SHUT UPPP

Between the brewery tour and Cinco de Luau last weekend we stopped at Chick-Fil-A for some mid-afternoon beer munchies. Mark got a kid's meal, and the toys they're putting those things this year are...interesting. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do, but Katie picked it up and after studying it for a while said "Hmm, it's got a magnifying glass. For frying ants." WTF? But true!! Upon closer examination, we decided that the toy is kind of a murderer-in-training tool:


It's got the magnifying glass to roast ants on the sidewalk, then tweezers to move the hot little suckers to a secure location without leaving fingerprints or burning your hands, and a shovel with which to bury your evidence. WTF, Chick-Fil-A!? That's not right, not at all.

Yeah apparently I'm in my 20s but I act like I'm about 85, all "Ted Mosby and the Murtaugh List" style eating dinner at 4:00 pm and chasing kids off my porch and complaining about my bad hip. Ok so that's maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but we've got this flipping crazy gang of neighbor kids who just run around right outside our front door and patio screaming at the top of their lungs (no words, just a high-pitched and sustained "AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!" for no reason other than their parents got sick of them doing it inside). Today they were in the breezeway between our front door and the front door of the apt across from us, which happens to be the lair of at least three of the banshees, and they were playing with these little stilts which were kind of awesome but caused frequent falling ("AAAAAHHHH!!!!") and regular smacking into our front door/door handle, which was driving the dog crazy. Finally, I looked at the dog and excitedly asked "Rygel, what was that?!" which automatically sends him into an excited barking fury.

An excited barking fit and an angry barking fit sound the same to kids outside your front door, though, which was what I was counting on, because the second Rygel started barking I heard the "AAAAAHHHHH!!!!" from outside the door. Rygel scared 'em but good. The "AAAAAHHHHH!!!!" started in the breezeway, migrated around the corner to the porch, and then faded off into the distance in the direction of the pool. That's right, you noisy whippersnappers, GET OFF MY LAWN!

Reason #134 that D and I are not parents yet: We think our dog is so much cooler than most people's kids.

No, but really, they're super sweet kids and even when they're at their loudest I suck up to them because I'm pretty sure they're starting a small army that is going to revolt with their Nerf darts and cap guns. And, like a real old person, I'm actually afraid of youths. And Rygel's cooler.

All this Earth Day talk got me to thinking: We have an "Earth Day" and a "Sunday," but we have no "Moon Day." This makes me a little bit sad, as I have always been a nighttime person and the moon and I are great buds. I get that the earth is all big and important and stuff because we live there or whatever but come on!! Up until not that long ago without the moon we couldn't even see after the sun went down, and then we played mind games with the moon in the '60s and '70s by visiting a few times and then deciding it was too far so we'd just put our own space junk in orbit and now we visit that instead. The moon totally wonders what it did wrong. Plus think about all the fun stuff you could do on Moon Day. Drink moonshine, eat moonpies, even moon your friends! That's a great way to meet your neighbors. So friends, family, and haters, I implore you: celebrate Moon Day. I think I'll declare it should fall on the next full moon, which is...yeah I don't know when I don't really pay attention. It's only fair!

Also, when you write while you're high on coffee, the word "moon" becomes incredibly amusing.

WTF, how has so much time gone by without an update?? That's hardly like me at all. I definitely didn't run out of stuff to say (or complain about), I just stopped pretty much everything in my life, but after a pretty sweet and amazing weekend I'm back and better than ever. Which, blog-wise, might have never been very good but whatevah, you're reading this aren't you? Anyway.

So, lucky you, today you're getting another gym blog!! Really, I would just like to comment on kickboxing etiquette. Kickboxing classes a) are always really full, b) are difficult if you're out of shape or not coordinated, and c) involve a lot of horizontal movement and (duh) kicking, which makes them d) a little bit dangerous. Here's what NOT to do:

- Come in 20 minutes late.
- Stand in the very small space between me and the girl to my right.
- Kick me.

All three of those things will make me wish you would go away forever, and one super genius managed to achieve all three in about five minutes' time today. Luckily I didn't get kicked hard, but I was like "WTF?" and she just giggled and acted like she wasn't sure exactly what happened. To be fair, she might not have been. Plus that class is always weird and hilarious anyway because the instructor is just like this teeny tiny little ball of crazy that is so cute you could puke and she turns the music up WAY loud and gets really into encouraging everybody and her voice goes from about an octave above normal to just high pitched squealing and yapping and "WOOOO!!!!!" It kind of sounds like someone dumped a bucket of catnip and jingle balls into a room full of cats.

So anyway - really it's just etiquette on life in general: don't kick me. It's pretty bottom-line, I think.

There are a lot of things I really love about our neighborhood grocery store. I'm usually there during the day, so it's mostly empty, the daytime employees are all "adults" and not high schoolers who are annoyed that they are spending the only free five hours of their day at a job where they have to deal with old people like me buying large amounts of wine and tabloid magazines to spend their Friday evenings with (suck on that, teenagers!), they have a lot of local products, and this particular HEB has the nicest freaking people you've ever met in your life (except the high schoolers). My beef with them, though, is the good two dozen or so prime parking spots they've got out front that are designated "CUSTOMER WITH CHILD PARKING". WTF?!

Now, I get that it's really not that big of a deal - I mean, walking an extra thirty yards or whatever isn't going to kill me - but c'mon, HEB, what the heck? Do you need that many parking places for your beloved yuppie-plus-spawn combos? I have zero problem with the pregnant-lady parking outside Babies R Us, or the "parent-with-sick-kid" parking outside the pharmacy. I honestly wouldn't even mind if there were maybe only eight or ten of these "customer with child parking" spots, but after you factor in the handicapped places and the cart return slots which are both completely valid and necessary, there's not a whole lot of room for the rest of us. The reason it bugs me so much, though, is for days like today, when I go to do my grocery shopping in the middle of the day and maybe only half the CWCP spots are taken but most of the parking places just beyond them are taken, because most people who are doing their grocery shopping at that hour don't have children with them. This way, I get to either stalk somebody through a partially-empty parking lot to their non-CWCP place and then wait for them to load up their car so I can take their spot, or I can park at the Starbucks down the shopping center and walk. At least that way I get to have tea.

I've considered just saying "screw it" and parking there anyway, especially if I'm there after 10:00 pm because then at least I can come back with a "Your kid should be at home in bed" response if anybody says anything, but I don't want to have a fight in a parking lot (not after the Little HEB Smackdown of '05, at least). Plus if I got banned from that HEB I'd have to go to the one by my parents' house, which increases the chance of seeing someone I knew in high school (RUN AWAY!) and that's not fun for anybody. This also makes a pretty obvious (and obnoxious) social statement, but that's another post for another day. Maybe next time I'll get brave and just take one of those spots. After all, it says "CUSTOMER WITH CHILD PARKING" but it doesn't say "ONLY."

Reason #2344 Why Bridal Was Not For Me: The Footwear.

Yesterday and this morning I had things going on that required me to dress slightly more nicely than usual. No big deal, but even though it's getting warmer outside I am the whitest Hawaiian person you've ever seen, especially now that Lamy just got back from Key West, so my "business" attire still includes full-length slacks instead of a skirt. I'd sure hate to blind anyone with my white legs. Unfortunately, I'm 5'4" and too lazy/cheap to hem my slacks or have someone else hem them for me, so I have to cheat and wear reasonably tall heels. Now, when I worked at the bridal shop I dressed up every day - skirts, slacks, dresses, heels, all of it - and the only time my feet actually felt like they were going to kill me was at the end of very, very long Saturdays when I'd been literally running in heels for about ten hours. Those were the days when I'd take lunch on my feet (if I got lunch at all) because if I sat down the first fifteen minutes after I stood back up would be agonizing and not at all worth it. So while I don't miss having to add 3+ inches to my height every day, it very rarely bothered me back then (you know, two months ago).

Apparently, my feet are very happy with our new arrangement where we pretty much exist together in a sandals-and-flats kind of world, because they are OUCH. I wore the same pair of surprisingly comfy Aldo wedges for the past two days. These are the shoes that I wore to work more than half the time not that long ago. I didn't even really have to break them in - I just bought them one day and wore them a full day at work the next. They were amazing! But currently, my toes hurt, my arches ache, and my calves have even joined in the protest. WTF?! I guess the lesson here is that quitting that awful job = good for more than just my heart.

We all have decorating items that we like to collect, right? For some people it might be picture frames, for others maybe throw pillows. For me: lamps. I didn't even notice it until the other night at bedtime. I was about to brush my teeth and asked D to leave a lamp on for me. "Which one?" he asked. Hmm.... Sure enough, that's a tough question: there are four in our bedroom.

Keep in mind, we live in a tiny one-bedroom. We do not need four lamps in the whole house, let alone one room. But we've got two red plastic Ikea lamps, one on each nightstand, plus an awesome 6' floor lamp in the corner. That one has shelves so it holds (no, not another lamp) a picture frame and a little vase. So it's kind of a lamp, but really more like a piece of furniture. And then on the dresser is an awesome beaded lamp that my mom found and gave to us. Then D brought to my attention that while we have four lamps in the bedroom, we have eight in the whole house. Totally an unnecessary number. Another two floor lamps, one in the living room and one by the back door, plus another table lamp on top of the bookcase behind the couch and a small blue accent lamp on a china cabinet in the dining room. Mostly from Ikea because the Swedes don't recognize "home accents" as a dangerous addiction.

What does all of this mean, then? It means that our lamp-to-home ration is approximately 1.10 lamps per 100 square feet of our home, give or take a little. D found this hilarious and took the opportunity to laugh at me, but I don't really mind. I can't help it. I love lamp! Warm, glowey, cheerful lamp.