Ting CLINK Ting CLINK!

My husband is hot...no, I mean SWEATY.   All the time.  If he thinks about hot, he sweats.  When I first met him  he had several fans in his bedroom and I don't mean the kind with pom poms or that want autographs.  I'm talking oscillating, humming, fans on poles.  It was like the fan display aisle at Wal-Mart. 

So when we moved into this house he was MORTIFIED to learn there wasn't a ceiling fan in the bedroom.  We had one put up and for the last several years it's been just fine.  Always on HIGH, but just fine.  Every once in a while when the build up of dust on the blades gets to critical mass, I make him clean it off.  He's always turning it on, I'm always turning it off.  It's just a little fan dance we do.....(AHAHAHAHAHA....okay that wasn't that funny...)

Anyway. Recently, something happened to the fan.  In the middle of the night it started to go tink-tink-tink-tink.  The little pully chain that can be used to switch speeds or turn the lights on or off suddenly  started hitting the light fixture.  TINK TINK TINK TINK.  That will PISS YOU OFF in the middle of the night.  Okay...a little aside here...I'm one of those people who can't stand repeated noises.  If it's a rhythmic repeated noise I don't find it soothing, I want to smash it with a ROCK.  So TINK TINK TINK at two am am am pisses me off off off.  What did I do?  I woke up Joe and made him stand up and fix it.

I'm not sure what he did, but it seemed to work until the middle of the night just the night before last when it started to ting CLINK ting CLINK in the night.  DAMN pully chain thing!  Only louder and with a new CLINK added just for rhythmic fun.  It was like sleeping with the percussion section from the Miami Sound Machine in the room.  I woke up Joe to make him FIX IT (I'm not going to stand up and fix it for Pete's sake...that fan will whack my hand off in the dark).  And this time...no fixy.  It just wouldn't stop!  It was maddening.  I finally made him turn the fan off and then he laid there and griped because he thought the bedroom instantly became a sweat lodge.

My question is this.  What makes a fan go bad?  We had no earthquakes, house shifts or otherwise fan unbalancing events!  All of a sudden it's got more sway than a hula girl convention.  What the hell is that?  I even thought about taking off the pully chain things (source of the damned clinking) but then Joe will somehow get it on HIGH and I won't be able to turn it down and it will be like a wind tunnel in there.  And you know what's as bad as ting CLINK?  FREEZING TO DEATH.

I have to kind of laugh because he actually gets up to fix it when I wake him up.  Either I've got him really well trained or he knows that if I had to get up to fix it, the thing would get yanked out of the ceiling and tossed through the window like a propeller.

I'm not friendly in the middle of the night.

Crickets. Nothing but crickets....

So I was all excited about the job thing.  To the point that I was actually DANCING after the phone interview!  I sent a cheery little thank you email and got a cheery positive response back.  I had been told that I would be contacted again at the end of last week...which obviously has come and gone.  

I sent another happy little email and this time...no response.  I thought...well...maybe they're busy.  Waited a couple of days...nuthin.  Sent a second inquiry email.  Again...not a PEEP.  WTF? They had even gone so far as to give me their cell phone number and had encouraged me to call with any questions.  So today, I called and of course they didn't pick up the phone.  I left a happy message, give me call, blah blah, looking forward to hearing from you, blah blah. And...NOTHING.  No return call.  

I do believe I've received the blow off.  Could they have possibly found out that I feed my daughter chicken nuggets most nights of the week and have even on one occasion given her a bowl of Oreos for breakfast?  Did she really HAVE one of those George Jetson phones and could see that I wasn't quite the model of health and fitness?  It was such a GREAT interview I thought!!  I can't quite figure this out.  There's got to be more to it. (I'm trying to make myself feel better). I mean, it's not like I'm a brain dead three toed sloth.  If they've changed their mind, aren't hiring, don't have a position, just CALL ME.  I'm reasonable.  

Most of the time.

Unless you don't return my emails and phone calls and then I can get down right hormonal, bitchy and way past unreasonable.  I think I might even border on being an asshole if this goes on too long. 

Yeah.   Pretty sure of that, actually.

Sister Nancy Negative.

I have nothing positive to say today.  Stay tuned for a better mood when I no longer feel like I've been beaten to death by my job. 

Heheheh....

I also like these.   Some of them are rated PG14 and maybe even R.

I SO need one of these!!!!

I'm an impulse buyer.  And not of things that are useful like chapstick or on-sale spaghetti sauce. I like  to buy things that are completely not useful.  There was this one time (don't you hate stories that start that way?) my cousin and I were in like 8th grade and we were at "The Mall" and we bought these DOG puppets that we thought were hysterical.    Completely an impulse buy that at the time my mother thought was HORRIBLE.  It was a dog puppet.  Come on.  

Any way.  I am a big fan of another blogger and it turns out she makes a unique product that I'm just drooling over.  Sock Zombies.  I am completely enamored with these things.  What would I do with it?  What WOULDN'T I do with it?  Zombies eat brains and my desk in a neurosurgery office would be the PERFECT location for a Sock Zombie to live!  I just get so much of a kick out of the detail and the fake blood.  The person that makes them writes very funny descriptions that make me want one even more!

And now...there are Sock Zombie Cozies.  I can just SEE one of these babies on the gear shift of my Equinox!!!!  How GREAT would that be?  His little red eyes beaming in the sun...sparkly red blood twinkling by the dash board lights.  I totally don't need one...MUST STAY AWAY FROM ETSY!!!!!!  You know I'll be hitting that "Shopping Cart" button in a moment of total weakness! Sock Zombies!   MUST.....HAVE....ZOMBIE......

Sizzle.

Tuesday at the big pool, I learned a valuable lesson about SPF values.  Like, SPF zero does not protect you from the sun at all.  I came home with a sunburn that was quite impressive.  Not just red. REDREDRED.   I thought I needed a little color...fire engine red wasn't what I had in mind.

When we got to the big pool, I sprayed the child down with sunscreen and added a little bug spray just for chemical fun.  (There are some big ass bugs out in the country)   My cousin swears she doesn't have stock in a company called "Banana Boat" yet she took almost 20 minutes to slather her children with sunscreen from the parts in their hair to between their toes and I think she might have done their nostrils but I couldn't swear to it.

Anyway, I have been dealing with the sunburn (self inflicted) for the past couple of days and it's been (gulp) painful but the worst has come on day three.  ITCHING.   I think as the top layer of skin, which is most assuredly DEAD, detaches from the new red, raw, new skin underneath it must create this itching, prickling, there-are-fireants-on--my-back feeling. I'd like to take one of those wire brushes on a handle that is used to clean grills and just go to TOWN on my back.  I don't know if  I'd pass out from the pain or the relief from the itching!!

You know what's next?  PEELING.  Did you ever see the episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe where he's in an attic with an exterminator looking for a snake...and all they find is the SKIN the snake has shed.  That's what is going to happen with me.  Joe is going to walk through the living room and I'll have left for work, but there is going to be a pile of skin shaped like me.  

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That'll freak him out.  

I hate Frosty and other rants

This morning Joe had to leave early for work, so I planned to take Emma to day care. No problem. She's pretty good in the morning.

So I got up my usual time and staggered around the house for a while, checked my email, made sure nothing earth shattering had changed on Facebook (it COULD, you never know) and thought "huh...those plants on the front porch look a little wilty. Think I'll go water them."

As I opened the front door, I swear it wasn't even open a CRACK, Frosty (the doofus pictured above) shot through the crack and out into the front yard. Now this should not be an issue right? Because the dog should obey the mistress, right? Well, Frosty didn't get that memo. She shot across the street and into a thigh high field of soy beans where I could only see the tip of her fluffy tail from time to time.

I was so pissed.

A. I haven't had any coffee yet and 2. I have on men's pajama pants that are two sizes too big and no bra. And no SHOES. And no CONTACTS. I yelled at Frosty (or at least the blurry cream colored thing I thought was Frosty) and she completely ignored me, so engrossed was she in her soybean field heaven.

So I went and put on scuffy slippers and my contacts (oh that looks better)..and went back out. Now she's gone...the little *&^%$&($$#@. I CROSS the road and start looking through the bean field to find her thinking of all the nasty things I'm going to do to her when I catch her (back down PETA people...I was only going to do it in my head...not really to her). I can't find her. It's now getting closer to time to be out of the house. I'm still in jammies in a bean field. Emma is still asleep across the street in the house. Then I saw a flash of white. It was HER. I crept up to her murmuring all kinds of sweet puppy love talk and when she wagged her tail and stood still I grabbed her and she knew she'd been really really bad. I stopped murmuring sweet puppy talk and told her that she'd make a nice sandwich for the German shepherd down the street. She's muddy, I'm muddy and we head for the house.

Needless to say, she got put right in her crate with no ceremony or treats. Peaches watched the whole thing with mild amusement.

The morning went down hill from there. I ran out of eye liner, my pants had slipped on the hanger so that they were all crunched up on one end so I had the most lovely accordion wrinkles at the knees.

Got Emma to school on time, I got to work on time. You can hardly see my eyes due to lack of liner and I look like an unmade bed because of wrinkles, had no time for a shower, so it's yesterday's hair (isn't that supposed to be cool?). On the way out the door Emma said "maybe we should get rid of the dogs, they are too much WORK". I told her that sounded like a really GOOD idea. Frosty is lucky she's not in a box addressed to Zimbabwe right NOW.

What a four year old thinks about...

Emma:  Mommy?

me:  Yeah?

Emma:  How come hands are the same color as bologna?

And no day is complete at the big pool....

Without one of these.....nothing says  non stop fun like a lobster chair.  Cheap popsicles, an acre of water surrounded by 6 foot tall corn,  and a lobster chair.  America is wonderful.

The big pool

Out in the middle of nowhere and I mean NOWHERE, there is a pool.   Well actually not really a pool, but more like an ACRE of water in a big concrete square  It's jaw dropping when you first see it.  Massive.  Surrounded by cornfields.  Holds 3500 people according to the "Capacity" sign. That number...by the way...is more people than live in the small town where this pool is located. No one can really explain to me why it's there.  "Some guy built it".   It's the last of it's kind, I assure you.  I paid THREE dollars for my daughter and I to get in.  Popsicles are a quarter.  Candy is 75 cents.  Where can you find values like that?  Better yet, how do they keep this place open?  I'll bet there were maybe 50 people there.  and 12 were life guards.

I took the day off (read as got told that I had to take the day off because the doctors were off) and took Emma to the pool with my best friend and her kids.  Emma was so excited.  She fairly danced with excitement all morning until we finally started on the hour drive to the pool town.  As we drove deeper and deeper into the corn country she became more and more discouraged when we didn't arrive at the much touted pool.  At one point she said "I don't think there IS a big pool!".  Like I'd lie about something like that.

We had a great time at the pool, weather was perfect.  But poor Emma.  We were there for six hours and the following happened:

1.  She fell and skinned both knees

2. Went down the slide and lost a tooth when she hit the water

3. Jumped off the play gym and twisted her ankle

4. Got a chafed bottom from going down the slide so many times

5. Scraped the skin off the pads of her toes from the concrete bottom of the pool and was     leaving little bloody toe prints.

I SWEAR I was watching her every second!!  She played so hard and had so much fun, I had to DRAG her out of the water every time the life guards blew the whistle for a break.  The minute the whistle blew again she was back in the water.  She was completely pruney.  

At the end of the day (SIX HOURS LATER) I was getting her dry clothes on and she looked at me with glazed eyes and said "I had so much fun...thank you  for bringing me mommy". 

I almost cried.  I nearly WRECKED her by letting her play so long and so hard and she loved every minute of it.  She fell asleep after eating 6 chocolate chip cookies in the backseat, face smeared with chocolate, hair still damp from the big pool, mouth agape with a new gap-toothed grin, tan from the sun, completely and utterly spent.  

I love the big pool.

Well well wellness

So I've got this job possibility that I can't say too much about, but suffice it to say it concerns teaching people about how to lead a healthy life style and thus...be healthy.  Sounds good, huh? Insurance rates go down, health care costs go down,  I get a new job, everybody wins.

I'm very excited...but now the 20 pounds I've put on since January is feeling like 400!!  I've had a phone interview that went very positively.  PHONE INTERVIEW.  Just a regular phone, not one of those George Jetson TV phones.  So the people haven't actually SEEN me yet.  I'm about a size 14...last year this time I was a size 10...(falls face down onto Macbook in horror).  I'm not sure what happened other than 1. I stopped taking the stairs at work and B. I started eating fried food again.  I'm tellin ya, they could fry GRAVEL and I'd eat it if it were breaded and dipped in ketchup.  So I'm trying to figure out how to lose 30 pounds and get the flab tightened up before the person who wants to to interview me returns from the east coast next week.  Short of sawing off a limb...it ain't gonna happen.  So I'm going to have to distract them with my incredible wit and maybe dazzle them with a new pair of shoes.  I can imagine it now after the interview.  Funny girl, kinda cute, nice shoes...but did you see the size of her ASS????

I'm also the worst parent of the millennium because my child exists almost solely on chicken nuggets and Pop-tarts...no...actually she DOES exist on that with the occasional pancake thrown in and on a really good day, a grilled cheese.  I'm the biggest hypocrite of the century!  Um...oh yes, I'm your wellness specialist and you need to be trim, fit and healthy...unless you're my five year old and then you can have fatty streaks in your liver and a cholesterol level of 1209.  I guess that's really not that funny. (is that DCFS at the door?)

I also have no patience because I think after one phone call and not actually MEETING me they should hire me and pay me more money than I'm making now...what?  Is that weird? I don't think so. Let's save everyone a little time.  Cut to the chase.   Give me what I want and everyone will be happy.

So, I can either eat that left over spaghetti in the fridge for dinner, or I can start this whole healthy thing right now and try to find something a little less...mmmmm...pasta-y.  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  No?  

AM I NOT GOING TO GET THIS JOB?????  I promise to eat a whole head of lettuce and maybe some broccoli if I get the job.  Now I have to go...someone wants to show a movie on my ass.