2011

2011 is going to be a huge year for me and I will be very busy (especially if the first 12 days have been any indication) so I've decided to forgo my normal moxies and just work on some things that I'd like to get done before the end of days next year. I don't really believe that the world is going to end in 2012 but I do much better with a deadline so I figured what the hell.

I am currently trying to start a business with my husband and a friend of ours and it is hard and confusing and rewarding but mostly confusing so I'm thinking about tackling less than I normally would as far as outlandish goals for the year go. I only have a couple.

1. Learn to juggle. I've always wanted to learn to juggle and I feel since I am almost 30 it's time. If you haven't learned to juggle by the time you are 30, then really, what's the point?

2. Learn to play guitar. This one I'm actually sort of doing under duress. I really want to learn how to play the banjo and Mike told me that it would be too hard. I believe he said that you had to be really smart to play the banjo which I disagree with (ignoring the fact that he second handedly called me stupid) because I've seen dummies play the banjo with my own eyes. So he said if I could learn to play the guitar I could play the banjo. Plus, we have a guitar and don't have a banjo.

3. Learn to read music. Clearly this one goes with the one above. In theory I know how to read music similar to how I theoretically know how to drive a stick shift car. But I feel like a quick lesson in either skill might be nice.

4. Get something that I write published somewhere humans can read it, other than this bloggie.

That's it. Just 4. Really, more like 4 1/2 if I can squeeze the banjo in there at the end of 2011. I just realized that I am so organized that my moxies are directly related to the business. If the business falls and I become homeless I can make money juggling and playing the banjo. Damn...I'm good.

Mad about you!

My husband Mike has always been obsessed with the show Mad About You. I watched it for a few seasons while it was on and I thought it was funny but at the time I really didn't get it. It started when I was only 10 years old and I didn't really have the life experiences yet for it to be really funny to me. It was the same with Seinfield. Seinfield to an 11 year old - not funny to a 28 year old - fucking funny. So, my husband being obsessed with it as he is buying the seasons on DVD. We just started watching thru the 3rd season and I can't believe how true to life and relationships that show is. I swear to god sometimes it's like we could've written that show. It's kind of like the American version of the Office. That show is either funny to you or not. If it's not it's probably for two reasons : you ARE Michael Scott or you have WORKED for him. When those kind of parallels happen in your entertainment it usually hits an uncomfortable familiarity nerve. Many times I watch a show, start to chuckle, then be swept away into a PTSD memory of a similar situation so it's usually a "hahah...that's not funny"

Mad About You seems to somehow transcend that uncomfortableness (which appears to not be a word but who cares). It's so familiar that sometimes it's even more funny or touching or sad or angering. I swear to you there have been conversations in that show that I KNOW Mike and I have had if not word for word, pretty damn close to it. A lot of that show is based off of the fact that two people who at their core are total opposites come together to make this perfect team. They compliment each other like peanut butter and chocolate but understand that both are awesome by themselves. I feel that way about my husband and I. I know that Friday's post was cheerful (by this bloggie's standards) and I don't mean to sap it up here but let me explain what I'm talking about.

This morning Mike called me at work to chat about some stuff that happened and while on the phone and walking our pup he saw a manta ray in the channel by our apartment. And he was excited to see it...like it was a cool thing. Those of you who read this know of my disappointment with the people who I was with when I saw a ray in that channel and their complete lack of interest. See this: http://sureaboutthat.blogspot.com/2009/07/finedont-care-about-cool-stuffjerks.html for a refresher.

Hearing his excitement on the phone about the ray made me think about how like Jamie and Paul, Mike and I are a team. I'm the one that is nutshit crazy about ocean creatures but by him having an appropriate excited reaction to something like a ray gives me the warm fuzzies inside and makes me think that we truly are meant to be (insert Disney princess end credit song).

A. I love him

2. he loves me

That's all we need to know.

Stuff I like

Hi bloggie loyalists, it's Friday and I know what you are thinking. Here comes another Friday rant from crazy Laura about how crappy the world is. Well jerk, you are wrong. Today is a bloggie about fun things. Things I love. See what I did there? I'm forcing myself to be positive today. It hurts but we'll all get through it.

Things I love:

lightning fast laptops that are pink

Trophy Queen purses and bags

white blonde hair

toddler laughs

Tom Hanks

Sourpuss clothing

stars

poker

dogs

fish

oceans

snow

yellow cake with milk chocolate frosting

strawberries

Brussels sprouts with pancetta and raisins

haircuts

being inside and safe during inclement weather

that light, in the evening, right before it starts getting dark

clean towels

shoes

turtles

WWII bomber art

laughing until I can't breathe

fireworks

mini vacations

dinner with good friends

corn on the cob with fresh garden tomatoes

silver jewelry

true crime novels

TV shows about freaks/people in prison

boys calling each other bitch

peanut butter

containers

hats

sweatshirts

friends

family

husbands

and apocalypse momo von doomz.

It's Wednesday, I love Rainbow Brite, and oil spills piss me off.

It is in fact wednesday but it is a month later than when I originally wrote this bloggie. I for some reason didn't pull the trigger on it until today. And guess what?! The goddamn oil spill is still leaking oil into the goddamn Gulf. I thought it wouldn't be relevent anymore cause people would be like "oil spill? that was like AGES ago". So that sucks even more. Also, for some reason when I go back into saved bloggies there ends up being only one space after periods instead of two. I'm too lazy to go in and change it all tho so you'll all have to deal with it. Anyway...think of this bloggie as history since it was written in the past and revere it like it's the GD Gettysburg Address.

I've had a headache for like the last 5 days, along with a cough, and sore throat which as I'm sure you could guess, didn't really help my whole hating the world thing. I imagined this morning while crossing the street that everyone in their cars could see a little black rain cloud with lighting flashes above me while I walked grumbling about the stupid sun and the stupid blue sky. It made me rather happy and I decided that I wanted to make a tiny felt rain cloud that I could carry with me on days when I was less than cheery. Suddenly that notion seemed extremely familiar to me and then it hit me. Murky from Rainbow Brite had a little storm cloud that he carried around with him. I had a whole bunch of Rainbow Brite dolls when I was little. I even had the dog and the horse (take that stupid girl down the street that always had the whole set of everything). I loved that show so much. I wanted to be Patty O'Green which is weird cause my nickname in my family is LaLa and there was a character named Lala Orange. She was a little weird for me tho. She was pretty 70's looking and had brown hair. It was supposed to be orange but to me it just looked brown. As the current state of my hair may tell you, I was always excited by alternatively colored hair so Patty O'Green's lucious green mane was all it took for me to love her. Rainbow Brite had pretty much everything I've ever loved in my life and therefore is my go to show for really happy childhood memories. There were rainbows, sprites, girls with powers, adorable bad guys, lots of stars (like star shapes and star decorations), and a puppy. Yep. I'd live in Rainbow Land right now. I'd be replace Lala Orange and do it up RIGHT. I'd ride around on Starlite all day and then Moonglow and I would hang out all night. aaahhhh

But no. I have to live in the real world. The world where we can't seem to do things right. The world where a drill can explode and then leak oil into the ocean at the tune of 5,000 gallons a day. What the fuck?! This would never be allowed in Rainbow Land. Like we don't do enough to the oceans? How come we can't do this shit right? I'm not hippie enough to say that we should stop using oil all together, I don't really know enough about it. But I do know that in this day and age we should be able to make containers that hold oil IN when things happen or we shouldn't do it. We're pretty technically advanced these days...figure it out. Too expensive you say, well, I think the oil companies have got it. In 2008 BP was averaging 42 million pounds per day. DAY. I think someone, somewhere should be able to make oil transportation safer with that kind of money flying around.

I know I'll sound like a bit of an eco nut and trust me I'm really really not, but when the oceans fail, humans fail. Not kidding around if we ruin the oceans we're toast.

It's Thursday

It's Thursday (as my title so cleverly suggests) and that means that I've had 3 full days of real world, outside of my apartment, time. That means I have hit my limit of stupid activity forgiveness. Coming off the weekend where I've done whatever I want and hung out with friends can make me very forgiving Monday. I may see things that I feel are stupid but I can ignore them. Shove them somewhere deep and pretend they didn't happen. Tuesday I start to let the stupid in a little bit. I'll try not to get mad but it's harder than on Monday. Wednesday is even worse. By now I've seen so many stupid things and people that I'm like 3 events deep in the stupid. I try to forget one and another one pops up. Try to forget that one and I'll remember ANOTHER one. I have no recourse, I have to purge. I'm not Super Woman.

So, my friends, we come upon Thursday. The day that I have become so full of stupid things I've seen, heard, read, been an unintentional participant in that I am literally full. I usually find a way to get rid of all of these stupid things I have in my brain. Either by just telling everyone who will listen or really just telling Mike. These traits usually keep me from having more than a core group of people who can deal with these "purges". I often wonder what would happen if I didn't. I bet if I was one of those people who was really charming (I always assume that if you are charming and friendly that you have something horrible hiding deep down in the depth of your soul that will someday explode out and you will become just like me) one day I'd be at some sort of social function and I'd be telling some funny and charming story and suddenly I'd cough. I'd say excuse me and continue on. Then I'd cough again and some black stuff would come out. I'd be shocked and I'd excuse myself to the bathroom, cause I'm charming and polite, but I wouldn't make it. All those things I've witnessed and swallowed and put down deep in the depths of my soul would come out all at once. They'd all rush me from below, all those stupid things I saw and didn't comment on. I'd turn purple, probably grow a tail, hiss at someone and climb up the walls and out the window. Ultimately Batman would have to capture me and throw me in Arkham before I was able to continue my rein of terror but that's not the point.

The POINT is that I'm thankful for this bloggie cause even if no one reads it, I can get all my anger at the stupid out before I turn purple and start hissing at people. So here we go.

I'm sick of seeing people, and by people I mean hipster a-holes, with their dogs off leash in a major city. The freeway, you know like 80 MPH 8 lanes of traffic freeway, ends in front of our apartment when it turns into another street. Letting your dog walk freely along a road that is a transition from freeway to regular road is insane and stupid and it drives me to drink. I almost stole a little weiner dog yesterday cause some hipster douche- I mean person- was lazily looking for him while the dog ran in and out of an intersection bike/bus lane. I stopped the pup and got the guy's attention, instantly regretting not picking the pup up and running. He mumbled some sort of something in hipster language to which I replied with nothing. I don't speak hipster.

Don't be fooled by my ranting I love letting Pocky off leash. In the designated, proper venue. She is great off leash and if she saw a pigeon in the middle of the road no amount of training or anything could keep her from running after it. She's a dog. It's what they do. If you don't believe in leashing your dog because of some sort of misplaced cruelty issues than A. don't get a dog or B. don't live in a metropolis.

Man, I had more but this is getting pretty long. Maybe I'll continue this tomorrow and make it like a cliffhanger. I'm excited that I have something to write about for two consecutive days! Here's how I'm going to leave it.

You know what else pisses me off?

to be continued...

feeeeelings

Mike started a blog yesterday and that made me mad cause bloggies are my thing and he's always trying to take my things. Instead of punching him in his sleep like I usually do I decided the only way to fight fire with fire is to write my bloggie more. HA take that!

I just killed a spider at work today and it's always such an ordeal. I hate spiders. I know, I know I hate many things. Too many some people/jerks might say. I suppose I should rephrase then and say that spiders scare the bejeesus out of me. Sometimes I think it's cause they move so fast but then I see slow ones and they scare me even more. I can't really put my finger on why they scare me so much really, but they do. Give me a bed of snakes any day. So, anyway, I was struggling with my cabinet door that sticks and the whole thing rolled a little and a spider ran out. I immediately went into panic mode. The thing that goes hand in hand with me hating spiders is the fact that killing a spider makes me feel bad. Killing anything makes me feel bad. When I was little I used to run out onto our driveway after it rained and throw worms back into the yard cause I was sad that they were out there all exposed. To this day if I see a worm struggling on a sidewalk I'll try to get it back to the dirt. I'm not lying - I did it at the park the other day. What can I say, I'm a weirdo. I feel empathy for EVERYTHING non-human. It's one of my weaknesses.

So I'm standing there in a panic cause there is a spider running towards my chair but I don't want to kill it. Conversely, I also can't capture it and throw it outside cause that would require me to get close to said spider and that is an impossibility. For a split second I feel like screaming and running away is my best option. I'm at work tho, and that would be ridiculous. I stifle my scream and my mind races, I have to make a decision. The spider must have decided the chair wasn't a viable option because he (yes all spiders are he's) is now running towards my purse. MY PURSE for christ sakes. I spot a stack of papers waiting for the shredder. That's it! I'll put that heavy paper on it and if the spider was killed, so be it. It wasn't actually me that was killing it then. It was the paper. I threw the stack down on it and the spider didn't crawl out the other end. It was over. A wave of guilt washed over me. In fact, as I write this now I feel terrible. Hopefully sharing this with you all will absolve the guilt just a little bit but it probably won't. Maybe I should go to a hypnotist and have him/her make me think that spiders are as cute as little puppies. Then if I saw one I would just pick it up and cuddle it.

I just almost passed out while typing that.

So it may be February and I'm just now writing...so what?

2010 bitches! Guess what! I went back and looked at my 2009 New Years post and I actually did some of my moxies! For explanation click HERE

I wrote more - not on the bloggie but in real life so shut it about the whole not posting since Sept. thing. I'm even thinking about starting a Deviant Art page to catch some of the stuff I don't post up here. We'll see, that might be too much work.

I got the hell out of San Mateo. In fact I am living back in the city and enjoying new and different ways of people pissing me off.

I think I lived a more relaxed life, I tried to not let things bother me as much. I mean...they still bothered me but I think I was able to shrug off more. I feel overall less stressed but I might just be increasingly tired. Seriously, last Saturday I couldn't look at my bed without sleeping for 3 hours. It was ridiculous.

This year I decided that I wasn't going to make any New Year moxies. I figured I was old enough now to just change my life without the pressure of pre-determined have too's. Or maybe I'll just decide that my life is going pretty well and I don't want to change it. We'll see how that works. 2010 is shaping up to be a pretty crazy year and January sucked so I'm hoping it will only get better.

My 10 year high school reunion is this year so that's nuts. Mike and I met a few friends that we went to school with over Christmas when we traveled back to the great white middle north. We were all talking about how things like Facebook have kinda ruined the fun of reunions. Now I get updates on what these people are doing every goddamn minute. I've already seen who got fat, who lost their hair, who has 4 kids. All the good stuff that you are supposed to find out about all at once and then compare them instantly to your life. It's not nearly as fun. Speaking of reunions, I watched Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion the other day because I was bored and I vaguely remembered liking it. Turns out I like Janeane Garofalo's part in it and that's about it. BUT, I thought it was interesting how accurately they portrayed those feelings that you can have about yourself 10 years later. You can walk in thinking about how awesome you are, how much you've grown, how you have a kick ass job, great partner, adorable kids, and you can spot one group of people out of the corner of your eye and all those feelings or insecurities you may have had when you were 17 come rushing back. Most likely you have spent more time now away from these people as you did together but somehow it's like you never left.

I wonder if it will be like that for me? I feel like I have a huge advantage given that I am married to someone who went to the same school I did and knows all the same people. There won't be any pretending by me to be someone that I'm not. He'll keep me honest and ultimately that will give me all I need to not feel those feeling of insecurity. I am proud of who I am and what I do. Cause in the immortal words of Christian...I'm kinda a big deal.