Who Says I Can’t Keep A Secret?

Aug 2, 2005 | Uncategorized


On Friday, my best friend will officially start her second trimester of
pregnancy.  Which means that the news I’ve been sitting on for the
past 10 weeks can officially be screamed from the mountain
tops… 

I am going to be an Auntie!



Who
says I can’t keep a secret?  But it’s been killing me to be
quiet.  In fact, I was so excited that before we moved  IZ
and I started calling Becca, "Linda"–just in case.  When you live
in Seminary housing and gossip is disguised as "prayer requests" being
paranoid is a prerequisite for sanity.  And after moving, it became
difficult to exchange knowing glances with Becca–it just doesn’t work
as well in email.  The thrill was gone. . . so, you can imagine my
glee to finally be able to say,

I am going to be an Auntie!



I know, it’s all about me.  

But seriously, I couldn’t be
happier for my beloved Becca (ok, and you too Dan!) and I’ve been
telling her that as often as possible.  The darling "Peanut" as we
have been calling her/him will be arriving shortly before my birthday
and I can’t think of a better present! 

Unfortunately,
I’ve been having issues uploading an image of the Peanut’s ultrasound
photo.  So, you will just have to trust me that he/she is aptly
named for the moment…

Woohoo… and did I tell you that I am going to be an Auntie?

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And You Smell Like Old People and Soap!

Jul 24, 2005 | This Life

This is a fragment of an email I sent to Becca– Turns out, one’s email is an excellent source of content.

So, I’m in this house a month and I’m finally getting the old house smell out. ARG!!! Our Realtor was like, “Well old houses smell funky when they are left vacant.” Let me tell you–Old houses smell funky, PERIOD. Turns out our water is weird and that has set me on a wild goose chase into the thickets of air fresheners. Now, I just want to go on the record and say that ordinarily those hokey plug in things are
way too housewifey for me to buy, much less use. Oh the shame of having them rung up at the cash register. No, I’m a candle girl and EXPENSIVE candles at that! But I have already ran through my stash and
they didn’t make a dent. You can’t leave them burning, they don’t work on larger spaces, and if you leave for any reason you come home to a very funky smell. So, I gave in and went “domestic”–and I used coupons and they were on special! Oh the horror.

At the moment, my entry hall smells like spiced pumpkin. (although I supplemented with matching candles on the landing so that it “looks” like the smell is actually coming from them! Hey, I still have my pride!) Boy Wonder’s bedroom has an odor neutralizer to deal with a very big hamster smell in a very
small room. It’s stashed behind a chest of drawers so you can’t see it. And the laundry room (also the cat box and cat food room and right off my kitchen and entry) smells like… wait for it… fresh linen. Ha ha ha ha ha. It actually smells like I’m doing laundry (my laundry detergent is scent free!). Which, as it turns out, I am always doing!

So… I think I have managed to effectively deal with the funky smell while still maintaining my image. Which we know, is so important now that I live in Oregon. OMG, shoot me now. No seriously, I’m going
insane. (I will warn you, this last paragraph will probably be blogged!**)

I Don’t Make This Stuff Up

Jul 22, 2005 | Uncategorized


Boy Wonder: "Can’t you please carry me to bed?"

IZ: "No."

Boy Wonder: "Pleeeeeze!"

IZ: "No, you are getting way too big for that!"

Boy Wonder: "OH!  That’s it!  You are so going to work out!"

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And The Sun Will Come Out

Jul 20, 2005 | Uncategorized

Well, after three weeks of
cloudy skies,  the sun has finally arrived.  This is saying
something as the weather widget loaded onto my desktop insists on
forecasting sun four days out–every day. Not two or three days.  
Never sun today, or tomorrow, but four
days out.   Every day I wake up to check the weather and there is
a sunny orange globe brightly shining at me exactly one day further out
than it was the day before.  We have taken Accuweather’s promise
of "Up to the minute" weather forecasting to mean, "Look out your own
damn window!"  I find this disturbing at best, since it makes it
difficult to be sarcastic and sing "The sun will come out tomorrow—uh,
I mean Thursday, no Friday, maybe Saturday…"  I suspect
something fishy is going on at Acuweather–they seem content to promise
you the moon sun
far enough out that when four days arrives hence, you will have
forgotten it was promised in the first place.  They are banking on
my Zima induced short-term memory.  But I do NOT forget that
easily. Oh no!  Despite their evil ploy to rob me of my ability to
annoy all those around me with my pitiful laments based on cloying
Broadway tunes, I will not be so easily deterred.  I know those
pesky weather people are just toying with my emotions–dangling the
hope of sunshine and vitamin D in front of me, hoping to see me
crack.  But I will not.  I will survive, I will…  Oh
never mind.


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And The Sun Came Out

Jul 20, 2005 | Uncategorized


Well, after three weeks of
cloudy skies,  the sun has finally arrived.  This is saying
something as the weather widget loaded onto my desktop insists on
forecasting sun four days out–every day. Not two or three days.  
Never sun today, or tomorrow, but four
days out.   Every day I wake up to check the weather and there is
a sunny orange globe brightly shining at me exactly one day further out
than it was the day before.  We have taken Accuweather’s promise
of "Up to the minute" weather forecasting to mean, "Look out your own
damn window!"  I find this disturbing at best, since it makes it
difficult to be sarcastic and sing "The sun will come out tomorrow—uh,
I mean Thursday, no Friday, maybe Saturday…"  I suspect
something fishy is going on at Acuweather–they seem content to promise
you the moon sun
far enough out that when four days arrives hence, you will have
forgotten it was promised in the first place.  They are banking on
my Zima induced short-term memory.  But I do NOT forget that
easily. Oh no!  Despite their evil ploy to rob me of my ability to
annoy all those around me with my pitiful laments based on cloying
Broadway tunes, I will not be so easily deterred.  I know those
pesky weather people are just toying with my emotions–dangling the
hope of sunshine and vitamin D in front of me, hoping to see me
crack.  But I will not.  I will survive, I will…  Oh
never mind.

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Oregon Looks Good On You

Jul 16, 2005 | Uncategorized

IZ: "Have you lost weight?"

Me: "No!"

IZ: "Hmm… you look thinner."

Me: "I live in Oregon, I am thin."



It’s a crazy
notion, a scary sensation, really, to be the THIN girl in town. 
Aside from
the tourists, that is.  When I look around me I realize I’m
seriously underweight in comparison to the general population.  I
got my first taste of this new "reality"  at a McDonald’s
somewhere along the I5.  (It all looks the same to me.) Anyhow, I
came out of the bathroom to be greeted by a row of men all
staring. At me.  Now seriously, I checked, my skirt wasn’t tucked
into my
panties and I didn’t have toilet paper stuck to any part of me. 
There was NO reason what-so-ever to be ogling me. Trust me on this–
like linen, I
do not travel well.  I’m typically wrinkled and bloated, a
somewhat disheveled mess.  It
didn’t dawn on me until a few days later when IZ came home from the
supermarket and said, "You
are so the Marin Babe!" that all those men were actually looking at
me.  WTF?

Um, hello.  Same girl
here.  Same AVERAGE girl.  Not skinny, not  fat. 
Just average.  In fact, by Marin standards, I have a serious
weight
problem.  But then, Marin is delusional.  It’s where 
grown women attempt
to look like 14 year old girls. Think of them as Barbies with Brains.
They are the epitome of
everything you see in magazines.  Tall, thin, tan– putting
nothing in their bodies that isn’t "organic".  Clad in the uber
uniform of trendy velor track suits, they meet for skinny soy lattes
to hash out the details of their macrobiotic diets and dish about the
new trainer they just hired to "whip them into shape."  
Seriously, Marin women are the archetype of self-obsessed, body
conscious Californians.  The only people "checking me out" when I
lived in Marin were those same women who seemed to roll their eyes at
my lumpy shape in an universal judgment that seemed to say, "Now
there’s a woman who could use a good colonic!"

You
would think this new shift in reality, this new found "popularity"
would not grow old.  However, I nearly throttled the produce guy
in Safeway on Tuesday who insisted on following me around and inquiring
every 10 feet if  "I needed anything."  Yes, I need you to
stop following me.  When he finally stopped stalking me, the
cashier did a double take on my I.D declaring that I looked nothing
like my picture and implying that there was NO way I could be that old. Um.  Yeah.  I am that old, now give me my damn alcohol before I sic Jr. over there in the produce department on you. 

Here in Oregon, life is just. . .
meatier.  And so by comparison, I am thin.   Which is why, my
next book is going to be entitled, "Don’t Diet! Move to Oregon!" 


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