Digging in the Closet

The ever-charming Robert of Observations From the Back 40 found himself internetless the other night (the HORROR) when a power outage interupted his nightly surfing festivities. At a loss as to how to occupy his time, he found himself digging in a closet and a meme was born!

Robert found some items of interest in his closet, including, but not limited to one clean red hockey sock, (No, it really was clean. He checked. He sniffed it!) and a single fishnet stocking (bow-chicka-bow!) These discoveries got Robert to wondering, “What’s in your closet?” More specifically, he wanted to know what was in my closet. (And all I can say is, it’s a good thing he didn’t ask what’s in the nightstand!)

Now, my bedroom closet is a nice sized walk in closet that is home to many things that don’t really belong in a bedroom closet. Since the hubby is often a day-sleeper, most of my clothes and shoes and necessary items are housed somewhere other than the bedroom closet. The bedroom closet is kind of a scary place, actually. Everything that doesn’t have somewhere else to reside ends up in that closet. The sad reality is that although I like the house to be really clean whenever possible, I always secretly hope that no one would ever dare look in the closets. When I announced that I was going in, in the interest of meme-ology, I warned everybody that if I didn’t resurface within twenty minutes they should call for help.

I found all kinds of things, like some of the kids old books and toys, purses that I no longer use, photo albums, an old turntable, wrapping paper and supplies, trophies…. and the list goes on. But I  thought it would be fun to photograph some of the more interesting finds:

This does me a LOT of good sitting in the closet gathering dust.

Three commemorative piggy banks from a St. Paul Saints baseball game. Because we need THREE of them?

One of the many finer gifts I received for a recent mile-stone birthday, The Old Geezer liquor dispenser. I bought it for our friend, Paul, who kindly gave it back to me on MY birthday. I’m saving him for future regifting purposes.

We’re gonna be rich in about sixty years at this rate.

Holy BIG HAIR, Batman. The wedding limo photo. In the closet. I’m not sure why… Possibly as a form of punishment to the hubby. See? I’m mad at you. And to show you just how mad, I’m taking our wedding photo and stashing it in the closet where I will promptly forget that I did so.

My daughter’s first grade journal. Such precious memories of playing with urinating hamsters (or rather, “ham sires.”)

Photos of an old boyfriend in 1985. He was kinda cute. Too bad his personality sucked. Yes, I’m still harboring resentment.

The finest in 1970′s era toys. My mom was certain I wouldn’t want to part with these, and apparently, I didn’t. Dawn and friends have been partying down in my closet with Lieutenant Uhura for the past lotta years.

So now I need to know…. What’s in your closet? I’m hoping the following will tell me:

• Beth at Around the Funny Farm
• Brian of Brian in Mpls who I don’t think likes memes, but I bet has some fascinating stuff, judging by what he’s revealed about his bathroom!
• Mahala of Hidden Mahala, because she was searching for the potato peeler on the floor so I bet she’s got some good stuff in the closet!

If you decide to participate, show me your stuff then tag three others!

Caffeine, Cleaning and Quirkiness

I’m all hopped up on Starbucks. I did some shopping this morning, making Target my last stop and grabbing a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks on my way out. By that time it was after 1:00 so I guess the mocha was my lunch. I started looking around the house and was disgusted with the state of things. I’ve given up Diet Coke in the last week and I think the mocha gave me a caffeine rush. I was a couple of hours into kickin’ ass and takin’ names with the housework when Mark came home from work. He had to run to Target (for a new calculator for figuring out tax stuff… because the computer doesn’t have a built in caculator?) and when he came home he handed me a hazelnut latte. WHOO! I haven’t seen this house so clean in weeks! It is 100% dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed and the laundry is almost all done. Of course, I’ll either crash and burn in a couple hours or be up all night and worthless tomorrow, but the house is clean now, leaving me free to do whatever I want this weekend. WHOOT!

I know you find all this domesticity uber-exciting and I’m sure you’d love to hear more tales of toilet scrubbing, ironing, decluttering and litterbox cleaning, but I promised Huckdoll I’d do the “Six Quirky Things About Me” meme. Yes, I know. It’s hard to believe but I DO have my quirks! (Insert sarcastic snort here.) For instance…

1. I sleep on the edge of the bed, and I do mean THE VERY EDGE. Like when my daughter comes in to say goodnight to me on those ocassions when I hit the sack before everyone else, she always warns me that I’m going to fall out. Apparently I stay there all night too. When Mark is working nights and I wake up in the morning, his side of the bed is virtually made up, with no wrinkles, and all I have to do is make my side of the bed.
2. I can not eat fresh or frozen green beans and a host of other veggies, but in the past few years I’ve discovered I LOVE brussels sprouts. When I was a kid, just putting one of those things in my mouth would make me gag, but last week I ate an entire bowl of brussels sprouts for dinner.
3. I buy clothing in twos. When I find a shirt, sweater, pants, tank, cami, pair of shorts… anything I like and fits me well, I buy two of them, at least. Almost everything I own has a match in another color. In fact, today’s shopping trip produced this:
4. I can be insanely immature. The other night at dinner, this commercial became the topic of conversation:  From that moment on, no one could say anything without me over-riding their words with, “Blah blah blblblbl blah BLAH blah blblblb blah BLAH blah blah blblb BLAH! Kacey finally told me, “MOTHER! I know four-year olds more mature than you are!”
5. My brain is like a radio station. At almost all times some tune is coursing through my brain waves. Right now it’s Pink – U + Ur Hand. (WHY?)
6. I feel like I can’t function if my kitchen isn’t clean. (Therefore, I am often non-functional.) When the kitchen is clean, everything else seems manageable.

I stink

Why does Victoria’s Secret make an entire line of perfume in bottles that all look the same? They can make bras and panties in 400 different styles but they can’t come up with a way to differentiate these perfumes? And why don’t I just get rid of the one I don’t like so that I don’t accidentally spray myself with a perfume I can’t stand to smell on myself? And why didn’t I learn my lesson after doing that exact thing last week? And as long as I’m asking myself pointless questions, why did I even buy the stuff in the first place?

  

One bottle of Divine – up for grabs.

Trade me for a Heavenly or Pink and I’ll throw in a barely used bottle of Very Sexy 2 which is not so sexy on me.

Be careful what you say!

Sitting at my desk early this morning, talking with a coworker, my phone began to ring. We were finishing up a conversation and I ended up missing the call, but looked at my caller ID in time to see that the call was from my friend, T. I immediately dialed her up, heard one ring, then the line went dead. I figured if it was important, she’d try me again.

Shortly afterwards, I saw my voicemail light go on. What I heard was not a message for me but a conversation between T and her husband B.

T: Hello?

B: Hello?

T: Why are you calling me?

B: I didn’t call you, you called me. Where are you?

T: Downstairs. Where are you?

B: Upstairs.

T: I was trying to call Terri and was going to leave her a message, but then the other line rang and I could see it was her so I tried to answer but no one was there.

B: Huh. Ok. I’m coming down now.

T: Ok.

So I immediately called T again, and both she and B answered the phone. I was laughing explaining that I had heard their entire conversation.

B’s response? “Good thing we kept it clean!”

My reply? “Dang.”

Message in a bottle

Sandy invited me to share in this meme.

1. Right click and save this image:

2. Add whatever text you like to the image.

3. Tag some friends to join in!

I tag:

• Kuckie
• Logziella
• Meleah
• Robert
• Rock Chef

The poor girl. She just needs some juice.

Poor, poor Avery is suffering from a mucus inducing, lung infesting, nasal congesting, head pounding plague of death commonly known as a sinus infection. She hoped to alleviate her misery with the long-sought after book meme. Alas, day after miserable day passed by, and still, she failed to earn the honor of the oh-so-coveted tag. Finally, willing to wait not one minute more, she DEMANDED she be given the tag which had so cruelly passed her by time and again. (And what a tag it was!) With the tag firmly secured, she scoured her personal library for a suitably taudry and titillating novel. She rifled through book after book in a desperate attempt to give the book meme a steamy, Harlequinesque flavor.

God, I love this woman! She’s a girl after my own heart.

With the passion of a sailor who has been at sea for too many months, she ravaged her book collection for the perfect blend of aphrodisia and eroticism. The hours passed and the sun began its descent as our poor Avery wilted under the weight of her defeat. For sadly, page 123 of each and every piece of chick lit in her possession told nothing but tales of tax accounting and other such mundane and non-arousing activities. (I don’t know… unless you ARE a tax accountant and you find that arousing, more power to you.)

But Avery knew that even though her library of page 123s had failed to live up to her stimulating expectations, her dream might not die. For she has loyal and avid readers whose only wishes are to see her satisfied (and mucus-free.) And so she extended the tag and bid us go forth in her quest for erotica.

Well, maybe not, but I took it that way.

It must have been fate, for my current book is proving to be quite juicy. Mercy by Jodi Picoult, offered just this bit of prurience:

He had heard the doorbell, had known it was Mia and tried to stuff the information into the back recesses of his mind. When Allie told him that she had invited Mia for dinner, he’d felt the blood rush from his head. He could not imagine anything more uncomfortable than sitting across a table from both his wife and the woman he could not stop thinking about.

Ok, I may have built up those three sentences just a little much, but I assure you, Avery, there is an abundance of lust just a few pages down the road… Trust me. He does much more than just think about Mia, such as….

Oh, wait. This is kind of a family friendly blog. I’m going to have to censor just a bit here…

When he was (censored) in front of her, Mia reached out to touch his (censored.)

She ran her hands down his chest and stomach to (censored, censored, censored, censored) and felt him (censored.)

Cam knew he could not hold on so he buried his face against her neck and, in the strongest effort of will he had yet to face in his life, (censored censored censored censored) and crushed her against him.

Ummm… I need to finish up here and uh…. go read the rest of my book! Right.

I’m supposed to tag 5 people, but I already did so, I’ll just leave this open to anyone else who cares to interpret this meme in any twisted way they please. Here’s how it works:

The rules :
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people & post a comment here once you post it to your blog, so I can come see.

For added fun, bend and twist all the rules!!! Be a rebel, for Avery’s sake!

Crawls through small spaces

Yesterday marked the anniversary of a momentous occasion in history… the birthday of my bestest friend ever.

Gina has been my friend for twenty years. She is my fun-loving friend, the wild and crazy one. She is outgoing and can strike up a conversation with anyone. I can talk on the phone, literally for hours with her. She has been there for me when I need a shoulder to lean on. We have been through thick and thin together.

The birthday of such a phenomenal friend could not pass without some kind of celebration. Moonlight bowling was the ticket! We had a great time. I have no idea who won any of the games but we laughed all night long. And so did a few others as we revisited some of our past idiocy… crawling through small spaces.

 

Hey, if they’re not going to fix this door, it’s going to remain an open invitation to idiots like us!

And you thought YOU had a bad day…

or

What’s wrong with this picture?

One of my coworkers was half asleep when she got dressed this morning. She didn’t realize her fashion faux pas until she arrived in the office.

Silly girl… she let me take a picture too!

I sent it out to the entire department in an email, saying, “One of our lovely coworkers is having a bad day. I’m not naming names, but her initials are Tanya.”

Oops! My bad.

It was worth it to hear the collective laugh as it arrived in everyone’s inboxes.

Into the weekend….

Do you ever wish you could just bottle up the way you feel sometimes? That’s how I feel today. I am energetic and optomistic! It’s FRIDAY! WOO-HOO!

I had some major and intense projects at work this week which are finished up and no longer hanging over my head.

We’re going to see 20 degrees today which will feel like a heat wave in comparison to the last few days.

Having a teenage daughter who’s growing has it’s perks. I’m wearing Kacey’s pinstripe dress pants today.  I bought them for her to wear for Christmas and she probably won’t wear them ever again. My wardrobe is expanding without the extra cost!

Tonight we have the choice of going to a birthday party at the home of some of our softball friends. It sounds like fun but could result in feeling like death on a cracker tomorrow. Our other option is to go to the varsity basketball game with two other couples, our best friends, then to the home of one of the couples for socializing. I think we’ll go for option two. I need to get my house in order this weekend and hangovers are not conducive to domestic productivity!

Saturday and Sunday are wide open and if we see warmer temps, I may just be able to get out with my camera, which would be a good cure for the cabin fever.

I need a vacation

Man, I have got some cabin fever going on in a big way. I know it is a lot colder in some other places than it is here, but that is not stopping me from being disgusted and fed up. I’m so tired of below zero temperatures. Last night I slept under the electric blanket, down comforter and a big fleece blanket. That combination is nice and toasty while sleeping but dragging myself out from under all that warmth in the morning sucks, big time.

I have been such a GIRL today emotionally. When I am like this, it’s best not to talk to me. I was doing some ironing this morning and Mark mentioned it was cold in the house. Eye rolling! Duh! He asked me if I was cold and I damn near started crying. CRYING! Because I’m so tired of being chilled to the bone. Not a good start to the day.

I’m tired of hearing the meteorologists reporting “warm-ups” to 18 degrees. Gee, thanks. 18 whole degrees? Gosh, at 18 degrees maybe I can manage to shed that third layer of clothing! I’m tired of the dirty, frozen landscape. I miss seeing the sun when I leave for work and come home again. I’ve had enough of shivering viciously when I get in the car after work. I did not appreciate Mark telling me that he just heard we’re in for a colder than normal spring. I’m bored with all conversation having to do with the winter weather and sick of hearing myself complain.

I want to soak up the sun and feel its heat on my skin. I want to wear shorts and tank tops and go barefoot again. Summer, PLEASE come back soon!