Archive | October, 2014

26 going on 40

30 Oct

Good god, are we doing this again? Happy Birthday To Me!

robd

Photoshop Cred to my wonderful coworker

^ FYI this was the birthday invitation sent out to my company by coworkers-I deserve a promotion

I’m 26. I’m still at the age where I’m not afraid to admit my age. I cried last year when I turned 25 but I have realized that as I get older I am really starting to figure shit out…so I’m pretty happy to be turning 26. Plus, I feel a lot older than I am and wouldn’t mind my age catching up a bit. I know that sounds horrible but when you prefer the company of people in their 40’s to people in their 20’s, you begin to feel impatient. While the rest of my 20 something generation is trying to find a special purpose in life, I’m over here like shit, is it time to retire to Florida yet?

I’m 26 going on 40 and I know I’m getting older because…

1. I finally understand the power of a hand towel

I never got the point of hand towels, I thought they were just over sized wash cloths with no purpose. This was until I started purchasing hand soap to place in my bathroom- you know to wash your hands-and now I understand the need for a small-but-not-too-small towel to dry your hands.

Hand Towels are awesome!

photo 3

2. My routine is my life

I go to bed super early, like 9:30pm early.

There is a method to this madness…If I don’t go to bed at 9:30, I won’t wake up for my 5:30am workout. If I don’t work out, I eat fatty foods, If I eat fatty foods all day long, I am cranky when I get home. When I am cranky, nobody wants to talk to me.

I am a slave to my weekday routine which is why I decline invites on weeknights. Don’t ask me to get drinks because I will say no. If you want to come to my house, it’s all good between the hours of 6-9. If you are not out the door by 9:15, I officially don’t like you anymore.

#I’mLame

3. My Hair is getting shorter

I never understood why people grow up and cut off all of their hair.

“I’ll never do that”

Guess what, I did. Chopped all 8 inches of my hippie hair.

People, I’m about 2 inches away from a MOM cut. Help me.

photo 4

4. I got called, “boring” 

I told my 24 year old co worker the highlights of my weekend which include catching up on Netflix shows and drinking craft beers on the couch and she called me boring. I laughed it off at first and then went home and cried about it because it’s true.

5. Old people hangovers

I remember the days of drinking until 4am, sleeping for 4 hours than waking up and starting all over again without hesitation. Now I drink three beers and have to raid my medicine cabinet.Plus if the night doesn’t start by 8pm and end by 11pm, it’s not happening.

6. If you are 22 years of age or younger, you will think I am a pessimist.

<22 yr old says, “I can’t wait to work!” 

I say, “Give it a year, you will hate it” 

<22 yr old says, “I just want to be free and travel the world before settling down”

I say,“You won’t have enough money to do that alone.”

<22 yr old says, “I know I’m going to be an executive by the age of 30”

I say, “Maybe, but you should probably move out of your parent’s house first.” 

Pffttt…Kids these days.

7. I hired a cleaning lady

First sign of grown up success.

8. Dislike driving at night

Hello, grandma. Scary things happen to your eyes at night.

 9. I pay attention to Public Works Announcements

Trash day happens every Tuesday, Leaf pick up day is once a month and there is no recycling enforced in my town…which pisses me off.

So pissed I actually sent a letter complaining…

10. I have a strong desire to make my own food

Like pizza and Stromboli. It doesn’t matter I can drive down the street and buy it from the pizza place, I just want to make it at home.

11. I know the difference between Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon

And prefer to drink it out of a bottle, not a bag.

photo 2

12. Infomercials are starting to get highly convincing 

I am the proud owner of a magic bullet. I use it 2x a year.

I currently have my eye on the “lettuce spinner”, looks like something I just need.

 

I’m looking forward to 26, I can’t imagine what old people habits I will pick up this year! Let’s just hope 26 doesn’t bring on any grey hairs or cracking knees!

The Date Ditcher

21 Oct

It happened. It happened to me. I never thought it would.

But how?! Was it my text? The way I responded? Maybe I seemed too over-eager to meet up.  I tend to get a little excited about new relationships.

This was my first time, I thought I did everything right. We met at a party and hit it off right away. We kept in touch every now and again and exchanged facebook friend requests. Then one night, after finding the courage in 3 glasses of wine, I sent a text asking to meet up and it worked! We set a date and time and double confirmed the details. The day came and I could barely contain my excitement. I showered, shaved and even put on my new fall booties. I anxiously awaited by the door as the time neared closer to the hour you said you were arriving but you never came. You never showed up. You never rescheduled. You never even cancelled!

Yes, I got stood up…on a date… on a play date.

I normally don’t do play dates. The thought of sitting in a stranger’s house while our kids play and leave us to small chit chat is excruciating. Especially when there is no wine involved. I went with my daughter to one birthday party/ play date and it was probably the worst thing ever. I’m not sure which was more painful, the fact that each and every kid at the party had a melt down or that people assumed I was the 18 year old babysitter hired to help.

Yea, play dates aren’t really my thing.

But they almost were…last year at a party, I met a girl that I had gone to high school with. I found out she had a son who is close in age with my daughter and immediately we hit it off.  By the end of the night, we had decided we should get together; the kids could run themselves tired while we drank wine and complained about them running wild.

It sounded like a dream play date come true.

Basically, I tend to get really overly excited when I meet new people. I am that over-eager friend. When you say, “we should get together soon” I respond with, “how about tomorrow”? Yea, I’m one of those people. Making friends out of college is a tough task. You no longer have drinking buddies or Sunday brunch besties. As you each begin to start new jobs and get married, you are lucky if you keep 2-3 friends from college. Sure, you can make work friends but all you really have in common is work and all you probably do is bitch about your boss. So to say that I was a tad excited for this meet up is a bit of an understatement. For this play date I went out and bought a cheese spread…Yes, A MOTHER FUCKING CHEESE SPREAD.

This was serious.

Our guests were to arrive at 2pm and confirmed earlier that morning we were still on. I did some last minute cleaning, brushed my dogs so they were less smelly then before and sat patiently on the couch awaiting their arrival….

DateDitcher

2:00 ….Ok, it’s time! I’m sure they will be here any minute now.

2:15….silly me, nobody arrives right on time, she is probably just being fashionably late. 

2:30….Maybe they stopped to pick up some desserts. 

2:35….They must have hit a detour in the road

2:40…I hope they arn’t dead

2:45…They are definitely dead

2: 50…I’ll send a text

TextHey! Are you guys on your way?!

3:00…No response

3:15…Ok, Seriously this is rude, the cheese is melting 

3:20...I’ll start an episode of Scandal while I’m waiting

3: 30…Shit, I ate all of the cheese 

4:00…Fuck it, I’m changing out of my bra and watching NetFlix

4:30…Drank entire bottle of wine and fell asleep

Can you believe I never received a response or cancellation from this girl?

Look, when a man stands you up on a date it’s expected because men are douche bags, but women, women know to cancel plans. They either reschedule or come up with a half believable excuse as to why they can’t make it. This girl straight up just went missing in action. I even kept an eye on the news in case I heard about a mother and son that were taken hostage!

For two days I had no idea what happened or if this girl was even still alive. Lucky for me, the world is small and I found out she planned a birthday party for her son the same day as our play date was scheduled.

jon-stewart-confused-what

Ok? Weird? Maybe she forgot about the birthday party?  Some people might forget a planned birthday party for their kid…right? But still, shoot me a simple text like, HEY-gotta reschedule, totes forgot my kid’s birthday party is today!

WHAT IS THAT? Why are people so damn weird?! I got a cheese spread for crying out loud! 

At least Addison sees right through the bullshit. When I asked about her thoughts on being ditched on her first play date, this is what she said,

This whole situation is awkward and so is that kid’s mom.”

Well said.

A little piece of paradise

3 Oct

Boy Ryan and I have had some shitty luck with neighbors over the past few years. We’ve lived under a bat shit crazy women who would knock on our door for talking too loudly, had a neighbor contact the home owners association for a suspected “dog dumping and not picking it up “incident and a run in with the neighborhood “violation” board for not weeding our patio. It’s been a rough and exhausting couple of years living in the world of renting which finally gave us the motivation to buy a house.

I moved to my house almost two years ago and at the time had no idea what I was getting into. Boy Ryan and I bought our house from two suspected lesbians. I say suspected because it was never confirmed, however one lady was super butch and the other wouldn’t stop staring at me during the closing, so I feel my evidence is strong for this theory. Plus my neighbors nicknamed our house, the “lesbian house”.

My house sits about 100 feet from a neighborhood lake. We have a club house, a beach and A LOT of “lake” parties. The usual attendees who participate in lake parties are interesting characters. The first few times I went to a lake party two things always happened; 1. I stumble home and 2. I would be told by the residents that living in this neighborhood is, ” A LITTLE PIECE OF PARADISE”.

Everyone who lives here is very close, eerily close and I’m thinking this neighborhood might be a huge community of swingers. While I haven’t seen any keys being exchanged, it’s a definite possibility. Hopefully I won’t get lured into any odd situations after a heavy night of lake drinking, if I do, you all will be the first to hear about it.

The Lake People are all in their mid to late 50’s. They will drink you under the table and tell you about things you have never even considered. For example, 10 reasons baseball can cure erectile dysfunction. Again, never crossed my mind before, yet highly informative.

Basically on a weirdness scale, my neighbors fall somewhere between Lady Gaga and Weird Al Yankovic.

Here is a diagram of my street. Each and every neighbor have a corresponding nickname given by myself and Boy Ryan based on the encounters we have had with each one.

lake

A. The Mean Old Lady

Mean old lady is probably a hoarder. I haven’t been in her house but I’ve watched hoarders enough to know the personality traits of a hoarder. She never leaves her house unless to yell at someone and rarely takes out the trash. I spend a lot of time staring out my window and have observed her the most because she sits at her window doing the same. Long story short, she hates us, I’m not sure why, but its probably for one of the following reasons:

1. Boy Ryan accidentally blew 3 leaves onto her lawn last fall. She came outside like a bat out of hell ready to shove that blower down his throat.

2. She is severely constipated and blames us.

3. Or she’s offended that Addison asked her if she was a, “legit” witch while trick or treating at her house last Halloween.

B. The Crazy Cat Lady and her emotional abused husband

I’ve written an entire post about the Crazy Cat Lady a while back. Basically my “angelic” dog attempted to eat her cat not once, not twice but three times. The point is, he never succeeded in eating her cat and the thing is still alive. We have done our neighborly duties by training our dog (through shock therapy) so he can’t leave his own yard and that should have been the end of the situation. However, that hasn’t stopped her from starting a dog-hating revolution on our street. She makes sure to stand at her glass door each and every Saturday morning holding her cat as if to remind me that she is the alpha female on the street. In a true passively-aggressively  way, I make sure she knows how much I respect her by never helping her shovel out her car when it snows. The only thing that disturbs me about her is her husband. This is a man who Is truly scared of his wife. He doesn’t speak unless spoken to and only chats with us when his wife is not home. One time he and I were having a conversation and when her car turned down the street, this man literally ran back into the house before she pulled into the driveway. I wonder if he got a beating for that?

C. The Pirates

Our favorite neighbors are the Pirates. This couple is wild and borderline trashy. The husband has a ton of tattoos and walks with a slight limp which prompted our daughter to call him a pirate; the name stuck. He loves to drink and can only remember your name when he is past the legal alcohol limit. The first time we met him, he showed up at our door with a case of beer; really he’s a great guy. He brings his own hookah to parties and will kick your ass in corn-hole. The couple has around 45 animals; at least 4 dogs and a ton of cats that run wild around the neighborhood. One of the cats is the size of a small lion and beat the shit out of our dog who, no surprise, tried to eat him.

D. The invisibles

The invisbles live directly next to us. We never seem them come in or out of their house and are not really sure they exist at all. I thought I saw them once but I might have been hallucinating.

E. The Partridge Family

This couple has 4? maybe 5 children who each have outdoor chores on Saturday morning. Mowing the lawn, raking the yard, weeding the plants…they are always doing chores. At night, the children sit outside on the porch and sing while their parents play the guitar. I’m pretty sure they write and produce their own music which is beyond impressive. The children sing in different octaves like something you see right out of The Sound Of Music.  When it’s raining out, they leave their front door open and you can find them around the fireplace jamming out.

I might want to be adopted by them.

F.The Lake Ladies

These 5-6 women are the shit. They “cast” off to the center of the lake on lounging floats with floating coolers filled with wine each Sunday at 3pm. I know this because I patiently wait on the beach for an invitation. Sometimes, they call their husbands to row out on the lake and replenish their wine bottles. When I grow up, I want to be a lake lady.

G. Packs of Children

For some reason there are always pack of children running around the lake. I don’t know who they belong to, they might be feral children. These kids keep to themselves while the adults drink, like all children should do. Occasionally I will drop off my own child so they can teach her how to occupy herself while I drink wine but I always pick her up before she gets the urge to run free with them. These children are basically free babysitters with an aversion to wearing clothes and shoes.

Hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

This neighborhood is slowly rubbing off on me. Who knows, by this time next year I could join the swingers club and really get into this little piece of paradise.

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