I'm writing a book to celebrate my anniversary

Tim and Shana, April 2012

As Tim and I celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary today, I am working on an outline for a self help guide to having a successful marriage. Chapters include:

Chapter 1: Choose Wisely: Avoid Marrying a Pretentious Douche (see Appendix A)

Chapter 2: Laugh together. A LOT.

Chapter 3: Good sex can help make up for a myriad of small offenses (see Appendix B)

Chapter 4: Compromise, Motherfucker.

Chapter 5: Get on the same page with regards to finances and child rearing (see Chapter 4)

Chapter 6: Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so GET A LIFE, MAKE SOME FRIENDS and DO YOUR OWN THING on a regular basis

Chapter 7: Dance together. OFTEN.

Chapter 8: Never go to bed angry. Seriously, hash that shit out until 3 a.m. You have a much better chance of winning the fight making your point if your opponent spouse is loopy from exhaustion.

Appendix A: Signs of pretentious douchery include ironic mustaches, pipe smoking, and skateboarding as primary mode of transportation after age 30. NOTE: indicators of douchery may vary regionally.

Appendix B: Small offenses include leaving the toilet seat up, not putting the new roll of toilet paper onto the roll holder, putting the new roll on the roll holder but BACKWARDS, and a host of other toilet related offenses.

DISCLOSURE: This is my second marriage, so I have had some practice. I know from good. And I've got it good.

A very old list of funny shit

I found this unpublished draft in my box from 2009 or 2010. Great quotes that struck me as noteworthy at the time, but never made it to the "publish" button...

The character Jason Stackhouse on True Blood: "Any woman with a purse that big is bound to have something in it I don't want to know about."

Dooce, on accepting the fact that her daughter loved her move than ever on Halloween when she was allowed to eat candy.  "There is a reason you give boxes of chocolate to your loved ones on Valentine's Day and not, say, a picture of vaginal stitches next to a thought bubble that says, "I love you THIS much."

Pearl,Will Farrell's "Landlord."  "Give me my money, bitch," and "I want to get my drink on."

June, ala Bye Bye, Pie! This one is not verbatim because I can't find the exact quote on her blog, but she is talking about how she lost 10 pounds before her wedding by doing step aerobics in a Parks & Rec trailer.  "I'm sure this is how Jackie O. got ready for her wedding too."  

WTF

I have this *awesome* new thing that I do where I frantically search my house for something that I can never find, and then mid search forget what I'm looking for and just stand in the living room/kitchen/bedroom BAFFLED, wondering what the fuck I am doing in the living room/kitchen/bedroom, because I have NO CLUE what I was searching for.

Wherein *awesome* = sarcasm. THIS IS NOT AWESOME AT ALL.

Booze helps.

Revenge

A *screenshot* of my Facebook status yesterday, wherein *screenshot* = yes, I just took an actual picture of my screen with my camera and emailed it to myself. What? That's how you do it.

6:30 this morning... CRASH! SHATTER! WHAT THE...

One-third of a collection of beautiful vintage Pyrex turned into rubble and dust. And shards. There is glass everywhere. Glass. Every. Where. The destruction is so massive I was unable to adequately document it on film.

Apparently Lola checks my Facebook status.

Touche, Lola. Touche.

Playing Dollhouse

Howdy, all. I am looking for some input on furniture arrangement, because what I have got going on right now is not working for me. I have moved and removed and rearranged and realigned my living/dining room furniture 200 times in the last month and, ick, not feeling the love.

Our condo has a long'ish living/dining combo room. On one end is the kitchen, on the other is the door to the balcony and a lovely river view. Between those two points we've got a fireplace, living space and dining space.

Blech. Boring.

We just had new tenants move into our old house, and they were not able to use some of the furniture pieces that we had left there, so a few of our old things have now moved into the condo, and the result is TOO MUCH STUFF IN TOO SMALL A SPACE. I think.

So, send me your genius ideas for a room makeover. Really! Do it! I neeeeed help. Here's a little visual tour.

Right side of the dining room. This mirror used to look nice hanging above the couch when the couch was on the wall. Now it looks dumb. So the mirror is coming down. Outside of that door and window is our balcony.

Left side of the living room. The TV above the fireplace is coming down. It's already claimed, just waiting for a pick up. The violin and music stand can also be put away since Carlie has not touched it since, um, December. See the thermostat and light switch? Well, if you were to keep walking past those you would go down the stairs to the front door, just for a little perspective.
Right side of the dining room. The only thing that is really "fixed" in this space is the lights above the table are where they are, therefore the table always has to be centered beneath the lights. Everything else is up for moving. The mirror leaning against the wall belongs upstairs, so that'll be moving.

Left side of the dining room. Here's my problem spot No. 1. The antique buffet just came "home" from the old house last week. It's too big. I love it, but it's too big. Not sure what to do with it. Also, the piano really has no place else to live. On the plus side, it's pretty unobtrusive.

The whole space from the kitchen looking toward the balcony.

And the whole space from the back door looking toward the kitchen. Of note: I HATE the couch. The first thing that will be replaced when we are buying furniture will be the couch. It's really the only "big" thing that needs replacing. So image the bulky overstuffed beast replaced with something low profile on peg legs.

And a close up of the buffet. Because it really is lovely. But should it stay or should it go?

Share your decor saavy with me in the comments. Please. I beg of you.

Party Like a Rock Star

You know you are a mom when...

You are extremely excited to spend the night alone in a motel, even a crappy one that smells like nachos and feet

You are in your granny night gown flipping channels at 7 pm

You are thrilled to be in control of the remote even though the TV only has, like, six crappy channels

You go to the bar for dinner and enjoy wine, happy hour snacks, and a library book, alone, in the most well lit corner of the bar

The fun activity you brought with you, just for kicks, is individual false eyelashes and eyelash glue. And a library book

Adventures in dumpster diving

When we decided to downsize to a condo from a larger home in 2009, we weighed the pros and the cons. Less space but smaller utility bills. No yard, yet no yard work. Losing vintage charm, but gaining modern convenience. In other words, we thought this shit out.

Once of the pro/con items that didn't seem significant was the garbage situation. In our old house, we had curbside pickup for garbage and recycling, one day per week. In the condo, we have a dumpster for garbage, plus dumpsters for recycling, that we can use any/every day of the week. We have to walk a skosh farther than the curb, but all in all, not a big deal.

Something that I did not anticipate was my husband's transformation into a dumpster diver. There's a little area adjacent to the dumpsters, just empty space, where people put "things" that seem a little too "good" for the dumpster, and apparently other people take them. Kind of like a sharing table. I've seen a nice-looking highchair sitting there, big empty rubbermaid bins, even a computer monitor, just sitting there, discarded, next to the dumpster, but nothing that has ever tickled my fancy.

What I'd never seen was a plant. Which is okay, because I've never met a house plant that I can't kill. But the other day, apparently a plant appeared at the dumpster, and by the end of that day, the plant was in my house, courtesy of Tim, who apparently forgot that bringing a plant into our house is the kiss of death. Also, for some reason, this is all my fault? I'm the plant killer? I don't understand how he brings a plant in and now it's "my" plant, but that's another post...

Anyway, here's the plant. A palm of some kind. A perfectly nice plant, I'm sure. Whatever.

The plant needed something beneath it to catch water, and apparently my husband has no idea how much a Demarle fluted moldhttp://shop.demarleathome.com/categories/1039622269-flexipan-molds/products/879818044-fluted-square-mold costs, because that's where I found my pan.

I noticed that our "special" kitty, Buffy the Mouse Slayer, was very interested in the plant. She's the biggest pain in the ass cat in the history of cats, fyi, but she is quite pretty. And we all know that pretty girls get away with pain in the ass shit that us regular girls just can't pull off. Again, a story for another post...

And now we know why house plants cannot survive in our home environment. Apparently they are being molested by Buffy.

And hopefully palms are not poisonous. And by "hopefully," I mean that if they are poisonous they are fast-acting and do not induce pre-death barfing. JUST KIDDING. Pretty much. Not really.

And thus ends Tim's foray into the world of dumpster diving. And thus ends the notion that it's me who kills the house plants.

The end.

I am so controversial...

I received an email about a complaint about my blog, and a link to click to view it, and blah blah blah, SPAM, so I deleted it. Because I? Am no fool. I do not clink links in ridiculous emails.

Then today I logged on to take a peek at my blog for the first time in, oh, a while, and lo and behold, a big, bold message greeted me:

We have received a DMCA complaint for your blog, So Not Zen. An email with the details of the complaint was sent to you on 11-Jan-2012 , and we reset the post status to "Draft"; you can edit it here. You may republish the post with the offending content and/or link(s) removed. If you believe that you have the rights to post this content,you can file a counter-claim with us. For more on our DMCA policy, please click here. Thank you for your prompt attention.

Wowza. Who did I piss off? I went to the deleted post, and it was a picture (from Google images) of a French bulldog with the title "Christmas Wish List No. 6" and that's pretty much it.

I had no idea frenchies were so controversial.

In other non-threatening news, today is January 12 and I have yet to break my January resolution, which is NO BIG BOX STORES. I'd love to make this a lifestyle choice, but even given our differences, the Tar-jay still calls to me on occasion. But not this month. We'll see what February holds.

I have continued my January tradition of dieting my way back down to my post-holiday level of overweight, which is my baseline overweightedness. It's hard to feel celebratory about the fact that, yay, I am dieting my ass off and now I only need to lose 15 pounds. But in comparison to the oh, hell no, reality of gaining six or seven ADDITIONAL POUNDS during the course of the holidays, I guess it's the better position to be in.

Hopefully I'll be back to my normal weight by March (15 pounds by March, that's doable, right?) when I start my running training program up again. This year I am running two half-marathons, one in May and one in June. I've got no good excuse for not running these days because our weather has been brilliant and non-wintery to the extreme, yet I haven't run since I did a 5k on Dec. 4, so six weeks ago, not one little jog. I have, however, been dancing with Tim, three hours of classes per week. We're doing West Coast swing, East Coast swing and Cha Cha. I could live without the cha cha, personally, but the swing classes are a lot of fun.

So, here I am, back to the blog, again, hoping to make it a semi-regular occurrence. I'll try not to stir up too much controversy with my cute dog posts. Peace out.

Deck The Halls.,,,

... with $1 loofahs from Walmart.

This idea? All Carlie. This photo? My new iPhone. Fa la la la la

Send help, STAT

Singing the new car blues

This is my Montero. I love this car. I know how to parallel park it like a boss downtown. I know which parking garages I am going to scrape the roof of. I know that the tires can take curbs without damage. I've driven it for ten years now. And while I love the thought of shopping and of new, I hate the idea of a learning curb.





I've needed as new car for a year now, for mechanical reasons. Repair costs at this point are more than the value of my car. But that's okay. I've lived with the rattles and chirps and occasional spazzy jerking motions when accelerating from a dead stop.





Now I have a giant crack across the windowshield. And I resigned myself to live with it, because even putting a new $350 windshield on the car at this point seems silly. That's okay. I'll drive it anyway. Last week, the interior overhead light started coming on at random times. Hit a bump, light comes on. Round a corner, light comes on. Weird. But I can live with that.





I've also been overlooking a leak on the front passenger side, and now a leak in the back door. I've learned to overlook the seatbelt problems and the fact that I get 15 mpg at best.




But this weekend, the speakers have started to die. And I am finally ready to car shop. Because I'm not driving around without a radio.





What I want in a new vehicle: small SUV, big tires, big side mirrors, headlights that turn themselves off automatically, roof rack, third row seating is a bonus but not necessity. 20 mpg or better required. Comes in red is a plus.





Tim is pushing me toward a Honda CRV. I have two friends with Subaru Foresters that they love. And my sister has a Ford Escape Hybrid which is awesome. My personal taste is running toward the Nissan Rogue or the Chevy Equinox.





What do you drive? How do you like it? Help me! I am suffering from a severe case of decision-itis, aka choice-o-phobia.

Insanity

Carlie and I are campaigning hard for a dog. Specifically, a shih poo. Because my dollhouse sized condo is not already crowded enough and covered in cat hair.

I may have finally lost my mind, for real this time.

But look at that face. Oy.

And now we're broke. The end.

Since I decided to participate in the NaNoDooDah thingy, I've been trying my best to post every night, which generally means posting from my iPhone or iPad, because I am too lazy to get out of my bed and sit at the computer by the time I remember that I was going to post something, and my laptop has somehow mysteriously gone to live in Carlie's room since I got my iPad. Anyway, I just looked back at recent posts and see how riddled with typos they are. Whoopsie.

Yeah, I know, first world problems.

Speaking of first world problems... this is Carlie at 9:40 this morning.

And this is Carlie at 11:30 this morning. Notice anything different? In her toothal region, to be specific. And yeah, toothal is not a word. I know.

Now here's me at 9:40 this morning...
And here's me at 11:30 this morning...

Let's celebrate in haiku, shall we? This week's theme: Fleeting. How appropriate.

Money comes and goes

I won't always be broke, right?

The smile is worth it

I've got absof steel buried under there somewhere

Today I did a kettlebell workout, a 30 minute session in a 150 degree sauna, and then went to a running group where we did 25 minutes of sprints followed by a core workout.

And then I died.

Nothing new to see her, move along

Today is one of my favorite days of the year. Or at least it starts as one of my favorite days of the year. Generally, it ends as one of my least favorite days of the year, but then like an insane idiot, I do it again the next year.

Craft with Carlie Day! Woot!

Since Carlie was old enough to exchange gifts with friends for Christmas, I've had her make her "friend" gifts every year. We've made some pretty cute things, like fairy houses, snowglobes, purses made from old jeans, magnet boards and I can't think of what else. This year we're going with crocheted monster hats.

She is getting her braces put on in two days, so I thought a good needlecraft project will keep her mind off of her aching teeth. Especially since she is such a low maintenance and drama free child. BWAHAHAH. not.

In other news, I recently replaced my ghetto-ass busted windshield on my car to the tune of almost $400.00. And guess what? On my drive to Boise Friday I got a rock ding. WINNING! I immediately said to Carlie, my traveling companion, I AM SO GETTING THAT FIXED FIRST THING MONDAY MORNING SO IT DOESN'T SPREAD... lesson having been learned last time (see $400 fucking windshield replacement).

One little ding. Not so bad, right? When we got up Saturday morning, everything, including my car and windshield, was encased in ice. When I got my windshield free of the ice, the "ding" had become a crack. A fucking crack that measured about five inches long. FML. As a bonus, once the car warmed up, the five inch crack spread RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES and I watched it travel from the driver's side bottom corner of the windshield all the way to the passenger side bottom corner. But it didn't go straight across. It curved upward and then down again.

And now my car has a giant frowny face on the windshield. Appropos.

Yeah, no

Spent eight hours driving today. In a car. Just me and carlie and Sirius satellite radio Hits 1, which is a station that plays the same dozen songs repeatedly.

So, yeah. Bogging, my ass.

Carlie-nomics

Gas for my behemoth vehicle to and from Boise, $300

Bazaar table fee, $25

Carlie's Gross Today, $95

Carlie's hair feathers at bazaar, $5

Carlie's new hat at bazaar, $15

Carlie's food at the bazaar, $15

Bottom Line, -$11,763 ish

But the new hat is pretty fabulous.

Sent from my iPhone.

Road Trip Fail

On The Road

Posting from my iPhone from a shithole hotel without wifi, in a shithole town halfway to Boise. Road trip, woot!

Carlie and I are joining Maggy and Iris for a crafty holiday bazaar. Banana Cream Puff goes nationwide. You can say you knew her when.

Sent from my iPhone.