Let's see how long this lasts...

Best of 2009 Blog Challenge

I heard about this idea from my girl over at Hilarity Ensues and I think it's pretty cool.  Plus, this way I won't have to stay up all night thinking about how many days of bad luck I've added up by not filling out email Christmas surveys.

The basic idea is to blog on a different topic for each day of December, recounting the best (fill in the blank) of 2009.  Like D., I also am psyched to not have to think about things to write about on my own...not that Adam leaves me in short supply...

December 7th: Best Blog (you didn't know you were missing) of 2009
Since it would be rude to nominate myself and all my awesomeness...damn.  I'll go with author Jen Lancaster's blog Jennsylvania.  She started out as an unemployed ex-sorostitute, emailing her friends about the trials and tribulations of finding a new job...and ended up becoming an author.  She loves Twilight, cats and shoes...no wonder it's also Adam's favorite blog!  (Just kidding...in case you couldn't tell.  He barely knows what a blog is.)  My favorite post so far this year is Taylor, Show Me on the Doll Where the Bad Cougar Touched You.

It's not over til it's over. Seriously.

Just when you think you've got things all figured out, God reminds you that you are sorely mistaken.  If you're lucky, you can laugh about it later.

I honest-to-God thought that people were over the whole I "don't work" thing.  Really, I did. 

I mean...I'm over actually caring what people think/say about it.  It's been 7 months.  It's not new information.  I don't have a 9-5, whoop dee doo. It works for me, it works for my husband, it works for my family.  Really, it does.

I no longer feel the need to explain what I "do all day" or why I quit PJS.  It's none of your business.  Really, it's not.

With that being said, I do notice when people STILL make comments.  Maybe more so than before, since they're less frequent and less intentionally hurtful and/or nosy.  Mostly, these comments make me wonder what Adam thinks.  I often relay the stupid comments to him over dinner, but he never says anything.  Not a word.  I started to wonder if maybe the reason he didn't say anything was that he'd changed his mind and wanted me to go back to the paper every day.  Then I really started freaking out.  I don't care what anyone thinks...except my husband...and if he's upset about it, then we have a real problem.  Really, we do.

When I asked him why he doesn't comment, he got pretty upset.  He said he thinks those people are stupid and it actually hurts his feelings too because people are saying mean things to his wife, and even though we both know they are untrue and ridiculous, it's still hurtful for him to hear that they're hurting me.  He said he's tired of having to explain and/or justify our personal decisions and thinks it's absolutely outrageous that people actually want justification.  We don't ask anyone to explain why they go back to work after having children, or why they don't.  We don't ask people why they purchase a specific vehicle or why they live in a certain area.  We just assume they made the decision that works best for their family, and that it's none of our business.  He said he didn't realize our decision would be so controversial that it would warrant people feeling that they actually had a right to question it.  Lastly, he said he is sick and tired of people not realizing that it's rude and disrespectful to BOTH of us, not just me, to make these comments.  I thought it was pretty sweet for him to stick up for me!  So the next time you have an ignorant/seemingly innocent (depending on who you ask) comment, I have one thing to say to you:  Really, fuck off!

The fat lady's aria

The sky has fallen, the end is near.

Adam knew a word I didn't.

It wasn't even related to farming.

We started back on hard core phase 1 of South Beach, as of Monday morning. Monday evening we were in Peoria and trying to figure out where we could eat dinner and have more options than a garden salad. Harder than one might think. White bread is EVERYWHERE!

I was near meltdown status, because everything I wanted included flour, pasta, fries, etc. Finally, I narrowed it down to 2 choices, but could not decide.

Adam said, "Well, you'll get more 'utils' out of the chicken."

I started cracking up. WTF are utils? It sounds like noodles but with a u. Sounds like a made-up word, if you ask me. He proceeded to inform me that they're a unit of measurement regarding enjoyment.

All throughout dinner, I could not focus on anything but this mystery word, which I still didn't believe was actually a word. By the time we got in the car, I had to bust out the blackberry and find out once and for all. Dictionary.com had no listings, but the thesaurus sure did. He was absolutely right.

Unfreakingbelievable.

He thought it was fantastic and decided he would start reading the thesaurus every day just to find a vocab word I don' t know. Ass.

Lauren vs. Mason Country III: The Epic Battle Rages On

The first day the construction crew arrived, I scared them (and myself) by picking up a "shoelace" that turned out to be a mouse tail.

After they left, a SWARM, no, a PLAGUE of pecker gnats (unrelated to Randy, I think) just HAPPENED to show up. Adam said it was just a coincidence. I thought otherwise. I thought the crew stirred up all the dirt, sand and whatever else, and that's where the gnats were previously lurking.

Yesterday, the construction crew was back again. After they left this time, I noticed a trail of red ants marching in time throughout my master bathroom. Upon further examination, they were in every room of the house. Randy says it's the rain. I think otherwise. They stirred up the front porch to pour concrete yesterday, and I'm willing to bet that was the headquarters of Ants Anonymous, Mason County chapter.

This morning (thankfully BEFORE the crew showed up), I went to the garage to get Bella some food. As I made my second scoop into the AIRTIGHT SEALED CONTAINER, I scooped up a dead mouse. Screamed and swearing commenced. This time I only scared the dog.

My attempts to get Adam to come home and dead with the mouse mania were futile. I am sad to report that he laughed at me, said this is what happens in Mason County, there's probably more where that one came from, and to get a dustpan, scoop it up and throw it into the burn pile. Then he laughed some more.

I clicked my heels 3x, but I didn't get anywhere. Assholes.

Back to the "airtight sealed container," the only thing I can figure out is that it actually IS airtight, the mouse was in the container/last bag of dog food, and when we dumped the food bag in, it was smashed under 40 lbs of Iams Healthy Naturals Chicken, and suffocated.

I think this qualifies for FML. If you've never been to http://www.fmylife.com/, I HIGHLY recommend it. http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/ is equally outstanding.

Weekend Thanks

I'd like to take some time to thank the people I DID see this weekend.

Chad, Brittany, Whitney, Tommy: Thank you for checking out the new house. Thanks also for your support of my blog, it means a lot to know people are reading/care. I'm glad the bullfrog made you laugh as hard as I did. I heart Jenga.

Keri and Randy: Thanks for lunch, and informing me that Babe's takes AMEX. That lit up my world. No joke. Keri, thanks for venturing to the big world of Canton for a pedicure. It's nice to finally have women around who have all their toes. :)

Kim, Katie, Uncle Keith, Aunt Jill: Thanks for coming all the way from PA for a BBQ. It meant a lot to Grandpa, I know. Plus, it was awesome just to see you all again! Sorry the CoMo trip didn't work out. I know what it's like when people refuse to call you back. :)

All Adam's male friends who visited over the past couple weeks: Thanks for actually acknowledging my presence. It's nice to know that you can actually hold a conversation with me when Adam's not around. Believe it or not...there are a lot of people who can't.

Adam's math, part 2

Yesterday, I was trying to clean out the saved list on our DVR. After much searching, I realized that I taped the season finale of The Millionaire Matchmaker at the beginning of the month, but forgot to watch it. As those of you who have a DVR know, you can either tape 1 show or a whole series. By the time we got our DVR, only the finale of The Millionaire Matchmaker was left.
The listing for that episode looked like this:

The Millionaire Matchmaker Thu 5/7 9:00 pm New episode

Adam came in as I was getting ready to watch it and goes, "Hey! You've still got FIVE episodes of that show to watch?"

I didn't get it at first. Knowing I only had one from the get go, I couldn't figure out where he got the 5 episodes from. So I asked.

"5 out of 7 episodes, right there honey!"

"Buddy, that says Thursday, 5/7. As in...May 7th, the day the show taped."

"Oooooh."

At least he can laugh at himself, because it would be kinda mean if I was the only one. :)

Lest anyone get their panties in a twist, I love my husband very much. There are few things I hate more than women who get together and have nothing to talk about except how stupid their husbands are. Since when did that become the cool thing to do? Sounds like a surefire path to becoming an old fucking hag, if you ask me.
These things just fall into my lap, make me laugh, and I write about them. That's it.

WTF is going on around here?

First it was the infamous "shoelace" incident.

Yesterday, we came home from Larry's to a particularly foul smell lurking outside the garage. Bella must have noticed it too because, before we pathetic humans could see where the stench was coming from, Bella ran up to the garage door with a feral dead squirrel in her mouth. LOVELY.

Problem is, Adam threw the squirrel out into the tree line across from our driveway...not 5 minutes later, we were inside and the coyotes seemed REALLY loud all of a sudden. How much ya wanna bet they were in that tree line scarfing squirrel guts? Just great. As if the damn things weren't close enough. 2 weeks ago there was one in the ditch across the street. Those lurking little bastards!

Today, I am forced out of the house because there is yet another mouse problem . A new mouse is in town...visiting the INSIDE of my house...inside of my blanket closet, to be exact. So what do I do instead? Text while mowing the lawn at the old house. I think texting while driving is still ok if you're only driving a lawn mower. Keri says everything is legal in Mason County, so I think I'm ok.

This just in: Adam said I was being cynical. Apparently he has not quite mastered the art of shutting his mouth when he has nothing nice to say. Doesn't everyone want to hear (as soon as your husband walks in the door), "why haven't you cleaned the...I'll shut up now!" He's learning, this one. Slowly, but surely. Sort of like the little engine that could.
Back to cynical me.
After the previous comment about cleaning the raspberries smashed all over the refrigerator, he said I was being cynical. Since I hadn't said anything, I had to ask..."do you even know what cynical means? "

"No."

Welcome to my world.

What the hell was I thinking?!

Let me sum up the past few days and you can all be the judges as to whether I am cut out for this country lifestyle...

Thursday, my in-laws were visiting (with new trees to plant, so my universe pollution has been downgraded to a category go fuck yourself) and wanted to eat at Larry's (can you blame them?).

Off to dinner we went and during dinner, my wonderful, U of I educated, otherwise intelligent husband commented that since he turned 31 this year, it had been 10 years since he was legally able to drink. He mentioned that he'd tried to calculate how many beers he'd consumed over the last 10 legal years, and figured that if he drank a case a week, he'd end up with 48 cases of beer per year... When a few of us questioned how he came to that final total, he said (with a tone clearly indicating WE were all complete idiots) "well, 1 case times 48 weeks in a year = 48 cases of beer." I'm like yeah, buddy, we got that part...where did the 48 weeks come from? He had no idea. "Well, there are 4 weeks per month (still acting like *I* am the moron here), times 12 months in a year...48 weeks." This went on and on until finally his mother had to explain that the correct math would be 365 days divided by 7 days in a week, totalling 52 weeks in a year. He didn't believe her.

"How can there be 5 weeks in a month?"
"Are all the calendars wrong then?"
"I don't believe you!"
"What do you mean not 5 FULL weeks in a month?"
"How do you account for February then? No months have to have SIX weeks to make up for it, so how do you explain that?"
"What about leap years?"

Wow.

I have a sneaking suspicion that his parents may be writing to U of I and asking for some of that tuition money back.

Maybe it wasn't the excess "smart cells" that would cause his brain to burst....


Sunday, we went to Steak n Shake and got into a discussion about where certain fast food chains started out.

Adam: "KFC, you know that one's from the south. Probably like Louisiana or something."
Me: "Or Kentucky..."
Adam: "...ooooooh. Duh. I meant to say Louisville, not Louisiana."
Me: "Right."
Adam: "Don't tell anyone about this, ok?"

Sure thing, sweetie! :)

Fast forward to this morning. I knew we had some construction crews coming to get the area in front of our garage ready for concrete, as well as bringing white rock in for the rest of the driveway.

I heard them show up and went out to see who was doing what and if they needed anything. I remembered the dog was outside, so I tracked her down and tried to drag her into the house. Bella is known for finding all sorts of lovely treasures, especially since previous construction crews have left lots of garbage everywhere. So far she's found 6 week old chocolate milk still in the container (smelled awesome when accidentally run over w/ a truck. Who knew chocolate milk turns pink after awhile?), rusty nails, bricks, old detergent bottles and etc. Today, she ran up to me with a leather shoelace in her mouth. We don't let her bring garbage in the house, so I grabbed the shoelace, pulled it out, and wouldn't you know...it was not a shoelace.

IT WAS A DEAD FUCKING MOUSE.

I dropped the mouse, started screaming, cussing, didn't even realize the construction crew was staring at me until they were right in front of me asking if I was ok. Apparently I was wringing my hands and staring at the ground...still screaming. I can still feel that nasty mouse tail in my hand. GROSS! Needless to say, the construction crew had a good laugh over that one.

Unfortunately, nasty day was not over.

My car was in the way of the construction crew, so I tried to get the dog into the car and move it down the road. She got in, with the dead mouse back in her mouth.

I dragged her and the mouse out of the car, got back in and moved it alone.

She's been puking up undigested dog food for the last 24 hours, so I wanted to make sure she didn't eat anything else, or get in the workers' way, so I started to drag her into the garage, where she promptly started gagging...and coughed up ANOTHER DEAD MOUSE. 4 minutes of screaming and swearing later, the dog and I were finally mouse-free and indoors. She's been whining ever since. Tough shit, puppy.

Has anyone seen my easy button lately? I need it. Or a shot. Whichever you track down first. Please?!