redundancies

Here is a hilarious list of redundancies from a book I just read. Makes me feel kind of stupid, because while they are obviously ridiculous when I read them, I use some of them, as does everyone on TV and people I know.

False pretenses
Armed gunman
Convicted felon
Hired mercenary
Forcible rape (this one I thought was particularly retarded)
Terrible tragedy
General public
First discovered/first established/first created…
Personal friend
Innocent bystander
Residual trace
Small detail
Disappear from view
Fall down
Climb up
Stand up
Follow after
Weave in and out
All throughout
Close proximity
Raining outside
Immediately adjoining
Scheduled appointment
Exact same
Unsubstantiated allegation
And etc.
Contributing factor
Hot water heater
Holy Bible
Different varieties
Natural instinct
Free gift

au revoir, mes cheveux bleus

So, either tonight or tomorrow I'll be bidding adieu to the blue hair. It's just gotten to where I'm just not caring enough to keep it up. It fades so fast, and it's bad enough to constantly have to get my hair cut without having to spend buttloads of money keeping it dyed. And every time I go, I have to spend like two hours, because it takes an hour to bleach the panels out and then an hour for the blue to set. I just bought some temporary hair dye (Herbal Essences) in a groovy red color called "Malaysian Cherry." I haven't done anything red in a while, so we'll see how that goes. The white/blue parts will probably be flaming, but who cares.

One thing I did learn in the past, let's see, how long has it been? eight months, I guess... One thing I did learn was that if you want to see how fast you get judged on your appearance, go out into a very traditional-values kind of place with blue streaks in your hair, a t-shirt that says "I support same-sex marriage", and a child holding your hand. I have gotten some pretty hilarious and judgmental looks in the grocery store.

who are you voting for?

nerdy book questions

Question #1:
Has anyone read Suskind's Perfume? Is it good? I am on page one and am already having serious trouble getting past the main character's name - Grenouille... Which I am fairly certain means FROG in French. Is it worth my forcing myself and my OCD past this?

Question #2:
I am on the lookout for two exceptionally nerdy book topics. Has anyone read any good popular historical books (non-fiction, but more pop than academic) books about the unrest in Ireland OR the life of Theodore Roosevelt? I am interested in these two subjects but don't want to read a textbook.

props to the HB

So I often feel as though I am not the greatest parent in the world. I mean, I’m not going to use the word “worst” because it’s not like I’m a meth head or a prostitute or something, but I definitely think I could be better. However…

I am constantly guilty because I have absolutely zero desire to stay at home with the boys. And when I say zero, I mean I bring them to daycare even on days that I am at home without a whole lot of work to do, even though I feel so guilty I could drive my car into a tree on the way home. I just know that if I keep them at home with me, both of them, I’ll be insane by the end of the day, and I’ll feel even worse for not being a good enough mom to be happy with them and not get aggravated.

I also feel like a big piece of crap most of the time about playing with Aidan. Not that I never play with him, but I feel like there are probably moms who have the energy and desire to play with their three-year-olds constantly, unless they are actively doing housework or cooking or something. Like I am a giant loser because I just want Aidan to chill while I watch a TV show or read a little. And while normally he just wants my presence, which is easy, I feel especially guilty when he wants to play outside, because frankly, I could never enter the out of doors in my entire life and I’d be a happy person. I have no desire to do sports or to do anything that requires me to sweat or be unable to sit or lie down comfortably. Again, I do take Aidan outside to play, so I’m not the worst mom in the world.

I guess I feel terrible because I just frankly don’t want to do most of the things I have to do. I mean, I stupidly look forward to the day when my kids are teenagers and are doing their own things so I can have my life back. Of course, at that point, I’ll be saying, “Oh, remember when they were so young and cute and wanted to talk to me?” When I married Tony, I thought, Yes! Here’s a guy who will be happy playing ball and doing outdoorsy stuff with my kids so I don’t have to. Joke’s on me… we’re equally lazy. A match made in heaven.

Anyway, the point of this little confessional is to say that I always enjoy when someone whom I consider to be an excellent mother says something that makes me feel like I’m not so bad. I don’t know if I’m just way worse than anyone on the planet or just perhaps people don’t spill the beans as much as I do about the negative.

I went to my cousin C’s house while we were in Louisiana and hung out with him and his wife H. H stayed at home with both of her kids (she still does, although not full time now, since E started kindergarten and Olivia was already in school). She clearly budgets well, her house is spotless every time I go over there. The kids are clearly not spoiled jackasses, and she’s maintained her attractiveness. They don’t even have cable, or at least they didn’t the last time we watched TV there. She’s all about the family. And when we were there, she admitted that when O was little, they started a routine of taking turns to read her a story to put her to bed when she was little, and about how annoying it got to be, so annoying that they never even started that with E because they didn’t want to be stuck doing it every night.

That made me feel a hundred percent better. I am always thinking, “I should want to play outside! I should want to read this Fozzie the Bear book another four hundred times! Why don’t I enjoy playing Matchbox cards with Aidan?” I really appreciated H's honesty in that situation, although I’m sure she just said it in passing. People should admit those things more, so that the rest of us losers don’t have to feel so bad about ourselves. :)

and my typeface ocd is justified

So I've been pretty honest about how OCD I am about everything, and about how judgmental I am when dealing with typefaces/fonts, etc. I was completely justified when, yesterday, I was looking at the work websites of two of my former coworkers, one of whom we'll go ahead and call my arch nemesis, and both of them used Comic Sans as their base font.

Comic Sans.
(pause for laugh)

We're not fourth graders making a PowerPoint, people! GROW UP!

two times

Two times when all the weirdos who say how smart I am can see how wrong they've been:

1) When Hootie and the Blowfish won their gazillionth Grammy award. This, after the first time I saw a Hootie video (I think it was "Hold My Hand" in the winter of 1994/95, very late at night at Katie's triangle house). I remember specifically thinking, "How stupid are those people. No one is going to buy crap from a band named Hootie and the Blowfish. Idiots."

2) When we ran into an exbf on Bourbon last week. While I realize I was only fifteen when we started dating, I still should have been intelligent enough to see how mortified I'd be when, sixteen years later, I'd run into him while with my highly superior current husband. I mean really... I'm divorced, but the xhub wouldn't have been caught dead in that outfit this one had on, at the very least. How humiliating to have to see him with Tony there, learning that perhaps I was a little bit lower on the league steps.

more proof of my ocd tendencies

So we all know that I have a personal obsession with pointing out typos and spelling/punctuation mistakes. Nary a menu, billboard, or car commercial go by without my having to lend a critical comment.

I've recently had two more incidents prove that I'm going to end up in a mental institute one day separating the forks by the bend in their tines:

1) This girl I used to go to church with added me as her friend on a social networking site. Since she fulfilled my requirements for being a friend (one, I know her personally; two, she doesn't work with me; three, she's not a current student; and four, I don't mind if she reads my blogs), I added her. She only lasted a few days though. Why? Because she constantly updated her status and always typed in ALL CAPS. like MS. X IS HAVING A BAD DAY TODAY. or MS. X WISHES SOME PEOPLE WOULD JUST SHUT UP. While the actual status updates were sort of weird, the all caps is what clenched it. I had to delete her from my friends.

2) I just realized today that when someone sends me an attachment as a doc, that I literally cannot read it if the font offends my visual aesthetic in relation to the content. Someone sent me a poem and I opened it, and it was in a Lucida Calligraphy/Monotype Corsiva font (which I don't care for anyway... overused, people! You may as well use effing Comic Sans, my least favorite font of all time). I immediately had to select all, shrink the font, and put it into one of my regular (read: better) fonts.

things i've learned while in louisiana

1) I miss rainstorms. Today it poured, and it rules. Aidan was jumping in puddles and making footprints. Back home, when it pours (briefly, if at all), the rain is freezing cold, the wind is hard enough to blow you over, and there's usually LOTS of lightning. No playing outside in that.

2) It took less than a day to remember how the heat used to make me literally and physically enraged. I remember trying to go to Starbucks or something on Siegen in the winter and sweating my buttcheeks off. Not missing that, that's for sure.

3) I enjoy watching my TV shows with other people. Mama and me spent half of yesterday watching Project Runways that Candace had DVRed for me. It's much more fun to watch a show when someone is there to verbally abuse everyone on the show and criticize all the fashions and hairdos.

I am also PSYCHED about tonight. Kari and Michael and me and Tony are spending the night in New Orleans. Candace and her friend are coming earlier, too, I think. YEEHAW! I haven't been to New Orleans at all since the weekend we got married four years ago, and I haven't been out in New Orleans since before I met Tony.

the lucrative business of lunacy

I just read part of this book, Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson, about conspiracy theorists. Some of the stories were interesting and some were weird and some were stupid. The most entertaining and ludicrous, however, was about this guy David Icke. Have you heard of him? Apparently, he makes a living speaking and publishing about the craziest theory I've ever heard in my life. It's hilarious. Details below, copied from an online article:

Most of [David] Icke's ideas are extraneous in terms of the purpose of this essay and as such will not be discussed here. ...immediately all that will be necessary is a brief overview of his beliefs and how he came into the public spotlight...

To suggest that David Icke's theories are unusual would be an understatement. Icke is the author of several books that (in a nutshell) essentially maintain that an elite cabal of shape-shifting, child molesting, human sacrificing, Satan worshipping, lizard-aliens are currently engaged in a conspiracy to centralize power and enslave the human race...

Icke's lizard theory is based on secondhand allegations that various elite families possess an alien-reptilian bloodline that allows them to transform between human and reptilian shapes. The Bush family are cited as being shape-shifters, as are the Rothschilds, the Windsors, the Rockefellers, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton (not Bill), and Henry Kissinger, just to mention a few. Icke's lizard theory, like most of his theories, was inspired largely by previously published material written by people such as Alex Christopher and alleged CIA mind control victim Cathy O'Brien (later he would also incorporate the tales of Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa). O'Brien claimed that George Bush Sr. had told her that he was an alien and then transformed into a lizard in front of her...

being a midget is so much easier

When will I realize that I do not, in fact, still wear a small? My entire life, I have always worn the smallest sizes in everything. I used complain about how it was hard to find stuff that was small enough to fit me, since I'm a midget and have the smallest frame on the universe, except for Candace, who is the one person whose frame is smaller. I remember how annoying that used to be.

However, it is much easier when you know that you just automatically need the smallest size ever. I don't know if I'll remain the size I am now, since it's still only been nine months since I had Liam, but I keep forgetting, stupidly, like an Alzheimer's patient, that I am not the size I used to be. I bought a few t-shirts online and got mediums, thinking they'd be comfy. Yeah, they're fitting like Hollister t-shirts. Then I just went to Sam's for diapers and bought a three pack of cotton tanks to sleep in, and I got small, thinking I didn't want the arm and neck holes to hang too much. Yeah, I needed AT LEAST the medium. Good thing they were only four bucks.

Vindication, however: I saw this kid I taught (when I was still teaching high school) working at Sam's. He's one of the people who was tranferred out of my senior lit class because it was "too hard" and everyone wanted him to be able to play a sport. He got transferred into party teacher's class. Oh, yeah. Congratulations, academic. That job at Sam's. The future's so bright, you gotta wear shades.

in case you were wondering

Who the best husband in the world is... It's Tony.

We just got the DVD from Chris and Natalie's wedding last year. They were the ones that Aidan "bore the ring" for last summer. Tony was the best man.

So I cruise through the different parts of the DVD and get to Tony's speech. Because I had Aidan, I ended up missing most of the ceremony and the entire reception so I didn't hear it then.

He started out joking about Chris, of course. But the bulk of his speech was this:

"Plato said that when we're born, each of us---our spirit or our soul is not complete. And it's our job to go out and find our spirit or soul. I've been fortunate enough that I've had that experience twice in my life. The second time was when I met my wife. The first time was when I met Chris."

And let's all say it together.... AWWWWW!

(BTW: It's from Plato's Phaedrus, I think... I read it a long time ago, but that's where we get the terms "soul mate" and "other half" from.)