The Art of Musing

...and I'm back!

2012-02-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

Sooo, back on December 19th when I wrote my last post, I intended to take a few days off from blogging to enjoy the holidays. Annnnnd then it was February. Ooops, my b! I'm sure that the 3 people who probably read this blog really didn't miss me too much.

Anyway, I'm back, and I am going to try try tryyyyy to be better about posting more regularly. I'm propped up in bed right now with B long asleep next to me. Per usual, he is sleeping on TOP of our comforter, covered in the throw blanket typically reserved for snuggling up on the couch. For reasons unexplained, he insists on sleeping covered by this sort of "adult blanky" as opposed to our perfectly nice, and might I add, more mature choice of bedding for a married man in his thirties. Ah, well, what can you do?

It is the eve of my 32nd birthday, so I'm feeling rather pensive tonite. Thirty-two. It seems so...old. Yet, I don't really feel old. In fact, most days, I feel a whole lot younger than 32, at least physically, which I'm inclined to interpret as a good thing. Mentally, though, I'm definitely 32...actually, I'm more like 62. I've always been a bit ahead of my age when it comes to my thoughts, I suppose, and this quality serves as both my greatest blessing and greatest curse.

This year has been the most amazing year of my life for one reason and one reason only....our baby, who I will call, "A". When friends and family discovered I was pregnant, and even more so once baby arrived, everyone chimed in with the expected cliches, "Your whole world will change!" and "They grow up so fast-time will fly!". These sentiments proved true, but not always in the more generic sense that I think that folks typically intend them, at least not for me.

Yes, my whole world changed, but not because we could no longer do the things that we wanted to do like go out to eat, travel to see friends, etc. Au contraire! We STILL do all of these things, albeit slightly differently, and, mind you, we do (have always done, even pre-baby!) them entirely independently, given that we have no family close by to rely upon for any type of support related to childcare, occasional help around the house, financial help, etc. At the risk of sounding dorky or self-impressed, this is something for which I am SO SO SO proud of us. To me, it really feels like a major accomplishment to know that we can and do fly solo in every way. I've heard friends and acquaintances with young babies/toddlers lament that they have not been out to dinner since their children have been born, or that they never go anywhere, do anything, etc. How ridiculous! That just has to be your own fault if that ends up being the case. While A is of course our world given what she means and represents to us, she is also thus because she has become a part of our world in every way. She complements our lives and our experiences, as opposed to inhibiting them. We have embraced her fully, and she us, and have figured out how to incorporate her into all of the things that make us "us", whether it be scalping last minute tickets to our favorite ACC basketball team's home game, or flying cross-country with a 5 month old to be at a college friend's wedding because he did the same for us when it was our turn. It's not always easy, and it's not always without stress or an added degree of difficulty, but we do our best to muddle through. We are all the better for it, too. Each and every time that we adopt the "what the heck, let's try it!" attitude with A, we gain more and more confidence, and so, I like to think, does she. The very biggest change to our world is the inexplicable increase in the size and fullness of our hearts. We both agree that we never knew the possibility existed to love another living thing this much. My heart is literally so full that it almost hurts to think about it.

As for the whole "time flying" thing...OK, I must concede that everyone hit the nail on the head, there. I never fully grasped the meaning behind the expression "time flies" until I became a mother. A's first birthday is fast-approaching, and I can't fathom it, not even close. Every month when we celebrate another month of her life gone by, another milestone reached, I am overcome with sadness. I find myself in a state of mourning over the months that have passed, each one taking us swiftly and steadily further and further away from babyhood. But I also look so forward to the little, independent, unique and amazing person that she is becoming with every passing day. The rate of growth and change is equal parts exponential and miraculous. I have begun to realize that for my whole life, and her whole life (or as much of it as I am here to experience), I will exist in this odd place of mourning for the babyhood, childhood, adulthood that she leaves behind, all the while waiting in joyful anticipation of all that is to come. It's an indescribable place to be.

Motherhood has sparked a new found appreciation for several things-sleeping in, under eye concealer, the true privilege that is "me" time, the luxury that is an evening glass of wine, the ability to eat a meal slowly, my husband and how very important our relationship is to ensuring the livelihood and health of our little family unit, the general amazingness of babies...I could go on and on. As far as things that I miss, well...nothing, really, not when compared with this beautiful creation that we call A. I look at motherhood not as something that I HAVE to do now that A is here, but rather something that I GET to do because God has chosen to infinitely bless me by bringing A safely and securely into this crazy, beautiful, confusing, wild world. B and I played it right (for us, at least) by waiting almost 5 years before having A. As a result, I truly feel as if I have no regrets. We did and shared and saw SO MUCH together and enjoyed the "married without children" years of our marriage to the absolute limit. Additionally, we don't view having a baby as being something that signifies the end of your chance to do things. We still have every plan to keep on doing and living and experiencing the stuff of our dreams...we just will figure out how to work A into our plans, too!

Here's to hoping that my 32nd year continues to be blessed by the very simplest gifts--my family, my friends, health for myself and my loved ones, a brain that continues to ponder, discover and challenge, and love, plenty of good old fashioned love.

I didn't know I was pregnant

2011-12-19T15:11:00.000-08:00

The other night, B was especially tired and thus headed off to bed on the early side. I found myself not yet wound down enough to retire for the evening. So, I headed back out to the couch with a glass of wine to catch up on some email and perhaps engage in some mindless TV viewing. As I surfed the channels, I happened upon a show on the TLC channel entitled, "I didn't know I was pregnant". Catching up on emails promptly fell by the wayside.

I had heard about this show in passing, but I had never actually watched. I was astounded. I mean, SERIOUSLY???? HOW can you not know that you are pregnant? And, I'm not talking like, "Oh I had a few too many glasses of wine when I was already 5 or 6 weeks along because I didn't know..."-pregnant, I'm talking full-blown, four alarm "I thought I was taking a shit and delivered an 8 lb 11 oz full-term newborn into the toilet instead"-pregnant. Both women featured in this particular episode delivered full-term babies having never known or even suspected, for that matter, that they might be pregnant. This whole concept just baffles me. Having been pregnant myself, I can't for the life of me understand how you could not know. You mean that sensation of something moving within your stomach to the point that you can see your abdomen undulate and poke out didn't tip you off? My favorite part of the particular episode that I was tuned in to was when the partner of one of the women being featured noted of the experience, "I figured that she was just having a particularly tough bowel movement that we all have on occasion.". Wait, REALLY? To him, I say, if, on occasion, you have a bowel movement that is that tough, you need to consider adding significantly more fiber to your diet.

Seeing this show once was probably enough for me. It was definitely enough for me to make a beeline for the bedroom to join B in slumber. I think next time, I'll just stick to something a little more tried and true, like, say, a "Little people, big world" marathon.

Nose grease, anyone?

2011-12-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

The other night, B poured me a glass of diet Pepsi that happened to be rather heady in terms of the foam. As I began to slurp down the foam to make more room in the glass, I was reminded of an absolutely repulsive practice from my undergraduate years...

In my heyday, I attended many a keg party, to say the least. Oftentimes, when pumping a freshly tap-poured cup of ~~high-quality beer~~ Milwaukee's Best, aka "Beast", the end result was a cupful of foam with a mere teaspoon or so of actual beer at the bottom of the cup. Fear not, though, because this was where "nose grease" came to the rescue. As was customary at the time (and maybe still is?), a valiant frat boy would offer to swipe, usually with his forefinger, a hardy helping of nose grease (i.e. a combo of sweat and sebaceous secretions) from the crevice where the nose attaches to the face and then swirl the forefinger around in your foamy beer. Voila! The foam would seemingly melt away, like magic! This positively revolting act was commonplace, and I honestly don't remember (likely because I was far from sober in most of these instances) even thinking twice about doing it myself, or allowing another person (often a casual acquaintance if not a complete stranger) to do it for me prior to enjoying a healthy swig of brew. SO FRIGGING SICK. But it works, oh does it work, as reconfirmed by a swipe of my own nose grease into my diet Pepsi yielding instant foam-reducing results.

Being the helpless nerd that I am, I had to explore the (possible?) scientific reasoning behind the nose grease/beer foam phenomenon. In my search, I found this helpful answer on a Chowhound Nagging Question post from a few years back--take a peek! God, I love the Internet.

Perhaps in a future blog post, I will revisit other college-isms, such as those small little chairs that folded out into a sort of pallet that could accommodate a whole body, known among the educated elites as, "flip and f$%&s". See below:

Golden Corral

2011-12-07T19:24:00.001-08:00

I know what you are thinking...another food-themed post. I'm sorry...for some reason, food-related topics seem to spark B's and my sense of humor.

So, the other night, we happened to catch a Golden Corral commercial on television. The commercial featured some chocolate fountain doohickey that Golden Corral now offers...you know, because an all you can eat buffet just would not be complete without a gluttonous fountain spewing forth liter upon liter of high fructose corn syrup. Honestly, these types of places are a total enigma to me. I just don't understand HOW or WHY....anyway....as usual, I digress.

Back to the commercial, which concluded with a voice over proclaiming the Golden Corral slogan, which we now know to be, "Help Yourself to Happiness". Naturally, this ignited a frenzied bout of B and I coming up with our own new--and we think BETTER--tag lines for this fine establishment. A few of my personal favorites are below:

Help Yourself to Heart Disease
Help Yourself to Type II Diabetes
Help Yourself to Obesity
Help Yourself to Being Dead by 30
Help Yourself to Foodborne Illness
Help Yourself to Diarrhea
Help Yourself to Severe Abdominal Cramping
Help Yourself to Arterial Stents

...and the list went on and on with B and I predictably giggling like school children.

But, seriously, Golden Corral, you set yourself up for this type of comedic fodder with that slogan. The door was wide open, and far be it from us to avoid walking right on in.

Facebook Detox

2011-12-07T05:40:00.001-08:00

In recent weeks, I have come to the realization that, like many, I have a love/hate relationship with my Facebook account. The things that I love: being able to instantly connect with family and close friends who I live at a great distance from, seeing pictures of friends' families/children, etc., and having one concentrated forum for communicating with so many folks all at once. As far as what I hate: pretty much every other aspect of the site.

I've always known what a time-suck Facebook could be. It was not until recently, though, that I stopped to fully consider the impact that this mindless petering away of time has on me personally, and to some extent, on those around me. Thanks to Facebook, I find myself knowing FAR too many intimate, and, might I add, USELESS details of the lives of about 546 "friends", the vast majority of whom I would never even have seen or communicated with again after the tenth grade, were it not for the advent of social networking.

Let me also touch upon the TMI factor, shall I? The amount of over-sharing (seriously, I NEVER need/will need to know that Bobby went pee pee on the potty like a big boy today), narcissistic and downright mundane blabber is positively mind-boggling. I observe many posting what amounts to play-by-play commentary of their daily activities. This is life people, not SportsCenter.

Lately, I am increasingly unappreciative of what I interpret as our society permitting--if not encouraging--Facebook to trump all other forms of good, old fashioned communication like personal emails or GASP! telephone calls. It find it troubling when I have to discover major details and updates regarding the lives of close friends and family not through one-on-one communication, but through a Facebook status update or photo. People have come to rely upon Facebook and other social media tools as the primary vehicle for sharing details and information about themselves. This would ordinarily be fine, to a certain extent. However, more and more, Facebook has come to replace personal (face-to-face, voice-to-voice, personal email) communication. The attitude seems to be one of trying to kill several birds with one stone by posting information on Facebook for all to see as opposed to calling/writing to individual friends and family. It is perplexing that people these days seem to have time to post incessant status updates, but not enough time to log a quick call or drop a personal email to a good friend. All of this begs the question, is all of this so-called "connecting" via social networks really just perpetuating a pervasive disconnect in our social circles and in society overall? I suppose I can't yet say, but I do know that too much time spent on Facebook (and similar sites) reduces both the quantity and quality of truly meaningful exchanges between and among friends and family. Perhaps more importantly, it wastes A LOT of precious time that you will never, ever get back.

Interestingly, Facebook does break down walls and communication barriers, albeit in a rather false way. To me, connecting with someone on Facebook is not really connecting at all, at least not in the true sense of the word. Like the "liquid courage" that often accompanies a few cocktails, Facebook gives us all "technology courage" as we hide behind the protective armour offered by our computer screens, iPads and Smartphones. It's a somewhat deluded sense of social connectivity made possible by information overload and over-access, both of which are hallmarks of the technological age that we are living in. I guarantee that if you were walking down the street and happened upon many of the "friends" whose pictures and status updates you routinely "like", whose birthdays, marriages, expanding families, etc. that you acknowledge, you'd be hard-pressed to have a non-awkward encounter or a natural conversation.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of Facebook is the disingenuous nature of it all. On Facebook, most (though not all) users have two primary goals: 1) Garnering attention and 2) Putting their very best (but not always their truest) selves forward. Do you really look for the most heinous pictures of yourself or your kids when posting to Facebook? I'd bet not. Instead, you (myself included!) find the best damn picture that you have of yourself in the hopes of garnering the admiration, approval and praise of others. Also, consider status updates, the majority of which border on being Utopian. I'm so blessed, My job is awesome, My friends are amazing, I got a promotion, I'm moving here, I'm traveling there, I'm doing this or that exciting thing right now, My kids are so cute, My husband is so perfect, blah blah blah. It's mostly lollipops, sunbeams and roses in the land of Facebook. It's just not reality. The Facebook culture breeds competition, it can make one feel inadequate, unpopular, as if they have somehow fallen short in terms of their physical appearance, achievement, happiness, friendships/relationships, etc. with respect to their Facebook peers. I've experienced all of these emotions firsthand, all as a result of a stupid website. I feel ashamed and silly to even write that! How incredibly DUMB.

So this post was a verbose way of explaining why I've decided that a Facebook detox of sorts is in order. I'm not inactivating my account entirely, just seriously limiting the amount of time that I spent idly scrolling through details pertaining to the lives of people who really are not a part of mine, at least not in any significant way. No more daily checking, but instead, maybe just weekly. I want to return to the time where I could learn about the goings on of my loved ones through honest, personal and genuine forms of connecting. Honestly, in the 2 weeks I've been at it so far, I've felt much happier and less tense. I have been devoting far less time to worrying/being impacted by shared details of other peoples lives that should have NO impact on me, but somehow were managing to get me all into a tizzy.

END RANT! ;)

A bit of nostalgia...

2011-12-03T16:55:00.001-08:00

Do you ever try to remember your childhood? I mean really try to remember it? I do. Quite often, especially since the birth of my daughter, an experience that has sparked within me such an acute sense of awareness of the passage of time.

Sometimes, in attempting to recall my childhood years, I get to feeling rather sad. Sadness washes over me not because I had a bad childhood. On the contrary, I had a (mostly) wonderful childhood. The wistfulness that I experience is more of a result of how I remember my youth, which tends to be in a very collective sense, all of the specifics and events bleeding together into a flashback reel of largely sunny (if not sometimes fuzzy) snippets. It's not that the details aren't there, because they most certainly are. So very many details compete with one another to invade the designated mental space assigned to them. Sometimes, these details have a way of intertwining into a big, almost indistinguishable, tangle, a big ball of carelessly raveled multi-colored yarn. It sounds foolish, maybe, but during the moments where all I see is the ball as opposed to the individual yarn strings, it makes me worry that day by day, I'm somehow forgetting. It makes me even more painfully aware of the reality that there is no going back, that I've lived those days, and that I'll never live them again, at least not in this life.

Every now and then, though, random details manage to break free, moving to occupy the front row seats of my conscious mind, just as vivid as they can be. These seemingly insignificant minutia from the past do come to visit, often triggered by something that I am in the act of doing/thinking in the present. Below are a few such details that called upon me today...

...the vacuum that my parents had while I was growing up. It was big and heavy; it must have weight 25 pounds. It was a hard to describe color blue, not navy, not royal, and the vacuum bag was fabric, with a subtle black checked pattern/texture to it. The part that actually roved about the floor doing the vacuuming was metal, all solid metal, nicked and scratched in places from frequent use...

...my mom's Dijon colored hand mixer. I loved licking the mixers after she was through using them. We'd stand over the sink until they were devoid of every last drop of batter...

...the random blue-painted wooden cubby hole cut into the back wall of our basement. I honestly don't know what purpose it was ever meant to serve. It was too deep to be a shelf, and it did not have an outlet in or near it, so the TV could never have gone there, either. We used to keep our stuffed animals up there. I can still see the stuffed Spuds Mackenzie dog (the star of numerous 80's Budweiser commercials) that my brother had won at a carnival or amusement park...

...the rust colored carpet that was in our olllld living room, and dining room, too, I think. I can distinctly remember fighting sleep laying with one cheek pressed into this flooring, with flickering images from the TV fading in and out as I nodded off...

...my purple legwarmers. I used to wear them to dance to Whitney Houston's eponymously titled first record, the one with a peach colored cover where Whitney is shaved bald and wearing some type of toga-esque looking garb...

...random things in our basement, like an engraved silver mug, my dad's old pipe (a habit ditched long before his kids came along), a wooden pencil tray/holder, a black metal music stand, a pair of ceramic baby shoes, various adapters, stacks of old records atop the piano, a black and white framed print of my Dad playing the trumpet, another framing of the cover of an old music magazine that featured a boy playing trumpet and his instructor, etc...

...our tape recorder. It was flat and rectangular. The record button was red, and square and you had to depress it and hold it down with the adjacent play button at the same time, I think, to get it to work. We LOVED recording our voices and playing them back...

...the bookcase in my parents room that was a secret bookcase which opened up into the eves. It felt like the most magical thing to push that bookcase open and discover the storage space beyond. I remember bringing all of my friends upstairs to my parents room just to show them...

...the old dog pen, rabbit cages and woodpile in the corner of the backyard before we put the pull in...

...a yellow plastic wading pool with a red and blue patterned design and a built in slide...

...the Yamaha piano. I spilled nail polish remover on the key cover when I was about 9 and it took the finish right off of the wood...

...my Dad's workshop in the back of the basement. It had a cement floor that once had been painted, but the paint had worn off in places so just gray cement peeked through. I can still remember that you had to pull a little chain on a light bulb in the center of the ceiling twice in order to get any light into the room. There was a red-painted, chipped vice on the workbench, and tiny bits of hardware kept stored in old baby food jars on peg board shelves along the wall...

...the forsythia bush on the side of the house...

...the flagstone steps leading to the front door and the wrought iron mail slot that we used to like peeking through...

...that my mom's perfume used to be White Linen...

...the vintage baseball card patterned wallpaper in my brother's bedroom...

...my Dad making steak fries as the dinner starch ALOT...and, for a period of time, me eating either ketchup or Bulls eye barbecue sauce on pretty much everything...

...how my Dad would smell after he'd been working hard in the yard in the summer. It was not a bad smell, just the smell of hard work, metallic and earthy all at once. I'd bring him out glasses of ice water and he would stop to take a drink and wipe his brow, his hands, arms and face all flecked with the grime of outdoors...

...my mom falling asleep on the couch while I played with her hair or played doctor with my Fisher Price doctor kit. Being a mom now, and working, I understand why this happened, and how tired she probably was between caring for us and working a very demanding job...

...Nutter Butters, Ruffles potato chips and Land o' Lakes American cheese...

These thoughts bring me comfort. I don't just remember them, but I feel them, I smell them, I know them with a unique intimacy that is mine and mine alone. Once I really devote time to connecting with them, they flow forth, almost effusively, linking together like so many molecules to form the basis of my very existence. Recalling these things, however mundane they may seem, gives me the hope that, though it may not always seem so, I remember so very much. My memories are here. They are in tact, just lying beneath the surface waiting for me to stop, to reflect, to chance upon them.

Elf on a Shelf

2011-11-29T05:02:00.001-08:00

Before I even begin here, I need to to give credit to one of my best friends and my mom for serving as the inspiration behind this post...

Over Thanksgiving, we were visiting with my parents out of state. My mother had purchased a few fun holiday items for our daughter, given that this will be her first Christmas. Among these items was a children's Christmas product called "The Elf on the Shelf". My mother bought one of these ~~evil talismans~~ plush toy/book combos for both our daughter and my niece in the hopes of starting a fun Christmas tradition for the little ones. The book is a story about an elf who watches over children during the holiday season , reporting back to Santa on who has been naughty or nice. Then, there is an accompanying elf doll that parents are supposed to hide in different places throughout the home during the holidays. The intent is two-fold: 1) for the kids to have fun attempting to search for and locate the elf each day; and 2) to motivate kids to be on their best behavior for Santa. Sounds cute enough, right? WRONG...but we'll get to that.

We arrived home from our Thanksgiving trip on Sunday afternoon, and after unpacking, I logged into my email to find a message waiting from one of my best friends who I'll call LCT to protect the innocent. In the email, LCT described having the same thoughts as my mother about starting up a holiday tradition by purchasing "The Elf on the Shelf" for her little guy. Prior to blowing $40 on this store-bought, mass marketed holiday "tradition", LCT decided to mosey on over to Amazon.com to peruse some of the product reviews and to psych herself up about the purchase. Hilarity ensued as she reached the 1 and 2 star ratings.

Naturally, in the midst of crossing her legs to avoid losing control of her bladder, she waited not even a millisecond before emailing me the link to these product reviews (can you tell why she we are friends?). She then proceeded to have a fit of laughter after hearing that B, myself and baby A are now the proud owners of this seemingly wicked and threatening imp.

Some of the best gems from among the reviews (at least in my opinion) are below for your exclusive enjoyment:

Review 1:

Review 2:

Review 3:

Review 4:

Seriously...the hits just keep on coming if you check out all of the reviews HERE. After reading several myself, I am left only to conclude that if you are interested in creating a tradition that will scare the ever-living s$%t out of your kids this (and every) holiday season, look no further than "The Elf on the Shelf".

Thanks again to LCT for not only finding these reviews, but for sharing them with me, and to my mom for providing what will (~~likely~~ possibly) form the basis of our child's/children's nightmares for years to come. So much for those visions of sugar plums!

Sidenote: We fully intend to use ours. In fact, B is a huge proponent of using the elf year round as a way to incite good behavior...

Crack Fridge

2011-11-22T11:09:00.001-08:00

Crack Fridge is a phenomenon that strikes our family approximately one time per week, typically, on a Friday. Essentially, this phenomenon occurs when your refrigerator contains almost NO food for sustaining human life, save for an odd assortment of condiments and perhaps some skunked beer. Thus, your fridge (and entire pantry, for that matter) resembles that of a severely addicted crack cocaine user who is so high most of the time that he/she overlooks the need for nutrition of any kind. Crack Fridge causes the inhabitants of a home to go to great, often irrational and downright offensive lengths to scrape together some semblance of sustenance in order to prevent losing consciousness, entering into a diabetic coma, hallucinating, and so on and so forth.

Let me just mention that B and I pride ourselves on being very healthy eaters. We also pride ourselves on not wasting food or buying more than we need for any given week. While both of these traits are positive things, they also significantly increase the potential for experiencing near weekly bouts of Crack Fridge. Since we tend to buy exactly what we need for the week, by Friday, there is literally NOTHING left.

An example of what a glimpse inside our family fridge might reveal on a Friday. Image source: http://wfaeats.org/2011/02/07/tales-of-an-empty-fridge-emergency/

This week, given that we are heading out of town for the holiday tonite, Crack Fridge came early...as in TODAY. Actually, we've been in the midst of a Crack Fridge epidemic as of last Friday, since we never went grocery shopping this past Sunday, as we normally would. The weekend was survivable, because we went out to eat a few times. We cook every night of the week, so on the weekends, we tend to splurge a bit and head out. Then yesterday hit. I managed to get by scavenging from the remainder of what we had left, but today has been a real struggle. Our fridge literally contains nothing except for aforementioned condiments, a bag of questionable looking shredded cheese, some Greek yogurts (thanks to a last minute Sam's Club run on Sunday night), and half a bottle of Chardonnay that I am pretty sure is at least a month and a half old.

Thus far, today I've eaten:

A protein bar before my workout (the last one--thank God we had one in there)
A handful of almonds
1 blueberry Greek yogurt
2 pieces of string cheese
1 spoonful of peanut butter
A single serving size bag of microwaveable popcorn that expired last month (pray for me)

Points for creativity, right?

That was quite seriously all of the food that we had left. I now need to try to hang on until dinner (we'll grab a quick healthy bite before embarking on our drive out of town--I hope). Delirium is starting to set in. I keep walking into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator and cupboards expecting for a replenishment of groceries to have magically appeared while I've been working out of my ~~master bedroom~~ home office at the back of the house.

I don't know to explain why we manage to continue to put ourselves in this predicament week after week, except to conclude that something about experiencing Crack Fridge gives us a certain satisfaction in knowing that we wasted nothing. Perhaps more importantly, though, Crack Fridge has just become another among the endless treasured inside jokes that B and I can share a laugh over at the end of each week...even at the expense of our nutritional well-being. A good laugh shared between the very best of friends is worth a little temporary starvation, right?

Self-Serve Frozen Yogurt:Making Obesity More Possible One Over-Portioned Cup at a Time

2011-11-21T10:00:00.001-08:00

Have you noticed the sudden explosion of these self-serve frozen yogurt places that seem to be cropping up everywhere? Maybe it has been going on for a while, but because we live in a pretty small town, I am just now noticing it. Anyway...they are EVERYwhere...I think about 6 of these places have been opened within a 5 mile radius from our house.

These businesses are downright dangerous for both financial (I'll get to that later) and dietary reasons, mostly the latter. First of all...have you SEEN the size of the serving "cups"? It's a little generous calling that thing a cup, right? I could have bathed my newborn in one of their "cups". Then come the 65 different yogurt flavors and the plethora of toppings. There should be another circle in Dante's Inferno for self-serve yogurt franchisees. But, I digress...

On Saturday night, I decided that I would like froyo for dinner. Why? Because I can, thanks to the calorie-neutralizing effects of breastfeeding coupled with a diligent workout schedule. Anyway, I stopped into one of these self-serve establishments that is close to our house. While B and baby waited in the car, I proceeded to fill up my cup with chocolate, peanut butter, eggnog, and cookies and creme fro yo. I don't even really like all of those flavors, with the exception of the peanut butter, but these places have some sort of hypnotic impact that renders me powerless and devoid of all forms of independent thinking. Sounds pretty sick, right? Just wait. Then I topped it with white chocolate chips, peanut M&Ms, colored sprinkles, cashews, and these mysterious round chocolate looking orbs about the size of a pin head...still no clue as to what in the hell those were, but by the time that I added them into the mix, I was in the full throes of a blind frenzy.

I stepped up to the register, fished around in my purse for my wallet, handed over my trusty debit card and paid for...wait for it, wait for it...

$9.69 worth of yogurt (you pay by the weight). HOLY SHIT! How embarrassing! I think I've managed maybe a 5 dollar total there before, maybe even 7 on my very worst day, but NINE DOLLARS? WTF? That's like a gastric bypass candidate-sized portion. A brief but nonetheless terrifying image of me being hoisted from my bed to the toilet via a construction crane flashed through my mind. I quickly grabbed a second spoon from the counter and mumbled something about how I needed another spoon since, you know, I'd obviously be SHARING this obscene amount of frozen yogurt with someone. I'm pretty sure that the apathetic teen working the register was on to me though. She could probably smell the shame emanating from my pores.

For the record, I DID give B a couple of bites, at least, before embarking on a solo mission to devour the rest. But, I mean, it WAS my whole dinner, so it's not that bad, is it? Ok, it's still decidedly awful. A special shout out to my boobs and my gym membership for making this all possible.

Joseph A. Banks....outfitting business men for FREE!!!!

2011-11-19T01:41:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard/seen a Joseph A. Banks commercial? They are completely ridiculous and B (my husband) and I find them downright hilarious. I guess they just appeal to our odd senses of humor?

The TV commercials are always supremely cheesy, like "I filmed this on my camcorder from the early 90s" cheesy, and the script accompanying both TV and radio commercials is always read by a Guy Smiley-esque voice-over proclaiming,

"Buy ONE suit, get THREE FREE!",

and other completely absurd-sounding sales promotions.

This store literally has blowout, irrational sales every single day of the week. Flag Day? Buy 1 tie, get 8 suits for FREE. This year, celebrate Festival of Extraterrestrial Abductions Day in style (yes, this is an actual day...google it) with a FREE suit just for walking in the door!

Each and every time we pass the store here in town, or happen to hear one of their radio commercials, it sparks a barrage of our own made up parodies of the commercials...

"We don't even lock our doors at night so that you can come in and get ALL of your SUITS FREE!"

"Need 4 new suits? Don't want to pay for them? No problem, we've got you covered! Come to Joseph A. Banks where you can dress for success for FREE"

I know it's really stupid, and probably only funny to us, but it puts us into hysterics every time. It brings to mind visions of madness and mayhem involving a completely ransacked store littered with socks, ties, dress shirts and related accoutrements, where people are looting menswear post-Hurricane Katrina style. The ads are that inane. I mean, it's a retail store selling men's professional business wear...you'd think that they would want to communicate some air of quality and fineness with relationship to their merchandise, like a Brooks Brothers or similar store. Instead, it's like a suit free-for-all. They literally can't GIVE their shit away fast enough, it seems.

Puffs

2011-11-18T19:07:00.000-08:00

So, as I mentioned, I'm a mother (scary), and a relatively new one at that. Our almost 8th month old (who is, coincidentally, awesome on all levels) recently reached a new dietary milestone. That's right people, baby has begun eating "finger foods" (as they are referred to in baby literature and by those "in the know"). "Puffs" are a popular first finger food for the wee ones. Essentially, "puffs" are just pieces of puffed rice cereal (because apparently today's infants are too good for Cheerios) that you get to pay $3.50 or more for at your local grocer for a supply that will last about a week and a half.

But you won't find us complaining. The baby set LOVES these things. They're like little individual baby crack rocks available in such tantalizing flavors as apple, banana and sweet potato. These things are powerful.

My husband, B, and I have quickly discovered that offering puffs is somewhat akin to having a mute button for your baby. Out to dinner and the baby starts to get fussy? Shove a puff in his/her mouth. Problem solved. Meltdown a-brewing during a Target run? Yup, you guessed it, break out those puffs and halt a tantrum in its tracks. Our realization of the power of puffs has led us to coin our own special name for these magnificent treats, a better, more catchy and more appropriate (we think) product name: Shut the F#$* Ups.

You're welcome baby food industry. Feel free to take that and run with it in your marketing departments. As a side note, please also let us know if you require any additional information for us in order to move forward with our "Parents of the Year" nominations.

If you enjoyed this post, then I also have a book suggestion for you. Check out this charming little bedtime story entitled, "Go the F#@! to Sleep" by Adam Mansbach.

HIGHlarious new-ish story by David Sedaris

2011-11-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back, as part of a wedding anniversary gift to me, my husband bought me a ticket to go hear one of my VERY favorite authors, David Sedaris, speak. If you are not familiar with him, you should be, because he is frigging hilarious and brilliant beyond means.

During the "show", Sedaris shared a story that he recently had published in the London Guardian. The piece details a recent trip to China. While I am an avid traveler, I've never been particularly interested in visiting China. Sure, if I could just get dropped on the Great Wall, hang out there for a bit, and then get beamed back up and sent to Italy by dinnertime, I'd consider it, but relatively speaking, I just don't know that China would do "it" for me.

After reading this, it is safe to say that I think my intuition is spot on. Enjoy...and don't read too close to a meal...or if you intend on traveling to China EVER.Consider yourself fairly warned...

Click HERE to check out the story.

Lauren Bush's Wedding Dress-YUM!

2011-11-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

Source: Norma Jean Roy for VOGUE Magazine

Just came across this today...now THIS is what I call a wedding dress! The bride seen here is Lauren Bush photographed wearing the dress for her recent wedding to David Lauren. Yes, a member of THAT Lauren family...clearly, realizing the gown of your dreams is more easily achieved when your father-in-law to be is Ralph Lauren.

Aside from being absolutely enamored with this look, I also totally dig the photograph. It reminds me of a dagguereotype photograph (see, I did retain something from the GART101 class that I took the last semester of my senior year of college!). Love love LOVE this look from head to toe.

Pleased to meet you!

2011-11-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

Hello (to anyone out there who may actually be reading this aside from my mother and husband)!

I am new to the blog world, though blogging is a hobby that I have wanted to pursue for some time. I've officially started blogs on two separate occasions, posted a few times, and then abandoned them completely. Usually, once I decide to blog, I place too much pressure on myself in creating blog posts. I have a tendency to be ~~completely OCD~~ overly-analytical and self-critical, and am a self-proclaimed perfectionist. These traits often get the better of me, and soon, something that was supposed to be fun and carefree ends up feeling like a chore. I am going to try to avoid traveling down that road with this blog. I am going to try to write for the sake of writing and expressing myself alone, without care as to how (or even if!) my words are read by others. Self-consciousness be gone! Caution meet wind!

A little bit about me...I am an early thirty-something happily married wife and new-ish mother. I have a Masters degree and I work full-time. I have a brain that never ceases, with the gears always turning. It's always going, flitting about somewhat randomly from topic to topic, thought to thought, idea to idea. This is both a blessing and a curse. I long for a way to harness and make sense of all that passes through my mind, and I am hoping that blogging might do the trick, as well as help me to embrace the more creative side of my personality. I know that this side exists and hope to be able to tap into it in a more meaningful way while having some fun at the same time! This will be a place to share not only thoughts, but things that make me laugh, upset me, frustrate me and/or annoy me, things that I find beautiful, things that I find outrageous, home decor, fashion, politics, news, and so on and so forth. Variety is the spice of life, right? RIGHT?

Thanks for stopping by--I hope that, at least occasionally, you like what you see!