one at home. So if you're bothered by the stains wouldn't you want to have a rug with less stains?"

At this point The Writer just stared at me like I was crazy and walked away.

I can't tell you how many times during the day a conversation happens, The Writer walks away and I literally just stand there in utter confusion for a full minute. (I use the term "conversation" lightly since, as you can tell, our exchanges are often rather disjointed, and don't really actually end anywhere)

NOT the rug in question! But here's part of the new place!
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For the last couple of weeks, I've been trying to kick my usual walking workout into a run. So far it's going well. Painful, but well, and one thing that keeps me going is my ridiculous workout mixes I listen to!
Here is one of my latest playlists:

"Will You Be There"-Michael Jackson
"Sweet Dreams"-Eurythmics
"Jenny Don't Be Hasty"-Paolo Nutini
"P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"-Michael Jackson
"Da Hottest in Da Hood" - Red Cafe
"In the Ayer" - Flo Rida
"Devil Went Down To Georgia" - Charlie Daniels Band
"Tik Tok" - Ke$ha

I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes right now. But let me assure you, you haven't lived until you've jogged at a snails pace, breathing heavily down a sketchy side road with some kick ass Charlie Daniel's fiddle blaring in your ears. . .

Temper Tantrum

Oh, what a tease am I? I promised you all some major crazy yesterday and couldn't deliver because I didn't work with The Writer on Thursday this week.

So sorry.

I arrived fresh from a day off and was hoping for a good day. Within minutes The Writer informed me that yesterday and this morning had basically been one long giant mental breakdown.

"Great," I thought, "here we go again. Another day of getting absolutely nothing done."

Boy was I right. In fact, at one point The Writer actually had a temper tantrum. Like, full-blown, I'm 50, but acting like I'm 3 temper tantrum.
There we are sitting at our desks when The Writer as is customary rolls over and commandeers my computer to show me something on Facebook. After ripping the mouse out of my hand and realizing that for some reason the right email wasn't popping up when they started typing, The Writer reached over and slammed their hands all over the keys, smacked the keyboard, rolled their chair violently across the room and made the most childish whiny noise I've ever heard come out of someone over 5.
Eek, that was a long sentence, hope you all got through that one alright!

My response to this tantrum. "OOK, lets just calm down." I then type in the proper e-mail, sign on and find the link The Writer wanted.

What I wished I could have said. "Let's calm down and stop acting like a child. God forbid you have to type 10 letters into a field and press enter." Then I would have stomped out of the room and left right then and there. Too bad I need to pay rent. And eat.

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Isn't this bowl of avocados just lovely? Sure they're not very pretty on the outside, but you can just imagine all that green, smooth goodness inside. YUM!

Word for Word

So while I'm taking a little break from The Writer, let me just update you all and tell you that A LEASE HAS BEEN SIGNED!!!!! I was there. Their new Tibetan landlord even solicited me to do his PR. He also tried to get my phone number. I refused on the premise that he would see me frequently and could just talk to me about it during the day. . .

I also had the Hallelujah Chorus ringing in my ears all day afterward. I even was singing it aloud at one point and had to cut it short when The Writer came upstairs. I know the drama is not actually over, but at least I know my hours of packing, albeit 2 months early, were not in vain!

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SOO, back to beautiful things. I've decided to write about one of the things I find most beautiful. words. Not necessarily sentences, or string of words, but words themselves. I love the way they sound to me, the way certain words roll off my tongue. The way the letters feel as I swirl them onto a page. I love the way one misstep could create a completely different word, or that 2 words can be combined to mean something totally different than they would individually. I'm so thankful we live in a world of lovely, lovely words.

Here are some of my top words

lackadaisical, verboten, correlation, unctuous, jalopy, compunction, incidentally, duplicitous, stroganoff, persnickety, calibration, tomfoolery, rhetorical, scintillating, moratorium, juggernaut, rabblerouse, hootenanny, jerryrig.

Ok, I'll stop, but I could probably go on forEVER. Do you have a favorite word? Tell me! So I can start using it.

I go through phases where I just use a certain word or phrase all the time. And I particularly like using big words, again because I just love how they slip off my tongue and sit in the air just a little bit longer than other words.

And with that dear readers, I bid you goodnight and good morrow. And do me a favor, definitely try to use rabblerouse in a serious conversation tomorrow. It'll do your brain good.

P{ost}S{cript} I'll get back to the good ole Writer tomorrow. I know you miss all the crazy.

Thankful

So, I've decided to take a break from complaining about my crazy boss for a few days (well, I started yesterday) and instead talking about beautiful things. Like my favorites. or birthdays. or Easter!!

Following are a bunch of pictures from the last few days which have been fun Fun FUN!

Easter Egg Hunt!

Chloe finding eggs!

Me and my cutie 2nd cousin Miss Chloe

Holly-Bear smiling away with her Easter goodies

Daffodils

V's Birthday Cake! (I whipped up some homemade frosting that turned out quite fab if I do say so myself:0) )
Blowing out the candle rather fuzzily

Goofing around while cuttin' the cake!

Birthdays Galore!

People have been doing these lists of favorites lately and I feel inspired. I know, I know you want to hear about my crazy boss, but bear with me. Have a list of favorites of your own? Leave me a comment with them. I love learning about peoples (sometimes surprising) favorite things!

My favorite season is spring
My favorite movie is The Princess Bride
My favorite song is Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
My favorite actor is John Travolta
My favorite TV show is LOST
My favorite smell is the air coming from a dryer vent
My favorite time of day is 11AM
My favorite pastime is reading
My favorite activity is dancing
My favorite flowers are lilies
My favorite ice cream is mint chocolate chip
My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving
My favorite color is green
My favorite food is Mexican
My favorite word is superfluous

well, that's about all I got. Don't be shy tell me yours!

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In other news. Today I celebrated ANOTHER birthday. I'm in my glory because I absolutely love birthdays. I think they're lovely, fun, and a great excuse to celebrate life with your friends!
This time it was one of my roommates birthday. We headed out for margaritas and dinner at a local place and had a lot of fun being ridiculous and eating delicious chips and salsa! Roomie has decided to extend her birthday over the whole week, so I've been in the process of making a cake with a unique homemade frosting for tomorrow. More on that lovely treat later. . .

Sorry to dump this on you

With only a few hours left of my day, but the clock ticking slower than ever, The Writer decides to bring me along on one of our many (of late) apartment hunting expeditions.

As we approach the last apartment, it appears that no one is home, and an unanswered knock at one of the many confusing doors seems to confirm.

Undeterred, The Writer plows around to the side where we locate the entrance to the particular apartment for rent, and finds the door standing partially opened.

Without a second thought, The Writer charges into the apartment while I trail behind, glancing feverishly around the lot for a disgruntled landlord. Thankfully, he didn't appear to be around.

After touring the apartment, we end near the bathroom, where Writer mentions that they need to pee.

"Uhh OK, I'll just wait outside I mutter and dash out to the front porch, again making sure no ones is coming.

The Writer finishes up, we tour said apartment AGAIN and then head home, just a few blocks away.

As we enter the house, I decide to use our own facilities and when I come out, The Writer is hysterically laughing

I question the sudden giggling fit, and The Writer says, "When I said in the apt. I had to pee, I meant we should go home, but then you said you'd be outside, so I thought, 'ok, what the heck' and then, I took a dump!"

And with that, I leave you for the weekend.

PS-Enjoy your Easter if you celebrate. I'm pumped for mine!

MorningStar&Zen

The Writer has a horrible relationship with their mother, who happens to be named something along the lines of Morning Star.
That's right.
Morning Star.
This isn't her real name. She changed it once she decided to become a Hopi Indian in spirit. Or something of the sort.

Today, as a surprise, MS showed up at W's house "for a hug" because she and Writer had gotten in a big argument. Of course, as I heard the story the argument was all MS' fault because she is manipulative, rude, and passive aggressively hostile. HMM sounds like someone else I know. . .

I've met MS before briefly, but for the first time spent an extended period of time with her, and realized for once the Writer was NOT lying. MS is quite a pill-twisting everything Writer said, making passive aggressive, backhanded comments.

Then, as I'm bustling around minding my own business, MS starts quizzing me on my experience in being a personal assistant, what I went to school, yadda yadda yadda. Afterward, she demanded I get her a baggy so she could carry the sandwich just made for her home because she couldn't eat it then. MS then proceeded to start making sly comments about the fact that she CLEARLY disapproves of my existence and my job.

She's a real self-esteem builder.

Boy was I glad that I left 20 min. after MS arrived. Although those 20 minutes were some of the longest of my life!

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Last night for a friends birthday, a group of ladies headed out to a french-Asian fusion restaurant called ZEN. the food was superb, and so beautifuly presented I just had to snap some shots of it! Also, for the second time in my life, I tried some sushi, this time with some crab and avacado. I've officially decided that I'm just not classy enough to enjoy sushi. Shoving a huge circle of cold rice, avacado, and raw fish of some sort in my mouth and trying too chew it all at once is not my idea of a good time!

Curry Fries filled with potatoes, carrots, and pea, with Passion Fruit sauce *YUM*


Orange Chicken (so lovely looking!)



some of the gals noshing on seafood