It was not that long ago that I was stuck in the corporate grind, daydreaming of a time when I wouldn’t be forced to get up every morning and listen to people complain about clients, students, donors, principal investigators… Whatever it was it didn’t matter, there was always a lot of complaining going on. I sat in my office and wished that I just could have a little more time at home.

It feels like it’s been twelve and a half years since I was working and had the ability to have conversations with grown ups on a daily basis. It seems everything that comes out of my mouth these days starts with “No – Lucy – no don’t put that in your mouth!” or “No – Lucy – no hitting Mommy in the face…” I never thought I would one day long for arguments about profit and loss statements or annual budgets.

I have had some good luck with prospective jobs and good interviews, I think I am learning the art of selling myself – unfortunately there is still a lack of takers. In the meantime I have had the time to paint almost the entire house, pack away all of Lucy’s old clothes, scrape all of the rust off of the porch railings, do 4,874 loads of laundry and learn how to make Moroccan chicken stew.

I have gotten so good at laundry, it’s a shame it’s not a prosperous career path. In the meantime, if you have any questions about excel formatting or the advantageous of using the Dewey Decimal system over the LOC system, please feel free to call me, I’m available to take your call.

I think HGTV is sucking the creativity out of me. In case you were wondering where I have been, it’s been all about trying to figure out paint colors and how to turn a spanish revival into a sleek modern materpeice and very little about thinking of new posts to write. I know, I totally suck.

What I should do is turn off the television, unfortunatly, I have recently injured my left ankle and I am something of a prisoner of the couch. I keep asking Guinness to bring me new coffee and pick up the remote control that fell onto the floor but he just looks at me in confusion.

Yesterday I was in Old Navy and I noticed that they have a lot of clothes this season made out of silk – SILK in old Navy, isn’t this an oxymoron? I mean am I the only one who shops there because I can get almost anything I need for $20.00 and it’s guaranteed to be washer & dryer friendly? I felt a little bit like I stepped into an alternate universe.

I have been unemployed for almost two weeks now, I have interviewed for the one job that I have applied for since the big lay off. This seems like really good odds and in a way I don’t want to mess up my stats. However it might still be good idea to start looking for other jobs but I don’t know how to do this with so many distractions on the internets. Every time I log on I am reminded to check my bank balance, to see what Susan is up to and to find out how many southwest miles I have and where that can take me… Perhaps what I lack is focus – do you think you can buy focus on-line? Maybe ebay?

Before my twilight zone excursion to old navy yesterday I spent the morning at Jury Duty – and for the 3rd time in a row I wasnt picked for anything, I was dismissed before lunch even. I don’t understand why they never want me. Having been picked now would have solved my problem of not looking for a job. I would have had somewhere to go everyday and I would have been getting paid. Ugh, if only I still lived in California I could have figured out how to get myself on Conrad Murray’s case and I would have been set for months.

I have two really good friends, and when I say “really good friends” I mean I work with a very cool guy who I occasionally find myself drinking too much with at the bars near our office. My other really good friend I have never met but I have been reading his blog everyday for at least seven years, I feel like I know him better than I know most people I interact with on a regular basis (also I’m a giant nerd).

Both of these very dear friends of mine have just recently self published their first novels, I would like to take the opportunity to urge all of you to help support artistic talent – because why else would you be reading this if not to bask in all the glory of my abundant artistic talent?  I mean besides just stopping by to see if I’ve posted any new pictures of the worlds cutest kid.

Someday I will find the time and wherewithal to sit down and put to print the novel that is inside me… and supporting my friends will give you all good practice for when I urge you to buy my book.

Here they are, they are awesome and totally worth your time*

      

 

 

 

*it should be noted here that I have not actually had the chance to read either of these books yet – I am, however,  confident in my awesomeness statement nonetheless.

I feel that my two most recent posts have been very maudlin and I need to lighten things up – that being the case I’d like to talk about the Daughter’s of the American Revolution, because nothing says light and funny quite like the DAR.

Several years ago my sister tricked me into joining the DAR, she did this through bribes of tiaras and costumes. I’m a sucker for any kind of head piece and since she promised to pay my yearly dues (for my lifetime) I reluctantly signed up.

I’m no stranger to societal organizations. I was once (also reluctantly) a Rainbow girl – which I was also talked into through  bribes of tiaras and hoop skirts (do you see a pattern here?).

The problem is my love of dressing up like a princess really conflicts with my deep seeded hatred of forced social gatherings. I have officially been in the DAR for six years now and not once have I gotten to dress up in period costumes – I have, however, been stuck in Many Many awkward forced social situations.

Now, I’m not saying the DAR isn’t a great organization dedicated to many worthwhile projects, but they lack one very important aspect – alcohol. When I watch the Gilmore girls, most of their DAR meetings take place with afternoon wine sprtizers on Emily’s patio, but not our chapter – oh no we drink mixers only – you know like soda and water… I’m not saying I need to be drunk to enjoy myself but seriously when you are hanging out with the DAR crowd listening to a Paul Revere reenactor speak for half an afternoon it certainly doesn’t hurt.  The DAR crowd, with a few exceptions, is almost entirely a group of women you wouldn’t be surprised to see on an episode of confessions of animal hoarding – you know because of all the cats… They are odd ducks to be sure.

Three years ago I was talked into attending the Pennsylvania state convention, being held in Scranton PA – you know somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. And not only did I go but I paged. As a page you have to dress entirely in white – you have to wear gloves and fetch things for all of the older cat hoarders who are too lazy or enfeebled to get things themselves. As a page you are not allowed to sit down or eat anything (except during designated times). It was 48 hours of tortuous forced social gatherings where my feet hurt and I was hungry. You are also required to stay in a small hotel room with three other people (fortunately I got to share a bed with my sister) but most pages weren’t so lucky. I tried to put on a brave face I really did but the flask I had brought with me was too small for funnel I brought and my dream of secretly tying one on the entire weekend were hopelessly dashed.

At one point one of the more obnoxious, chipper pages says to my sister “I don’t think Becca is having any fun.” Um… duh. No one says DAR women aren’t observant.

I’m not sure what my point was to all this – I lost focus on the message I was trying to convey several paragraphs ago when my brain diverted itself to trying to locate the flask I haven’t seen since that fateful weekend. I guess what I’m trying to say is that last weekend when I learned the valuable lesson of not having multiple children my lovely sister and her husband where in Gettysburg to attend this year’s Pennsylvania State DAR convention – because that’s the difference between me and my husband and the two of them, you couldn’t get us to go without the use of a court order…

(If you are interested in joining or learning more about the DAR please visit National Society DAR or The Independence Hall Chpater  (thats my site – I made it – isnt it pretty?)  This has been a public service announcement)

I realize that I am getting old and out of touch because when I flip through the People magazines in our breakroom at work I only recognize about a quarter of the people in it. I’m also pretty sure that there are several commercials on TV featuring celebrities trying to sell you things, but I’m never sure if they are celebrities or just TV commercial actors, I’ll look at my husband and say “Is that someone we should know who that is?”, and my husband who is even more out of touch with this stuff than I am will stare blankly in response, give me about 5 seconds of eye contact before he buries his head back into his laptop and (I imagine) wonders for the umpteenth time how I tricked him into marrying me.

~

Another realization I have come to recently is that no matter what I do – my hair will never be shiny and bouncy like the women on TV that use the same shampoo I do, I buy a lot of products, sometimes really expensive products and at one point in my life worked at a hair salon where we sold ubber expensive products and even then I was not bouncy or shiny…  I have finally come to the conclusion that unless I can go back in time and somehow add some Hawaiian ancestry into my gene pool this is never going to happen so I’m going to start saving my money.

~

This morning I was getting ready for work and I decided to dress up – you know in a dress and everything and searched through the bottom of my closet for a pair of black heels, I had them on for about 10 minutes and remembered why they were buried in the bottom of my closet in the first place.

 When I was getting ready to leave for work I took a minute and fished my worn and tired ballet flats out of the shoe pile near our front door, my husband and I had this conversation:

Him: Are you looking for shoes?

Me: Yup

Him: But you have shoes, right here, you just had them on.

Me: Yup

And as I pulled on my ballet flats and stuck the heels in a bag to bring to the office I thought about explaining to him that the heels had a 30 minute window and I would take them to work and keep them under my desk and if I’m called into the Dean’s office, or if say Ed McMahon shows up with a crazy big check for me and a TV crew I will quickly step into them and hurry from my office. I wanted to tell him how there is no point in being in pain unless someone you care about sees you and think it makes your legs look longer, and since I never run into anyone I care about in the parking garage why would I do that to myself. But then I thought, he’s a man who wears doc martins to work he’s probably not really going to understand anyway.

I thought it was weird when I started only being able to walk on the dark squares on the diamond patterned rug at work, and then last night I realized I couldn’t go to sleep without turning over three times to the left… I would be worried about these things but who has the time for that? I really need to go wash my hands again…

While I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my daughter last summer, there was a small period of time where southern California was rocked with earthquake after earthquake – since many of my friends hail from there I was worried, but clearly not that worried – here is an email sent to my very good friend, lets call him Jeff (cause that’s his name) on July 8^th:

I wanted to write and make sure that you are okay from your umpteenth earthquake from last night – and I know you are worried that this weird pattern of earth shaking might signal the beginning of the apocalypse or something but I have a much better explanation…
 
I am going to be a Mother, and yes it is all about me, but seriously me – a Mom, Hell clearly hasn’t frozen over yet so something else needs to happen ergo earthquakes.. Its all going to be fine. I promise.
 
I threw up on the sidewalk walking into work this morning… how much fun is that? I don’t understand I wasn’t sick at all for the last 9 months – it’s a great time to start I guess.
 
On that note – I have to leave, please try and have a good evening – I am going home to deal with an exterminator who is coming to handle our roach problem (I’m telling you – all sunshine & happiness on my end!)

Haha – fun stuff, apocalypses, vomit & roaches oh my…