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.