Entries from January 2006 ↓

new-glasses-yay, originally uploaded by brittney.

I finally broke down and got my eyes checked. Turns out I can’t see far away, and I have a floater. I’ll use these glasses except when reading or at the computer. My other pair is still awaiting lenses, but look much different than these.

What unnerves me most is trying to gauge their mood. Sometimes they
smile when I circle back to check on them. Sometimes they glare.

In addition to dexterity, poise and a good memory, a server apparently needs to be able to read minds.

A New York Times restaurant critic spends a week waiting tables. It’s a terrific read, and a spot on look at what it takes to make it as a server.

(Click to embiggen)

That is what I ate yesterday. The boyfriend and I are having a little Git Fit contest. SparkPeople.com is a very cool, very free site that tracks your nutritional intake and fitness. Like Weight Watchers, but free.

Thanks to TN Girl for the site recommendation.

I’d gotten my hair cut too short the year before, a mistake that turned into an unfortunate mullet. I spent all of 7th grade trying to grow it out. Long curly hair with giant teased bangs was the standard of beauty at my junior high, neither of which I could attain.

Our school regularly had dances, about one every six weeks. They’d push all the tables out of the cafeteria and turn the lights off and bring out some strobes. It was a money maker for the school. It cost $2, I think, to get in, and damn near every body came, all grades 6-8. The strains of the day were Tony, Toni, Tone and Boyz 2 Men, with a little Whitney thrown in for good measure. I’d dance with my friends to the upbeat songs, decked out in a flourescent yellow shirt and tight-rolled stonewashed jeans. The girls would dance in a circle, one brave soul willing to try a new move, only to have the entire circle copy her style. Middle school was about conformity, and no one wanted to be made fun of. It was this junior higher’s scariest thought: "Is someone out there making fun of me, even in their mind?"

Then later in the evening they’d change it all to slow ballads. "Every Rose Has It’s Thorn" or maybe a sweet country song. Obivous couples would immediately pair up, mostly the 8th graders. Kids with crushes would linger near each other until one of them drug the other by the hand, pretending not to like it all the while. I would sit with my back against the wall and watch, and sometimes cry.

I don’t know why, but I always ended up crying at school dances. And it wasn’t as though I had some mad crush on someone who jilted me for a bigger haired broad, it was that I never danced with any boys ever. No one ever asked me to slow dance with them. I would buy a Sprite and a Snickers and watch as the 8th grade girls, with their blossoming everything, would place their heads on the boys’ shoulders and just sway. I thought it would be wonderful if someone would want to stand and sway with me, in front of the entire school.

There was this 8th grade couple, she a model and he the captain of the football team. She was tall, but he was taller, and they truly looked like real live adults. She’d wear very grown up clothes, and he already had to shave every day. The two of them danced like a couple of old pros, spinning and dipping and all that jazz. They were often the focal point of the room, wowing everyone with their skills. But they’d also stand crotch to crotch and kiss each other deeply on the dance floor when no teachers were looking. He mouthed her hungrily, and it only made me cry that much harder.

But I always went back. School dances were not to be missed. That little ritual went away in high school, replaced only by prom, where no one danced anyway, just figured out the best and quickest way to get drunk. Anyway, I overheard a twelve year old talking about wanting a shorter skirt than her mother would allow to wear to the dance, and all that came flooding back.

Last week I was a participant on a "Blogging for Business" panel, and now I’ve been contacted by a professor at Vanderbilt Medical School who wants me to come talk to his "Medicine and Media" med students about blogging. I nearly blurted out, "WHAT FOR?!"

Seriously. The hell?

Today is Tootie’s birthday. She’s one. She’s currently demolishing a file folder in the floor besides me, but it’s her birthday, so I’m just letting her.

The boyfriend is going to cook her a rabbit for dinner. He wanted to buy a live, real rabbit, maybe a lame one, and let her catch and kill it. I told him that was totally fucked up, and that there would be no backyard killings, birthday or not. So he bought frozen rabbit for her instead.

She may get an extra walk or two, also. And a trip to PetSmart for more dog food and maybe a pig ear. But it’s below freezing right now, so we’re staying put. We can play birthday when the sun starts shining a little brighter.

UPDATE: That rabbit was gone in under a minute.

UPDATE #2: Birthday party photos!

My mother and her husband gave the boyfriend and I their washer and dryer. Read it and weep: No more laundromat. No more bringing clean clothes home in a car. No more $38 to get something clean to wear. And best of all, I now get piping hot panties fresh from the dryer. One of life’s instant happys.

• Just 22-months older than my sister, I wanted her to do everything with me. Before she had the physical ability to walk I would drag her around the house, banging her against everything and giving her rugburns. I also tried to teach her to talk. Most of the words I taught her were wrong.
• Little sister and I hit puberty about the same time, a time when Titty Twisters were especially painful due to budding breasts. I would wait for her to yawn, stretch her arms and then I’d go in for the twist. She was guilty of this torture as well.
• I would write her evil notes threatening to murder her in her sleep.
• I picked on her for being overweight. This is the one I regret the most. I cry if I think too much about what I said.
• In high school she would leave much earlier for school than me. I had an awful habit of going into her closet after she left and taking whatever I wanted for myself. I’d show up to school later wearing all her shit, and she would get so mad. So she started locking her bedroom door. So then I just used a coat hanger. Poor Mus.
• When I was about six and she was four I’d trade her nickels for dimes, because I’d convinced her nickels were bigger which meant they were worth more.
• I would listen in on her phone conversations when I wanted to use the phone.
• Or I would simply pull the cord out of the phone jack, resulting in an all out fist fight.
• Once I ratted her out. I’d gotten in trouble for something so minor, like not making my bed, when angelic Miss Amy had been sneaking out her bedroom window every night for a week, so I just blurted that out. God, that was so not cool. She was grounded for weeks.
• I can’t leave out the time I ran over her foot. (Scroll allll the way down, last entry.)

I had ten glorious days off in a row, six of which were paid. That has never happened to me before. I made use of my time by training Tootie and sleeping. I slept like I had something to prove. It was so awesome. I’d wake up at 8 or so, then hit the hay again at noon or something. It was seriously ridiculous. I spent most of those first few days off with pillow seams carved into my cheeks.

I spent some of my time before Christmas making gift baskets. I decided to handmake bath items for friends and family. If you know me this is completely out of character. I can’t sew on a button. I’m utterly uncrafty. But I saw how easy it was to make bath salts and homemade soaps by looking directions up online, so I started gathering supplies. After the lavendar essential oils and all the baskets and the extras, it was just as much as I’d spend if I bought something. Unfortunately, most of the projects were a failure.

My homemade soaps with lemon zest and lavendar came out sort of brown looking and bumpy. Not good. I think it could be because there was some leftover cornstarch in the mixing bowl (and why the mixture expanded like a balloon in the microwave). The bath powder turned out fine, but I made way, way to little, so only my mom got that. By the end I was filling baskets with store bought things, which wasn’t the plan.

Oh, and I’m never shopping for Christmas items online. One thing never arrived (Sorry, Lou!) and my mom’s Rusty Wallace sparkle shirt was entirely too small. I used the sizing chart very carefully. It looked like a child’s shirt!

A couple of days after Christmas the boyfriend and I took his new (used) car to Chattanooga to visit his family. That was fun. The boyfriend’s sister was down from Iowa City and there was a new puppy in the house. As you may have read below that new puppy, named Ladybug, a miniature weiner dog who weighs under four pounds, ate a pile of Tootie’s poop then puked it up on the boyfriend’s mother’s cream carpet. It was maybe the most vile thing I’ve ever seen come out of something that cute. And the smell: indescribable.

We took Tootie to visit the boyfriend’s aunt and her two Boston terrier, CJ and Pippy. They basically chased each other until they collapsed. And sniffed much butt. Everyone was sort of horrified by the amount of crotch sniffing, and I still laugh out loud every time I remember looking up to hear the boyfriend’s sister say, "I mean, he’s just eatin’ it."

Also, there was a pot-bellied pig that belonged to one of the neighbors that had gotten out. I didn’t get to see it, but others of us went looking for it and touched it and met its owner.

I thought I’d go ahead and have a nice little panic attack at the dinner table the night we planned to go out and play pool. That was embarrassing. But more than that it was crippling and I’m thankful for the medicine I was given that night to calm my nerves. My panic had been growing steadily over the course of many hours and became too much when I tried to eat. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I’m glad I don’t have many of those attacks anymore.

We brought the boyfriend’s sister back with us so we could take her to the airport the next morning. We spent New Year’s Ever drinking cheap red wine and playing Mario Party and Mario Kart Double Dash. I got the boyfriend a Gamecube for Christmas. He loves it, and so do I. Even though he is totally better than me at all the games we have.

I feel fully rested and refreshed after my time off. I am very grateful for it. Paid vacations pretty much rule on all counts, but you probably knew that already.

You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen (and smelled!) a puppy vomit up your own dog’s poop.