Lolz

My brother-in-law is going to the taping of American Idol today. I wish I could say I was joking.

Horrors, Indeed

I've managed to pare my early-morning routine down to about a 15-minute block of time each day before work; pee, shower, brush hair, brush teeth, and mouthwash while I get my clothes out of the closet. No blow-dryer or make-up for me anymore, thank you very much. Those are luxuries saved for the weekend. I think I'm doing a good job of preparing myself for when I have kids.

The advantage of getting ready so quickly in the morning is that it offers me the help of getting to sleep a little bit later each day, precious sleep that I so desperately need in order to function like a real human being and not a zombie.

I have no idea what happened to me. When Edgar and I started dating a mere three years and two months ago, we would (ahem) stay up during the week until around 1am and be out of bed at 5:30 before tackling a monstrous commute to work. And it worked. But somewhere over the past two years, I've totally lost my ability to function like a normal person if I don't get over eight hours of sleep each night. I've even found myself going to bed at 10:00 on the weekends. WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?

Anyways, this new version of me in the morning has also built time into my schedule so that after I'm done getting ready I have a few minutes to just sit down, zone out, stare at the TV, and stew in my own thoughts about how much I hate the stupid drivers that all converge on my commute in the morning. JUST BECAUSE THERE ARE A FEW PEDESTRIANS ON THE SIDEWALK NEXT TO YOU AND A STOP LIGHT A BLOCK AHEAD, THAT'S GREEN BY THE WAY, DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO CREEP ALONG IN FRONT OF ME AT 10 MPH DOWN A CITY STREET. Losers. My TV drug of choice in the mornings lately has been TLC programming. Depending on if I have to be to work at 7:30 or 8:00, the shows on around the time that I park myself on the bed in the morning are either A Baby Story or Clean Sweep. Or at least it was Clean Sweep until this week when they started running that abominable clown-car vagina show 19 Kids and Counting in its place. TLC, I will be sending you an angry letter.

Anyways, on Monday, finding myself ready even earlier than I expected, I sat down to catch the last few minutes of A Baby Story before being shockingly, unexpectedly greeted by the Jim-Bob clan in place of Tava and her sorts and her infectious energy and the carpenter who always spreads the paint on the wall with his fingers. The couple on A Baby Story was a Jewish-Italian family (at least I hope after naming their son Giacomo that they were at least part-Italian). The woman was incredibly obnoxious as they filmed her right after labor ("OH MY GAWD, OH MY GAWD, OH MY GAWD, I TOTALLY DID IT! OH MY GAWD!") and I was half tempted to change the channel, but I decided to stick it out for the "life-after-baby" segment that they show in every episode. For this family, their follow-up was 10 days postpartum for the baby's bris.

And then there was grandma. Oh, crazy old Jewish-Italian grandma, with your crazy teased hair and your crazy fingernails and all of your crazy gold jewelry. Way to play into stereotypes. But after opening her mouth, crazy old Jewish-Italian grandma was even crazier than I thought. Because she was holding the baby (not very well by the way...hey crazy old Jewish-Italian grandma, babies that young cannot hold up their heads, so just holding them up by their arms is probably not a good idea) and she was all "Oh, baby, do you want to dance? Ok?" And she started singing to him and kind of convulsively shaking him around to make him dance. But the thing was....ok here's the thing. She was singing, to this sweet little 10 day old baby that was about to have a very unpleasant experience with a knife, "Little shop! Little shop of horrors! Little shop! Little shop of horrors!" like IT WAS THE GREATEST SONG IN THE UNIVERSE.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. You Are My Sunshine. The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Old MacDonald. These are songs you sing to babies. Not Little Shop of Horrors. Not songs about giant people-eating plants and dentists addicted to nitrous oxide. This is the point where if it was my baby story I would tell Grandma it's time to give the baby back and turn to the camera crew and plead with them to please not turn that film over to their producers.

I was worried this might happen

Uh oh. I officially like Glee.

AMANDA, ONE OF YOUR NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS WAS TO BREAK UP WITH MORE TV, NOT ADD NEW SHOWS.

Bad Amanda.

Walk this way

Having won a $25 gift card for PF Chang's at work (because I'm just that awesome), Edgar and I decided to have ourselves a little date night. Because date night for middle middle class citizens like us entails having dinner at a restaurant in the vein of PF Changs, Olive Garden, Chili's, Outback Steakhouse, etc. You know, those havens of good worker-bees. We're good little faux-yuppies pumping cash flow into the economy.

The PF Chang's at Shoreline Village is about a three-quarter mile jaunt down the street from our apartment. There's a part of the sidewalk that goes down a hill at a fairly steep grade. So la la la, there we go, walking down the street, going about our business in totally sensible shoes, and then all of a sudden BAM my left foot slips out from under me and I fall with my right knee behind me and my left leg sprawled in front of me. And besides keeping a hold to my hand, Edgar just starts laughing and I had to be all "Need I remind you about that time earlier this week when you almost died because you choked on your Diet Coke in the middle of a Jack 'n the Box? A JACK 'N THE BOX? REMEMBER THAT?" So after limping the rest of the way to the restaurant I discovered that I had torn a hole in the knee of my jeans and scraped my knee to shit.

So, you know. Awesome.

Forget the food. Get this. On the way back, walking home, all full of Dan Dan Noodle-y goodness, we passed on the street....

...you'll never guess.....

.....THE MOTHER OF MICHAEL PHELPS. That's right, the lady that pushed out of her vagina the Dumbo-eared boy (I'm thinking they used forceps) that would one day become an Olympic, no, scratch that, an AMERICAN hero that won eight gold medals in the land of China. THAT'S RIGHT, TAKE THAT COMMUNISTS. And his sister was there too. And the reason I recognized them was not because I'm a Michael Phelps stalker but because when the Summer Olympics were on in 2008 Edgar and I were glued to the events for a lack of other things to do and how many freakin' times did they show little pre-recorded segments of interviews with his mama and then show him giving his sister the flowers after he got yet another gold medal draped around his neck.

And no, just because I live in Southern California, I don't see celebrities on a daily basis. Or, in this case, people with shared glory that bask in the glow of said celebrities. So it's kind of still a big deal to me in that "girl from the Mid-West that dreamed of being a star as a child" kind of way. I think that the only celebrities I've seen since living in California were Magnum PI and Carrie Ann Inaba at the Revlon 5k in 2008.

Oh, Pine Avenue, I never know what you're going to throw at me.

What an eventful evening.

Lost: The update

Edgar and I have now completed three seasons in our "Let's try to figure out what's going on on Lost" project. My eyes hurt a little bit.

So here's my thing:

Um, Charlie. Hobbit-man. You are dumb. And you totally didn't have to die. When running for the door in the underwater hatch, you could have just run two more steps to be on the other side of it and then closed it from the outside. It had the big dial-y thing to seal it on the other side.

You brought this upon yourself. Or the writers of the show were stupid and brought it upon you, whichever.

Either way, YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE. Was anyone else as annoyed by this as I was? And yes, I know, IT'S A TV SHOW. I just can't help but become indignant about stuff like that though. I get too emotionally involved. It's the same way with every show for me. I get mad if a character I like gets killed off. I have an "I hate you, I love you" relationship every time the two characters that are meant to be together have some made-for-TV obstacle arise between them. Ooooh, will they make it? Will they not? Who cares, it's a TV show, right? I CARE, THAT'S WHO. Escapism at its finest.

I'm the same way with books. I just finished reading Jane Eyre and I absolutely hated it, because I found Jane Eyre herself to be a whiny, indecisive, arrogant, and entitled bitch. You're supposed to be some great figure in literature? Whatever, you wouldn't have had half the problems you did if you weren't so whiny, indecisive, arrogant, and entitled. And then that boring book could have been much shorter than 500 pages. And I KNOW, she's a figment of Charlotte Bronte's imagination. It's just the principal of it!

She says, as the shelves of the bookshelf groan in agony

I hope everyone out there in Internet-land had a safe and wonderful Christmas. I enjoyed my Christmas in the company of my husband (not to sound all sappy, but that's really all I needed) while wrapped up like an eskimo in this blanket/throw/wrap contraption that my father-in-law gave me on Christmas Eve. It has zippers and snaps and SNUGGIES BE DAMNED. I am now Eskimo Wife. And as Fiyero spent a good part of the pitiful Colts game yesterday under the blanket with me, he is now Eskimo Kitteh.

While I have lots of Christmas themed things to write about (the bulk of which center around Catholic church attendence on Christmas Eve by this not-at-all-a-Catholic girl), I thought I'd throw this out there in the meantime. It's a random meme that I found floating around out there and thought it to be rather timely since I'm at the beginning of a massive "Read all the books you always 1) wanted to read 2) thought you should read 3) heard you should read" project. The ever-growing project list is currently at 525 books. I've managed to cross sixteen off of that 525. The project began when I was out of work and had a lot of time on my hands while armed with a library card. Reading time has been scarce the last few months, will probably become scarcer still, what with this Lost project, but it's always something that I can come back too. For the meme, it's apparently the consensus that most people will only have read 6 of the 100 books.

So here's the deal. From this list, you bold the books that you've read and italicize the ones that you've not completed. I'm also adding a new category by asterisking (is that a word? If not, it should be. Websters, TAKE NOTE) the books that are part of my project, so you all can see my good intentions. I liked this list because even with the ones that I haven't read and don't own, there are a ton that are on my personal to-do list as well. And yes, I too find it kind of silly that they have the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe listed separately, but I guess that's because most people have read the one part of the series while not reading any of the others.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy*
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien*
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy*
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh*
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens*
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood*
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert*
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley*
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold*
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas*
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville*
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens*
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker*
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray*
80 Possession - AS Byatt*
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker*
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro*
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert*
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams*
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole*
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas*
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare*
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So between completed and started I'm at 25 out of the 100. Not too shabby, I don't think, but it could definitely be better.

I'm working on it.

Chalk this up to a probably bad idea

December is The Land of No TV, wherein all of the good shows that you like to watch and DVR and fill your long cold evenings with go on hiatus and leave you seeking other sources of warmth. Like the under the covers naked kind of warmth that your husband CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT. I will not number the amount of times that I've had my leg humped like a dog as playful playing quickly turns to "Hey, so you wanna *raised eyebrow, cocked head*......you know?"

It's a lot.

Needless to say, as I am a person that appreciates the capability to walk and also knows she can't get pregnant if she's not ovulating (SO WHAT'S THE POINT, RIGHT?), we've had to turn to alternate forms of entertainment. Don't look at me like that, I was only kidding and I still give it up multiple times a week. Since you wanted to know that.

Anyways.

Alternate programming has found Edgar and I renting the first few seasons of Lost on DVD. I never saw the first two seasons. Edgar didn't start watching it until late in the third season with me. Both of us are sufficiently lost (no ha ha pun intended) when we watch the show, but feel like we can't let the pop culture phenomenon pass us by.

Side note: Edgar and I watch a lot of TV. It's an easy and cheap and lazy form of entertainment, so I'm all Sign me up! But we don't watch shows just because pop culture tells us we should be watching it. I'll give a show a try if I hear good things about it or if someone I know really likes it or if it looks interesting. But I won't continue to watch it if I don't like it. So SUCK IT Anna Paquin and your stupid show on Showtime about vampires (no pun intended there either, but I guess it works). You call that acting? I call it raising your eyebrows and speaking in a hideously bad impression of a southern accent. I tried watching the first episode of that show when it premiered and couldn't figure out if you were trying to play your character as slow or not. That isn't a good thing to leave the audience wondering, especially when they realize that you aren't and become offended for all of the slow viewers out there. So stop shoving it down my throat, Golden Globe Awards!

Rant over.

Anyways.

I was talking about Lost. I had a friend that really liked the show and got me started watching it. It was all very confusing to me, but I liked the mystery aspect, and I was able to pick up enough of the backstory as it went along to be able to provide a sufficient explanation to Edgar when he started watching it with me. And then it went all bat shit crazy and we were all "Would this make sense if we had watched the show from the beginning?" "Time travel?"

And that brings up to present day. With all of the final season Lost promos everywhere we decided to catch up on what we missed in hopes that going back to the beginning would help the end make more sense. Plus, it's fun to watch a show back-to-back-to-back like that. Don't agree? I'll lend you the entire collection of Friends and Sex and the City on DVD and find out what you think after basking in that glow for a few weeks. Anyways, I'm totally stoked for this little Lost marathon that we've embarked upon, and I'm hoping that we can get through all of the seaons that are out on DVD before the new season premieres. I don't think that's until February (bless you, TiVo, for always remembering) so I'm sure we've got the time.

Please tell me I'm not the only person in the world doing this?

One race where I get to sit still

On Saturday evening Edgar and I made the three-quarters of a mile trek down Pine Avenue to check out "2012" at the local Cinemark. Which brought up a few things, like:

1) Must stop going to movies in the evening at full price.
2) Why do people bring tiny tiny children to movies that aren't going to let out until well after 10 o'clock?
3) Why was the movie theater playing the sad Wal-Mart commercial? As if I wasn't already feeling trepidation for the people that were surely about to bite it in the movie I was about to watch?
4) Why do people clap at the end of a movie? It's a movie, not play, stupid. They can't hear you.
5) Why would you stand leaning against the sink playing with your phone in a crowded bathroom after a packed movie gets out, blocking other womens' access to a free sink to wash their hands and completely ignoring the bitter "Excuse me?" coming out of other's mouths? (Yes, tweenie, I'm looking STRAIGHT AT YOU.)


Going to the movies also brought me that little happy feeling in my gut that Oscar season is upon us. Of course that feeling might also be a little bitty baby but let's not confuse one thing with another, shall we? I've always loved to go to the movies; something about overpriced popcorn and buckets of soda six times the size of my bladder (for only 25 cents more than the medium!) make me tremble with delight and say "Sign me up, please." I revel in movie trivia. I may not have seen all of the "classics" and I can tell you very little about foreign films, but I still just like going to the movies, plain and simple. I have my standards, but they are totally inexplicable. I like what I like, and that's that.

Last year, though, I got very into the Oscar race. Edgar and I saw every movie that was nominated in the Best Picture category, and nearly every movie that had an actor/actress in the lead/supporting races. I say nearly because some of the smaller release movies that had actors in the race weren't playing at the theater near our place and I didn't feel like driving 40 miles to downtown LA to catch them. Especially since to catch a matinee showing we would have to leave much much earlier.

And take advantage of the matinee showings we did. At the AMC theater that was near our apartment in the December-February period of last year, they offered weekend matinees before noon at $6 per person. And since their security was ridiculously lax Edgar and I would make it a double feature and just movie hop. Nothing like a 10:30 am breakfast of salty buttery popcorn goodness washed down with a couple gallons of Diet Coke. There was also nothing like the slightly sick feeling that it would inevitably leave me with around 2:30 when we would be stumbling out of the theater into the blindingly bright light; turns out that your body does require more than fluffy carbs and soda in order to function.

And so it is time to begin that Saturday morning tradition once again. The only thing that is not going to last is the movie hopping part of it, I fear. Long Beach is much more ghetto (in the we-need-more-security) way than where we lived before (which was a whole 'nuther kind of ghetto). The Cinemark is much smaller and designed in a way that is not conducive to movie hopping activities. There's an AMC theater closer to our apartment, but it's even worse for the movie hopping, and *gasp* it does not have stadium seating. I guess I'm just spoiled, but we saw one movie there after we moved in and I don't really fancy seeing another.

But I love movie season! I love being able to watch the Oscars with a previous knowledge of the movies that are taking all of the top prizes. I like having my horse in the race. And I'm glad that I do this. While some of the Oscar fodder is, utlimately, fodder ("The Reader," anybody?), I also found some movies in there that I really liked as well ("Slumdog Millionaire," "Doubt") that I never would have seen if not for my goal to see all of the big Oscar movies. So let the games begin! My movie-watching ass is ready and waiting for that popcorn.

Thank you, America

Thank you, The Amazing Race. Thank you. Thank you for making me almost shoot wine out my nose when that stupid-ass blonde "singer," while driving in Dubai, said "Wow, it's funny here how you can be driving 120 miles an hour but it only feels like you're going 60."

And then her boyfriend said "That's because it's kilometers per hour, not miles. You are going 60."

People like you are too stupid to exist. Thank you.

But I am le tired.....

I know it's an oldie, but it will always be a goodie.

The jolly green giant

When I come home from work each day, I travel to the south end of the 110 freeway and cross the giant green behemoth that is the Vincent Thomas Bridge. That bridge, where I imagine my death happening on a daily basis*, ultimately connects me to Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, a hop, skip and a jump away from my apartment. This area is called the Port of Los Angeles; its title is kind of ironic considering that this mish-mashed area of Long Beach/San Pedro/Palos Verdes is not Los Angeles. Its part of Los Angeles County, but really? It's not LA. Speaking of Los Angeles County, what other county in this country is named after the major city in it? New York City is not in New York County, Indianapolis is not in Indianapolis County, Seattle is not in Seattle County. And Miami doesn't count because it's Miami-Dade County. The Dade part disqualifies it.

Speaking of these misnomers, why do people refer to Los Angeles as the West Coast? The West Coast spans from southern California all the way through northern Washington, but no one refers to Bend, Oregon as the West Coast. You say "I have to fly to the West Coast" and you're talking about LA. Or "the Left Coast" if you're trying to be witty but I beg you to not be. Same thing with the East Coast. Apparently the entire East Coast is comprised of New York City. THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE, PEOPLE. But I digress.

Anyways, I was talking about the Port of Los Angeles. Even though I nearly lose my head every time I drive over that damn bridge*, I love seeing the port every day. It's insane. Each direction you look, there are shipping containers as far as the eye can see. Hundreds. More than hundreds. Thousands. Many many thousands. There are these red and green and blue and orange shipping containers stacked everywhere, spanning these huge expanses of concrete, that arrived through the port from China and Japan and bunches of other places, waiting to be slapped on to the back of an 18 wheeler and hauled somewhere up the 710 freeway and out into the country. My favorite thing to see, though, are the huge cargo ships scattered through the port that are being loaded and unloaded with those technicolor containers. Two things go through my head when I see these, 1) Where did it come from and where is it going? and 2) How the fuck is that thing floating and not sunk somewhere in the middle of the Pacific? I'm no science major, but it just seems like ships that huge with that much weight on top of them would not be able to stay above water. And about that port of origin thing, I saw one the other day that said 'Italia' on the side. How the hell did an Italian ship end up over here? Wouldn't it have been a lot cheaper to just go to the East Coast New York? Did you get to see the penguins down there by Antarctica? Because I hear they're really cool and that the Daddy penguins do all of the work so that the Mommies can go about their business instead of getting all fat and hormonal. I think we humans could learn a lot from our little web-footed friends.

The geography of the port amazes me. The south side of the Ocean Blvd/Seaside Ave/VT Bridge is the ocean side; the north side of it looks like solid land. But the land on the north side, it appears to be full of parking lots and holding areas for the shipping containers, but today, I saw a huge cargo carrier over there. I could not see any water whatsoever. But there it was, just sitting there, la di dah, AS IF IT APPEARED OUT OF THIN AIR. How is this possible? I kept craning my neck to try to see how in the world it got there, but I almost simultaneously hit a concrete barrier and a slow moving Honda Odessey, so my mission was aborted. Some one, tell me, WHAT IS THIS WITCHCRAFT?

Scattered everywhere throughout the port are these giant forklifts that are used to lift the shipping containers off of the cargo ships and to move them on to solid land, and vice versa. Think Tom Cruise's job in War of the Worlds. They are EVERYWHERE. And the only thing I can think when I see them is that, damn, if that first scene in the Transformers 2 movie could actually happen in real life, and it happened during either morning or evening rush hour, I would totally have front row seats. THANK YOU, JERRY BRUCKHEIMER.

*Every time I cross that bridge, I see imminent death coming my way. There are these joints in the concrete where the pieces of the bridge are connected, and everytime I go over them, all of my pelvic muscles involuntarily contract. Like when you take that first drop on a roller coaster. Because I'm so totally fearful that the bridge will drop out from under me and that I will pee on myself all the way down. The same thing happens with those grates that are in sidewalks over sewer lines. I know, I'm crazy. Book my padded cell right now.

I Have My Boundaries

Something happened to Edgar and me yesterday that has tested me about what my limits are when it comes to publishing certain details of my life--and by extension his life--on this blog. I won't go into details about what exactly happened, except to say that we were betrayed by someone very close to us, and that betrayal is now causing a not insignificant monthly financial burden on us and will continue to do so for the next two years. It also is going to negatively impact us if we want to buy a house in the next seven years. Of course, that may never happen anyways since in California a shoebox with a small yard, and by 'yard' I mean 'concrete,' costs MORE THAN MY RIGHT KIDNEY IS WORTH.

What I will write about this situation is that it makes me thankful that I am married to a man like Edgar, a man who is willing to be honest with me, even when the results are unpleasant. He could have very easily hidden this betrayal from me, just as the person who betrayed us in the first place hid it from him. But he didn't. I could tell when I walked in the door that something was wrong, and when I asked what it was, he said "I'm telling you right now that you're not going to like this and that it is going to upset you." And then he told me. I value that honesty, and I think it's the mark of a strong relationship that we were able to rationally talk about it like adults without getting mad or frustrated at one another. I tend to react to bad news by freaking the hell out about it and not letting it go; he tends to react by getting super pissed off and volatile. However, his openness and honesty in telling me what was going on helped me keep from freaking out. And yes, while I was extremely upset about it, we worked through it together.

But since one dose of bad news is never enough, we had another unpleasant surprise this morning. This one I can talk about. A long time ago (at least that's how long ago it feels, even though it was only a month and a half ago), Edgar and I were initially going to move into a different apartment. Same building, different apartment. The apartment that we were going to get was on the second floor of the building, and because of the proximity to the next building on the block, we wouldn't have been able to get DirecTV satellite access from the balcony. So we called the friendly cable company, Charter, to get our TV service through them. We decided a few days later to upgrade to a different apartment in the building, this one being perfectly fine for DirecTV. Edgar called Charter to cancel our order. It was an unpleasant experience. They called him seven times over the next three days to try to "save" him as a customer. Personally, I think that if you really want someone to come back to you as a customer, don't call them like that and PISS THEM THE HELL OFF. It's just not good business. Anyways, they finally stopped calling, we went on living, we got our DirecTV, and life was good. But, what is this? Lo and behold, when Edgar checked his bank account this morning to make sure he was paid, along with his paycheck there was a $54.97 charge from Charter for service. Charter? What is your problem? He called them to be like "Excuse me, what are you charging me for?" And they were all "We couldn't have charged you, you don't have an account with us, you aren't in our computers" and he was all "THIS IS WHY I AM CALLING YOU."

Oh, Charter. I swear, this move has been the most mind-numbing, teeth-grating experience I have ever had when moving when it comes to phone, internet, and TV and companies. People need access to basic human services without all of the hassle! Forget food, water, and electricity. I want my TV and my Internet service so that I can watch The Amazing Race and then sit on my couch blogging about it! Seriously, Lance, what's with arm thing? Your voice makes me want to gouge out my eardrums with an 80 year old woman's knitting needles that are covered in cat hair and the odor of Elizabeth Taylor perfume.

Is that really so much to ask?

Our Brains are Rotting

When I woke up this morning, Edgar came in the bedroom, threw himself down on top of me with his head nestled in my neck, and said "Oh, babe, I couldn't sleep last night." When I asked him why, he told me that every time he tries to sleep he thinks about what happened to him on the plane.

That feeling of fear is invading every part of his life. Even though that situation turned out to be a false alarm, the fear was real and he now knows what it's like to face losing everything that you hold dear. I feel so bad because I can't make that pain go away. I want to be the nurturer, I want to take it all on me, but I can't. And I feel so powerless because I can't make him feel better. I can only assure him that he's safe and that he's here and he's alive, but it still doesn't change what he went through.

So we're trying to go along, business as usual. Yesterday we went to the grocery store. Three grocery stores, to be exact. They're luckily all in a really close vicinity to where we live, so it was actually only about an hour and a half trip. The bulk of that time was spent walking around Vons trying to find the hot & spicy buffalo wings that were on sale for $2.99 a pound. Hey, my husband's world may have almost ended, but today is still football Sunday and WE MUST BE PREPARED.

Outside of Superior, I experienced the most aggressive panhandler that I've ever seen in my life. We live in downtown Long Beach, so the homeless population is an ever-present part of life that you see on a daily basis. But this guy, THIS GUY, got so mad that these people who were loading up their SUV with every kind of expensive sugary soda and potato chips available (and at Superior, that shit is expensive; anything that doesn't come from Mexico costs an arm and a leg) wouldn't give him some money that he literally stood behind them and blocked their vehicle from pulling out of the parking spot. After they finally called his bluff and started to back up he moved over BEHIND OUR CAR and stood there yelling at them. Like that helps. Dude, they're not going to give you any money. Give it up. I undestand that you're homeless and that you need money, but that kind of behavior just angers everyone involved, not to mention making everyone more uncomfortable than words can express. I'm just sayin'.

The weekend also involved TWO different trips to the Rock Bottom Brewery that sits six blocks up the street from our apartment. We went Friday night after Edgar got home since neither of us had eaten, and that man clearly needed a beer. We also bought a growler of their Octoberfest and took it home with us. We each had one more glass of it Friday night after we walked home, and we decided yesterday that we would definitely need more than what we had on hand. So we walked down the street again and bought another growler to bring home. We're totally working towards getting our name on a little engraved plaque to be part of the Half Barrel Club. It's nice to have goals.

We then proceeded to spend the rest of the day on our asses in front of the TV. Edgar's business trip unfortunately coincided with the week that pretty much every single show of the TV season had their premieres. I might as well just admit it up front and say that Edgar and I are total TV addicts. Rather, we're TiVo addicts. Actually, scratch that, we're HD DVR addicts, because it's not a TiVo. Edgar is very specific about his electronics, and TiVo is it's own brand. Anyways, we like A LOT of TV shows. So there were many, many returning shows that we watch, and we tried out a bunch of new shows as well. If it looks remotely interesting, we watch it, get a feel for it, then wait for it to inevitably get cancelled once we're interested in it. So, off the top of my head, we had about 22 hours of TV to watch. Luckily, TV hours can be condensed, because if you can fast forward through the commercials (best invention EVER), an hour long show can be completed in less than 45 minutes and a half hour show can be completed in about 22 minutes. Yesterday, we started around 2 in the afternoon and were able to get through about 16 hours of TV by midnight. We even cooked dinner during that time too! Add in the multiple bathroom breaks that I required because THERE WAS JUST SO MUCH BEER, and I'd say that we are totally among the elite of TV watchers. Even with all of that work, we were only through Wednesday on the TV schedule. We still have Thursday and Friday to get through. And then the new week of shows, along with six more premieres, starts tonight. GOD BLESS YOU TIVO. I MEAN DIRECTV HD DVR. Some people might say it is a ridiculous waste of time, but it's a very inexpensive form of entertainment, and I really don't care what those people think. We know our TV watching days are limited since my biological clock insists that we have a baby soon, so we're stocking up on the indulgence.

Did I mention we're watching TV right now as I write this?

This Isn't Helping

Last night marked the premiere of the new season of The Biggest Loser. I love that show. I just started watching it last season. Not because it inspires me, I don't think. I think probably because it just makes me feel better about myself that I'm not that far gone.

I drank two beers (mmmm Modelo Especial) and ate 3 chocolate wafer cookies while I watched it. Jillian, please don't club me over the head with a medicine ball.

I'm In Love

Can I just say how much I am loving the Dave Matthews Band's new CD? Well, maybe not 'new,' since it came out early in the summer. Latest CD, happy now? Whatever it is, I've been really into it lately.

Much better than the mostly sub-par material off of the last two albums before that.

"Do you know what it is
to feel the light of love inside you,
where all the darkness falls away?
If you feel the way I feel
then I believe we have the answer
that I've been searching for tonight"

Can't stop listening. It's been on constant play in my car for the last several weeks.

Quit It

Kanye West. You must stop. NOW. We all hate you. You aren't cool. You're a douche. I hate using that word. Don't make me say it again.

You are not God's gift to our ears. Your stupid sunglasses are not God's gift to our eyes. Spouting your mouth off with no concern for others, especially a 19 year old girl who I don't even like but am forced to take her side at this moment, makes you a total TOOL.

GO COTES!

Today was a special day. Why, you ask? Because today was opening day of the NFL season. YAY!

And so begins 16 weeks (more if my team goes to the playoffs) of near heart attack-inducing 3 hour spans of my life.

I'm an Indianapolis Colts fan. Life is sometimes tough for me. I have the best quarterback in the league (eff you Tom Brady), I have some of the best receivers in the league, I have one of the two best safeties in the league (when he's healthy), but for some reason, we just can't seem to get it done. Lack of a running game and lack of the ability to stop the run are holding us down.

The Colts' first two possssions looked really good, of course until the respective interception and lost fumble came about. And thus began the spouting of what are sure to be oft repeated phrases: "Come on, morons!" "Catch the fucking ball!" "Run you bastard, RUN!!" They just make me nervous. They're good, then they're not good, then they're good again, and we just keep going round and round and round on this never ending cycle of pleasure and pain.

And not in the good way.

I love my Colts. I suffer like this only for them.

Two Things

Two totally awesome things happened today:

1) My surrogate big brother Patrick's third son was born today. I call him my surrogate older brother because he lived two houses down from my family for several years in our youth, and he and my brother were best friends. As cliched as it was, Patrick always knew when we would be having dinner and would show up about five minutes before hand, so it became the joke that he was my parent's second son. Therefore my surrogate older brother. Congratulations on your new baby boy!!

2) I ran for 15 whole minutes at a 5.2 mph pace. YAY ME. I totally rock at running. Even though I'm miserable the whole time. Tomorrow I plan to do 18 minutes at 5.0. Small steps, small steps.

Ooh, extra bonus awesome thing that I just remembered:

When I stopped by the leasing office for our apartment today to drop off our move-in inspection (yes, I know, we moved in last Saturday, but I'm a little behind on the times), I found out during a conversation with one of the leasing consultants that the TV show Dexter sometimes does location shooting right down the street from our building, and might even be shooting this weekend. At least, some TV show is shooting, but it might also be CSI: Miami, 'cuz apparently they like to rock it Long Beach style as well. But I hope it's Dexter. I LOVE DEXTER!

Working on the Book List

Quick status update: I finished To Kill a Mockingbird on Friday (loved it!) and have moved on to Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

I was so excited unpacking all of my boxes of books on Sunday. I luckily have about 15 books on my list that I currently have on my bookshelf, so I'm stocked with reading material for the time being.

Of course, this is assuming that I ever have time to read. Since we're living in a place that has a gym, I'm going to start working out again, so that will take up some time in the evening. Plus the new TV season is about to start, and as much as I hate to admit it, Edgar and I are addicted to TV. Super addicted. We have a schedule and everything to make sure that we get everything added on the DVR.

Plus there's the fact that Edgar cannot amuse himself for very long on his own. He's very ADD that way. If I'm by myself in another room reading, every so often he will wander into the room. "Whatcha doin?" "Reading." "Ok." And then he's off. And then he'll be back a half hour later. "Baby?" "What?" "Nothin', just seeing what you're doing." And so on, and so forth.

It's good practice for when we have kids.

To Kill a Mockingbird

I'm currently reading "To Kill a Mockingbird," and I have to say that I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. My main memory of it is watching the movie in eighth grade English class. Yes, we watched the movie, but didn't read the book. THAT, my friends, is some quality education.

Even the movie I don't remember much about. I remember Gregory Peck being super handsome back in his young days. And I remember the way the little girl that played Scout said "Atticus." She would stretch the "-cus" into this shade-too-long syllable with a pitch change in the middle. No one in eighth grade pulled any themes out of the movie; the only thing that we got from it was a week of kids saying "Atticu-us."

Anyways, I'm really enjoying the book. Despite the serious nature of the events that it describes, it's actually really funny. Harper Lee writes the thoughts of an eight or nine year old kid very well.

I'm in the middle of an endeavor right now. I have a list numbering somewhere around 500 books that I want to read. My current plan of attack is taking the list to the library, randomly picking a book on it, and checking it out. I'm excited about moving to our new place tomorrow because the Long Beach library is only about a half mile walk from our apartment, and it looks bigger than the Covina public library that I've been using lately. I'll try to keep track here in my posts of what the current book is.

My PSA for the day: Adults, get your kids library cards. It's the gift that keeps on giving.