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I Can’t Think About Afghanistan when I’m Busy with Painting and Exercise and Polka Dot Dresses.

So I cannot, from my head, erase the things I know I need to do. I’ve swept them into a discombobulated pile — tucked somewhere behind the dusty corners of my right temple, I figure, because that’s where I wake up with a headache every morning.

Or maybe it’s because I clench my jaw at night.

Either way, these things won’t move.

And they weigh.

And rather than tackle them head-on and one-at-a-time like any normal, functioning, proactive adult, I sweep. And I stare. And I think. And I watch episodes from Season 1 of Felicity on Netflix and analyze my sister’s love life on the phone and eat artichoke for dinner 2 nights in a row.

Clearly, I have problems.

Unlike the last time Justin was out-of-town when I got all productive and inspired and finishy, this is one of those other times. Those times when I know I can stretch that dirty pair of jeans out one more day — when I think that a disgustingly filthy post-road trip car makes the appropriate statement to the world that I don’t give a sh*t — when I tell myself that watching Felicity is good for my nostalgic mental health.

And all I can think really, intelligibly, is that I hope this isn’t a preview of what will come when he’s gone for much, much longer later this year.

Of everything that happens. Mentally. Emotionally. The stuff that military spouses talk about but never really talk about.

The fact that I relish being alone.

And the fact that I hate being alone.

That I miss being touched.

That sometimes I don’t want anyone to touch me.

The way the leftovers are still in the fridge when I want them.

The way leftovers spoil in the fridge because I never eat them.

That this would be so much easier if I had kids to keep me company.

That ohmygod I could not handle effectively being a single mother for months at a time.

No way.

So I know, when the time comes, I need to gear up for productive mode. That lethargy simply isn’t acceptable. That I need to spend those 4 months painting the front porch. Remodeling my bathroom. Advancing my freelance career. Taking Spanish lessons. Or French lessons. Or both. Growing some arm muscles. Revamping this website. Learning how to make a proper gin martini while wearing vintage polka dot dresses and red high heels.

What?

Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing.

Reason #372 Why I’m A Crappy Girl.

So apparently my 2 year blogiversary — that’s the cutsey name blog people came up with for a blog anniversary — like TomCat or BradGelina — get it? — passed nearly a month ago without me even noticing.

And that, my friends, is why I’m a crappy girl.

It’s true.

When we first got together, it was Justin who reminded me about the anniversary of the day we first met.  And not just the first year, but most subsequent years.

Combine that with the fact that I would never remember anyone’s birthday if it weren’t for Facebook and that my detachment from having any real “home” has caused me to be about as sentimental as Lord Voldemort on Ritalin, and we have one very crappy girl on our hands.

I mean, aren’t girls supposed to be good at remembering special dates?  And aren’t girls supposed to buy special gifts for people “just because” and carry Hallmark discount cards and have wrapping paper stations?

I neither do nor have any of these things.

I still have a birthday card that I bought for my mom over 2 years ago.

I’ve never been good with calendars, or planners, or blackberries, or reminders.  I can do lists, but I usually only make it 1/3 of the way through them before I get bored and move on.  I have approximately 37 draft blog posts that I’ve started and never finished.  The polish on my right big toenail has been chipped for 3 days.

I tell you these things not only so you can understand what we’re working with here, but so you can feel better about yourself if you’re better than me.  Or good enough about yourself if you’re as bad as me.

Or something.

Because honestly, this is just me.  And the fact that I let the exact date, 2 years later, that I started this blog roll by without even realizing it, only proves it.

And guess what?

The world didn’t end.  The blog didn’t end.  Wordpress hasn’t started writing me nasty letters because I missed a ubiquitous blogiversary post.

So really, I just forgot it, and I don’t feel bad.

And because I don’t feel bad, I don’t feel like a failure.

And because I don’t feel like a failure, I think that maybe mentally, I’ve made some improvements over the past year.

And if we’re going to bother measuring time, those are the things — self-improvement achievements, relationship communication milestones, number of stamps in my passport this year — that are worth remembering.

A date is just a date.  A year is just a year.

It’s what we do with them that counts.

Annapolis, MD

Annapolis, MD.  April 4th, 2012.  Taken with my iPhone.

 

Back to the Grind.

So I’m back.

I’m back and my eyes are puffy and my hair is fuzzy and matted to the back of my head and I’ve just been woken from the best sleep of my life by the jarring alarm of an iPhone that, when I think about it, I should’ve thrown against the wall.  But I didn’t want to scratch the paint.  The charcoal paint.

Are you picking up what I’m dropping?

That’s right — last night, my first night home from my whirlwind tour of the east coast, we were able to sleep in our bedroom.

Not the guest room — our room.

Which means that on top of approximately 872 trip photos to sort through and share via witty highlighting commentary, I also need to give you an update on that.  Which I will.  Very soon.

And I would’ve updated you sooner — say, while enjoying a cup of fresh-ground coffee in my aunt-in-law’s remodeled Philadelphia kitchen, but I left the power cord to my “borrowed” work laptop in its sun dappled perch in Erin’s water view Annapolis kitchen.

Which I wasn’t too bummed about at first, because it allowed the excuse of taking a leisurely meander back down the coast instead of the terrifying I-95 past Washington, D.C. in order to retrieve the cord.  But then I was bummed, because I realized we wouldn’t get back in time to retrieve the mutts, which I find considerably more fluffy and huggable than a laptop power cord.  So now I have approximately 47 seconds to hop in the shower and erase the grimy road residue from my body before I head out to pick up the mutts, bring the mutts home, and drive all the way back down to work, effectively arriving an hour late on my first day back.

A fact my female boss — the one I directly assist on a daily basis — seemed none too pleased to hear.

And I have to wonder.  Why is it, when I’m on the road, that everything seems to work out timing-wise, but when I’m home, everything turns into one screwed up fuster cluck of a rush?

For example, when we realized we didn’t have time to get the mutts, we realized that meant we did have time to stop at an Italian restaurant, maneuver to change into dressier clothes in the car in the restaurant’s parking lot, enjoy one last vacation-prolonging leisurely meal, and pick Justin’s car up from where he’d left it at the Raleigh airport.  Good deal.  However, I can already see today stretching into a giant stress ball of running all over town, catching up on work, setting appointments, and figuring out how I’m supposed to fit my grandiose plans into a single, short-lived week.

And that, it hits me, is the reason I love to travel.  It’s like my soul refuses to accept a sense of urgency, because nothing really is urgent.  I’m allowed, finally, to just live in the moment.

I just need to figure out how to do that at home.  After I shower, get dressed, pick up the mutts, go to work, cook dinner, do laundry, finish the bedroom, sort photos, and work on other various projects I have going.

Crap.

(P.S. I did post the occasional photo highlight on my Facebook page while I was away. You can see previews at the right, or click here to check ’em out if you’re bored.)

My Mind is Like… the Most Intricate LEGO Set Ever Designed.

Michael Wurm, who has an inspiring blog and is apparently one of the most followed people on Pinterest, posted something yesterday that made me feel better about myself.

literally, for like an entire second, I felt better about myself.

It’s a quote by someone named Rae Smith that says:

Never be afraid to fall apart, because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along.

I feel like that’s me right now.

Or me for the past couple of years.

This thing — this thing that I’m doing/going through/putting the people I love through is a process.  First, we had the falling apart.  The realization that I wasn’t living my life the way I wanted to live it, and so I started taking the steps necessary to change.  I may have stumbled here and there, but for the most part, I feel like the changes were a step in the right direction.

No matter how crazy others thought I was.

No matter how crazy I sometimes think I was.  Because I have to remember that sometimes I would leave my cubicle, close myself into a bathroom stall, and sit there for 20 minutes to contemplate the meaning of my job.  My life.

Sometimes I would cry.  At work.  In a bathroom stall.

So when I think about how I miss the paycheck and my way-above-averagely-awesome co-workers, I have to remember the bathroom.

I have to remember the bathroom and the sense that if I stayed in that place (the job, not the bathroom) much longer, I might quite literally lose my mind.

Second, we have the rebuilding.  As with any major construction project, the process is a bit slower than I’d like, I’ll admit.  And some of the pieces keep falling off, which indicates that it may be time to invest in some better glue.

So when I find myself falling into the rut of my new job (new? I’ve been there since August), I have to remind myself of what it is that I’m really after and how this job can help get me there.  It’s home photography practice.  It’s writing practice and people skills.  It’s a portfolio-builder in many ways, and while there isn’t a lot of extra floating around, it helps pay the bills.

Photo I took for a house flyer.

It’s flexible, and for the most part, allows me time to work on other things.

I just need to force myself to do it.

By the way, I made it to the finals in a writing/photo contest to win a trip to India.  I believe that winners will be announced later this week.  And while I realistically understand that the guy who’s made it to the finals 4 times as opposed to my 1 time has a better shot, I’d like to keep it positive up in this mind.  You know… better glue.

If Life is a Contest to See Who’s The Most Pamperedest Chef, You Win. I Give.

What is it about getting older that makes us feel like we need to slap a theme on something in order to make it fun?

Take, for example, renovated house reveal party my bosses are planning.  It can’t just be a classy affair with an amuse bouche or two, some tapas, and a cocktail bar — it has to have a theme. “Sangrias at Sunset” sounds simple enough, but in reality it requires coordinating the food, music, and even colors to make everything fit a predetermined Spanish vibe, even though nothing about this home in a historic downtown Fayetteville neighborhood has anything to do with Spain.

It’s undue stress, I tell you, and if they’re not careful, the end result will likely be some mishmashed medley of weak catered sangria with cheap wine, bright garish table cloths, and streaming mariachi music.

The house will be beautiful, but I wonder if anyone will see it.

Themes can be fun when they’re original, like the “Ugly Sweater Parties” from a decade ago.  But did anyone notice the mass surge of ugly sweater parties during this past holiday season?  It became the it thing to do, and suddenly the act of hunting down an ugly sweater became a chore — it no longer entailed a quick trip to the Goodwill, but an all-out hunt for the best worst sweater in town, sometimes requiring the payment of retail prices in department stores which were stocked with colorful Santa and reindeer knits designed specifically, it seemed, for parties honoring the art of the ugly sweater.

It seems like all adult social parties, once we reach a certain age, have to be designed around a theme.  Especially the social parties exclusively for women.

What is it about turning the big THREE-OH that apparently makes us lose our ability to gather with a group of women to enjoy some good drinks, sincere laughs, and stimulating conversation without the crutch of a theme?

Or worse, without guilting each other into buying something?

Every single women-only event I’ve been invited to since turning 29, with the exception of the book club and a much-loved “girls’ night out” or two with former colleagues, has been a ruse to get me to buy something I neither want nor need.  From jewelry to bags to kitchen gadgets to chip dips, my social world has turned into a support network for home-based pyramid schemes businesses.  I can no longer go to my local wine shop without feeling a twinge of guilt for not purchasing bottles from someone with a home-based wine selling business.  I can’t make my own fresh ingredient soup without thinking about the just-add-water bag of powder still sitting in the back of my drawer.  I can’t comparison shop for health products.  Test my own makeup.  Buy my own non-fugly patterned lunch bags.  I can’t even purchase inexpensive Wal-Mart brand room fresheners because they might soil the specialized plug-in warmers that cost me a 2-week grocery budget and a contract for my first-born child.

I don’t mind supporting my friends, but when I’m guilted into attending these “parties” where I’m forced to fake enthusiasm for a collapsible polka-dot thermal picnic cooler and spend $50 on powdered drink mixes that will be doomed to take up back-of-pantry real estate until we move, I’m not gonna lie — I find myself wondering how much Im supposed to spend in order to qualify my friendship.

I say this not to insult those who earn a living supporting these companies or those who genuinely enjoy the products and purchase on a regular basis.

I say this because I’m concerned about the fact that these are the only gatherings that seem to exist after a certain age — these, and baby showers.  And I’m sorry, but unless they involve Kahlua and stroller races, I’m really not going to get excited about them.

Why can we not get together simply for the sake of getting together?  Why can we not gather at a friend’s home and cook a collective meal?  Talk about the books we’ve read?  Watch the latest Nicholas Sparks film and outwardly ridicule the main characters while secretly wishing we were them?

Why does there always have to be a premise?

The next time you attend one of these themed gatherings, ask yourself if you’re having fun.

And if you think that you are, ask yourself if you really are, or if you’re just faking it.

Because there’s something that happens as we get older and more domestic.  Something bad.

Somehow somewhere along the line, we start telling ourselves that it’s okay to fake it.

That fun isn’t fun unless it’s forced.

That we can’t really laugh, because our laugh is too loud.

Our jokes are too crude.

And our meatballs must suck because there are still some left on the tray.

We leave feeling inadequate.  Ridiculed.  Or the coolest member of a club we never wanted to join.

And when I think about it, I realize that I have no energy for pretense.  There are too many fun things to do.  Fantastic people to meet.  Wonders to experience.

So maybe it’s the domestiphobe in me, but I really don’t think I want to do this anymore.  This faking it thing.

So I think that I’ll stop.

Because really, if my laugh is too loud, then I’ll stop getting invited.

And I’ll have more time for the people and things that make me laugh for real.

Everybody wins.

What about you? Think you have a little domestiphobia in you?

I Wish the Internet Worked in Candlelight.

Yesterday and the night before, I had no internet.

I didn’t realize quite how much my world revolved around internet until I didn’t have it.

Kind of like when the electricity goes out for a couple of days, and you think it’ll be fine because you have plenty of leftovers you can just pop in the microwave for dinner, except oh yeah, the microwave doesn’t work and so all meals henceforth, including your morning toast, will need to be cooked on the grill out back.  And I don’t mind not having television (since we don’t even have cable anyway) so I’ll just read, except reading by candlelight is much more difficult and less romantic than expected, and so not worth the inevitable squinting headache at the end of the night.  And you can forget about hot showers because it’s electricity, my friends, that heats the water.

In Costa Rica we couldn’t even flush the toilets when the electricity went out, but somehow not being able to poop near common living areas during power outages there seemed a lot less inconvenient than not being able to make toast here.

It’s like that with the internet, too.  The internet is my baby.  It’s my connection from this secluded suburban pocket to the outside world.  It’s how I stream Dexter and Downton Abbey and The Bachelor.

It’s how I talk to you.

Anyway.  This is my long-winded way of telling you why I haven’t posted.

Well, if we’re going to be honest, the internet thing isn’t the only reason.

See, someone commented not too long ago that if I don’t have something worth writing about or can’t put together a coherent post, maybe I shouldn’t write.  Maybe I should wait longer between posts.  And I’ll admit that jarred me a little — I thought, maybe I shouldn’t just throw all of these inane thoughts out into the vastness of the internet where anyone can see.

But then I quickly remembered that thoughtfulness and coherency are not what this blog is about.

So.  Speedbump hurdled.  (Thanks for talking me through that one, Rhome410.)

The third reason is that my job — not career, but job — has suddenly become more stressful.

Despite the fact that my boss and I came to a mutual agreement that I would not be working full-time for him, I was shifted into the position of my other boss’s assistant, which is, I’m finding, pretty much a full-time job.

Yep.

I think I’ve been manipulated.

Worse, I’ve been manipulated into a respect-less, opinion-less role of subhuman dignity, where apparently the idea is for me to work my ass off in order to make someone else look good and collect all of the money.

Yet.

I don’t hate it.

Yet.

The world of real estate is a pretty shallow, bitchy, self-righteous place full quirky and interesting characters.  From the extreme end of clients who think that in hiring a realtor they’ve invested in some form of legalized slave labor, to the extreme end of agents who think selling real estate is akin to saving the manatees and all the rest of you would-be manatee savers better back the f*ck off because I’m the only person allowed to save manatees in this town — ME, my days are filled with interesting sociological observations of the extremes and the dawning realization that no one, no matter how old, experienced, wealthy, or intelligent, really knows what he or she is doing.

My job is anything but mundane.

And that’s what makes it work for me.

There are some atrocities, however, that I find difficult to move past.

Take, for example, a would-be client who currently can’t get approved for a mortgage.  Is it because he has questionable history, late payments, bankruptcy, or any other blemish on his credit report?

No.

It’s because he has no credit report.

The bank will not give him a loan because he has no debt.  He’s financially responsible.  He pays for everything with cash, therefore ensuring that he never buys more than he can afford.

In other words, because he doesn’t owe the bank any money, they won’t loan him any money.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to experience other countries.

Even if I’m not allowed poop during thunderstorms.

All I’m Sayin’ is You Probably Don’t Want to End Up in a Pie. DO You?

It occurred to me over the weekend that some of you might find it odd that Justin and I are taking a separate-yet-together vacation.  That we’re married, and yet we would opt to arrive at the same destination via different means.  That I, the girl, would choose to toss my bags into the back of the Tracker and take a week to meander my way to Philly while Justin, the guy, will pop a couple of Dramamines and ask the stewardess to wake him up when they get there.

The difference in our travel philosophies is obvious.  For Justin, it’s about arriving at the destination as quickly as possible so he has more time to enjoy it.  But me?  I don’t like to be rushed.  The trip itself — as long as I’m not stuffed into a cramped plane cabin full of crying babies and plane farters — is a part of the vacation.

Especially when I have the chance to see other interesting places and people along the way.

So.

After nearly nine years together, we’ve finally figured out that there’s really no need for one of us to conform.  If he prefers to fly, he can fly.  Since I prefer to drive, I will drive.  (Though I’ll admit this idea doesn’t seem quite as brilliant as gas prices creep closer to that $4.00 mark.)

Anyway.  Just because we’re married doesn’t mean we have to become the same person — some oddly morphed amalgamation of the individuals we once were.

Nope.

I remain stubbornly independent.

It probably stems from my first real date.

See, I wasn’t the most popular girl in high school.  And I never really did have a boyfriend.  But there was this boy, we’ll call him Todd for reasons that will become obvious in a minute, whom I met while painting the set for our high school’s production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona or some other Shakespearian work we didn’t understand, in a junior year last-ditch effort to involve myself in the place so it would look like I cared on my college applications.

Todd was a senior who worked on the lighting, and I remember the flutterbies when he held my hand in the dark on the catwalk as we lay side-by-side on our stomachs, watching the play through the metal grates from above.

He asked me out not long thereafter, and it felt surreal when the night arrived.  A real boy was picking me up in a real car and taking me to a real dinner and not just a movie, but a play.  A college play, that was going to be performed in-the-round with a revolving set inside of a big black box and we’d be parked in the seats, not the catwalk, though I thought maybe I’d miss our aerial view from the catwalk a little.

The play had some silly name, Sweeney Todd or something crazy like that, weird but easy to remember the way it rolled off the tongue.

He said it was about a barber.

Now.  It’s important to remember that this event occurred before Johnny Depp brought Sweeney to mainstream culture.  So.  Imagine my surprise when Benjamin Barker cuts the first victim’s throat with a razor blade, red blood gushing oh-so-realistically as he pulls a lever on his specially crafted chair, turning it into a rigid slide of sorts, and the body, a once-jolly chap who’d only wanted a shave, falls through a hole in the floor and down into Mrs. Lovett’s kitchen where she grinds him up and turns him into a pie, of all things, and sells him on the street as the delicious individual pastries for which she soon becomes famous.  And they sing about the pies, people, about the human meat pies in a song called, God, that’s Good.

Source

And I thought about the hamburger from Ruby Tuesday’s I’d just devoured, and I realized at that moment that maybe this whole romance thing was overrated.

So when Todd (the one I dated, not the one from the play) started to get a little clingy — showing up at my house when I told him I was spending time with my girlfriends and calling incessantly — I thought maybe there was a chance that Sweeney Todd had been a warning.

And maybe, no matter what happens in this life with the menfolk, I shouldn’t try to change who I am to fit someone else’s personality.  Nor should I expect them to change for me.  Sometimes the solutions are much simpler than what we make them.

And I definitely should never pay anyone to shave my neck.

Hey.

My life is full of lessons, people.

I’m just here to pass them to you.

And This Is Why You Should Never Do Anything Nice For Anyone Ever.

This weekend, I broke my boss’s television.

Yep.

Welcome to my world.

I know these things don’t just happen to me, right?  You told me these things don’t just happen to me, like the time I flashed my co-worker, boss, and pretty much the entire city my skivvies in broad daylight.  (Because, you know, any other time of day would be perfectly acceptable.)

It was one of those moments when, clear as crystal, I had an epiphany — we really should lie the television down while we move it, I thought, rather than balancing it up on its stand.

Of course, as is common in these types of scenarios, I was having that epiphany as I pressed the accelerator when the light turned green.  In the forward momentum, the backwards-facing television decided that it would rather stay at the stop light, so it fell, face down, and landed on top of a file cabinet.

And I got that feeling.  You know that sickly feeling when you feel like life is playing a joke on you?  Like any second time is going to rewind itself to the moment before The Incident happened, and you’ll have time to change the way things went down?  Like this really can’t be happening, and we’ll just stop at the office to drop off the filing cabinet, and then there will be plenty of room to properly arrange the large, not-inexpensive flat screen television in such a way that basic physics won’t lead to its ultimate demise?

But wait.  That already happened.

And now I have to explain to my boss, when we show up at his new house to which we were helping him move his family’s worldly possessions from his old house, why, exactly, I broke one of the two things I was responsible for transporting.

After that thought crossed my mind, a more primal instinct took over.  I’m not exactly sure, but I think this is the conversation that took place in my car:

Me:  We could just keep driving.  We could just keep going and start over with nothing but this Tracker, a filing cabinet, and a broken, flat screen television to our names.

Justin:  That sounds great, except for the part where I get arrested for ditching the military.

Me:  We could just throw it out the back of the Tracker and tell him we got mugged when we were driving through a less-than-savory part of town.

Justin:  We didn’t drive through a less-than-savory part of town.  He’ll only believe that story if we tell him we got mugged by a McDonald’s employee or grass-fed prep school children.

Me:  It could happen.

Justin:  And the only thing they stole was the flat screen?

Me:  What else are they going to steal?  Mixed CD’s from 1998?  A pack of kleenex?  The copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull I bought in a used bookstore in Canon Beach  in 2003 that’s been sitting in the pocket of my door ever since?

Justin:  Good point. But we’d have to file a police report to make it believable, and I refuse to get involved in that type of scandalous affair.

Me:  What, they didn’t teach you that in Catholic school?  That it’s okay to file false police reports on your wife’s behalf so she doesn’t have to tell her boss that she broke his expensive television?  That you BOTH broke his expensive television?  Don’t forget, Mister, you were in the car.  That makes you an accomplice.  And I’m your wife.  Catholics are totally into that idea of doing-whatever-the-spouse-wants-no-questions-asked, right?  I mean, it’s for the good of the marriage.  I could be carrying your CHILD.

Justin:  What?  You could?

Me:  No.  It was a hypothetical.

Justin:  …

Me:  Let’s talk about something else.

In the end, my boss wasn’t mad.  Or at least he did a good job of hiding it.  I console myself by saying it was an older flat screen, and he said he’d been looking for an excuse to buy a new one anyway.

That, and the fact that I work for a bargain.  And he knows it.

And we’re the only people who showed up to help him move.

And we did it for free.

So hey.

You get what you pay for, right?

I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson to be learned here.  Something like… don’t do nice things for other people because it will likely bite you in the ass.

Or something like that.

I’m still working on that one.

I’m So Cool — Too Bad I’m A Loser.

A couple of days ago, I found myself slipping. Bemoaning the lot in our military life that’s landed us in the same place for so long.  I was doing something meaningless — dropping flyers and a lockbox off at a new listing, driving through the usual drudgery of pawn shops and Asian markets and the suffocating stench of fried food and giant southern truck exhaust.  I was headed west, and I knew that if I kept going, I would eventually race along the south side of the military training lands, where they shoot stuff and drop stuff and fall from the sky like little turds from a bird only they never land on anyone’s head.

Unless, of course, they plan it that way.

But I didn’t keep going, because I had things to do.  A right turn to make, into a tiny pocket of suburbia tucked just off of the main road and into a deluded fog of quiet seclusion and community togetherness.  I tapped my brakes, and that’s when I saw it.  Due west, straight ahead, the biggest bird in my sky at that moment — probably a C-17 with a 170 foot wingspan and 4 bulky engines carrying its unlikely hulk above the tree line over the rise ahead.  And then they started dropping, the turds from the bird, only way, way cooler.  They seemed random and graceful the way they fell, one after another after another, then pop pop pop went their parachutes almost immediately, seeming precariously close to one another and then falling, falling and from this distance looking like so many tiny Mary Poppins silhouettes gliding down across the setting sun and over the London skyline comprised, in this case, of the tallest Longleaf Pines.

I can’t find a credit for this photo. If it’s yours, please let me know.

It was stunning.

And, no matter how many times I witness this surprise display of Paratrooping prowess, it will never get old.  Never.

It will never not be cool to me.

Which is comforting, because in this life, it’s so easy for things to fall off of our radars, whether because someone tells us it’s no longer cool to like these things, or we outgrow them ourselves.  And sometimes it feels like this race — like we drop one trend, clear the overalls and jean skirts from our wardrobes, and just a short 10 years later, we’re filling it up again.  Denim, denim everywhere!

Doesn’t it get tiring?  This constant struggle to look the right way, say the right thing, be the right person?

I mean, really.  If we all loved the same things, there would never be anything new to discover.  And stores would constantly be sold out of yoga pants.  And we wouldn’t procreate because Scott Bairstow is taken.

And I realized that day that to me, no matter what anyone else tries to say, these things will never stop being cool:

The Toadies.

Absolut Vodka ads.

Harry Potter books.

Bangs.

Geography.

Billy Joel.

(Every voice heard in this song is his.  The only instrumental accompaniment is a bass guitar.  Tell me that’s not awesome.)

The Tracker.

So.  What’s your list?

*Thanks once again to the Barenaked Ladies for providing the post title. I couldn’t do it without you.

Happy Frickin’ Valentine’s Day to You, Too.

In light of the fact that Justin and I celebrated Valentine’s Day together for the first time 3 years into our relationship and bought each other a marriage “game over” t-shirt and the complete box set of Carmen Electra’s Strip Aerobics (can you guess who received which gift?), you would think I’d be over this V-day thing entirely and that this year we’d kick back on the couch, trough some sloppy joes, and practice opening beer bottles with our butt cracks.

However, I’ll have you know, romance isn’t entirely dead to me on this day.

In fact, this year we’re doing something super romantic.

That’s right.

We’re working on our master bedroom.

Well.

Technically we worked on it over the weekend and I will be painting the walls on my day off tomorrow, so really tonight we might hang the light or something, then sit on the floor admiring our handiwork while eating sloppy joes — the homemade kind, not the crap from a can.  Because we’re crazy like that.  And to me, nothing says love like ground beef on a bun.

Anyway, we are making progress.  Justin primed and painted the ceiling, and I cleaned and painted all of the baseboards, door and window trim.

*NOTE: If you’re going to take on a room painting project and the trim needs to be painted as well, start with the trim FIRST.  Just trust me on this.

FYI, cleaning a room after popcorn removal and ceiling sanding is not an easy task.  It requires a shop vac, a regular vac, patience, and some elbow grease.  Guess which one of these 4 I don’t have.

While Justin was at work last week, I got started on the grungy baseboards.

You can see how bad they were, even post-scrubbing.

Ignore the “special” trim brush I’m using and my creepy red hand.  My hand isn’t really that red.

I hated that paint brush.  When I did the rest of the trim over the weekend, I found it much more effective to use my usual Wooster shortcut brush.

That big flat spatula tool that Justin had used to scrape the ceiling worked wonderfully to hold down the carpet while I painted the baseboards.

I was meticulous about not getting paint on the carpet.  That is, until I got paint on the carpet.

Lots of it.

This is after instinctively glopping (because that’s a word) the bulk of it up with some paper towels.

See, I was wedged between the wall and the dresser, and in my haste to get out from the confined space, I spilled the paint.  And while we’re going to replace the carpet eventually, I’d rather not have a huge paint splotch constantly reminding me of my inadequacies until that day arrives.

So, after hastily consulting Facebook on my phone, I went to work dumping water onto the spill and soaking it up with a towel before reading the responses.

Turns out this was a wise move, since my oh-so-helpful Facebook plea responses included: gum, bleach, peanut butter, scissors, an ice cube, carpet colored paint, a rug, and urine.

Thanks, guys.

Really, though — this is why I love my friends.  They make me laugh when I kind of want to cry.  And there were definitely some useful tips too, like water, a carpet shampooer, and this stuff.

Fortunately though, the water/towel method ended up working just fine since I didn’t let the paint dry, and there was no need to pull out the ol’ shampooer or overnight myself some latex paint remover.

Whew.

Remember how I told you that every DIY project takes much longer than you would expect?

Well.

I’m starting to think it’s just me.

So.  Are you doing anything special for V-day like hanging a ceiling light or watching paint dry?

It’s not that I have a problem with Valentine’s Day — it’s just that I’m not really into the typical accoutrements (hearts, candy, flowers, hearts, sappy cards, and hearts) that come with it.  Now.  If Justin were to bring home… say… 2 airline tickets to the Galapagos Islands, we’d be in business.

I’m a simple girl, really.

I know.  He’s totally got it made.