Tea and Sympathy

Tony and I have regular business meetings every week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we camp out at a coffee shop or restaurant and hash out the things we'll be doing when we start our company next year. Most days, it is pretty uneventful, but sometimes, we get a day like today.

We had a rough morning, getting some bad news, some worse news and then some truly disappointing news. To take the edge off, we decided to hoof it over to the Starbucks inside Barnes and Noble because we get 10% off there and they have bigger tables for us to spread out on. Once there, Tony looked at me, said "Don't judge me," and ordered a giant slice of cheesecake. (We are dieting and he's allergic to milk, so this was a pretty big transgression, but one necessitated by the unbelievable crappiness of our day.) Needless to say, I ordered a giant chocolate chip cookie. (That's pretty much de rigueur for me, bad day or not.)

I sent Tony to pick a table while I got my skim latte (see, I'm SO on a diet.) Unbeknownst to us, he chose the table at the intersection of Angst Avenue and Tearjerker Trail. No matter how much we tried to concentrate, our neighbors just kept intruding. Of course, they didn't know that, but who can resist this kind of eavesdropping?

The girls I was facing were high-schoolers of the best sort - blase, angst-y, know-it-alls with too much time on their hands and not enough creativity to fill it. One girl was named Ivy, which should tell you everything you need to know, but I'll fill in the gaps. She had a pixie haircut, those awful stretched-out earlobes (seriously, women, how on earth do you think that is going to look when you are 35, let alone 60? BLEAH. I actually rooted for one girl to get kicked off Top Chef this season JUST BECAUSE she had those gauged earlobes and it made me want to vomit every time I looked at her. I don't want to be able to drive my Mini through your ear-hole, people.) And several tattoos. What high-school parent is going to let a daughter, even a senior, get that many tattoos? Shouldn't you have to wait until college to make yourself unemployable? Edgar Allen Poe poetry tracking down your arm does not make you an intellectual, hon. It makes you a future video-store clerk.

Ivy and her friend whose name I did not catch (let's call her Trixie) were chatting about life and school and football players being idiots and tattoos and whatnot. However, I don't know if Trixie, who mentioned her boyfriend on several occasions, knew that Ivy was TOTALLY hitting on her. I was watching a true exhibit of unrequited girl-on-girl love. What was amazing was how similar it was to unrequited boy-on-girl love. Call me naive, but I would have thought that girls would be better at picking up on the I'm-not-interested-and-this-is-making-me-seriously-uncomfortable vibe. At least from other girls. Things did not improve when one of Ivy's friends, who I think was also into Trixie, showed up and they both started lavishing complements on the obviously uncomfortable breeder. It was a comedy classic!

However, Tony definitely got the better end of the deal. Facing him were two middle-aged men who eerily resembled Ned Flanders from the Simpsons, right down to the mustaches and eyeglasses. At first, I thought it was just a boring business meeting or bible-study group, but turns out, Ned 1's wife was cheating on him! I know, another classic! Ned 2 was merely there to commiserate and offer clumsy dude advice. (Sorry guys, your advice is always clumsy, no matter how well-intentioned.)

Here's the story, which is so much better than any cheating Ned Flanders story I've heard to date: Seems that every Thursday evening when she was actually out with her lovah, Ned 1's wife told him she was heading to Starbucks to have a coffee and hang out with some friends and then VOLUNTEERING TO HELP THE HOMELESS. Ned 1 only found out when a friend called him and told him he should probably investigate his wife's altruism a little more closely. Taking a page from Law & Order, he went down to the shelter and showed around a picture of his wife, asking if they'd ever seen her. When the answer was no, he knew he'd been cuckolded.

But the best part came later in the conversation when Ned 2 asked if he was going to counseling to help with the shock, etc. Ned 1 said yes, he was going FOUR TIMES A WEEK! Now people, I've been seriously depressed before in my life. I've seen many a therapist and done lots of time in group therapy. I have never once in my life gone to therapy FOUR TIMES A WEEK with four different therapists. I think you have to be unconscious with depression or mania before they prescribe that. Why not just check yourself into an in-patient facility? The occupational therapy is great (they let you make cookies and embroider stuff.)

Needless to say, Tony and I got very little work done today, but the time we spent together was priceless. The part I don't understand is why you would have such deeply personal conversations in a busy bookstore/cafe. Or why you'd try to bed an obviously unwilling young woman with only a cappuccino to cloud her judgement. This is what bars are for, ladies. In fact, the Neds, had they been manly men, would have had their meeting over a few drinks at a bar, thereby loosening the tongue AND keeping them from having to look each other in the eye, a position I find quite helpful when I actually want to laugh hysterically at someone's absurd tale of woe.

In fact, I might go to a bar right now.

Vegas Week....

So sorry I didn't post from Vegas. While we were there, internet access (because it wasn't a drink, a buffet or a topless dancer) cost a freaking fortune and I write way too slowly to make $.35 a minute worth your time or my money.

Today, I will admit to still feeling pretty poorly. I'm blaming jet lag, although a massive quantity of vodka gimlets, wine and assorted champagne cocktails are probably more to blame. Tony and I arrived home at 2:30 yesterday morning and have since eaten our way through the entire fast-food selection in Florence, Kentucky. (I just polished off four pieces of the Colonel's extra crispy. Now I need a stent, followed closely by a nap.)

So, I promise that starting tomorrow, I will detail the accommodations, dining, entertainment, gambling and various mom-related madness we encountered in the city of sin. Right now, however, I'm going to try to finish my personal detox and begin detoxing my suitcases. I don't know how much they had to drink, but it isn't pretty.

Vegas, Baby, part Deux....

Well, it is 3:45 a.m., an ungodly hour, and I'm getting ready to suck down a cup of black coffee, hop in the car and head to the airport. We're off to VEGAS!

Now, here's hoping Tony doesn't get stopped by airport security thinking he's a terrorist (as usual) and that I can get on the plane, considering my driver's license expired on my birthday last week and I totally forgot to get it renewed. Oh, and my passport is in a different name than my tickets. Gotta love changing your name every other year - makes the paperwork SO MUCH easier!

I'll try to keep you posted on my mom's antics (and my antics) while I'm in Sin City, but if I can't, I'll be sure to post as much as I can remember when I get home. Just to give you a taste, though, let me hit you with a little anecdote before I leave. Tony and I went out on Friday night to celebrate leasing our condo and had a leetle bit too much to drink. So much so, in fact, that when we opened the door to our bedroom in the morning, the carbon monoxide detector went off after it was hit with the full blast of our alcoholic exhalations. Go Team Coutsoftides!

Rookie Mistake

Today at the gas station, I observed a tender, touching moment. The 55-year-old woman in front of us in line was obviously pumping gas for the first time in her entire life, and it was quite moving.

Okay, I'm being sarcastic. But seriously, lady, if you'd never done it before, you should have asked for help. An infant could pump gas faster than that. I could siphon the gas out of my own tank with my mouth and spit it in your car in less time than it took you to figure out how to turn the pump on.

I shouldn't have been irritated. It was a lovely afternoon, there was a good song on the radio and Tony and I had a productive and tasty working lunch and were driving home in a great mood. I was even having a good hair day!

But when we rolled in to the gas station, cars were lined up three deep behind each pump and we knew it was going to be a wait. And then Grandma Magoo got out of her car. She had been parked in the spot in front of the pump for a few minutes, so we thought she was done and just getting ready to leave. (Some people have this urge to re-organize the car every time the get in and out. I like to jump in, toss everything on the passenger seat and tear off into the sunset, especially if there are 15 cars lined up behind me.)

Anyhow, Mrs. Deliberate s-l-o-w-l-y got out of the car and then went fishing for something in the backseat. Then, she proceeded to juggle her pocketbook, some pens, a snack and her debit card for a while before beginning to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS on the pump. Really, lady, it is pretty simple. Insert card, pump the freaking gas, AND GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY. But no, she had a fierce internal debate about whether or not she wanted to use her Kroger card, then had to dig it out of the aforementioned pocketbook. Then, she read all of the instruction screens like they contained the secret to a long and happy life. Then, she had another fierce internal debate about what grade of gas to pump. Most of us choose the same grade of fuel every time, but I assume there must be some people who pull up to the pump and think to themselves, "Well, I'm feeling pretty frisky today, so I think I'll splurge and go for mid-grade." or "I know times are tough, but when I read every page of the owner's manual for my Kia, it told me I should use hi-test, and I'm not one to color outside the lines, so hi-test it is."

After all of this angst, reading, shuffling of cards, juggling of personal belongings and FINALLY putting the hose in her car, the pump in front of her opened up and we roared past, middle fingers raised. Okay, we didn't really flip her off, but I wanted to. My main problem is that if you see people stacking up around you, you should perhaps put some mustard on it and make whatever transaction you are undertaking go a little faster. I feel the same way about people trying to re-finance their mortgage in the automatic teller lane or order complex McDonald's food for the 22 people at their house waiting on dinner while in the drive-thru. ("Okay, I want 15 cheeseburgers, one without pickles, one with half pickles, one with extra pickles, one with just a single pickle, one with the ketchup and mustard mixed together....") Some things are better done face-to-face, when no one expects to move quickly. And no matter how slowly you usually do things, something as simple as pumping gas should never, ever, take more than five minutes, and that's if you have to pay inside, pee, purchase road snacks and call mama in prison from the pay phone out front. Move it along, people!

And don't even get me started on the Taco Bell near my house where it takes 20 minutes to get a taco that doesn't even vaguely resemble the taco you ordered. That's a whole 'nother blog.

Jazzercise!

I've pretty much beaten the dead horse of my diet in this blog, but today I want to talk about the other, equally important half of the weight-loss plan - exercise! (Unless you read Time magazine, where they hypothesize that exercise doesn't do a darn thing. Really? Because as a massively fat nation, that's the message we need to send.)

In high school, my mom started me on my path of loathing exercise by demanding that I play a sport in order to be "well-rounded." I ran cross country and hated every friggin' footstep of it. HATED IT. It was hard, unglamorous, and I was really bad at it. I was a terrible runner - slow, heavy-footed and crabby. But I did it, for two long, ugly years. I even got a letter (our team wasn't exactly stellar.) But, as soon as I could quit, I did.

However, the running did one thing for me. I could eat ANYTHING I wanted and stay thin. I would eat all my dinner, seconds, my brother's dinner and then whatever my dad didn't want. I would polish off a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food, not because I was depressed (that was later in life, after the second divorce) but because I wanted to win a bet. I didn't think about calories, fat or anything else. I just ATE. When I was 15, I weighed about 118 pounds, which is right on the threshold of too thin for my height and my aunt expressed concern that I might have an eating disorder. My mom disabused her of that notion by taking her to dinner with us and having her watch me devour the trucker's special plus the dessert tray. I think at that point she was worried more about my cholesterol than my weight.

Don't get me wrong about exercise, though. I like playing pick-up basketball, I like backyard football, I like aerobics classes and Spinning. I like to move and have fun, but I really hate running. It is boring, long and unfortunately, the best thing for me to do to get in shape. Nothing peels the weight off my chunky buns like jogging.

Through my 20's, I've had various gym memberships, trainers, diets and fitness programs. My weight has held pretty steady, until the last year, when I ballooned like Janet Jackson in the off-season. (Okay, I gained 20 pounds, but it still pains me to write that. I like to pretend my organs just got heavier.) Now that I'm not working, my goal is to get fit. And to fit into more than three items of clothing in my closet. And be able to wear stilettos without wanting to saw off my own feet. (They say that gaining one pound puts 30 pounds on your knees or something. I will tell you that every pound of weight you gain puts 10,000 more pounds of pressure on the 1/4" of foot that connects to your heel. AND I DON'T CARE. I'm going to keep wearing awesome shoes until my feet secede and run away from me.)

So, I've been eating better and exercising. Unfortunately, no one sent the memo to my body that we were working on a goal here. It seems determined to sideline me at every turn. In May, I screwed my back up big-time mowing the grass. (Reserved judgement until you see the size of my lawn compared to my lawnmower.) When I got back from being with Tony's family in Europe, I was able to work out for three weeks until my girl-parts (because I know I have men reading this) got evil and I spent a week doped out on Vicodin and unable to control my limbs in any meaningful way. Once that was fixed, I strained a groin muscle (doing something stupid that looked much better in my head) and have spent two weeks nursing that back to health. I've been trying to work out every other day this week, and that seems to be going pretty well. (Famous last words.)

The frustrating part is that I really do want to work out. I want to continue the progress I've made so far, losing six and a half pounds and some serious inches. In fact, I wanted to lose about 10 more pounds before Vegas, but that's not going to happen in the next three days, no matter how many laxatives I take. (Sigh.)

So, all I can do is hope that this groin thing is the last indignity my ever-older (29!) body will put me through and I can cruise through the rest of my time off work losing about a pound a week until I've achieved my ultimate goal.

Which is eating an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. BECAUSE I CAN.

Tell me about the rabbits, George.

Most of you know by now that we have two dogs. Sarge, an eight-pound Yorkie, we purchased the day before we got married. Beau, the 75-pound Bouvier puppy, thundered into our lives about four months ago. Anyone who has spent time with me knows which dog is my favorite - the one who doesn't shed great bales of hair, chew my house to pieces and poop right in front of the mower when I'm cutting the grass. (Sarge, in other words, is my favorite.)

Beau has unleashed a series of indignities on us since we got him. When we were getting ready to move, Tony decided he wanted - no, deserved! - a big dog. A manly dog. A dog all his own. Never mind the fact that he picked out Sarge, conned me into getting him and pampered him way more than I ever did. No, he wanted a big dog that he wasn't embarrassed to take for walks. So, we did some research and came up with the Bouvier, a magnificent creature with intellect, a proud heritage and a low-shedder with a sweet personality. Oh, and a $600 price tag, thank you very much. Add the plane ticket and I could have a Chanel suit for what this dog cost us just to procure, let alone the maintenance costs of the giant furball. (Let's just put it out there right now that big dogs are not lower-maintenance than little ones. We've spent twice as much on vet bills for Beau in three months than we ever have on Sarge.)

One of the things they warn you about with Bouviers is how much they fart. Now, I read that with a chuckle and thought, how funny! Sometimes Sarge lets out a tiny little poot and it's adorable. Not so with Beau. He farts in a room and moments later, you see people running out like the Japanese escaping from Godzilla, scarves held over noses, pushing each other out of the way to escape the toxic fumes. And don't let him sneak one in while you are sleeping. We had to put in an extra carbon-monoxide detector just to protect ourselves.

One of the things they don't warn you about is the copious shedding. I'm not sure if it is because he's losing his puppy coat or if the summer heat is getting to him, but everywhere you look in our house, you'll see giant tumbleweeds of fur rolling by. With Sarge, we were spoiled. Yorkies don't really shed at all, even when you brush them. Beau sheds explosively and can fill a dog brush four or five times in one brushing session. I find at least one dog hair in every meal I eat at home, which horrifies someone as squeamish as I am.

Tony sold me on a big dog by saying he would be great for home protection. What better deterrent could we have than a giant, menacing, black dog? Well, perhaps a giant, menacing black dog who doesn't RUN AWAY FROM EVERYONE IN TERROR. It's true. Beau is big, he has a ferocious bark, giant scary white teeth, and is the biggest fraidey-cat on the planet. Anyone new comes toward him, he'll bark like crazy and then take off in the other direction. Between Sarge thinking he's a killer and Beau running scared, anyone attacking the house or us would be laughing so hard, our best line of defense is to hit them when they are doubled over in mirth.

Beau's destructiveness is the one thing he has in common with Sarge. (Well, that and the desire to eat so much grass you puke.) Whereas Sarge spent his puppyhood destroying expensive, irreplaceable shoes (I miss you, hot-pink faux-croc Tommy Hilfiger stilettos), Beau has gone to work on the more expensive parts of our house. Our brand-new house. Our house where everything was perfect until Captain Chew moved in. So far, he's eaten the garage steps, which isn't that big a deal, and now has started on the entryway into the house, which is a HUGE deal. Our cream-colored wood paneling has been chewed, splintered, scratched and pooped back out in massive proportions. I'm not even sure we can fix it with sandpaper and paint. We might have to buy putty to fill the crevices he's created. IN ONE AFTERNOON. One unsupervised afternoon of laying in front of our front door, chewing on a freaking wall. Sigh.

Now, to read this, you might think I don't love Beau. You'd be right. Sarge is my baby. Beau is my much-dumber stepchild who wrecks my car and gets arrested for selling drugs at school. I tolerate him, I pet him, I work hard at loving him, but at the end of the day, it just isn't the same. Maybe in six more months, when he's grown out of his more annoying habits and it's cold enough that he stops shedding, I'll discover some part of his personality that I find redeeming. Until then, though, I'll continue to mow over poop-piles the size of my car, pick dog-hair from my salad and run in terror every time he gets that farty look on his face.

The pressure is intense!

In case you hadn't noticed, I consider myself funny. (If YOU don't consider me funny, perhaps your time would be better spent reading another blog, because I can't possibly imagine the entertainment benefit of this blog without the occasional chuckle.)

Humor is a reflex for me. Just whack me on the knee, and I tell a joke. Hahahaha! Okay, so that was a bad example. But coming from my family, there was really no way you could survive without a sense of humor, and a pretty black one at that.

On Mom's side, my family is hilarious. At least the women are. We mostly marry strong, silent types, but the women are real crackups. I used to go out with all my cousins for our birthdays and would laugh so hard my stomach would hurt. Holidays are a riot - we sometimes have crazy white elephant gift exchanges where people wrap up crazy stuff and it actually turns in to a competition as to who can have the funniest gift. Seriously. We give out prizes. (My mother once wrapped up a dirty shower curtain. My cousin Raymond opened it up and had absolutely no idea what to say. The horror on his face, however, was priceless. It was a really dirty shower curtain.)

In my father's family, humor is necessary to deflect the cruelty. (Keep in mind I haven't seen anyone from that side of my family in seven years, but the memories are etched in my brain.) His family was really mean, making fun of everything about a person, from your clothes to your hair to your manners. If you didn't have a quick mind and a sharp tongue, you were dead meat. One of my aunts once said my mother would never need a weapon as long as she had her tongue, so she fit right in. I used to dread going to family gatherings there because not only was everyone mean, but the food was terrible. (And if you know me at all, you know that the only thing I love as much as a good joke is a good piece of cake. Or cheese. Or meat.)

So, growing up, I was exposed to a lot of joking, both good and bad. When I was in high school, we would sometimes have dinners at my house where everyone was laughing so hard, no one could eat. My mom's specialty was to invite over a boy who was interested in me and then subject them to all sorts of horrible statements, just to see how they'd hold up. Her favorite was to spring on them that the space program was actually staged in a pole building in Utah and then see how they reacted. One of my boyfriends wanted to go into the service and he was convinced the CIA was taping our house just to trip him up in the future. He's in the Air Force now. Maybe I should send him a tape?

My dad, on the other hand, was a truck driver, so he had lots of dirty jokes to tell. I remember my freshman year of high school I had a new joke to tell at lunch every day. I eat lunch, then unveil some terrific joke about nuns or penguins or priests or Mexicans.

And I guess that's how it started. I got a lot of attention and respect for being funny. And I'm a Leo, so attention and respect are my stock in trade. I can tell a story, tell a joke and crack wise with the best of them. I'm quick on my feet and not afraid to make fun of myself, too, which helps take the edge off. Women tend to like funny women who are self-deprecating. Men like funny men who are other-deprecating. It is just a fact of life. And because I'm not a supermodel, an athlete, a genius or a deadly weapon, I have to have something to set me apart. (I'll be honest, I'd rather be considered a deadly weapon. Can you imagine the power?)

So humor is, truly, my reflex. When I'm angry, I make sarcastic jokes. When I'm sad, I tell jokes to help snap myself out of it. When I'm nervous, you can't get me to shut up and I'm sweating bullets to be funny. When I'm in the hospital, I'm a riot. The more stressed I get, the funnier I tend to be.

But there is some pressure inherent in this behavior. When you are known for being funny, it can create a stress of its own. After I write this blog, for instance, I have Tony read it and if he doesn't laugh, I worry all day that my writing has fallen flat. When I was still in Mary Kay, if I had a class that didn't roll around laughing at me, I knew I wasn't going to sell much. Sometimes, I'll walk into a situation and realized I'm not the funniest person in the room and be disappointed. I'm competitive even in my funniness. This is sad.

So, if you didn't laugh today, please lie to me and chuckle at least a little. (I'm talking to you, Tony.) I'm having a sad day, and this is the best I could do. Tomorrow I promise I'll talk about the dog who is currently using the entryway to my house as a chew toy. It's HILARIOUS.

Nothing good happens after midnight.

Last night, I made a series of bad decisions. It was my 29th birthday, and I was celebrating pretty hard, so I guess it is excusable, but I am certainly regretting it this morning. Here comes the confession: last night, in a celebratory stupor, I slept with three men at once. And two of them weren't even human.

Let me back up a little bit. My mom (the vicodin-hoarding, blackjack-cheating woman I'm sure you all remember from previous posts) came in to town this weekend for my birthday. We did lots of fun stuff, like go to tea and hit the clearance sales around town. Nothing nearly as hairy as the things I've done in the past few years (I'm talking to you, mechanical bull at Cadillac Ranch!), but mature, adult birthday things that most 29-year-olds do with their mothers, I'm sure.

Anyhow, they left yesterday afternoon and things just got wild here. Tony and I took a nap with the dogs and then I got up and ate leftover birthday food for dinner. I had a slice of pizza and a handful of pastries from tea at the BonBonerie. Oh, and a single beer. I know, I'm crazy!

After an hour or two of TV, I was exhausted and decided to call it a night. It was 10p.m. That was when the bad decisions started. I agreed to let the dogs spend the night sleeping in our room instead of in their kennels. Things started off badly. Beau and Sarge were so excited to be sleeping in the big room that they wouldn't settle down. Sarge, who sleeps on the bed, kept jumping off to assault Beau, who because he weighs a trillion pounds, sleeps on the floor. If you've never heard my dogs fight, it's unnerving, to say the least. Add Sarge air-assault tactics to that, and you have quite a mess.

Then, Beau discovered that the fringe-y trim on his sleeping blanket made a great snack and had to be relieved of the blanket before he ate the whole thing, noisily. Once everyone had finally settled, I turned off the bedside light, only to discover that SOMEONE (me) had left the hall light on. So, Tony got up to turn it off, which resulted in EVERYONE getting up to check out the problem and us starting the settling-down process all over again. This is when I should have decided to put them downstairs, but I didn't.

For the next six hours, I was woken up approximately every 30 minutes by Beau heaving himself into the floor, wheezing, sneezing, snoring, licking, eating our down comforter and sticking his face in mine. He's tall enough to put his face even with yours on the mattress, which is really freaky at 3 a.m., when you feel warm, wet breath on your face and open your eyes to Beau's hairy, stinky face. Staggered with Beau's thrashings, I had to deal with Sarge stepping on my stomach, back, feet, legs, hair, mouth and eyes. This tiny dog takes up more room on a king-size bed than my husband, who outweighs him by more than 200 pounds.

At 5:45 this morning, Sarge woke up, rested and refreshed, and decided to start licking my face. I do not like having my face licked by anyone at 5:45 in the morning, so I punched him in the neck and rolled over. At 6:41, Beau woke up, rested and refreshed and started to lick my face. This is how he lets us know he's ready to go outside and potty. (This is better than his old method, which was to potty on the floor and look surprised.) I punched Beau in the neck, then punched Tony in the neck and told him to take his dog outside and leave me alone. He did. At 7, the alarm went off. I turned it off and tried to go back to sleep. At 7:05, the paving truck showed up outside my house, and the dogs lost their minds barking at it. Tony brought them in the house, where they spent the next 45 minutes standing in the dining room window, barking at the paving truck and fighting with each other over who got to bark first the next time it passed our house. I briefly considered going outside and punching the driver of the paving truck in the neck.

I got up at 8, demanded coffee and punched all three boys in the neck. Just to remind them who's the boss.

Moral of the story: If you ever hear me say, "I think it would be fun to sleep with the guys tonight!" please, punch me in the neck.

This cooking thing has to stop.

Too tired to write much today. Spent the day elbow-deep in one kind of batter or another and learned a couple of key things about baking.

1. Vegan baking is for weenies. Tony tried to bake me a dairy-free cake for my birthday because he's allergic to dairy. It never set up and tasted like crap. We threw the whole thing out and I baked brownies that used a whole stick of butter and two eggs. Take that, vegan weenies!

2. It never ends. I started at 8 this morning and just took my last batch of lemon muffins out of the oven 32 seconds ago, at 6:45 p.m. What was I thinking?!?!

3. I always forget that my brownie pan has some sort of thermonuclear core that makes it bake everything twice as fast as the recipe calls for. I always have to lower the oven temperature 25 degrees and shorten the bake time by 10%. I now have brownie hockey pucks. Brownie jerky. Brownie buffalo chips. It's amazing how fast "chewy" can become "tooth-shattering."

4. My dogs love to eat anything that falls on the floor. That's not necessarily just while baking, but it is important to remember when you are splattering your whole kitchen with a variety of foods, ranging from meatballs to strawberry ice cream base. Sarge drank close to a quarter cup of coconut milk today when Tony loaded the dishwasher. And because Beau can now reach his head onto the counters, food doesn't even have to reach the floor to be in danger. The minute I see him wander off with a full pan of brownie pucks is the moment he starts sleeping outside.

5. It is exhausting. There is something about baking that puts too much pressure on a woman. You feel like your brownies have to be moist, your muffins delicately strueseled, your cake frosted to glossy perfection. Frankly, it's enough to make me start drinking.

6. Once you start drinking, everything gets much more approximate, so make your most complex items first and then end with something simple, like toast. Or scrambled eggs. Don't save the 42-step jumbo muffins that constitute your entire breakfast tomorrow for last, like I did. You'll be in the weeds, tipsy and unable to pour lemon glaze in the tiny holes you just poked in hot muffins. Your kitchen will end up looking like a lemon murder scene. I've strung up some of that (appropriately yellow) crime-scene tape in mine just so I don't have to clean the counter off again. I figure tomorrow I can come back with a putty knife and scrape up the rest of the lemon detritus.

Well, now that I've blogged, it's back to the kitchen for my second glass (bottle) of wine and dinner. Oh, I didn't mention that? Yes, I still have to cook dinner. What on earth is wrong with me?

Slip'n'Slide for Jesus

Driving home from the grocery store the other day, I passed a giant church on the side of the road with a rather strange arrangement of plastic tarps and straw bales in the front yard. After passing it a few more times, Tony and I were able to ascertain that this was, in fact, a homemade, gargantuan slip'n'slide. Like most yards in Kentucky, the front yard of this church is a steep hill ending abruptly at the street (the other variations are steep hills ending in a body of water, and steep hills ending in ravines).

And this was no ordinary hill, either - this was a doozy. Fifty or 60 feet of precipitous drop and nothing to stop you from rolling out onto busy Route 42. In the construction of the enormous slip'n'slide, the church had solved this by placing three straw bales at the end of what looked like 45 straight feet of roof tarps or those really heavy duty painting drop cloths. Along the sides, the tarps were held down with more straw bales at regular intervals.

My first thought on seeing this monstrosity was, what on earth are those Baptists doing now? Speed baptism? Baptism by slide? As the minister says his words, you slide down a hill, scared out of your mind, but more receptive to the healing power of Jesus because you might just die at the end of this and you want to get right with God before that happens?

Maybe it was an outdoor church service and altar calls were now held at the bottom of the hill. You slide down to receive Jesus...and well, experience the same scenario. I wonder if "OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDD!" really counts as a prayer. I'm not sure.

Finally, though, it became clear why there was a giant slip'n'slide when I saw the Vacation Bible School sign that was hastily erected in the front yard. At the end of the slide. So, obviously, as part of the VBS festivities, there would be some summer water-slide fun. I was immediately jealous because the most fun thing I ever did at VBS was make macaroni art that my mom deemed "wretched work created by a talentless hack" and threw in the trash. (Now you know why I'm a writer instead of a painter.)

I guess other VBS programs are picking up their game, too. In the past few weeks, I've seen the Tastee-Freeze truck outside many churches, as well as those fantastic blow-up jumpy moon bounce things in the shape of pirate ships and jungle trees. Nothing says bringing Jesus to the masses like a pirate ship!

However, I do appreciate how the baptist church was rocking it old-school. No fancy soft-serve, no expensive moon-bounce for them. Nope, just a poorly designed and slightly moist slide to your death.

I don't have any problem with water slides, per se, just the ones that seem destined to result in much maiming or death. Let's review the slide at the church for a moment to see the design flaws:

1. The slide is so long, the amount of speed you would pick up by the bottom would have to approach terminal velocity, which is unadvisable for most eight year olds, I would assume.

2. The amount of water necessary to prevent third-degree plastic burns from sliding down the aforementioned quarter-mile of plastic sheeting is either impossible or just plain environmentally irresponsible.

3. If, at any point on your trip down the slide of death, you veer off course, you will either shoot out into grass, adding long-lasting grass stains and the probability of horribly broken bones to your experience, OR you slam full-tilt into a straw bale, adding stabbing injuries and the probability of horribly broken bones to your experience.

4. At the end of the slide, assuming you make it that far, you arrive with all your exposed flesh in plastic-burn induced flames that are only fanned by the extreme speed you've acquired, you slam, full-tilt into a straw bale. See above for the results of that scenario, with two possible variations, face-first (meaning loss of vision, broken neck or nose, concussion, etc.) or feet-first (sprains, ACL tears, loss of feet, legs sheared off by the incredible force of the impact, etc.).

5. In the entirely likely scenario that you miss one of the end-of-slide straw bales or push it out of the way with your broken, mangled feet, you will launch directly into four lanes of traffic on Rt. 42, allowing you to be run over by any number of coal trucks, RV's, motorcycles or the Tastee-Freeze truck on its way to another, less deadly VBS.

In my mind, I see all of these options and the scene that will inevitably unfold when, on the last day of VBS, after having spent five long, hot days making macaroni art and memorizing bible verses, the children run outside, dewy-eyed and expectant, waiting for their first turn down the biggest homemade slip'n'slide in the world. The carnage will be incredible - tiny bodies writhing in pain, shooting blood from every orifice, cars swerving manically on the highway to avoid crushing children who have shot cannonball-like into the flow of traffic. The screams are terrible.

Someone should get those kids a Tastee-Freeze.

Tony's Magic Math

Anyone who knows my husband knows he's a pretty intense guy. People who used to work for him always joke about the shouting, the bouts of selective deafness when he's focused on a task important to him and his unfailing ability to focus solely on one goal to the detriment of all others.

They should be married to him.

In fact, he's interrupted me 15 times while I was writing that sentence to send emails that are important to him but that I don't give a crap about. Even though he has a working email account and the ability to type.

Tony's favorite pastime when we're driving is forcing me to do mental math. Now, I was a journalism major in my undergrad. That should explain everything you need to know about my mathematical abilities when a calculator is not present. (Before the mathematicians get all up in arms about that last statement, thinking that I'm taking the easy, wimpy way out, read my writing and tell me if you would focus on math with a mind-blowing talent like I have. Well, sure you would, but it would take a lot more effort than just vomiting out your thoughts on paper or a screen. I've never said I was ambitious.)

It works like this: Tony will be driving along (He always drives because he's convinced I'm trying to kill him every time I get behind the wheel. He's right.) and out of nowhere, usually while I'm in the middle of a sentence, he'll say, "What's 6 times 7?" I'll give him the answer, usually wrong the first two times and then correct after I've done some serious thought and a few, smaller multiplications in my head (if 7 times 3 is 21, then 7 times 6 must be twice that, yep 42.).

But it doesn't end there. He'll continue.

"Okay, then plus 136?"

"Ummmm 175. 166. 179. No, 178."

"Okay, plus 215?"

"Jeeezus! Okay, um, 451." (It literally took me two minutes to do that just now and I'm LOOKING AT ALL THE NUMBERS. Imagine how stressful this is when I'm flying blind and carsick.)

"Alright, and 122."

Sigh. "537."

"Okay, that's how much money we'll have left in the checking account 20 years from now if we never earn another penny and we average 6% return each year."

"What the hell are you talking about? Where did you get these numbers? What numbers were you possibly using? How do you expect me to believe that when I've just multiplied and added up a random string of bullcrap that you just pulled out of your giant domey head?"

And so forth. Our car trips often end in punching matches, with me trying to gouge out one of his eyes, and him trying to keep the car on the road. Or at least as close to the road as it ever is when he's driving.

You see, Tony is a numbers guy. Nothing gives him more pleasure than "running the numbers," no matter how fictional or approximate or crazy they are. I dubbed this unique study of budgets, pricing and returns "Tony's Magic Math" some years ago and the name stuck. I know that at least once a day, he's going to come up with some cockamamie formula for our budget or our spending, or our investments and subject me to the task of adding it all up for him IN MY HEAD until he's satisfied.

Why in my head? Because he ambushes me when there is no calculator present. In the shower, when we are falling asleep at night, when I'm sick as a dog in the car, while we're out for our evening constitutional. Wait a minute! These are also places where I'm trapped and can't get away from him. He's a cunning bastard, that's for sure.

Well, gotta run. Tony needs me to figure out his waist-to-hip ratio so he can figure out what he'll weigh in 40 years.

Vegas, Baby!

So, yesterday I mentioned that my family (mom, Jack, Tony and I) are going to Vegas in about a week and a half. This is a trip my mother has been talking about for years, every Christmas and New Years spent cajoling me, my brother and whatever husband I had at the time to spend the holidays next year in Sin City. It has been her dream that joining thousands of Japanese tourists blowing their hard-earned Yen on hookers, coke and gambling would really help us understand the "Reason for the Season."

However, I feel that Christmas is no time to travel, so we decided to go this summer as a joint birthday venture for mom and I and also because Tony and I are so mind-numbingly bored that we'll agree to any trip, anywhere. (World's largest ball of string in Spokane, Washington? I'm there!) Plus, I've never been to Vegas, and I've always wanted to get married there, but none of my husbands would agree to this. Something about violating the sanctity of marriage, which I found particularly touching this time around, since it marked the THIRD marriage for both of us. I told Tony that we weren't going to be the poster couple for Focus on the Family, no matter where or how we got married.

I digress. Mom has been hysterically excited ever since we booked the hotel room two months ago. She watched "The Hangover" the day it came out, and called Tony and I as soon as she'd left the theater, gushing about how it was the perfect movie to watch to plan our trip. Tony and I immediately rushed off to see it, after which I phoned HER and said that if anything remotely like that movie happened while we were in Vegas, I was going to leave her and anyone else I could behind and start over in Spokane. (I hear they have a great ball of string.)

After her obsession with that movie faded, she started reading The Unofficial Guide to Vegas and decided that she was going to learn how to play craps and become rich by "beating the system." I know, I know, at that point we should have had her committed, but she was so excited about the trip. For weeks I told her I would not stand by and watch her bet away her retirement at a craps table and that she should spend $20 on slots and then go to the buffet. Finally, a few days ago, she called, practically in tears. Seems she'd been reading and re-reading the craps section of the book and still couldn't make heads or tails of it. Now, I'm not one to rejoice in the crushing of the dreams of a senior citizen, but I was very happy to hear this.

A little backstory so you all don't think I'm a horrible daughter: the same night we made our reservations for Vegas, Mom, Jack, Tony and I played blackjack (or 21, for you purists) for a few hours. During that time, Mom managed to mis-count her cards several times, betting heavy on a 23 at one point, and continuously tried to "bluff" us when she had busted. In addition, she was making wild bets on crappy hands and nearly caused Jack to have a heart attack with the randomness of her game. His comment was that it was impossible to play with people who were this bad at blackjack. (He was including me in that statement, but I was being reckless on purpose. Stick it to the Man, I say!)

So, what I was looking forward to as a lovely, quick jaunt to a city known for its culinary delights (not even joking), where I could eat my way from one celebrity chef's restaurant to another without ever stepping out into the 3 billion degree heat has turned into a nightmare of epic proportions. Mom and Jack are coming this weekend and while she is out trying to catch and tame a turtle in our lake - her favorite Kentucky pastime, I'm going to call a group meeting whereby we set out gambling limits, a medication schedule and determine who carries Mom's money at all times.

Vegas, baby!

Tiny Bubbles

I finally went to the hairdresser today. It has been three months since my last haircut and and two months since my disastrous, painful and traumatizing run-in with a home bleaching kit. (Note to my readers - I know the three of you are waaaayyyy too smart to ever assume that because you can read directions and look truly professional in those latex gloves they put in the box of home-haircolor, you are in no way capable of bleaching your own hair bright white. Don't even try.)

After the home bleaching, and the second home bleaching, and the home toning with a darker shade of haircolor to please God make my hair not gold, I had giant, bleeding scabs all over my head. I decided that the color was good enough to live with and besides, if I did anything else to my scalp, I'd probably be bald, so I would let my hair "rest" for as long as possible before going to the salon again. I'm also trying to grow my hair out from the buzzcut I received at a very prestigious and expensive salon in New York City, so I had two motives for running around with two inches of black roots in my mullet. (I looked like a sunflower at one point - black in the middle, yellow on the outside.)

Today, however, Tony and I walked in to a salon just up the road from us to make appointments before we go to Vegas in a week and a half. I didn't feel comfortable rocking the hillbilly sunflower 'do any longer, and Borat needed a trim. We were looking for appointments later this week, but the extremely bored staff (I guess thunderstormy Mondays are the day to go to the salon - free tip of the week!) begged us to stay and get our hair done IMMEDIATELY!

So, we threw caution to the wind and went for it. Tony's stylist Candy trimmed his hair for about three hours, so I'm a little suspicious. Either she was really bored and had no other clients for the day, or she thought my husband was cute, at which point I will cut the bitch. (However, she gave him a very nice haircut, so I'll have to do it anonymously in a dark alley or something. And be sure to leave her hands out of it.)

My hairstylist, Bambi (All the names have been changed to protect identities, mostly mine.) was a perfectly nice 15-year-old who weighed about 12 pounds. She was very pleasant, so I chose to overlook the fact that her hair training must have happened at Boone County Junior High and trusted her with my mess of a hairstyle. Much to my relief, she did not laugh out loud when I showed her my roots OR my mullet, but got right down to work placing 35 million foil strips on my head. I have so much hair that the stylist inevitably has to leave me, mid-foil, to mix up more haircolor. I'm a gorilla.

Now, I trusted Bambi because she had a very nice, very natural style. Her hair was brunette, didn't even look highlighted (her parents probably wouldn't let her color her hair until she was a junior in high school) and was perfectly straight, no crazy spiky stuff, no hairspray. So, I assumed that when she was done cutting and coloring my hair, she would give me something similar, especially because I told her that I like to let my hair air-dry and I don't use any product and I'm low-maintenance, etc.

No such luck. Bambi, just like every other hairstylist in the known world, gave me the bubble. She dried and fluffed and root-lifted and back-combed and ratted and sprayed (and did I mention I told her I was going straight home after I left?) and moussed and picked and placed my hair into a perfect helmet.

Keep in mind, I staggered into this salon with serious two-tone hair that hadn't been washed that day, hooked behind my ears and not even parted straight? What part of that look said that I had a political fundraiser to attend for my husband later that night? Did she really think I was 45 years old and a bank branch manager?

The worst part is, because my hair was colored, I can't wash it until Wednesday (gotta let that new hair color settle over my formerly banana-yellow locks.) So, I'm stuck with bubble hair, slept-on bubble hair or a hat for the next day and a half.

I swear, next time I go to the salon, I'm going to look my stylist in the eye, and say, "Put down that comb, because if it even comes near the crown of my head, I will cut a bitch."

Hyper!

Well, I'm two kinds of hyper today. I had a latte on an empty stomach, so I have caffeine jitters, plus Tony and I tried our hand at hypermiling today. I know, I have to slow down this crazy rock-star life I'm leading before I burn out!

For those of you who don't know, hypermiling is driving in a very specific way to get huge mpg numbers out of regular cars. I learned about it from a Washington Post article many years ago and had never really tried it. For one, you have to drive much more slowly than I normally do - hypermilers recommend staying around 40 miles per hour. I like to drive about 90. For another, you have to accelerate very slowly after braking and Tony likes to red-line the throttle every time. He would hit third gear before he got out of the driveway if I let him.

The hypermiling started innocently enough. We filled up a bone-dry tank at the local Kroger (we got 10 cents off a gallon, in case anyone cares), which is about three miles from our house. Between there and here, we hit four stoplights and some serious hills, all of which are anathema to hypermilers the world over. Any time you have to stop or step on the accelerator, the terrorists win. When we started out from the first stoplight, I reset the miles per gallon counter on the car - the Mini has real-time digital information available. When I saw that we were starting at 66 miles per gallon, I challenged Tony to get to the house with the counter above 50 mpg, a comfortable 16 mile per gallon cushion.

And so it began. Ten tension-filled minutes of Tony driving s-l-o-w-l-y along the highway, cars piling up behind us as we pretended to sight-see. (Who gets mad at tourists?) Every light was against us, though, forcing complete braking and accelerating from a dead stop. We watched the counter slip slowly below 60, then lower, finally dipping below 50 in front of the high school that is still a good mile and a half from our house. Desperation set in and the flop-sweat started. We revised the bet. I told Tony that 40 miles per gallon was still admirable and well above the 26 city we were used to getting.

We shifted to and from neutral, willing the car up steep hills and free-wheeling down the other side, only to inch up the next one. As we finally coasted into the entrance of our neighborhood, we were sitting pretty at 46 mpg. The last hill is a doozy, though, and we nearly stalled in front of a neighbor's house. With the a/c off, and windows down, we cheered the Mini down that final hill, only to roll into the driveway at 43 mpg.

When we pulled into the garage, Tony summed it up quite neatly. "Well, at least that killed the last 10 minutes."

God, we're bored.

Family

I'm exhausted.

My cousins Susan and Dinah just left with their families, and I'm pooped! We had a very quick visit, only an hour and a half, but I was cooking furiously the whole time and trying to entertain and make sure everyone had fun. I loved it.

We live about four hours away from our closest family members, and sometimes it can get pretty lonely. Every holiday except the biggies (Thanksgiving and Christmas) we are here and they are having get-togethers up home. We could travel up there, but the drive is hard with the (snarling pile of) dogs and expensive with gas prices the way they are. So, we spend most holidays watching movies and going places only to realize that they are closed or insane because it's a holiday.

Susan and Dinah surprised me yesterday by calling and saying they would be driving past on their way to a family reunion in Nashville, and could they stop by and we could have lunch? Frankly, I was thrilled. (And I made the insane decision to cook for 10 people, who can't have chicken - Dinah - or beef or dairy - Tony.) That made things a little more challenging, so we had spaghetti with meatballs, garlic bread, salad and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

None of my family outside of my mom and Jack have seen my house, either, so I had to give the big tour before we could eat, which is always a balancing act - how can I seem proud of what I have without seeming snotty? I hope I pulled it off. I guess my family knows how I've struggled in the past, so they don't think I've just landed in the lap of semi-luxury here. Or maybe they do, but at least I make a mean pasta sauce. It'll smack the grin right off your face.

So now, I'm headed upstairs for a nap, much needed after last night, when I couldn't sleep because I was planning menus and stressing over laundry piles in every corner of the house and when I finally did get to sleep, being rudely awakened at 5:30 by the freaking carbon monoxide detector blaring. (We had a guy come and re-finish a spot on the steps yesterday and apparently, the carbon monoxide detector also detects varnish.)

Plus, I'm super excited for my fasting glucose test in the morning, which I'm sure will be helped by the giant plate of pasta I had, followed by two chocolate chip cookies. It's beans and lettuce for dinner!

Betrayed by my own body....

I'm so mad at my body right now. By extension, of course, that means I'm mad at myself, but I like to pass the buck. So, body, you are on my list.

I've been pretty healthy all my life, at least physically. (Mental health is whole 'nother blog.) And I thought I still was, until Tony and I started trying to get pregnant. Nine months ago.

I stopped taking my birth control pills the second week of December, fully convinced that I would get pregnant the minute I missed one pill, let alone two weeks of them. (Isn't that the fear that all women have who are trying to prevent pregnancy? Miss one pill and BLAM! you're pregnant! I had enough stupid OH MY GOD MY PERIOD IS 10 MINUTES LATE, CRAP CRAP CRAP moments in my early marriages that I should have bought stock in the pregnancy test companies. Little did I know.)

My mother always joked that she missed one evening of some kind of one-shot birth control in the sixties and ended up with my oldest brother and then went off the pill and had my middle brother three days later. I was the only one she had to work for and I was born a whole 18 months after Levi. So, she tried for about ten minutes on that one. My cousins on her side, despite copping to issues, all average three children. My dad's family is Catholic, so I have about 8,000 first cousins on that side, and they have started the process over again, popping out kids like Pez dispensers. I coasted into the whole conception thing thinking I had it in the bag.

January was an interesting month. I spent the first two weeks nauseated, with tender breasts and emotional outbursts. I had my yearly exam with my OB-GYN in those two weeks and we all thought for sure I'd done it, going so far as to order a blood test when the urine test came back negative. I even skipped riding a mechanical bull in Phoenix because I was so sure I was pregnant. My period started the next morning. I was crushed, but figured we'd get it on the next go 'round.

February was a mess. We were both sick and I think we had sex all of two and half times that month. March, I came off my anti-depressants (didn't want to have a kid with deformities if I could help it). That was a HOT mess.

The following months weren't much different. We'd figure out when ovulation was *supposed* to occur, then studiously avoid having sex. Tony has always been hit-or-miss in this department, working long hours and feeling icky 90% of the time, so I'd have to remind him every so often that it had been three weeks since we'd tried and we should probably at least pretend we were interested in getting pregnant. Forget having sex every other day - we were lucky to have it every other week.

In June, we were both done working, so we figured it would happen, no problem. Not so much, although we did have to wait 42 whole days to find out, well in to July. This month was the piece de resistance, though, with my ovaries deciding to cripple me with cysts the size of golf balls over the weekend. (That's where I got the vicodin, not from a street dealer.) I ended up having to have the worst kind of ultrasound, the one where they jam what looks like a miniature baseball bat INTO your body and then whirl it around like Jr. warming up at home plate.

After a conversation with my doctor about my mood swings, hideous adult acne, cysts and wacky irregular cycles (which I think would be a great band name), we decided on blood work. So, Saturday morning, I'm headed back to the office for fasting blood work to see if I have thyroid issues, hormone issues, or whatever other issues there could be to make it freaking impossible for me to have children.

I know what part of the problem is, though, and it seriously pisses me off. Like, makes my head want to explode with anger and hurt and embarrassment and disappointment.

Last year, I got fat.

I ate a lot of fast food, which Morgan Spurlock has shown can have a somewhat negative effect on your body. I didn't work out. And I have Type II diabetes in my family, which means that I'm prone to insulin resistance even under the best circumstances. So, add some weight, and my body stops processing insulin. Then, take away the hormones in birth control and you have the perfect storm - whacked out insulin combined with irregular hormones making it impossible for me to lose weight, no matter how many times Tony Horton and I go toe-to-toe and I eat low-glycemic-index food at every meal.

The ironic thing is that the best thing for my fertility would be to lose weight, which is the one thing I can't seem to do. So, I'm hoping there is some magical solution in the bloodwork this weekend.

Barring that, I'm going to decide I don't want children after all, eat whatever I want and buy fabulous larger-sized clothing. Screw it.

I love Vicodin!

Seriously. Vicodin is an awesome, awesome drug. (Not that I advocate drug abuse or anything, but, man, if I did, Vicodin would be my drug of choice.)

I just got a mini-prescription from my OB-GYN - 10 pills to help deal with a ruptured ovarian cyst (now all the guys are covering their eyes and going "LALALALALA") - and I have realized how they help pass the time. Frankly, I don't remember anything about the last two days, but that doesn't bother me at all.

Monday, I went to the doctor and she said the only thing I could do for the screaming pain in my abdomen was "wait it out," so she gave me the scrip. I ate lunch, did a little Target shopping, rode around in the car for a while and finally took a pill at about 3 in the afternoon. The rest of the day is a soft, floaty haze. I know I slept and then had some egg salad and then took another pill before I went to bed, but beyond that, pfffft!

Tuesday I got up in much less pain and decided that I didn't need any more pain pills! I had a semi-productive morning (okay, I made breakfast, but that counts for productive, right?) and then took a nap with Tony, who is having his own medication issues. When I woke up, I was feeling icky and achy, so we went to lunch, thinking Chinese food would help. It didn't. I came home, took a pill and slept for three glorious hours straight. (At this point, I think I've slept away 10 of the last 12 waking hours...whee!) I don't remember the rest of the night, except I got hooked on Mafia Wars and ate some more egg salad and I think baked some cookies. Yep, a quick survey of the kitchen reveals chocolate chip cookies were baked last night. Breakfast!

The moral of the story is...if you don't have to work and the house is pretty clean and the dogs still get fed, take your vicodin. If you are like I have been most of my adult life, and you have to work ridiculous hours, the house is a mess and the dogs are savaging your leg because they are so hungry when you finally get home, look wistfully at the bottle of vicodin (or tramadol, or tylenol 3, or whatever pain killer you've been lucky enough to get) and tuck it into the back of your medicine cabinet, because you certainly don't have time to get high right now.

My mother is the perfect example of this. Not for herself, but for her children. Whenever my brother or I would receive pain killers, whether for wisdom tooth removal, surgeries, broken bones, whatever, she would remove enough for one day from the bottle "for us" and keep the rest "for mama." I swear to God. Her favorite line always was "you don't want to get hooked on this stuff." Like taking two days of pills for a broken nose was going to make me a junkie or something.

The woman has to have 10 years worth of vicodin in her cabinet. Whenever we go somewhere, she has it out, offering it to any family member with a bruise. She'll open this old tin pill box and announce, "I've got vicodin, tramadol, what's this little one? Oh, yeah, valium! And, if you are really feeling hinky, here's some estrogen - takes the edge right off!"

You want to see her get really sweaty, just take what she deems to be too many of her painkillers. This past weekend Jack hurt his back and was dipping into the collection in order to be able to stand upright without shrieking in pain. My mom was on the phone with me, whispering, "If he doesn't stop, I'm going to be completely out, Lacy. Then what will I do?"

Well, her solution presented itself in a mass on MY ovary. I called her on the way home from the doctor and made the mistake of mentioning my new prescription.

"Well, you get that filled, but don't take any. You give that to me - you don't want to get hooked on that stuff!"

Mafia Wars

Well, I've found a totally new time-suck. As if Facebook weren't bad enough, I'm now wasting every spare moment I have (and there are many) playing Mafia Wars, this silly little game inside Facebook.

I blame Tony. He had some "friends" on Facebook who got him involved and then he was having such a great time that I decided I'd play, too.

That was six hours ago. I have left my computer exactly twice since then, once to scarf an egg-salad sandwich and once to speed-bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies. And I wouldn't get up until I was completely out of energy points to do jobs. Jobs like robbing pimps and knocking over convenience stores, mind you, but jobs nonetheless.

To give you an idea of what this has done to my marriage, Tony just asked me, and I'm not kidding here, "Do you have a 9mm?" We share an office and all of our communication this afternoon has consisted of of absurd questions like that. Do I have a 9mm, indeed. (Actually, I don't, so he sent me one as a gift. Isn't he sweet?)

As we were driving back from the grocery store this evening (we were out of eggs and needed a fresh dozen for the cookies), he said, "Hey, at least this gives some purpose to our days!"

Sigh. This is what my life has come to. The only purpose in my life, at the age of 28, is to rush home to play Mafia Wars against my husband. I knew that MBA would come in handy someday!