February 17, 2009

Am I Random Or Just Wearing A Sweater Vest?

So everyone, I mean everyone is participating in Random Tuesday Thoughts sponsored by Keely over at The Un-Mom. I thought I’d give it a try this week and I have to say, it’s so cathartic. I very much loved clearing out all the junk rattling around in head. I need to do the same thing with all the junk in my trunk.

No, not that kind of junk
Okay, just a small clarification before we get rolling here. The “junk in my trunk” I mentioned above in no way refers to my backside, m’kay? I honestly do have a bunch of junk in my car trunk including a stroller, an empty Macy’s bag, at least three clean diapers and maybe one dirty diaper. Please don't judge me.

Reason #264 that I love my husband
A few weeks ago I was leaving a comment on Tattooed Minivan Mom’s site and I needed the correct spelling for a particular word.
“Honey?” I shouted down stairs, “How do you spell ‘douche’?”
Without skipping a beat he hollered, “D-O-U-C-H-E.”
He never asked me why. True love. Forever.

Reason # 5 that I now love the dollar store
I’ve never really spent much time at dollar stores until one moved into a shopping center near our home. As of late, I stop by at least once a week to pick up dish soap, cleaning supplies and cookies for the kids’ lunches. Last week, I took Henry and Reese along with me so that they could each pick out a toy as a reward for their good behavior. (Henry picked out a ninja sword and Reese snagged a flute, in case you’re wondering.)

Anyway, as I made my way to the register, a pile of pink boxes along one of the aisles caught my eye. I recognized them as my tampon of choice. I honestly let out a little gasp of joy when I saw them stacked on the shelf. I ran over, examined all the boxes carefully to make sure that I was, in fact, purchasing Tampax brand tampons and not some knock-off brand like “Timpax”.

I threw as many boxes as I could manage into my basket, then urged my four-year old son to carry several boxes in his little arms and follow me up to the front register. He dropped most of them along the way and ended up kicking them with along the floor for me.

Sure, I got strange glances from my fellow shoppers as I held a baby in one arm, and urged my son to “Kick harder! Get those boxes up there!” But then again, I am now the proud owner of 17 boxes of Tampax at the cool price of a buck a box. Score.

I’m irregular
I really need to get myself organized and start posting regularly again. I’d like to set a schedule to log on and read everyone again. My internet usage is pathetic these days. I sneak on here and there, but my blog-stalking time has taken a severe blow.

Should I copy write this?
Severe Blow would be a great name for an album name, don’t you think?

Maybe I should just submit it instead?
.....orrrr, maybe an entry to urbandictionary.com? Take your pick.

I’m too sexy for this sweater vest
No one has told me to “party-hearty” ever. I thought about this for a while this morning while I was getting ready for work. I’ve decided I’m totally fine with this. People either take one look at me and 1) immediately know that I won’t be the life of the party, or 2) they figure that I’m plenty capable of partying and need no urging to get my party on. The high-collared shirt and sweater vest ensemble I’m wearing right now leads me to believe it might be the first one.

February 11, 2009

Love Lessons: We Think We Are So Much Smarter Than We Actually Are

The other day Jeremy and I were having our annual in-office romantic lunch. I had the Beef-n-Cheddar, while he opted for the more traditional Regular Roast Beef. Why was it romantic, you ask? Because there were curly fries, that’s why.

After looking longingly into each other’s eyes while we playfully wiped Arby’s sauce off of each other’s chin, we decided to surf the web together at my desk for a few minutes. A headline on the Yahoo! home page immediately caught my attention. It read: 10 Must-Avoid Spots on Valentine's Day. Or so we thought. In reality, it actually read: 10 Must-Avoid Spots for SINGLES on Valentine's Day. Very different.

Before realizing our mistake, Jeremy immediately shouted out “Strip club! You shouldn’t go to a strip club!”

Maybe he shouted it out a little too loud, because moments later several of our co-workers, all male btw, were huddled around my desk wondering what was going on. Jeremy assured them that there was no strip club emergency at this time and he was sorry to send out a false alarm.

This worried me. Is there some sort of guy-code in our office about strip clubs? If one of the men shouts out "Strip club!", does that mean that a trip to one of these establishments is imminent? Or does it mean that when a man blurts out those two words that he has a strip club story to tell? And really, couldn’t they have thought of a signal that is a little more subtle? I mean, when us women in the office have a good tale to tell, you don’t here us shouting “Three-way with members of the University of Utah's men’s swimming team!” Well, not anymore. That woman quit a few years back. I’m just sayin’.

Back to the list. As Jeremy and I read down the list that we thought was of the 10 places that you should not go on Valentine’s Day, we were perplexed as to why bed and breakfast joints, candlelit restaurants, cozy ski lodges and gourmet chocolate shops would make the top ten.

Eventually, as we usually do, Jeremy and I figured out our misread of the headline. We then spent the next ten or so minutes trying to convince the other one that we knew all along that the list was geared toward single people and that we were just going along with the joke for the other’s benefit. (Folks, you should know that we do this a lot. It’s our foundation for a strong marriage. In our relationship, love means never having to say your sorry…just so long as you can convince the other person that you were being wrong on purpose.)

Jeremy and I then thought it might be helpful to produce our own list of sorts. The 10 Must-Avoid Spots for Married Men on Valentine’s Day. You’re welcome.

1. Sizzler (Avoid the all you can eat and unflattering lighting trap.)
2. Strip clubs (Liberal use of glitter, and again, unflattering lighting.)
3. Your secretary’s house (Needs no explanation.)
4. Your mom’s house (Why would you?)
5. Free clinic (Again, why?)
6. Emergency room (Neither to just “hang out” as a place to meet women nor as the result of injury sustained when your wife catches you at secretary’s house. See # 3.)
7. Greeting card section of any retail store. (Because you shouldn’t have waiting so long to pick out a card for your wife, that’s why. I always make it a habit to run to Target or Wal-Mart on Valentine’s Day so I can give dirty looks to all the men scavenging the already picked over Valentine’s Day card section. How could you wait so long? I do this on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as well.)
8.Tattoo parlor (Love doesn’t always last forever, but ink does. The wise man would opt for the less permanent piercing.)
9. Sizzler (I guess I just can't stress this one enough.)
10. Jail* (No explanation necessary.)

*As with virtually everything that is written here at Steenky Bee, not all advice should be taken to heart. These are only guidelines, mere suggestions. My roommate in college had a brother, a perfectly nice guy, who met his future third wife, a booking officer, as he served a 24-hour stint in County Jail on Valentine’s Day. (I said he was nice, I never said he was a lawfully abiding citizen.) They were happily married for well over a year. This guy then went on to meet his fourth wife at a family dinner. She was the cashier at Sizzler. True story.

This post brought to you as part of Sprite's Keeper's Spin Cycle. This week's topic: L-O-V-E.