Cha cha cha

My best friend Amy teaches 2nd grade and she does this thing with her class where she gives each child a choice on their birthday about how they prefer the rest of the class sing the "Happy Birthday" song to them. She'll ask, "Do you want cha-cha's or no cha-cha's?".

If you choose cha-cha's then the birthday song is boisterous and loud with a lot of wahoo-ing and goes Happy Birthday to you - CHA-CHA-CHA, Happy Birthday to you - CHA-CHA-CHA. I think she does some other stuff too, like she wears a fright wig and big Mr. Magoo glasses, calls herself Birthday Betty and makes the birthday kid wear a giant sombrero or something. I'm not sure, but it's too late to call her to verify at the moment, so you'll just have to take my word for it. This isn't the New York Times and I don't have a staff of fact checkers here.

If you choose no cha-cha's then the song is just sung the normal way with very little fan fair. That's a fact.

I think it's nice that she gives them a choice.

She says you can pretty much divide the world into two kinds of people, those who prefer cha-cha's and those who prefer no cha-cha's.

I'm most definitely no cha-cha's.

And having said that now I will tell you that tomorrow is my birthday and that I will be 42. How the hell did that happen?

There won't be any cha-cha's or fan fair and that's just the way I like it. MDH and I are packing up the car when I get home from work and we're driving to Columbus where I will spend the weekend with my friends and family and that's totally fine with me. I bitch about my family a lot, but honestly I can't imagine a better way to celebrate my life than being surrounded by all the people I love.

Meanwhile I have spent the last week gorging on all sorts of ridiculous candies and treats and splurging on all sorts of crapola and potions along with various assorted services and telling myself it's for my birthday, including but not limited to:

• Cute little pink ear plugs for $3.99. Quite a luxury as I usually sleep with cotton balls that I have rolled into tight little balls and jammed into my ears to quell the jackhammer of MDH's snoring but these adorable pink ear canal shaped nuggets of foam are official, the real McCoy.
  
  
• A new hair cut with bangs and over $30 worth of hair care products at the salon, which really amounts to one can of Bedhead Queen for a Day and a new round brush because my old one broke a couple of weeks ago and I've been styling my hair with an old pick.
  



• Swedish Fish that I bought to give to my friend Becky when I see her in Columbus, but I ate half the bag last night while I watched 24 Hour Party People on our DVR and I can't very well give her a half eaten bag of candy wrapped up with a rubber band.
  
  
• The roast beef with swiss on rye with mayo that I bought for lunch at the cafeteria today - normally I pack something healthy.
  
  
• A pap smear and 3 month supply of birth control pills. Par-tay.
  
  
• An order of hot and sour soup and steamed dumplings for dinner tonight.

So that's me, livin' large.

Anyhoo... I'll take my cha-cha's this weekend in the form of the big Who Doesn't Lunch family reunion on Saturday filled with aunts, uncles, cousins, softball, grilled corn on the cob with lots of butter and salt, new babies that'll get passed around for cuddling, and the never ending bourbon soaked (we are from Kentucky after all) poker game that goes on, after all the kiddies are tucked in bed, into the wee hours of the morning.

In case you were wondering, the picture at the top is a festive "Ass" pinata that I found on Google Images quite by accident.

I hope you all have a wonderful my birthday weekend - cha cha cha!

Same Old Song & Dance

Another position has become available at the company where I'm contracting so I am once again trying to balance that fine line between being assertive and being a giant pain in the ass.

You thought I was going to say aggressive didn't you?

My efforts to gain permanent employment at the company where I'm contracting have moved way past aggressive.

It feels like campaigning and it's what you have to do apparently to get the attention of management and human resources around there. You have to continually make phone calls, ask people for your support and ask them to call the manager of the department with the available position and speak on your behalf.

It's like a fucking telethon and I'm the good cause.

Then you have to meet with people, upper level management type of people, and express your interest in the position even though the managers you are meeting with are not necessarily the managers in the department that has the available job, but the managers you meet with should know the manager of the department with the job so that they can give that manager the heads up about how great you are.

It's also a good idea to meet with at least two or three of the people who actually work in the department that has the available job and express your interest in the position and ask them intelligent questions about the department and the work they do and than also ask them to speak with their department manager on your behalf. This is also a good way to get the skinny on who else may have applied and get a fix on your competition.

I'm telling you this shit is exhausting and I don't even know if I'm going to get an interview yet.

And nobody tells you that you have to do any of this shit, but it's what you have to do to get noticed when you want to get a job here and are not already an employee.

They will always consider internal candidates before they consider you when you are not already an employee there. Even if the internal candidate is considerably less qualified than you, has all the intellect of a hay rake and all the tact and personality a pygmy goat (although they certainly are very cute aren't they?) the internal candidate will be considered more desirable than you.

Did I mention that this process of constantly and aggressively selling yourself in extremely high gear only to stand by helplessly and watch while internal pygmy goat candidates who are dumber than hay rakes get the positions you are supremely qualified to do is exhausting? Well it is.

You know what is even more exhausting? Having to smile and be nice to the pygmy goats who got the jobs I wanted and in certain circumstances, when professional courtesy has required it, actually congratulate them and welcome them to the team.

It feels like a punch in the gut every time.

I want to work there and will do whatever it takes.

So I campaign.

I would don tights, a tutu, tap shoes and a top hat, do a song and dance number on the table tops in the cafeteria and for my finale passionately scream out "who do I have to blow to get a fucking job around here??", if I thought that might work.

I hope it doesn't come to that. All my tights have holes in the toes.

Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

My blogger friend Tara gave me an award weeks ago and I hope she will forgive me for taking so long to respond. Not only is it an award, but it's an award that has strings attached in the form of a meme. Yes. How cool is that? An award and a meme. It's a sensation like chocolate and peanut butter they just go together and I'm thrilled for the recognition.


It's all girly with frills, ruffles and afternoon tea.


It is cute, no?


Anyhoo... I've been meaning to respond for quite a while now and was finally able to take a moment and sneak away from job hunting and entertaining my mother in law who is (still) visiting from Boston.

Excuses, excuses. I always feel terrible when you all leave such lovely comments on my blog and I never seem to have the time to leave any on your blogs. For the record though I am actually reading your blogs every day with my Google Reader when I'm at work although I can't sign into Blogger to leave comments on them.

No worries though, soon I'll be out of a job and I'll have all the time in the world for blogging. Heh, heh. Oy.

And now... the meme portion of my post:

5 Obsessions

1. Finding a job before my current contract is up in September.

2. The prevention of fine lines and tiny wrinkles. It consumes me and sometimes I feel like the shallowest person on the planet.

3. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

4. The recipe for “Sunday Beans” in last weeks New York Times Magazine. I can’t wait to make this.

5. My hair. I need a haircut desperately. I’m a total freak of female-ness in that, aside from the occasional and inexplicable root perm or brunette color job I for some reason subject myself to every couple of years, most of the time I really like my hair. Unfortunately I keep forgetting to schedule an appointment and now I'm about 12 weeks gone with no hair cut. I'm looking quite dreary. To add insult to my scarecrow head I just learned that my stylist has reduced her hours to part time in order to spend more time with her infant son and it has become nearly impossible to get an appointment with her. Damn baby.

5 Dislikes

1. My hair stylist’s baby.

2. Bad service at a doctor’s office. I had to find a new OBGYN (again) because I refuse to be treated so horribly for a service that we pay so much money for. I waited in the waiting room for 45 minutes until they finally put me in an examination room where I waited for an additional 30 minutes while wearing nothing more than a paper towel. I finally left. I got dressed first of course. I wonder though - how much longer would they have left me there? I never heard from them either. They never called to see if I was OK or find out what might have happened to me. Assholes.

3. The Bachelorette. I’d never seen this show before, but MDH and I watched it this week with my mother in law. Not that I don’t watch my share of terrible TV, but this was particularly bad.

4. Men who wear cowboys hats for no discernible reason. Unless it’s Halloween, if you live in Michigan or parts east of Oklahoma and the like, and don’t own a horse, a herd of cattle or a piece of property larger than a quarter of an acre you have no business wearing a cowboy hat.

5. Flat screen TV’s are everywhere. Have you noticed this? The hotel we stayed at in Syracuse last week had a flat screen over every elevator, like 2 elevators next to each other and both of them had a flat screen TV over it, on every floor. The hotel also had flat screen TV's in every hallway, sitting area and public space. It was maddening. I felt like there was no escape.

5 Tagged & Awarded:

I'm going to stick with the girly theme of the award like Tara did. A couple are the usual suspects, but I've thrown in a couple of bloggers I read regularly but rarely comment on:

Gwen
CDP
Miss Minneapolis
The Vegetable Assassin
Boredmando - Ha! I bet you didn't think I was paying attention didja?

Don't mind me, I'm just some lady who randomly wandered into your yard...

"My mutha, my brutha."

Then nothing.

It was more of a grunt really, followed by 2 nods, one in the direction of my mother in law and one in the direction of my husband.

This was the way in which my brother in law, formerly known on this blog as Syracuse and heretofore known as Captain Caveman, introduced me to his friends, neighbors and finally to the family of his ex-wife at the back yard barbecue they hosted Saturday evening to celebrate his daugher's high school graduation, which is to say not at all.

"My mutha, my brutha."

Then nothing.

After about the 3rd or 4th time I decided to officially move Captain Caveman from the column in the spreadsheet of my mind marked "Somewhat Rude Yet Tolerable" to the column marked "Economy Sized Asshole".

I would like to rise above these types of situations. Grin and bear it as they say, but a lady can only take so much.

My anger had been building up throughout the day after I had been forced several times to introduce myself in an awkward and overly cheerful lilt, realizing that Captain Caveman's six syllable introductions were never going to include me.

By the time we got to the graduation party at his ex wife's house late in the afternoon and the umpteenth fucking time of being totally disregarded in this manner and at the same time having had the epiphany that I didn't even merit a grunt or nod from my dickhead of a brother in law, I was steaming mad and blurted out the very words you see in the title of this post in a loud tone and the surliest of expressions.

At least I didn't stab him in the ear with a plastic picnic fork and scratch his eyes out as was my instinct, but even my surly outburst didn't phase him at all. He ignored me then too.

It pretty much summed up our weekend in upstate New York. MDH and I who are strapped for cash at the moment and PS I'm about to be out of a job, drove all the way to New York, paid for everything, including but not limited to our nieces graduation dinner on Friday night to which Captain Caveman had invited us, breakfast 2 days in a row and were offered nothing in return.

Not even a "thanks", which I might add is only one syllable and could very easily be grunted.

Get in line ladies - he's single!

Anyhoo... On a lighter and merrier note MDH and I brought his mother home with us. She's staying until after the holiday and she's lovely. I lucked out in the mother in law department. She's sweet and funny, does the dishes, makes her bed every day and swears up and down that she doesn't care a lick what we want to watch on TV.

I love her awful.

How she created such a band of baboons (except MDH of course, who is an angel straight from heaven) I have no idea. You can read brief biographies of my 4 brothers in law here if you want.

She has a very thick Cambridge accent:

Shawts = shorts
Sawks = Red Sox
Shawah = shower
Pawk chaps = pork chops

See what I mean? Adorable.

The News Round Up

Goodness me. It has been nearly a month since my last post. Tsk-tsk.

What can I say? I suppose I should troll through my list of usual excuses and see what best fits.

I've been busy? Somewhat.

We've been traveling? A little.

I was sick? Jesus God was I ever.

It all applies - I've been working a 10 hour day schedule, we went to Chicago for the soccer world cup qualifier game between the US and Honduras where I contracted and am still recovering from the black plague, that I probably caught on the train we took into Chicago from Michigan City.

I feel I should mention here that the last time I was violently ill with a rotten head cold was last October and also corresponded with train travel between Michigan City and Chicago from now on known as the Tuberculosis Express.

Anyhoo... here I am now, but don't go thinking that I'll be posting again anytime soon or with any regularity whatsoever because I probably won't due to the fact that the next several weeks are going to be jam packed with activities and travel for the Who Doesn't Lunch family and because I will most likely want to spend every single waking moment of my entire life that I'm not busy working, traveling or entertaining house guests playing The Sims 3, which arrived on my doorstep last weekend.

ob-ses-sion [uhb-sesh-uhn] –noun 1.the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.

I'm currently obsessed with the Sims 3. It's shameful and I don't give a damn.

It arrived 2 weeks ago along with the new video card and 2 gig of RAM I bought in order for the game to run properly on my computer. I was too sick to install everything until last Friday after dinner but once I did - it was all over.

Done.

I kissed MDH goodbye, holed myself up in our home office with a pot of hot tea, a bottle of Robitussin, a box of Puffs with lotion and played until 4am like a crazy person.

Since it's been such a long time since my last real blog post I thought I would give you some bullet points to help catch you up with the goings on in Ladyland.

• During our visit to Chicago, back in those wistful days when I wasn't hacking and coughing, MDH managed to surprise me with tickets to see the stage production of Mary Poppins. It was everything one might hope and dream it would be. I shed tears and got goosebumps - it was terrific.


• My hours have been cut at work, but my contract has been extended until the beginning of September.


• I had a job interview last week. It was no big deal and I'm not getting worked up over it.


• We are leaving this Thursday night for Syracuse for our niece's high school graduation. We are doing this instead of going to Columbus for Comfest which I'm telling you is bizarre. MDH has not missed Comfest for 14 years.


• I'm not looking forward to this trip in any way at all. It is going to be two long ass motherfucking car rides and we're not even going anywhere cool.


• The only bright spot of the trip will be that when we come home we are bringing my mother in law with us for a visit. I adore her and have spent this weekend cleaning and getting the house ready to best maximize her well deserved pampering. (I'm going to treat her like a queen, not diaper her.)


• According to my best friend Amy in the time it took for her to grab a serving spoon for the bowl of freshly picked, farm stand strawberries she had just finished rinsing and coring, she witnessed her oldest stepson (age 18) reach down into the depths of front of his trousers, vigorously scratch at his balls for what seemed like an eternity. Then she watched in horror as in one fluid motion he removed his filthy hand from his ball sack, pulled it back out of his pants and proceeded to put the ball sack hand directly into the bowl, scooped out a handful of lovely clean berries and jammed them greedily into his mouth.
  
• I love the show Nurse Jackie on Showtime. You should try to catch it.
  
• Last Sunday I suddenly remembered that I own a very nice waffle iron so I dug it out, dusted it off and made some lovely banana waffles for brunch. MDH declared me the Best Wife EVER.

That's all for now. Happy summer!

Brilliant Ideas I Cannot Share With My Husband for Obvious Reasons Vol 1

Born out of my growing disgust with Twitter, Facebook and our culture's increasing desire to constantly know and share all the mundane and intimate details of our everyday minutiae comes my brilliant idea for a new social networking website called "Shitter" where members share and trade comments about the color, texture and content their various bowel movements.

I'll write a real post tomorrow. Hope you're having a great Saturday!

Let Yourself Go

Wednesday for the first time - like ever in my professional life - I wore my hair in a pony tail to work. Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal, but people I'm telling you normally l blow my hair out and put on an extra coat of mascara just to take out the trash. A pony tail to work, for me represents an unprecedented level of lazy personal grooming*.

Now that the deed is done and the pony tail has been debuted, and even though I kind of liked it and many of my coworkers remarked about how nice it looked, I worry that it's all downhill from here. To prove my point - the pants I wore on Wednesday began to disintegrate shortly after my arrival to the office, probably dying of embarrassment from being seen in public with me and my lazy-ass pony tail head. The hems of both legs came undone. Both legs - what the frigg?

I handled the situation with relative style and ease like fuckin' McGuyver. Not really. I stapled the hems of my pants. With a stapler. I walked around all day with the hems of my pants visibly stapled and I wore a pony tail. The end is nigh and it's all my fault. I'm sorry.

Not convinced that end of times is come? Today I wore open toed sandals to work. Stock your shelters.

In my defense, I'm dog tired dude. I'm sorry to "dude" you, but holy shit I'm having a difficult time adjusting to my new summer schedule. I've been getting up at the crack of my ass (otherwise known as 5:30am), hopping directly in the shower and running off to work as soon as I'm dry. Stopping briefly, of course, on my way out the door to throw on some clothes and slop some coffee into a travel mug.

My old schedule had me getting out of bed at 6:30, then schlepping around in slippers and a haze for as long as I needed, taking my damn sweet time for the wake up portion of my day.

Coffee at my leisure.

Breakfast?

Sure, why not? Don't mind if I do.

I was pretty much able to take my damn sweet time to make myself beautiful and plan my outfit for work too. It was good times.

Anyhoo... I do not remember the last time I wore a pony tail in public that I wasn't performing yard work and even then I never crossed our property line. I do a quick mirror check and touch up my lipstick to go to the window to yell at the neighbors dog.

Do you understand that I am tightly wound?

I cannot explain and have no excuse for the open toed sandals. They are cute and it's the Friday beginning a holiday weekend so there was no one at the office today to see and judge my janky toes. Besides it was a half day so get off my back.

*Pony tails are pefectly fine and I have seen that many of my fellow lady folk are able to pass off a stylish, professional pony tail and any number of inventive and chic bun, updo and twisty hair creations, but I personally do not have that level of confidence. When I attempt to step out the door wearing a pony tail I hear my mothers voice in my head asking me with a sneer, "how much longer will it take for you to get ready dear? I can wait if you'd like to finish combing your hair".

So technically I don't have a problem with pony tails, my mother does. Or at least the voice in my head that sounds like my mother does. Whatever - bottom line is: Pony tails are fine, but not for me. I can't poop in the woods or wear flip flops either, but those are entirely different topics, although the source of all of my quirks and neurosis is the same.