this is all I got, Internets, until work stops melting my brain

While watching The Nightman Cometh (a Charlie Kelly original musical, duh):

Me: This is insane. Although...it makes just about as much sense as The Hazards of Love.

grace in small things, day 9

1. NPH on NPR
2. Poop Ball
3. reading on my lunchbreak
4. utilizing all of my anal-retentive, list-making, and planning abilities to get ready to travel to a wedding tomorrow (With your powers combined, I am Captain Plan-It!)
5. Um, Captain Plan-It? I am proud of COMING UP WITH THAT RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.

grace in small things, day 8

1. We had no hot water this morning but, um, I guess the water could have been colder?
2. FarmVille
3. The Office starts tonight!
4. Also, 30 Rock!
5. Tracy Jordan/Morgan!

and you CAN make wine from dandelions, HEIDI*

Joe and I have dumb fights, Part 1:

Me: I wish I had a baby elephant...
Joe: This should be good.
Me: Because! I could train it and then...ride it...to work.
Joe: OK?
Me: I would feed it bananas.
Joe: ...
Me: And whiskey. Elephants like whiskey.
Joe: You can't ride a drunk elephant to work. You'd get pulled over for drunk driving.
Me: Nuh-uh, because the elephant is drunk, I'M not drunk.
Joe: But the elephant is driving.
Me: No, because I'm steering the elephant so it doesn't matter how much whiskey it had.
Joe: ...that makes no sense.
Me: BESIDES, I wouldn't give the elephant enough whiskey to get it drunk. Just enough to give it a little buzz.
Joe: Oh, so you'll be riding a buzzed elephant to work, that's so much better.
Me: Why don't you want the elephant to be happy?
Joe: I don't even think elephants like whiskey.
Me: Yes, they do, I read it in this book. This elephant in the circus used to steal whiskey. And watermelons.
Joe: Yeah, like everything you read in a book is real.
Me: WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?

Joe and I have dumb fights, part two:

Me: It was really hard to write today.
Joe: Oh yeah?
Me: I can see why so many writers are alcoholics and drug addicts, because it's way easier to write when you've had something to drink. Cause you don't care if what you're writing is any good.
Joe: So are you gonna start doing drugs?
Me: No. I'm just saying. Lots of writers are drug addicts and alcoholics.
Joe: True. Hunter S. Thompson.
Me: Stephen King.
Joe: Beverly Cleary.
Me: Yes! I mean, a mouse riding a motorcycle? COME ON, BEVERLY.
Joe: And Ramona? She's crazy. And who has a sister named Beezus?
Me: YOU SHUT UP, RAMONA CALLED HER SISTER BEEZUS BECAUSE SHE COULDN'T SAY BEATRICE!
Joe: Yikes.

*see here and HERE

grace in small things, day 7

1. I was so busy this morning and it went by SO FAST.
2. I bought new crayons for volunteering tonight. New crayons are the greatest thing ever.
3. Ruffles potato chips.
4. Ice cold water.
5. Today is my busiest day this week so once it's over, things should be totally easy (fingers crossed).

Baby step to four o'clock. Baby step to four o'clock.

I have had a major burst of productivity lately, a general feeling of needing to Do Things. Last week, Heather Anne told me to write a book and so I started writing a book (yes, again) and wouldn't you know it? Writing did not make my eyes bleed or my fingers turn into tiny snakes or even GIVE ME A HEADACHE. No. It was rather enjoyable. I think I may need to start trading in more TV/Internet surfing time for Writing time. Small price to pay, really. AND ALSO. Weeks and weeks ago I decided that I needed to write a children's book about grieving on account of I can never find enough good grieving books for volunteering. Oh, there are lots and lots of them, but not many that seem to suit my purposes and so I thought, why not just write them myself? So I wrote one. It's sitting in my Google Docs, though, until I figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do with it now. But my point is, I am doing things.

Doing things like working out ON THE WEEKEND, which you'd think would be when I would work out the most anyway because of all the free time, but you'd be wrong. Tam commented last week about this blog here, where a bunch of crazy ass women are doing Jillian's Shred DVD for thirty days in September. At first I was all, "No way in hell could I do that because ow, my knees hurt just THINKING about it," but I started doing it again this weekend anyway. I maybe should not have done it two days in a row because I'm having a bit of trouble with simple activities like WALKING or SITTING UP but progress is supposed to be painful or something. I think I heard that somewhere. Next step? Eating better, meaning eating more food I cook myself and less food that others prepare for me, unless it's Kat doing the preparing because you'd have to be crazypants to turn down anything Kat made you.

Over the weekend, I went from Ew, Cooking to I Need to Make Some Manicotti RIGHT NOW and I don't know why. It's not like I looooove manicotti (although, it is delicious), I just wanted to Make Something and manicotti didn't seem too terribly complicated. I even plan on cooking more this week (I KNOW) and then eating the leftovers because I am a responsible grown woman. Or trying to be. I mean, I also spent most of the weekend watching (almost all of) Season One of Veronica Mars but whatever. Baby steps.

PS: You should probably go check out Abigail, Ashley, and Heather Anne's new TV/Movie/Book review blog. Um. Like now. What are you waiting for?

grace in small things, day 6

1. finishing a good book
2. Veronica Mars
3. having time to stop at Starbucks this morning
4. noisy coworker is off interviewing for a different job
5. Cousin Vinny's pizza and breadsticks

Everyone has a purpose. Maybe this is mine.

When I got home from work today, I noticed there was a piece of paper hanging by our front door, in that little clip thing that the apartment complex uses to give us important information. Also, Chinese restaurants leave menus there. But mostly the apartment complex uses it. These notices always make me wary, because it's usually something like, "Maintenance will be coming in to change the filters on your heating unit [heh, unit], so please remove anything from that area." I don't know why it tells us to remove everything from in front of the heating unit because WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KEEP ANYTHING THERE ANYWAY but they must know people keep shit there because where else would they put it? THERE ARE NO STORAGE UNITS ANYWHERE. Ahem. I hate notices like that because I don't like strange people to be wandering around our apartment when we're not home (when we ARE home, that's fine) but also because Heidi and I are totally those people who store as much stuff as possible in front of the heating unit because where else would we put it? THERE ARE NO STORAGE UNITS ANYWHERE.

Anyway, most of these notices are for things we can ignore because it's something absolutely thrilling, like there's going to be a complex-wide yard sale (that no one participates in) or that we need to stop letting our dogs poop on the golf course (duh) but it's never anything like, "congratulations, you've won a raffle you didn't enter and it means you don't have to pay rent anymore!" Jerks.

BUT. Today's notice was beautiful. I now present it to you, in its entirety:

Dear Residents of Buildings 1, 2, 3, 4*:

Behind the garage bays of your buildings we have been finding piles of vomit on a consistent basis. It has also been brought to our attention by fellow residents that these piles have also been found in their personal yard areas. At first we thought this might be from an animal however the piles are found daily and on top of bushes making it impossible for an animal to be the culprit. We please ask that this stop immediately.

Thank you for your attention to this matter

-Your Staff

So. A couple things. First of all, they should hire me to edit their notices. SECOND OF ALL, someone is vomiting outside on a regular basis. They're doing it often enough that they felt the need to send everyone a written notice. Who is doing this? Who is the Univomer? What do they want? I really think we need to understand his or her motives before we can even begin to think about catching this person. (I realize that no one has asked me to capture this person, but I've been watching a lot of Dexter and Bones, so I feel like NOT ONLY could I totally solve a crime, but I have a growing NEED to solve a crime AND YES I realize that vomiting in someone's yard is more of a nuisance than a crime but shut up.) Also. How do they know it's someone from Buildings 1, 2, 3, or 4*? That's discrimination (right?) and I won't stand for it! It's unfair to assume that it couldn't be someone from a rival building phantom puking in our area.

Maybe someone has a drinking problem they don't want their spouse to know about, so they do their hangover vomiting out the window or on the way to their car or something. Maybe one of the golfers got sick (literally! heh) of people letting their dogs poo on the golf course. Maybe a homeless person is living in the shed next to the mailboxes and OBVIOUSLY he doesn't want to puke in there, because that would smell up his hidy-hole. I don't know. But I want to know. I might have to start getting up early and running so I have an excuse to patrol the area. That is the sacrifice I'm willing to make. YOU'RE WELCOME, RESIDENTS OF BUILDINGS 1, 2, 3, AND 4*.

*obviously, those are not the real building numbers

I am a blogging machine today

When I'm singing along to the radio in the car, sometimes I forget that other people can still see me. I hope the people stuck in traffic in the lane next to me earlier enjoyed my recreation of this:



Only I was alone. Also, can you believe Kumar works for the White House now? Awesome. I hope Neil Patrick Harris is next. Except, no, never mind, if he was at the White House, he wouldn't have time to do stuff like this anymore and that would be the opposite of awesome.

priorities

I desperately need to go to the grocery but I really only have enough energy for one errand tonight and so I think I'm going to the library instead. Partly because I still don't have much of an appetite and I can just have grilled cheese or something for dinner but mostly because I think reading is more important than eating.

this involves a lot of poop talk so don't say I didn't warn you

I already said I hadn't blogged in forever because of my gastrointestinal issues but really that's no excuse because how much energy does it really take to sit up (barely) with my laptop resting on my legs or the sofa or whatever and type up some nonsense? Not that much energy, really, but I still didn't blog. I was sick on Thursday and Friday but went to work anyway (yes, I'm THAT coworker) because why would I want to waste my sick days at home being sick? Please. Anyway, I want to save as many as possible because at the end of the year we get our sick days paid out and I want money, lots and lots of money.

I did try and be somewhat social on Sunday, and went over to my parents' house because they were having people over for pasta and garlic bread. That's right, pasta and garlic bread. Anyway, that ended up being a total clusterfuck because I spent most of the time in the bathroom (TMI) which led to conversations like this one which, when Joe told me about it later, made me recoil in absolute horror for several reasons:

My sister: Where is Jennie?
Mom: She's in the bathroom. She's not feeling very well.
My sister: Oh, is she pregnant?

Um, no. Thanks, though. This, of course, led to several more fun conversations about my stomach issues and non-pregnancy issues which made my head explode about 14 times because FIRST OF ALL, if I want everyone in the world to know my poop business then I will just tell the Internet like a normal person and ALSO I'm not very good at math (anymore) but I'm pretty sure that bad poops does not equal pregnancy. What made it even worse is that I was on my period at that very moment (OOPS TMI). But whatever, according to my mom, I probably had the swine flu. Have the swine flu. One of those.

Anyway, so that was fun. If by fun, you mean, "OMG OMG GET ME OUT OF HERE PLEASE I WANT TO CRAWL UNDER THE PORCH SO I'M ALONE WHEN I DIE OF NON-PREGNANCY-INDUCED DIARRHEA OH YES I JUST SAID DIARRHEA, INTERNETS, GET OVER IT OK?"

Ahem. Then my cousin was all, "hey, Uncle Jim (who is my dad), would you care if Jennie and Joe moved in together before they were married," which was also fun if you're going by the definition above.

The beginning of my week last week was much better, because I had an awesome night of volunteering on Tuesday, which sounds weird because we go there to talk about dead people but whatever, it was good. There were two little girls in my group and they liked drawing and playing with My Little Ponies, so that's what we did and that is why I have My Little Ponies in my car. Also, one of them was talking about how her boyfriend is really short (yeah, she's 5) and how people call him midget and I was like, "oh, I bet he doesn't like that," and she was all, "no, he doesn't really mind," so then I thought, "well, maybe he really IS a midget," but I didn't say that and then she demonstrated how short he is and I was like, "wow, that is short!" and she was like, "yeah, he's not tall like you are," and I wanted to hug her because I haven't been tall since the sixth grade (that is when I stopped growing) and it was the best day ever, you guys. True story.

grace in small things, day 5

I forgot to be grateful for small things all weekend, on account of I spend my entire three day weekend either A) napping, B) watching movies/Dexter, and C) expelling everything I've ever eaten in my entire life from my body (there's a pleasant image). So OBVIOUSLY that left little time to be grateful. Anyway. I'm back, mostly.

1. Joe made me soup and toast all weekend
2. Four day work week!
3. I can't work out when I'm sick (hooray!)
4. Book reviews on The Collective
5. Speaking of book reviews: Goodreads

grace in small things: day 4

1. it's Thursday, which means it's almost Friday
2. Abigail met Chuck! (and Sarah Walker)
3. Natalie Dee
4. the three day weekend is so close I can taste it (weird)
5. peanut butter

grace in small things: day 3

1. volunteering was really, really good last night
2. pineapple on pizza
3. Diet Dr. Pepper
4. sleeping with the windows open
5. Gmail is working again (I mean, thank GOD)

grace in small things: day 2 (again)

1. hot coffee on a chilly(ish) morning
2. volunteering tonight
3. Blistex Silk & Shine chapstick (seriously, I am addicted)
4. quiet coworkers
5. perfectly ripe bananas