It'll cost you

The other day, I went to the store to get a 2010 daily planner (yes, I still use a paper daily planner and I am aware that it is not still 1982) and a small calendar for the fridge. For some reason, I picked out both of these items without looking at the price. I figured the big calendar to be about $15 and the small one to be about $5. Based on what, you ask? My many years of practice watching the Price is Right, of course. Der.

The nice saleslady rung up my items, and this is how it went.
Her: That will be $42, please.
Me: WHAT?
Her: $42.
Me: DID YOU JUST SAY FORTEE TOO DOLLARZ?
Her: (stepping back from the screaming customer) Yes. Um, each of these is about $20 each.
Me: THEY WERE? WOW, THAT IS A LOT FOR A COUPLA CALENDARS.

Nordic Boy stood there, shocked. And then I collected myself and bought the damn calendars anyway and we ducked our heads and walked out. Because really, people. Who does that? Maybe that was too much for some calendars, yes, but did I need to bring the drama like that? And yell so that the whole store could hear me? Was I raised in a barn?

Later that day we stopped at Office Depot. And you know what happened? This.

Cashier: That comes to 21 dollars.
Me: (in a complete panic) TWO TWENTY ONE? IT COSTS TWO TWENTY ONE?
Cashier: No. I said it comes to twenty one. It costs 21 dollars.
Me: Oh. Sorry. Ha ha.
Cashier: (not laughing).

The moral of this story for me. Me = classy.
Moral of this story for you. Don't try and tell me how much things cost. It causes a Pavlovian effect whereby I will most assuredly scream at you.

If we took a holiday, took some time to celebrate

I've just had five whole days off of work! And here's what I did with it.

1. Became much more well-acquainted with my jimjams than I had been heretofore. We got along famously.

2. Got a gorgeous new necklace from my sweet Nordic Boy, among other sundries. That dude has good taste.

3. Gave Nordic Boy his presents, among them a food scale, which was the surprise hit of the day. Nordic Boy could not WAIT to start weighing shit. Listen, everyone needs a hobby, right?

4. Got a sweet ass lamp from my parents. I LOVE IT. Plus, now I can actually sit on my couch at night and read, which is sort of essential.


(Please do not hold my crappy iPhone photography against my new lamp. Trust me, it is pretty in person).

5. Went to see a nutty, over-the-top light display at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. That place was GAUDY. In the best way.


6. Finally sent out my holiday cards. Yesterday. The upside of being a heathen with no investment in the holidays is that I can send out my cards any damn time I please.

7. Spent a day with my brother, sister-in-law, and super awesome nephew, who is scientifically proven to be the funniest, smartest, cutest, most adorable kid ever made. Four out of five dentists agree.

8. Also got some quality dog time with my nephew's lab, Mokee, who is also scientifically proven to be the best dog ever constructed. By the time I was done playing with him my sinuses were so clogged I wanted to pop my eyeballs out, but it was so totally worth it.

9. Learned from my nephew all about legos, and Star Wars, and Bionicles. These three things are, according to my nephew, the only things that ever need to be discussed, ever, at any time.

10. Saw "Sherlock Holmes." I think Robert Downey Jr. needs to make a movie wherein he just reads the phone book for three hours. I am convinced I would find this riveting, just because of his Robert Downey Jr.-ness.

11. Saw "The Road," on Christmas Eve. There were three other people in the theater. What, people don't want to see post-apocalyptic people-eating bands of nomads on the eve of the birth of the lord?

12. Watched "The Great Escape" on dvd. I forgot that that movie is like eight hours long. Nordic Boy and I started to yell "ESCAPE, ALREADY!" about half way through.

13. Played Wii until it kind of got ridiculous. Our current favorite activities? Samurai sword fighting and the bowling game where you have to knock down 100 pins each frame. Both are really dumb games. I don't know if you can even call them games. And yet, we can't stop, to the piont where my arms are completely sore.

14. Got turned away from seeing "Avatar." Twice! Stupid sold-out movie.

15. Had dinner with our friend Delium, who never fails to make me laugh in a milk-out-of-the-nose sort of way.

16. Wrapped the whole thing up by waking up at 6am this morning to see Nordic Boy off to Portland, where he is working for the next two nights. I managed to restrain myself from grabbing him around the leg and trying to prevent his departure and making a spectacle of myself in front of the neighbors. But just barely.

Hope you all had a restful, fun week full of just as much love as I did. Also, that you talked to someone about legos at some point. If you haven't, you really must get on that.

Tossing Those (Christmas) Cookies

Jeezy Creezy, you guys, where the hell have I been?

I've been in Crazytown, that's where.

Work is an absolute nuthouse right now, and so was home too- Nordic Boy went and got an effed up sickness that scared the holy hell out of me (he's fine now), and so what I have concluded is that for the holiday spirit I was not having, December decided to give me a nice firm kick in the crotch just to seal the deal between us. Message received, December. This does not make me like you more.

So yeah. I don't have a lot of mirth and cheer to tell you about, because I have been too busy working like a dog and then cleaning up lots of the puke of my beloved. We never did the whole "in sickness and in health" vow, not that we wouldn't, but we have just always walked the walk with each other without having the need to talk that talk. Anyhow, that whole in sickness and in health thing? That shit is the real deal when it comes to love. When you don't find another human being's puke any more disgusting than you would find your own, that is saying something. And I am queasy about other people's germs and bodily fluids and stuff. But Nordic Boy's? Doesn't even phase me at all. So although "in sickness and in health" sounds pretty sanitized, in terms of verbage, it really means something. They really should change that line though, to make it more real. Something like "if you puke on me I won't be mad." Something along those lines.

Ha ha ha. I cracked myself up. "If you puke on me I won't be mad." I am totally saying that if I ever want to do vows. And if I don't, I think I should send that one in to Hallmark to be made into a valentine.

Sorry, everyone. You probably didn't want to hear this much about puking, did you?

Subject change!

I have no idea why this clip makes me so happy, but it does. I think this sort of epitomizes how I feel about Christmas, in that I don't know how to do it, but I'm trying to follow along and do my best.



Hope your holiday is puke-free, all!

Awww, SNAPPED!

Do you know that there is a show on Lifetime called "SNAPPED!"? And although I have never seen it, from the commercials I gather that it is an entire show where they reenact the moment in some poor woman's life when she, well, snaps. I assume, because this is a Lifetime show, that the snapping involves her going crazy in some way after being pushed too far.

I scoff at the concept of Snapped! but you know what? Everyone has their line. And for me, it was this weekend.

Me: I am excited to go to the play tomorrow night!
BioGirl: Me too. It'll be the official start to the holiday season!
Me: Um, what? You have been talking about nothing other than Christmas since Thanksgiving! How can this be the start? I will tell you how. It CAN'T.
BioGirl: (giggling) Well, it sort of is.
Me: No, it's not. You put up your tree. And your decorations. We went shopping for holiday sweaters. You have done Christmas shopping. You are doing Christmas crafts. You have designed your Christmas cards and started making them. You have been playing Christmas music. You have put up Christmas decorations in your office. Those are all seasonal things. You can only have one kick off for Christmas. Maybe two. But I think you have had about ten now. And that's not fair. That's too many kick-offs. You can only have a limited amount of kick-offs!
BioGirl: Until next year?
Me: Until next year.

I want you to note that during this entire conversation, she was laughing. And I was laughing. Only hers was in a normal person way and mine was in an I have lost it in a Lifetime SNAPPED sort of way. And all because, apparently, I have a pre-set number of Christmas Kick-offs that I am allowing people. Because that's not weird.

In other BioGirl news, guess what, ya'll? She has a blog! She's had it for a while, but only recently has she wanted to keep up with it more often. You should totes go read it. In fact, do me a solid and go over there right now and leave her a comment and say howdy. Let's freak her freak with a blogland welcome wagon hello. A blog-commenting kick-off, if you will.

Berried Alive, by the incomparable BioGirl

While you are at it, go over and check out Neighbor J's etsy shop. If you are stumped for holiday presents, it's the place to shop. If you go there, I will let you count it as an extra holiday kick-off. But just this once.

TraditiSHON! Tradishon!

I love weekends so much, it's sickening. Me and weekends are like those couples that make out in public, with full tongue and gropage. I know this. But, like those couples, I don't stop. I must grope my weekends no matter who is there! I can't help it! GET A ROOM, ME AND WEEKENDS!

I know that metaphor really doesn't make sense. I am too swept away by my weekend to care, however.

I was still feeling under the weather on Friday night, just a smidge, so I opted out of going to a dance party at my friend A's house. This was painful to me as there is nothing I love more than cutting a rug with wild abandon, but I did the responsible thing and stayed at home so as not to cough my germy cough all over the dance floor. Nordic Boy, after working another 14-hour day (that dude works so much more than I do and complains so much less, which is something I am working on, the complaining less, not the working more) came home and we watched a bunch of bad tv and fell asleep by ten. This makes me sound old and moldy, but I LOVED IT.

On Saturday my friend Sarah came over and she brought me homemade chocolate brittle, which, come on, you gotta love a girl like that. We drank tea and talked the day away until the sun went down (which ok fine is only until 4pm these days) and can I just tell you if you don't know Sarah, you totally should? She is just the cat's knees or the bee's pajamas or whatever the saying is.

That night BioGirl, Nordic Boy, and I put on our fancy knickers and went out to eat at Cafe Lago, which has the lightest lasagna you have ever had in your life. It's like lasagna-flavored air, which maybe doesn't sound like a good thing, but it is.

Then we went to see a live production of White Christmas. The show was good, although the cast members were clearly singers and actors (excellent ones) but not dancers. The dancing was fine for what it was, don't get me wrong. I just have a case of hyper-picky-itis when it comes to dance sometimes. What warms my heart is that after all these years with me, Nordic Boy is as perceptive a dance watcher as I could ever hope for. After the show was over, he noted "did you notice that the lead dude only turned to the right, never to the left?" And I said "OMG YES I DID NOTICE," while thinking in my head goddamit I love this man.

The other thing about the show was that although it wasn't as bad as the last time I went to this particular theater, there were still a few people that did not clap at the end of the show but just up and left during the curtain call as if they were at a movie during the credits and not watching real live performers who can see your indifference to their dedication. I don't usually have much of a temper about things, but this makes me so mad I want to Chuck Norris someone. FIFTH AVENUE THEATER PATRONS YOU ARE REQUIRED TO CLAP OR AT THE VERY LEAST SIT DOWN UNTIL THEY HAVE DONE THEIR CURTAIN CALL NO ARGUMENTS THE END. Don't make me come over there, effers.

Sunday was a day for the history books. I love days like I had on Sunday. I slept well, and woke up when my body said so instead of my mothersucking alarm clock, and then Nordic Boy and I just hung out for the whole day. The day seemed like it went on for eleventy jilliion hours and I never wanted it to end. We watched movies, we baked peanut butter brownies (and we ate apple pie while making the peanut butter brownies which is a style of multi-taking that I can really get behind), we talked a blue streak, we laughed at stuff that probably wasn't even that funny, we ventured out to the grocery store and hardware store, we played a heated game on the Wii with trash talk that would scandalize your momma, and we just soaked it all up.

This made me realize that for all my non-traditional holidayness, and the fact that we don't put up a tree or lights, and that some years we exchange a little gift but others we don't, that we actually have managed to come up with a holiday tradition that is all our own and that we do without fail each and every year, right around Christmas/Hannukah/etc time. We set aside entire days where we do nothing but look at each others' ugly mugs for the whole entire day. We don't talk to anyone else on the phone, we don't go to anyone's house, we don't check any email. We just act all together-ish, just like this Sunday. We have already planned at least one more day like this before the end of the year.

Look at that. I do have a holiday tradition that is meaningful to me after all and I never even realized it. Who knew?

Sicko

I'm sick, people. WAAAHHHHH.

I am usually a pretty good sickie, if I do say so myself. But this time is frustrating. Because I sort of feel ok as I sit and watch Hallmark Original Movies in a long, unending loop. Just a sore throat, really. But then I get up to put in a load of laundry or try and vacuum and I feel like I have just run a few miles and I either need to take a nap or faint or something. So, I just have to sit. And sit. And sit some more. It's now Day Two and I am bored out of my everloving gourd.

Did you guys hear that Kirkus Reviews is closing down? My library colleagues and I are all abuzz about it, because even though Kirkus reviewers are haughty and crotchety and scary to authors, we use them a lot. I wrote a short story in an anthology once, and the crowning achievement of the whole experience was that the Kirkus review for the book called the entire book the equivalent of maggoty goat turds, but singled my story out as being less maggot-filled than the rest. From Kirkus, that was like a four-star review.

Does anyone think it's kind of cheating when mascara commercials show models who are obviously wearing fake eyelashes? Are fake eyelashes so ubiquitous that they are just a given? I think it's cheaty advertising.

One thing that I can get going on today is my holiday cards. I always feel a little chagrined about my holiday cards, to tell the truth, and I have decided to stop that shit this year. The story is that I really do cards mainly for my relatives overseas, who have not seen me for years (and some of whom have not seen Nordic Boy ever). Because of this, my cards are always photo cards. I choose a photo or set of photos of us from throughout the year and make a card out of them and that way my family can see how we grow and change each year. For instance, this year, my cards have a photo from each season, so I can tell my relatives about the snowstorm in January and the Chicago trip in July, etc. Most of my relatives do not have computers, let alone Facebook or email addresses for me to send photos of us, so the holiday card is kind of important to me for that reason. So in past years, I used to order up those holiday cards for family, and then get another non-photo set for friends and family in the States. That got to be too much of a hassle and so for the past few years I have done just the photo cards.

Here's the thing. I don't know if you are aware, but there are some people who think it's weird that people such as us send out photo cards. It's like, looked upon as megalomanical in a Tyra Banks self-referential sort of way, or something. The first year I did this, someone said thanks for the card, and that they found it interesting that we sent out photos of ourselves. They said it in a non-assholey way, but it made me think. And when some other people said similar things, it made me think some more. And you know what I think it is? I think that the only way that (some, not all) people really want to see photos of you in that context is (a) if you have children and the photos are of them, or you with them, or (b) if you just got married and your photo is of you at your wedding or honeymoon or something, or (c) if you have done something worthy of photo-documentation, such as finishing a marathon, or buying a house, or graduating from grad school or something, or (d) if it's of you doing a brag-worthy hobby, like you traveling to Paris or you climbing a mountain or you underwater basketweaving. But you, just living your regular life, with regular happiness and contentedness? BORING. And also borderline Tyra narcissism.

So in the past couple of years, I have found myself making an excuse for the card, whenever anyone received one and thanked me for it, even to those people who weren't even making the "that's so interesting that you did that" sort of comments. "Oh, yeah, you're welcome. I only get those photocards for my overseas relatives, you see, and I know you probably don't need photos of us since you see us every week and everything, but you know, it's just that, um, it's for my relatives, and so, you know..." Which makes me look like a weirdo to the majority of people who weren't even thinking anything bad about the cards, which is a bonus.

Anyhow, this year, I have decided to officially stop feeling weird about the cards. I don't have kids, I don't do underwater basketweaving, I don't run marathons, and I didn't go on a honeymoon. What I did do this year was spend a lot of time with Nordic Boy, and we clocked in another year of being happy, and smiling a lot, and probably looking a bit older than the year before, and that's all the pictures show us doing. If that is boring, then people can be bored. If that makes us Tyra, then oh well. I'm good with that.

Well, maybe not good with being Tyra, exactly. But you know what I mean.

"And so I'm offering this simple phrase..."

Nordic Boy: Brrr. It sure is nippley out there today.
Me: Nippy.
Nordic Boy: What?
Me: It's nippy out there, not nippley.
Nordic Boy: Same thing.
Me: No, it's not. Nippy does not refer to nipples. It refers to nipping. Which is like biting.
Nordic Boy: I thought it was nipping. Like, you know, nipping.
Me: No, it's nipping, like a dog nips at your ankles. Or Jack Frost nipping at your nose.
Nordic Boy: Oh. So Jack Frost is not nippling at your nose?
Me: What, like nipple on nose action?
Nordic Boy: It would be such a better song if that were the case.
Me: (groucho impersonation) And don't even get me started on the chestnuts. Is it hot in here or are my chestnuts roasting?
Nordic Boy: Ew.
Me: Listen, you started this whole thing. Don't complain now.

What if I have to talk about the Buttock Zeitgeist?

Words and phrases that I just can't use, either at all or at the very least without rolling my eyes, giggling, or being loaded with sarcasm:

TIA (for "thanks in advance")
return on investment (or even worse, just saying "R.O.I.")
just a heads up
bailiwick
poo-poo (as in, "he poo-poo'ed that idea")
outside the box
win-win
kudos
massaging the data
staycation
webinar
vista
Twihard
buttock (weirdly, this is only true of the singular. I can say "buttocks" just fine).
zeitgeist
panties

What words bug you?

My Professional Opinion

Are you shocked at how little I talk about books? I am the Pop Culture Librarian, after all. LIBRARIAN. It's right in the title!

Come to think of it, are you shocked that I don't talk about Pop Culture either?

It's like this whole blog is a LIE. A LIE, I tell you!

I don't know why I am trying to whip you all into a mob-style fury directed at me. I just felt enraged, on your behalf, as readers. And also? I realize that using the terms "shocked" and "enraged" is so completely out of proportion to the importance of anything related to this blog, but you know me. I like to ham it up.

Anyway, a couple of people asked me about my mention of A Prairie Tale, by Melissa Gilbert. In response, I give you my goodreads review of it. That's right, I am recycling content from goodreads to blogland. Once again, I am setting the bar as low as low can go.



If you're going to write a celebrity tell-all, this is how it's done, people. The ingredients: a starlet who is born into a show business family and can tell anecdotes about meeting the likes of Groucho Marx and Ann-Margret before turning 10. Also, anecdotes about an affair with Danny Sugerman and Billy Idol doesn't hurt. Throw in a long-term tumultuous relationship with Rob Lowe? Yes, please. Sprinkle with vignettes where one of the guys from the John Hughes Brat Pack makes out with Liza Minnelli (I won't spoil it by telling you who) and a tryst between John Cusack and another 80s star is revealed, and then top it off by a description of a post-9/11 visit from Karl Rove to talk about how the entertainment industry can fight terrorism, and you have WON ME OVER. Nice one, Half Pint.