We haven’t been home all night due to visiting some visiting family in Maryland… including the newest addition, a wee one born just 2 months and 2 days ago on Christmas! It was our first time meeting him and I am in luuuurve.
So instead tonight I present you with: 1) this photo of a baby on rollerskates from a cooler at CVS…
2) this photo from Pinterest which I have been laughing at all day long…
Aaaaand 3) Jeff in a Rick Santorum sweater vest (do NOT ask)
Chooch and Molls had fun expelling some energy at the park today- Molly mostly eating sticks, Chooch mostly humping this dog seen below. Proud moments, as always.
Think I might need to take a closer look on that. As Cute Overload would say… CHOOCH-HANCE:
PS… Shout out to BFF Luna who came to visit this weekend! Wah!
And now, back to the real world (BARF)
Loving:
OK, not gonna lie, I’m kind of in love with our beagle-for-the-week Molly. Even if we did lose a great deal of sleep on Tuesday night due to her anxiety shenanigans. I was also whining to our Dog Nanny CEO (Yo Des!) about the abject horror that is walking two dogs simultaneously, to which she told me I’d “get used to it and then want 2 babies!!” and I was like “lololololololol NEVER, this is insufferable misery and I was very close to bludgeoning myself unconscious with a full poop baggie if it would have made the walk end sooner” and 30 hours later I’m singing a different tune. You know what’s more cute than 1 doggie greeting you at the door crying and begging for a tummy rub? Two of the little furry effers! I’m already thinking of excuses to give her parents so I can secretly hoard her forever. “Welcome back! UMM I suppose you are looking for Molly? That sucks cause we lost her. SORR.”
Also loving: The Discovery Health show “I’m Pregnant And _____” and Heejun from American Idol.
Hating:
The self check-out at the grocery store. How have I not whined about that thing yet!? The self check-out machine and I have a long-standing love/hate relationship. Mostly hate. Mostly murderous rage.
The thing is so tempting isn’t it? I always remind myself of my long and decorated history of FAIL with the self check-out machine when I’m tempted to use it. Like the other week when I got in line (traditional human check-out line) behind an older gentleman in a fedora buying 1) cotton balls and 2) a Twix bar. (True story, not just 2 arbitrary items I was making up, that was apparently his list). And I’m saying to myself OKAY. All my instincts are telling me to run, run far away BUT homeslice has 2 items. This has to be a quick transaction. Stick it out in the lane run by a human with an actual brain and cognitive abilities.
People, let me save you the fuss. No judgement here, but fedora+cotton balls+Twix=trouble. I waited for like 9 minutes while who knows what happened up there. BUT then you get in the stupid self check-out lane and your odds are no better.
I swear if that thing tells me one more time to remove a non-existent item from the belt, replace a non-existent item on the scanner, present my ID for the 5th time to buy whatever crappy wine is on sale that day, or to ”Please wait! Help is on the way!”, I WILL cut someone. Honestly, if the stupid machine is not interested in assisting me that day, I wish it would just let me know. You know, like instead of “Welcome! Please scan your bonus card!” it could just say “NOPE. WALK AWAY. NOT TODAY.” I would at least appreciate the honesty.
Also hating: My stupid computer “updated” itself in the stealth of night while I was powerless to postpone it. For the record, I will do most things short of sacrificing my life to avoid computer updates. Like The Oatmeal, I delight in tricking the thing into thinking I’ll maybe someday indulge it with its coveted updates. Like, I will click “Remind Me Later” every week for 5 years until the effer pulls a fast one on me and updates and restarts itself at 3:00am. ANYWAY it pulled that devious little maneuver on me and now I am stuck with some new-fangled Internet Explorer and MY PINTEREST MAGIC PIN-IT BUTTON IS GONE. First world problems of epic proportions, I’m aware. I spent like 20 minutes trying t0 restore it and it just seems to be bugg-y for me. Microsoft, y’all better get ON this. Or, I should maybe get over it and employ some coping skills. Maybe.
Let’s seeee, what happened this weekend…
I got to do a rare cheetah shift at the zoo (because the cheetah volunteers are weak-willed and take the winters off). I even caught them during their weekly bunny treat! (Sorry, cheetahs gotta eat too.)
Every weekend there is a clipboard waiting for the volunteers with updates that the keepers post throughout the week with animal happenings. It is a treasure trove of awesomeness and the interesting/funny anecdotes are half the reason I donate my time to the zoo…
THEN. Then. Jeff got his question answered on our local sports show.
Oh sorry, was it not clear what a big deal this was? Let me just make sure everyone understands…
MMM HMM Respect.
We are also dog-sitting this sweet little she-beagle for the next week… meet Molly!
Umm… What else do I have for you….. tonight I did boring stuff then capped my evening with a glass of wine and Shake it Up on the Disney Channel.
Perfection.
Sorry this update blew.
May all your Tuesdays be Fat Tuesdays,
Becker Out
P.S. Opening super glue pens with your teeth=not adviseable.
Preface: Allow me to introduce you to the tastiest, yummiest salad and the easiest meal ever. I am a total sucker for all those links proffering “Weeknight Meals in 20 Minutes!” blah blah blah Rachel Ray blah blah. And then you click it, and all the recipes start with “Preheat oven to…” and “In a large skillet…”. NO. Heating things=cooking things=400 things to clean. Which is all well and good if cooking a nice dinner is the one extracurricular activity you planned for the evening, but if you’re interested in doing anything else with your time away from work, I require recipes that are more along the lines of combine-this-and-this-and-ta-da-you’re-done-collect-100-gold-star-wife-points.
Which is what this salads is! It is an exact replica of the Santorini salad from Sweet Green, which is one of the most delicious things in the universe, but, you know, prohibitively expensive for regular consumption.
The picture looks like dog barf but I swear it’s really good:
Here is the formula: Romaine+garbanzos+grapes+feta+shrimp+splash of lemon juice+Gazebo Room or whatever greek-ish dressing you have access to. BAM. The shrimpies were just the pre-spiced, pre-cooked ones from the cooler at the store. I guess it would be more laborious if you had to cook the shrimp.
Okay… Now… My commuting problem.
We had a little left over so I brought it in to eat at work today. (Gold star frugal wifey WOO!). I got around to eating it at like 3:00, so by the time I was rushing out the door at 5:10, the empty tupperware was still on my desk. I was in a super rush to make the 5:30 bus, so ended up just putting the lid back on the tupperware and throwing the whole thing in my purse and running out the door. Why didn’t I make my way to the office kitchen at 5:08 so I could rinse and dry it before departing? I don’t have the answer to this question. It’s probably the same reason that I, once again, was sprinting after the bus this morning like a wild woman because I cannot get my mess of a self to the corner at the proper time. Jeff is dumbfounded as to why I can’t wake up 60 seconds earlier so I don’t keep missing the bus by 10 seconds. It seems so simple, doesn’t it?
I had one of those foreshadowing moments of clarity as I was carelessly tossing the tupperware into my bag. Because from past experience I do know you cannot trust anything in a purse no matter how well you think it’s secured. I swear I’m just walking around with this thing over my shoulder at 2 miles per hour, I really don’t know where these crazy forces of physics and nature are coming from that turn my bag into a vessel of absolute destruction. You leave the office with everything perfectly nestled in the little compartments, and 30 minutes later it’s: Headphones? Crushed. Sunglasses? Dismembered. Wallet? Has inverted itself and dumped $8.54 in pennies into the purse abyss. Cell phone? It’s unlocked itself and is dialing someone who lived on your floor freshman year who is inexplicably still saved in your contacts 9 years later.
So as I’m looking at this tupperware with about 3/4 tablespoon of dressing residue swirling around the bottom, I’m very clearly saying in my head: Self….. seeeelf? This is not a good idea, self. Come on. Go be a good girl and rinse this thing out. BUT NO! I thought of my embarrassing morning moment and reminded myself that saving 60 seconds and catching the preferred bus would get me home 20 minutes earlier.
I was about 3 minutes into my commute when I noticed a slight liquidy sheen on my wallet as I swiped through the metro turnstile. Yep. Somehow, someway, the bond of bowl-to-lid had been compromised. Odd, because it was intact upon inspection! ONCE AGAIN… mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle of the Handbag.
And here is where the fun starts. One warning about my knock-off Sweet Green salad: SHRIMP-JUICE-RESIDUE-STUFF IS SMELLY. Like, WAY smelly. I’m not exaggerating. I wasn’t noticing it “only because I was looking for it.” I was most certainly aboard the train with a very strong fish stench wafting from my general direction. Lolololololol MORTIFYING.
It was kind of one of those moments where I was like… Is this going to be more awkward if I bring this up and explain it to the person next to me? (I decided yes, yes that would be more awkward). So now I feel like I need to post, like, a reverse missed connection on Craigslist:
M/F4W: Girl on Metro Who Stank Like Seafood. I promise there is a very real explanation for my fruits-of-the-sea odor and it is unrelated to any personal hygiene deficiencies. CALL ME!
February 15, 2012: Chooch consumes 7 ounces of petroleum jelly, warranting our first calls to the after-hours vet and Poison Control.
Happily we were told it was a pretty benign substance, although they were a little concerned with the quantity he devoured. (Seriously Chooch? I don’t get what could possibly be so tasty that he would eat the entire tub). He had some tummy problems a few hours ago (as they warned us) but seems back to his usual excitable self.
Oy to the vey. Getting this little hoodlum insured was the best decision of my life. Chooch, you are going to make me gray by 27 you furry little turdball! JK I LOVE YOU thanks for making it only a false alarm.
I stumbled on this linked somewhere and it was such a good read: Are You With the Right Mate? via Psychology Today. (Or alternately if you’re in a time crunch, read on for highlights enhanced by my amateur yammerings.)
What day is more perfect than Valentine’s to talk about the science of relationships!? I love this crap. I can’t get enough of it. Self help books are my crack. I’ve read them all. All in a valiant effort to make our marriage one billion zillion percent divorce-proof. Even typing that word was traumatic. NOT HAPPENING. Those that know me know this stems from my father having left my mother; those that don’t know me, sorry but that’s the extent of that biographical nugget- twenty years later I’m still a great deal of therapy away from being ready to talk about it in greater detail than that. #TEAM CRAY CRAY!
Ironically, the pastor who married us told me that my OCD-ness here was actually a bad thing. A memorable moment from our pre-marital sessions was her looking at me and basically saying “Woman you better chill the eff out and release the death grip on your relationship.” She reminded me our relationship was already healthy and I needed to trust it and let it have its own natural ebbs and flows and quit being an overbearing psycho. It’s a work in progress, and I am working hard on not having a five alarm meltdown every time we have a conflict and barking at Jeff to NO, NO SIR, we are not going to sleep before resolving this. TELL ME YOUR FEELINGS. All of them. NOW! WHAT DO YOU MEAN I AM NOT CREATING A WELCOMING ENVIRONMENT!??!!?!
Anyway. Backing away from this slight exaggeration…
The gist I took away from the article was that relationships require care and attention and maintenance. Romance and the idea of the “perfect mate” are crap. Be mature and put your partner first. Look at your own behavior before you assume your partner needs to change. Be humble. QUALITY crap, you guys. I’m curious to hear others’ analysis too.
After a few post divorce years in the mating wilderness, Katz came to realize that framing a relationship in terms of the right or wrong mate is by itself a blind alley…. “We’re given a binary model,” says New York psychotherapist Ken Page. “Right or wrong. Settle or leave. We are not given the tools to think about relationships.”
Tools! Tools are good! Tell me more, wise ones…..
Along with many other researchers and clinicians, Meinecke espouses a new marital paradigm- what she calls the “self responsive spouse.” When you start focusing on what isn’t so great, it’s time to shift focus. “Rather than look at the other person, you need to look at yourself and ask “Why am I suddenly so unhappy and what do I need to do?” It’s not likely a defect in your partner. In mature love, says Meinecke, “we do not look to our partner to provide our happiness, and we don’t blame them for our unhappiness. We take responsibility for the expectations we carry, for our own negative reactions, for our insecurities, and for our own dark moods.”
Love it…
…In a long term relationship, Toronto’s Katz has come to believe that “Marriage is not about finding the right person. It’s about becoming the right person.”
I love that so much.
In an ongoing marriage, he adds, “incompatibility is never the real reason for a divorce.” It’s a reason for breakup of a dating relationship. But when people say “she’s a nice person but we’re just not compatible,” Doherty finds, something happened in which both participants allowed the relationship to deteriorate…. “It’s like your car stopping on the side of the road and you say ‘It just isn’t working anymore’– but you haven’t changed the oil in 10 years.”
Preach it…
Another crucial element of growth in relationships, says Givertz, is a transformation of motivation– away from self-centered preferences toward what is best for the relationship and its future. There is an intrapsychic change that sustains long term relationships. Underlying it is a broadening process in which response patterns subtly shift. Accommodation (as opposed to retaliation) plays a role. So does sacrifice. So do willingness and ability to suppress an impulse to respond negatively to a negative provocation, no matter how personally satisfying it might feel in the moment.
So, no cheap shots? Sound advice!
In the end, says Minnesota’s Doherty, “We’re all difficult. Everyone who is married is a difficult spouse. We emphasize that our spouse is difficult and forget how we’re difficult for them.”
YEP…
Boston’s Real reports that he attended an anniversary party for friends who had been together 25 years. When someone commented on the longevity of the relationship, the husband replied: “Every morning I wake up, splash cold water on my face, and say out loud ‘Well, you’re no prize either.’” While you’re busy being disillusioned by your partner, Real suggests, you’ll do better with a dose of humility.
”There is no such thing as two people meant for each other,” says Givertz. “It’s a matter of adjusting and adapting.” …Even then, successful couples redefine themselves many times, says Meinecke… “If both parties are willing to tackle the hard and vulnerable work of building love and healing conflict, they have a good chance to survive,” says Page.
Awesome. Srsly, good read. Hit that shiste if you have a chance. Hopefully this wasn’t too much harsh reality for Valentine’s Day?! Ha! Hope everyone had a lovely day filled with lots of chocolatey nommings. Hugs and kisses to all!
This was the Nine West front page today… Anyone think this looks terribly over-photoshopped?! I hate to body snark even a headless person but this is ghastly… if they were wearing little hot pink plastic pumps they would look just like little barbie legs!
This entire concept (fugly shoes, salmon socks, exploding carnation bouquet?) just is not working for me right now…
I Freaking Love the Internet
28 FebDo not ask, but today I googled “Are Altoids bad for you?”. A seemingly boring query which, once again, revealed to me new and unprecedented depths of the Splendorous Wonder That Is The Internet. Because what did I turn up but some sketchy forum full of people legitimately addicted to Altoids. (Source)
Here is our original poster…
Can I relate? No. No sir. No I cannot. But I appreciate you “putting it out there.” I like Altoids. Altoids are my friend. When I’m feeling a little stale in the pie hole? Altoids. When I want a sweet fix that isn’t Hershey’s Assorted Miniatures (Family Val-U Size)? Altoids. But… umm… wow.
Now our girl is going to address this bad breath accusation…
LOL NO you guys she doesn’t have bad breath! Gawd what kind of person do you take her for? Homegirl, by my estimation you just ate 600 Altoids in 48 hours so I’d say you’d be lucky to have bad breath as your problem. Also, you should probably withhold your judgment being someone seeking help from an internet forum about your debilitating breath mint addiction.
I’m also beginning to suspect this whole thing is a sham and these people are plants from Altoids corporate given the suspicious marketing buzz-phrases ”cold and refreshing feeling” line from the last person and the “cool, refreshing taste” from Trish. Trish’s analysis also lends itself to a possible new slogan: “Altoids: come for the cool, refreshing taste. Stay for the crunch”
No, I agree and actually do not believe there is anyone in the world who eats as many wintergreen Altoids than you. 6-12 cans. Rock that minty shyste.
This is where I gain a great deal of respect for the medical professionals that have to listen to the insane problems of the world with straight faces.
Doctor: Any other questions you had today?
JanieTheresa: Well, yes. Altoids. I eat about 1-2 cans per day… and that’s limiting myself.
Doctor: Hmm yes Altoids yes. Tell me more?
JanieTheresa: For me, I put about 4-5 Altoids in my mouth…
Doctor: Yes I see.
JanieTheresa: Crunch them up into small peices…
Doctor: Mm hmm crunch OK.
JanieTheresa: Swirl those peices around in my mouth…
Doctor: Yes yes. And after the swirling?
JanieTheresa: and then swallow.
Doctor: CHHRRMPPHHH SNORFLE I mean, that’s very interesting. Anything else?
JanieTheresa: Mmmmmm!
PSSHH get OUT… Insensitive troll…
Also did anyone else have a really inappropriate double take on “gentlearts”? Please don’t make me say it…
Let’s end on an uplifting note OK?!
FWD: TLC Production Department.
Tags: altoids, Awkward, inappropriate, internet, weird, WTF