Tag: Humor

Family, Humor

Why Are Mothers So Smart?

“It is a difficult thing to do, to stop being a full-speed-ahead student and settle into the more mundane life of a working woman.  Suddenly you find yourself no longer super stimulated, intellectually, or running 100 mph, 24/7.   

It’s very hard to get into the swing of mundane things, and find satisfaction in them.  Learning to love the simple things in life is a art form.  It takes a change of mental attitude and a lot of practice in order to go slow and enjoy the ride.  Instead, we tend to want to fill up our days with things that stimulate, but don’t really feed our needs.  Burnout is the inevitable result.
 
Do get your exercise and healthy food, do go to bed earlier, do say ‘no’ to things, but ‘yes’ to fun, and do let me know if you want me to buy you a light box.”
– Mum

Funny how mother’s just get things, huh?  Like winter funks and the contributing factors.  And how they immediately either make you feel better or know what to suggest that will.  Hope I’m this wise when I’ve got my own spawn to raise!

I’m lucky to have lots of mother figures in my life so here’s a happy birthday to the newest but by no means least, my wonderful Mother-in-Law Darling tomorrow!  I’m lucky to be able to share my families (all of them) with you!

Humor, Sad

Winter Blues

“You know when you take a puppy to the vet, and it get poked and prodded for hours, and when you get it home it’s drained, exhausted, and loopy for days?  That’s you right now.”
– J.

Winter has been rough for me this year.  My theory is that the lack of sunlight (which by itself doesn’t really bug me, seeing as I like rainy, cloudy, and cold weather just fine) combining with birth control hormones for the first time during the dark half of the year has congealed into a perfect cocktail of winter doldrums. 

All I want to do is hibernate.  Even if, in spite of the ridiculous things that wake me up occasionally, I get a full night’s rest, I wake up exhausted every day and completely lacking the will to do anything.  For a week now I’ve hauled myself out of bed mere minutes before we have to dash out the door to work/school.  There’s been a pile of clean clothes sitting on my floor for days because I just can’t muster the strength to sort and store them (sorry, Mum!).  We got these great electric toothbrushes for Christmas from J.’s parents which took some getting used to (i.e. splattering the mirror) which I haven’t dealt with in a week.  And nature might abhor a vacuum, but not as much as me!

This isn’t just run of the mill laziness and I’ve never been this affected by a season before.  I’m in a right dirty winter funk!

Fabulous, Friends, Humor, Work

Good Company

“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”
– Aristotle

How can you tell that you have a good friend in your life?  Well, first of all you are able to have a complete conversation with them wearing just a towel (this is a crucial test that all of my closest friends have passed, I shall spare you the details).  Second you are able to pique the interest of everyone around you just from hearing your half of a phone conversation.  Again, all of my friends have crossed this threshold, but today here is what my office got to listen to when Venice called to brighten my day.   

“No one’s making fun of you.  This is a judgement free zone.”
“I don’t really wear them.”
“Was the steamer necessary?”
“Holy mother of pain!”
“I will need my dress back at some point.”
“Oh, honey!  Do you need to come over and shower?”

I take particular delight in refraining from elaboration when co-workers, classmates, or random strangers look to me for further explanation.  A good friend doesn’t lessen her pal’s mystique!

Family, Humor

Negotiating. Marriage.
The sexiest thing I've ever seen.

“I need to take a picture!  I need to post it!”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said no.”
“Puh-leeeese?”
“No.”
“But I need too.  I can see the caption now, ‘Cleaning dishes.  The sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.'”
“No.”
“Why not?!”
“Because I’m tired and cranky.”
“Please please please please please?”
“What do I get out of it?”
“What do you want?”
“Donuts.”
“Cupcakes.”
“Deal.”
– C. and J.

Family, Humor, Husband, Marriage

Pillow. Fight.

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillows.”
– Charlotte Bronte

Apart from the subconscious boxing J. and I seem to engage in while asleep, it is not the only adjustment to be made sharing a bed.

Though we have little awake experience to corroborate this, morning evidence suggests that we also play blanket tug-o-war on an almost nightly basis.  Admittedly our second best set of sheets is pretty flimsy and doesn’t grip the bed well, but many is the morning we have woken up nearly smothered by a fitted sheet sprung free from its mattress corner.  We also must toss and turn a lot because some mornings we awake to find blankets kicked off to the floor, or gathered so tightly around our heads that our feet are poking out.  I suspect myself of secret malice because some mornings I wake up, completely overheated, but piled with most of the blankets, as if to keep J. from getting at them.

J. however, has sunk to a whole new low.  A few nights ago, I was deep in slumber when he started moving around a bit and woke me up.  Just an eyelid flicker, nothing too serious.  I’d just closed them again when suddenly…

Thunk!  My head dropped back and plunked on the bed.  I scrambled up in confusion but a quick glance to my left explained all.

J. had stolen my pillow!  Right from under my head!  In his sleep!

I dragged it back, which of course woke him up, disgruntled I might add.
“You stole my pillow!” I accused.
“No I didn’t,” he returned.
“Yes you did,” was my witty rejoinder.
“No I…oh…”
His own missing pillow surfaced, shoved up in the corner of the bed.

Jerk.

Drama, Marriage, Movies

Classic

“It’s January.  Masterpiece Classic Season!”
“What are you, a fifty year old woman?”
“Sometimes.”
– C. and Brando

I love PBS.  Even with the unexpected gift from the cable gods, still gracing our TV by the way with no end in sight, I flick back to my beloved public broadcasting at almost every commercial break. 

PBS has given me lots of fond memories.  The first time I saw The Marriage of Figaro (my favorite opera) was on a PBS station when I was nine, I’ve watched countless Nature episodes with my parents, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Wishbone when I was younger, and BBC America now that I’m older.  My particularly loves (currently) are Larkrise to Candleford and Sherlock Holmes…and whatever documentary is playing.

Does anyone else miss the Edward Gorey style animation sequence for Mystery! ? No one? Am I really that much of a hopeless nerd? Shutting up...

Some people’s entertainment lives cycle around the sweeps, but not I!  I live and die by PBS’s Masterpiece!  Contemporary I don’t really care for, but during Mystery and Classic season the TV is mine starting 8pm on Sunday evenings.  January is the kickoff for Classic season and I’ve already swallowed Return to Cranford and the first episode of Emma whole.  And!  Not content with just Sundays, I usually develop cravings (staring early January) for costume drama mini-series not currently airing, which means I get on a long waiting list at the local library and torture J. with those on weekdays as well.

J. is tolerant and does homework while I watch, and is occasionally firmly shushed when he commits the cardinal sin of speaking before a commercial break.

Humor, Office, Stupid People, Weird

A Slice of J.

“I love being married.  It’s so great to find that one person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
– Rita Rudner

The other day, J. came to my office earlier than usual and so he went to the break room to study for a while before my lunch break.  A bunch of the student officers congregate there between shifts or to eat so there was a group of them there at the time.

Helper, a notoriously unobservant young man, was among them. 

Helper is an interesting kid.  He spent several months trying to flirt with me, mostly by slinking up to my desk, lurking behind me for a while, and then informing me of what I was doing quite suddenly.
“You’re reading CNN.”
“Where’d you come from?!  Um…yes.  I am.”
The weirdest thing he did was hover silently one day while I went online to my bank account to pay my credit card bill.
“You use [name of bank]?” he drawled.
I jumped, as I’d had no idea he was there, and demanded why the hell he was looking!
“No reason.  Is that your email too?”
I shut my windows and pointedly asked him if he was on duty.
“Heh, yeah,” he gave me a ‘I-get-it-we’ll-talk-later’ look and meandered off.

This was two months after I’d gotten engaged and had this nice rock sitting pretty on my left hand that was supposed to protect me from the over-amorous attentions of clueless men. 

It never registered.  It wasn’t until a couple months after that he must have figured out I was getting married in the near future because he came to me while I was reconciling a report, lurked behind me for a couple minutes, and finally muttered, “So, you’re engaged.”
“For about five months, yes.”
“I see.”  He sat looking at me for a few more seconds before sighing and murmuring, “I won’t bother you anymore.”

He wandered off while I sat with my jaw slack, wondering where he had pulled this supposed relationship out of.  I don’t think he’s spoken to me since, though I have caught him glaring furtively before he whisks himself around a corner.   And once I overheard him once complaining to a co-worker that I had flirted with him, and the ensuing guffaws.
“Are you kidding?  She’s married, and she was dating the guy before she ever worked here.  Besides, she thinks you’re creepy.”

The reason for this back story?  Well, there J. was sitting in the break room for quite a while before Helper realized he had no idea who J. was and enquired.
“I’m J., C.’s husband.”
“C.?” Helper asked nonchalantly, “Who’s that?”
“You know,” Lexie said, “she works at the front desk.  Dark hair, green eyes, pretty?”
“Short?” offered J.

I still much prefer him to Helper.

Humor, School

Creative. Writing.

“And by the way, everything is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
– Slyvia Platt

I’m in a bit of a bind, darlings.  I signed up for a creative writing class this semester(after work hours so Chief can’t quash it) both to get me back into the school mindset and to make me start writing again.  I’ve lapsed of late, so I thought this would be a great way to spur me on a bit.  I got good and excited for the class and then I walked in on the first day and immediately realized Creative Writing was not going to be a comfortable class for me.

See, I want to be a writer.  Most of the (mostly freshman) class want to be creative. 

This is not the same thing at all.  When we shared what our favorite books are most of the class said Twilight (blech and sigh) or named a fantasy series of some type or another.  Then when we went around talking of what we wanted to do with our writing almost everyone said poetry, a couple said songwriting.  

Appropriately artistic and moody writer.

My teacher is a poet as well, but talking about “snow melting like a woman crying” and trying to bring “the magic and mysteries of the cosmos to the page” is not really…what I do.  He gave a long, rambling lecture about how he wants us to create art, ART (said in a rolling voice with a dramatic fist shake towards the skies), and that’s what he expects.  I immediately blanched.

Inappropriately chipper and fairly happy C.

Now, I think I may be a talented writer  but by no means do I think I’m a Great Writer (I’d paraphrase an evaluation of someone I heard once and say that I’m mediocre with flashes of brilliance).  Mostly I just like to tell a good story.  To be honest, I’d have to say that my sense of humor is probably what makes my writing at all readable, but I have a feeling that humor in this class would not go over well.  So, whilst I was floundering in this sea of doubt, my teacher volunteered me to write a piece for class this coming tuesday.  I have to submit it by email tonight to be ripped to bloody shreds by the rest of my artistic and suffering classmates in peer evaluation. 

Of course, I probably shouldn’t tease them so much because this assignment plunged me into a pit of despair and I wandered about in a pretty artistic slump of my own for a couple days as I was seized with Writer’s Block and whined about the lack of poetry in my soul.  Not that I’d ever want to write it, but that I’m shallow enough to want to impress my teacher.

Quick, someone tell me to suck it up and get to work!  I’ve been telling myself for three days but my inner wanna-be-writer is actually pretty fragile and seems to be ignoring me out of fear of scathing peer reviews.  Or the realization that I’m not actually any good.  Yikes.

Home, Humor

Something is Rotten in the Flat of C.

“Open sesame.”
– 1001 Arabian Nights

I went home with J. for lunch and as we walked in the door, we were met with an overwhelming smell that neither of us could identify.  We sniffed dubiously around trying to solve the mystery.  We dumped all the bins, lit candles and opened windows to clear the air, but it wasn’t until J. wandered into another room and got a fresh whiff that he exclaimed, “Sesame oil!  But…why…how?”

Any ideas?

Humor, Movies, Scandalous

For My Next Trick, the Rest of You (Pt 2)

 “There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.”
– Ambrose Bierce

So, Avatar.  I have to give it one big “Meh.” 

Now, before the raging hordes come for blood, I can absolutely appreciate the scientific whammy of creating completely new technology to make something totally innovative.  I can also appreciate the fact that the special effects are indeed pretty special (as long as you’re not in the second row at a 3-D theatre…woof…).

But, and I stand on this, the plot is boring. 

I have seen A) Dances with Wolves, B) Pocahontas, and I have also lived through the Bush administration (subtlety, thy name is not James Cameron.  Might as well have named the planet Iraq and the invading commander Cheny…yes, we get your point.  Thank you).