semi-confessions of an almost shopaholic (but i'm really well-dressed.)

You know that old saying "your eyes are too big for your stomach" suggesting that you shouldn't get more food than you will eat? well in my case it should be "my bank account is much too small for my closet," as I have discovered since a) being married and b) sharing a bank account. t's not that sharing the bank account is a burden -- we are really good at sharing. Well, Bryan is good at sharing. But the thing I don't like is Bryan can see where his share of the money is going. That is what I am not so comfortable with. It's getting hard to cover up the multiple trips to Target and an occasional Anthropologie charge with the excuse of "we needed groceries." I'm pretty sure that I've conditioned Bryan to think that "do you want to starve???" means "i need a new cardigan."

I suppose I should just avoid malls, shopping centers, outlet stores, county fair's and bazaars, garage sales and side of the road vendors from now on. Or maybe Gap and J.Crew will start carrying perishable goods.

25 and growing.

No more beating around the bush. I am getting old. In the wake of my 25th birthday, i've been thinking a lot about how things have changed. I mean this side of 10 years ago I was excited to get my period and now I countdown the days to the next Hiroshima to which I refer to it with names of movies like "There will be blood" or "Rambo". I now realize that it's not just an unfertilized egg but yet another future family member that bit the dust. When I say these things, most people say I'm crazy -- that I'm at my pinnacle of youth. But I feel it, old age that is. I feel it creeping on. So I decided to do what I do best. I decided to make a list of things of things that prove that I have turned 1 year older:

I now HAVE TO use a sleep mask, ear plugs and tylenol pm to go to sleep at night.

While bathing our dogs for 20 minutes, I was bent over the bathtub for so long that I literally couldn't stand back up.

I don't think mom jeans are all that bad anymore. If you have the real estate, what's wrong with a 9-inch zipper?

I was actually sad that the only Luby's in town shut down this past week. Where am I going to get square fried fish now?

The other day I thought to myself "Those youngsters drive too fast!" and then I peed in my adult diaper.

At a restuarant the other day, I was tempted to only tip the waiter a dollar.

I see the importance of an elasticized waist band.

I've started keeping hard candy at my desk and around our house and insist on anyone that enters in must have one.

There really is nothing better than peace and quiet and a good ol' Murder She Wrote marathon.

I've thrown out using the conventional internet and returned to my tried and true AOL account. I've also got a new email address at juno.com. Let me know if you are intersested in being on my forward list.

So there it is -- 25 years old. So with each year down, more wrinkles shows up. I guess it's not so bad. In about 30 years, I'll be able to get discounts at movie theaters and hotels as a reward for having bad knees and a bald spot.

oh look -- is that another random mole? Happy birthday to me.

in the time of love and code.

As i was working on some html for a super secret project, I was getting very frustrated. As I began to google "html for dummies", I asked Bryan: "Who do you think even wrote HTML?" His response:

"I don't know, some virgin."

Cruel, no? I just know that there is a script-loving virgin out there softly crying into his wireless keyboard.

silly boy, diets are for girls.

there might be nothing worse than a man on a diet, this I know.

As newlyweds we have experienced the ups and the downs -- of the scale that is. Getting married is hard on the body in the fact that from the time of your engagement to the time of your wedding all you do is celebrate. And by celebrate I mean eat. And then a whole week follows where you do nothing but lie around nice hotels and eat expensive things in the sacred name of marriage. {This is also the tradition of every anniversary, birthday or holiday.)

Then you come back to reality where you are just another old and fat married couple. Wait -- fat? When did we get fat...and that's when it hits you. Like a bag of fast food to the face. Over the last 3 months, while it looked like you were celebrating, your metabolism turned against you and you got fat.

So here we are on the other side of a year and half of marriage. Happy -- but happy fat. So in the wake of this reality, I put Bryan and myself on a diet. For the first few weeks, things were going well. We were cooking healthy things, going for walks, watching the biggest loser. And then we hit week 3. That's when my husband turned on me. He turned into a dieting monster. He told his co-workers that he was on a diet, his friends, his family. Everyone knows.

Now I think that all women have an understood rule -- it's okay to break a diet every once in a while. I mean how else are we suppose to go to lunch together? Or celebrate an office birthday if we are always on a diet? or go to starbucks 3x a week because its so close to our office and we skipped breakfast? (which is in fact why we are always on a diet.) Men on the other hand, as I've found out, do not break rules. If you are on a diet -- YOU ARE ON A DIET. end of story. no excuses. no fear. ain't skeered. [add other crappy t-shirt slogans here]

So my dearest female friends -- please for the sake of midnight snacking and the occasional afternoon chocolate shake, do not ask your husband to go on a diet with you. Yes, you will lose weight, but you must ask yourself -- what will you gain? Yes, I've lost 5 lbs but I've gained a 185 lb man who tells practically everyone he meets that he is in fact on a diet. This is when people gasp and say "you?? you don't need to be on a diet!" and then they look at me and shake my hand while staring at me with that unapproving eye that says "You could lose a few."

Don't put your husbands on a diet. That's what low self-esteem is for.

dear stranger named ernestine,

i accidentally took your coffee at starbucks today (that's how i got your name). a non-fat latte -- great choice. i hope you got my drink as well -- a double chocolate espresso frapaccino with whip cream, carmel and cheesecake bites on top. "sugar exhaustion" is what i like to call this special drink. well worth my $10.

you looked like you were in workout clothes, just back from the gym. well there is nothing like a starbucks sugar exhaustion to make up for the weight you might have just lost.

til we switch again,

kendi

and this little piggy went on a diet.

The office kitchen has been stocked full of apples, diet soda and ham lately. This always means someone is on a diet. Sure, ham might be a strange choice for a diet but as a lady at my work explained to me, when you are on a diet--ham is your best friend. What you have to watch out for are "the carbs" They. Are. Everywhere. -- except for meat. (naturally) She says to me:

"Yeah, I'm on this low-carb diet. I just eat a salad and I load on tons of ham -- I just pile it on."

"Oh my." I say as I shuddered to think which little piggy ended up on her morning salad.

"Did you know that there are no carbs in ham?? In fact, there are no carbs in any meat! None!"

At this point, I restrain myself from saying "except for the fine delicacy of meatloaf" solely because I didn't want to confuse her any more. So I say "Really? Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah. You should look it up sometime, I looked all of this up on the world wide intra-web."

so for my dear friend, the co-worker i've made a list of other items that do not have carbs.

1. a solid wood desk
2. boats
3. tennis shoes or leather boots
4. animal bones
5. rubber tires
6. nail polish remover
7. any type of metal
8. floppy disks
9. swords
10. common sense

good luck with all of your future dieting endeavors.

"I'm pretty sure anytime I smell nachos I think of you."

-- my dearest long-distance friend, Lindsay Hoefer on missing me

age is just a number -- but yours is just so much bigger than mine.

I hate that when an older person asks bewildered, "how do you know that??" and my answer can't be "because I'm not retarded."

Two things could happen if i answer this way: the person i say this to has a retarded child I don't know about or they are retarded and I've offended them to their face. plus i would be breaking all sorts of social laws and all of my good karma i've been saving up will turn into bad resulting in a piano falling on me and ultimately leading to my untimely death.

but still, it would feel so good.

EDIT: I would like to thank my dear friends for your suggestions. Yes, maybe "retard" is much too harsh. Next time someone asks me how I am so smart I will simply answer with "I don't know. It must be in my jeans."

serving size

On cold(er) days, Bryan and I like to cook this amazing bean soup in our crock pot. Today we started making it and I said, why don't we just make half? Since we never finish it and we hate left overs. We both agreed that this was the best idea ever and wondered why we hadn't come up with this yet. (I also felt like this when the iPod came out.) So as we were making this soup, B looked on the back of the bag for the beans and started laughing. He then pointed out to me that our crock pot of beans is suppose to be 14-16 servings or roughly a school bus of children, not 2 adults.

It's a wonder we don't weigh 300 lbs. Yet.

pescatarian

I just saw a fish display at our local grocer that was a dead fish inside of a larger dead fish. It was just so wrong. That would be like stuffing a dead chicken with an egg or a pig with bacon or a person with a toddler. It's just not right.

In case you were wondering, we did go ahead and get some meat. The toddler inside the person was just too tempting.

In other news, I accidentally ate a partially raw hamburger for dinner and I'm still kicking. It's a new diet I'm trying -- it's called e. coli. I figured if diet and exercise don't work out, there is always food-borne illness to take off the weight. I've been making sushi out of raw chicken and beef all week. The doctor says at this rate I should be at my goal weight in a few weeks. He also said I'll need a liver transplant and maybe a prothestic leg (I think he was just trying to scare me on that one though.)

freudian slip.

i woke up this morning, went into the bathroom and took one look at myself in the mirror and muttered "faces of meth" and went and laid back down. apparently my subconscious is ready for me to get some sleep.

makeup can cover up methface pretty well though. of course, i did hear someone whisper "clown" under their breath today. i think that they were just jealous though -- of my size 11 red TOMS.

I have a bad habit of saying "The fat guy?" when Bryan refers to someone on the Biggest Loser. Which Bryan has to reluctantly say..."which one?" and then rolls his eyes at me saying I'm "insensitive".

I don't know if insensitive is the word to use for someone who bakes a whole batch of cookies every Tuesday for the newest episode of Biggest Loser for her husband, who happens to love this show and cookies. We like to eat one for every pound lost. Just to celebrate.

Pillow Talk

I'm not sure what you and your significant other's nighttime talk is like, but lately Bryan and I have been getting into some really deep conversations. Last night it was "What our parents used to put in the freezer and then make us eat 6 months later."

We stayed up like young lovers talking about the food that our parents would deep freeze, defrost and then call dinner, only 6 months later. This is literally a child's worst nightmare. As we were debating who had the worst freezer food experience, it was definetly a toss up.
Bryan's mom's frozen dish of choice: Beef Chili. Not too bad right? Until it freezes into what Bryan calls a "chilli cube" where the fat rises to the top and creates a gel and the meat stays at the bottom. The whole thing is of course in the form of whatever tupperware his mom put it in (in this case, a square). Once you see that as a child, you don't come back from that. You just can't defrost memories.

My mom's frozen dish of choice: Chicken Spaghetti. My nemesis when freshly cooked, so you can imagine how I felt when it was frozen for that second meal that kept threatening to happen when our pantry got low. I can still remember opening up the freezer and just staring that chicken spaghetti right in the eye. I was too afraid to make a move after I spotted it sitting there all frozen and gross because I was afraid my mom would see it and think it was a good idea for dinner. I tried many times to sneak it out of the freezer and right into the trash, but those times always ended with a defrosted dinner of something that hadn't been alive for many months/possibly years. The worst was when we didn't finish it the second time and we had to freeze it again. (I just threw up thinking about it.) Third time is not a charm.

So this my friends is what keeps us up at night. I'm not even going to tell you what we do for fun. (it doesn't involve chicken spaghetti or the chilli cube.)

like mother, like daughter...

My mom and I were talking about her trip to visit me this coming weekend. As we were talking about our fun plans my mom says " I'm so excited! We're going to have so much fun! {pause} Are you going to be on your period?"

Now, this means 1 of 2 things. Either I have the worst PMS ever and no one in my family has told me about it and they've been avoiding me every 28 days for the last 10 years OR my mom wants to swim.

I guess if she packs a swimsuit, I'll know the truth.

"I think I'm going to shave my head..."

This is a picture of my husband:


This is a picture of my husband after he decides to shave his head and forgets to put the guard on and cuts a 2x2 inch square into his head in which some people think its a cultural thing, others a mistake:


Anyways, every year we go to ACL Festival. And every year I hear the words "I think I'm going to shave my head..." And I always say "No, it's not a good idea." With which I hear a high-pitched "Really?" And that's when I must bust out this photo.

So far, no razor. But I have a sick feeling that I"m going to wake up to a sink full of Bryan hair. I'll keep you updated.