Tag: Life

Family, Friends, Humor, Life

2010, We Hardly Knew Ye

“Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right.”
– Oprah Winfrey

A decade, dears.  There have been revolutions, wars, natural disasters.  There have been cures for diseases, leaps in technology, triumphs of humanity.  The iPod is approaching its 10th anniversary.  I’m 10 years on since starting high school…where does time go, exactly?

A big decade for me, all things considered.  Lots of good stuff happened, some bad as well but surprisingly little in comparison I find (which belies all my complaining, shhh).  My small galaxy of people had a pretty stellar year too.  Jane had to move three times in one year as she and her husband struggled with the economy, jobs, and life, but now they seem pretty settled (and much closer to me than California!).  Janssen had a lovely little girl.  Wise is about to follow Jannsen’s maternal lead any second now and her husband got a clerkship post that they are thrilled about.  Hennessy got married and bought a house.  Sav is graduating and her husband got into the grad school of his choice – hurray!  Venice moved (which I’m still not over) but it was the right choice for her and Val and they have a bright future ahead.  Peregrine also moved back to DC, has a fabulous job and a very special – but sadly top secret – project she’s working on.  Scarlett is in grad school in New York, dealing with personal demons (aren’t we all?) but doing so with her usual clear-eyed honesty and personal flair.  Angel got a great new job.  Margot is having some truly heinous battles in the teaching craft, but I’ve never seen her more awesome, (which, if you knew her, you would realize is a statement of gargantuan proportions).  Dad retired, Mum got a job teaching at university and they moved to the US to enjoy retirement (by which I mean, Dad flung himself into manual labor to turn a patch of East Coast backwoods into an estate).  Gio graduated high school and is on to uni himself.  Buddy and Snickers started at a new school in a new country and are doing swimmingly.

Next year will find J. graduated and off to grad school, goodness knows where.  Most likely we’ll be moving as all but one of the schools he’s applied to are in different states and/or countries.  2011 will be a year of adventures and I’m thrilled.  It’s been too long since I’ve had one.

Obligatory Goals:
Shop less.
Eat better.
Save more.
Exercise longer.
Love harder.
Complain less.
Anticipate more.

Hope the New Year brings you all the adventures you desire, kittens.  See you on the other side.

Home, Humor

Presenting My Lord and Lady…Beepington?

“Beep beep!
– Roadrunner

My Lord and Lady Stompington are long gone, but the creaky floors above us remain.  Our newer neighbors, whom we have never actually met have their own quirks (including loud, ahem, conjugal activity.  And even more inexplicably, always vacuuming directly after said activity.  We still haven’t figured that one out) but by and large we prefer them to the clay-footed, bowling ball dropping, riverdancing jerks who went before.  But yesterday they almost lost their Small Dog Family stamp of approval.

While J. worked on finals, projects, etc. yesterday, I was busy being a phenomenal wife.  I cleaned the whole flat and did two loads of laundry… and nearly went completely round the twist before noon.

Hi!

Because the smoke alarm in the flat above us apparently needed its battery changed, it beeped precisely every thirty seconds.  All day long.  For the first hour or so I tried vainly to locate it, pressing my ears to the walls and moving incrementally about the apartment with me head cocked to the ceiling.  The second hour I paced in circles fuming and pondered angrily as to why the neighbors didn’t shut the blasted thing off.  The third hour I lay on the couch, waiting to switch out laundry loads, and glared upwards.  It didn’t shut off until nearly 9pm at night.  You may imagine my wrecked mental state at the time.

Friends, Humor, Life, Weekend

Small Dog Takes You ‘Round the Internets

“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others are not; and that the two kinds are mostly oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.”
– Christopher Morely

Truthfully, my loves, nothing interesting has happened since the Anti-Harassment Seminar.  I’ve been wracking my brains for something to entertain you with but, alas, I’m coming up short.  Accept, instead, this humble offering of some of the things Google Reader has saved my sanity with this stupidly dull Friday afternoon.  Enjoy!

Fabulous friend Lauren – who writes a blog about buying and updating a “little farmhouse in the big city, which you should totally be reading – writes a post about water for Blog Action Day

Bobby Pin Blog – vintage style prettiness

Dress, Design, Decor – just what it sounds like

Fabulous friend Janssen reviews everything worth reading and occasionally expands your world with recipes, stories, and even photos of her completely lovable little daughter.

Need to chuckle?  Check out the sometimes silly, sometimes chic headgear of those crazy Aussies going to the races.

Do you love history?!  And I’m assuming you do, since we’re friends.  It would be a shame to lose you…anyway, check out The History Blog – with a new story everyday about something from the past being dragged into the present.  Estate sales at Chatsworth, shipwrecks being raised, or (recently) a lost Vivaldi manuscript turning up in Scotland.

Do you love medieval history?  Or at least funny tales, quips, and snarky tales of saints and sinners complete with Monty Python-esqe commentary and improbably illuminated manuscripts?  Read here.

Get thee to a nunnery!  Here’s a blog written by the sisters of a Stateside convent that will make you feel that the contemplative life might me more busy than you could handle.

Noble Pig – one of the best food blogs I’ve ever found, I inevitably start drooling on my keyboard whenever they post a new recipe.

And finally!   Every once and a while something comes into your life, usually through the efforts of a very good friend, that you had no idea existed but now that you do, you can’t live without:

My father used to retreat to his armchair sometimes and read Calvin and Hobbes comics by himself.  And within minutes this quiet but incessant giggle would be heard tiptoeing its way round the house.  It makes my mother and I crack up every time we hear it.  And, ladies and gentlemen, I have found my personal equivelent (although for me, it’s more like side splitting, lung busting bouts of uproarious laughter that must make the neighbors hate me).  Behold!  Hyperbole And A Half!

Have a lovely weekend, piglets!

Family, Friends, Humor, Life

In Which C. Debates the Wisdom of Copying Sav’s Awesomness

“You can watch this while I find someone who will perform a marriage ceremony between a crazed fan and a celebrity teen hostage. To the Internet!”
– The Fairly Odd Parents

Savvy just did something which, considered in light of current societal attitudes and the fact that a movie title The Social Network was just released, is quite brave.  She deleted her Facebook.  Apparently it took hours of dogged, single-minded determination and clicking, but she did it.

 

"Honestly, C., had you no life at all?!" "I'm SORRY!"

 

I confess, I’ve toyed with the idea myself.  Truthfully, the hours I’ve spent on that ridiculous thing will shame me when we’re all dead and get to watch the Big Movie of our lives.

However, I have a qualm.  Surprisingly I do use Facebook for its original intent: to keep track of people.  Having trucked over the world, keeping in touch with people can be a chore.  It’s the same reason why I’ve never changed my Hotmail address: I got it when I was 12 or 13 and across the years have given it out to friends/contacts/employers in multiple countries.  It’s the only way I keep in touch with a whole army of correspondents, I couldn’t do something so stupid as to change it simply because Gmail is en vogue (yes, yes, and better, yes I heard you).

Frankly, though, as the years have gone by, I’ve winnowed down my own social network quite a bit.  Scarlett, Peregrine, Jane, and Venice are far off, but I still communicate with them regularly.  Margot, Marie, Tink, and Angel, though busy, are still nearby.  The majority of people I see everyday… I see everyday: Hennessy, Wise, Susie, Sav, and Vodka, as well as the traffic clerks.  I regularly bump into Sadie on campus and we often get together with my whole godfamily to play, usually at least once a month.  And now that my parents live on the same continent as I do, keeping in touch with them has never been easier.

So…what do I really use Facebook for?

Honestly, the occasional glimpse into long gone friends’ lives (once every six months), to keep in touch with Gio as he heads off into his first year of adventure at university (daily), and to play stupid games (also daily, shamefully). In other words, with very few exceptions, nothing really valuable.

I don’t know if I have the moral fortitude to completely go cold turkey as the indomitable Sav did…but I am thinking that I really need to start weaning myself off it.

 

And how many of these behaviors/tendencies have you displayed recently?

 

Make your voices heard, minions!  Have you ever rethought your relationship with your techie relationships?  How many people would simply vanish from your life if you ditched Facebook, Twitter, and whatever bastard cousin of theirs has popped up recently?  And would you miss these people if they melted away?  How much of your life would disappear, and how much of it would you get back if you tuned out?  Weigh in.

Family, Friends, Humor, Life, Work

TGIF, etc.

“There aren’t enough days in the weekend.”
– Rod Schmidt

Today I realized that, what with the insane week I’ve had at work/home/any other plane of existence that temporarily escapes me, I could not – for the life of me – remember whether or not I’d paid our October rent!  On my lunch break I scampered over to our flat’s managers.  She answered the door in her pajamas with scary hair and a sick-to-her-stomach looking face.  Turns out, she’s pregnant and was having a miserably week to – and apparently so were a lot of other people living in our building because she waived the $15 late fee, citing life.

Excellent.

Also!  Today was the first day I’ve worn a coat to work.  It’s Fall!  It’s my sister-in-law’s birthday so we’re going to her house this evening for cake.  Tomorrow I get to play with Fairy and GS (whom I haven’t seen in weeks) for a lovely Ladies Only Afternoon.  Last night I wore my chenille house slippers and made my first real cup of tea in a long time (with a teapot, as it was intended to be).  J. is playing with the guys tonight so I think I will make a steaming pot of corn chowder and watch a movie.

The week’s almost over, poodles!  Chins up!

Humor, Husband, Life, School, Work

Praise Jupiter, Odin, and Quetzalcoatl!

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”
– Woody Allen

Oh, C., you and your plans! So droll!

Ever feel like God/the Universe/Fate/Whatever is doing that thing when you make plans and They laugh at you?  Well, recently it’s felt like God/the Universe/Fate/Whatever has been having a benevolent but enthusiastic chuckle at our expense.  Plans that we make, good plans, solid plans, with all necessary effort behind them to accomplish them, have just…not been happening.

Not to sound vain, but this is really the first time in my life that I’ve come up against so many game-changers (not counting my university’s Football team).  I don’t know if that means I’ve been extremely clever, extremely lucky, or more than extremely pig-headed about getting what I plan on…but likely some combination of the latter two.

But I digress.  Yesterday, the God/the Universe/Fate/Whatever decided that It had had enough of yanking our chains and allowed our hard work and single minded effort to pay off.  Wiping the last of laughter tears from Its eyes, It gave a last little sigh of amusement and waved Its finger benevolently at us.

J. has an internship!

Granted it’s not the one we’d thought he’d have, but that’s not a bad thing.  If he’d gotten the one we originally wanted, he’d have been shipped off somewhere for 6-8 weeks and I’d have stayed behind holding down the home front.  Perfectly doable, but not at all fun (and the amount of Netflix I’d have consumed would have been perfectly shocking by any standards).  But now he’s got an internship with a Fortune 500 company, local, that pays very  well, and adds additional sparkle to his resume.

Collective sigh of relief.

Family, Friends, Humor, Life, Weekend

Ducklings, I Haven’t Forgotten You…

“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
-Thomas Carlyle

This past week/weekend:

-Marie had a bridal shower, reception, wedding, and luncheon (Wed., Thurs., and Friday respectively)
-We had our school’s Football season opener (and won!)
-Labor Day, several hours of which I spent throwing nieces and nephews around on a trampoline
-I bought food for the first time in over a week
-Ate a full meal…which seemed like the first time in over a week
-I didn’t sleep more than five hours a night, and apparently started grinding my teeth in my sleep (according to J.)
-Fall showed up.  Seriously.  I turned around and there it was with sweaters, boots, and temperatures plummeting thirty degrees.  Unlike most people I know, I’m thrilled because Fall is my favorite season
-Had a perma-migraine

Weddings, even fabulous ones like Marie's, can have unforeseen consequences.

So instead of updating you as was clearly my duty and your right, my loves, I spent last night in flannel pajama pants, dosed with pain killers, and watching Emma – not sharing pictures from the wedding.  Every once and a while I lurched to the kitchen for sustenance, but only at moments of near death.  Apologies, but I really wasn’t fit for anything else.

I’ll get them up today, I promise.  And I’ll never neglect you like that again.

Books, Humor, Life, Movies, Music

If A Equals B, and B Equals C, Then A Equals Muffin

“Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.”
– Mason Cooley

The science of Recommendations seems, to me, to be very imprecise.

Pandora, set to my station of summery, party, of-no-artistic-value-whatsoever music, was feeding me a lively stream of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, and other culturally reprehensible choices.  And then suddenly, out of no where, an unmistakable disco beat.  And then, “Ah, ah ah, ah, stayin’ alive!  Stayin’ alive!”  Who ordered the Bee Gees?

Then later on Amazon.com, Small Dog’s personal crack, I was casually leafing through their recommendations for me.  They defy logic.  Wondering what had possessed it to recommend Conan the Barbarian I clicked on it to see why.  Answer: because I once ordered  Planet Earth.

Quoi?!

Humor, Husband, Life, Snark

Mother. Nature.

“Nature’s all well in her place, but she mustn’t be allowed to make things untidy.”
– Cold Comfort Farm

Pictured: Summer, after a particularly impressive bender.

Of course, summer is moving towards its inevitable end.  Though not quite in her death throes, she’s sensing that they’re not far off and so is  looking to have a last fling with a boy a third of her age, wear skirts that are far too short, and spend all her money rather than let her grasping nephew Fall get a penny of it.  In other words, generally behaving badly.

The other day J. called me up.
“Are you coming home for lunch?” he asked.
“Wasn’t planning on it.  Why?”
“Because you need to go to the store.”
“Again, why?”
“Because you need to pick up ant traps and spray.”

Summer's attack German Shepherd. And although I didn't catch a glimpse of this guy, I am sure he was lurking back behind the suitcases.

Augh!  Apparently ants had descended on our flat.  They were crawling in from a closet runner, bent on global domination (For the record, Mum, our flat is in no way in a state to attract the wildlife, please don’t wring your hands and bemoan anything).  Anyway, I dashed home armed with chemicals, J. vacuumed everything, sprayed and booby-trapped our closet to the point that those famed nuclear-resistant cockroaches of lore couldn’t survive, and we waited with baited breath to see if it had worked.  So far, nary a six-legged fiend has been sighted.

However, marshalling the ants to send them indoors was only Old Lady Summer getting drunk at her granddaughter’s wedding.  She finished the night by climbing up on the buffet table, shaking her bon-bon, and collapsing spectacularly into the punch.

That night we had a massive lightning storm.  I read later that in a half hour period we had nearly 150 lightning strikes in the area.  And unlike normal storms, where the flashes and rumbles are spaced out a bit, this was explosion after explosion for hours.  Neither J. nor I slept because every few seconds our whole room would light up and it would sound like someone had cracked a whip right next to our heads.  And this sort of weather has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, for the last three days now.  The power was knocked out yesterday, making getting home from work a nightmare.

Small Dog gets Summered-out.

Summer and I have a middling relationship.  Round about February of each year I whine and long for sunlight, but as soon as we’ve made it through July, I start glaring at bank signs along the road with their publicly displayed roasting temperatures and start mumbling things like, “October sounds good.  I could do October right now.”

*Photo of cracked old biddy, from mygutinstinct.wordpress.com
*Photo of the vile insect invader, still from the 1954 film Them!
*Photo of my approximate face come mi-August from: findavet.us/blog/2010/04/how-to-keep-your-dog-safe-in-the-heat/