omg, sry i hit u!

I was on my way to Sean’s last Friday after a tolerable day of work (there were cupcakes), excited that we had tickets to see The Town at 7:00, wondering if I’d allow myself to eat sweet potato fries for dinner (you know, given the aforementioned cupcakes), and pretty much minding my own damned business, when all of a sudden (and quite without warning)—WHAP!—my car lurched forward, my seatbelt yanked me backward, and before I had time to look out my rearview, some idiot on a motorcycle had pulled up beside me and was waving rather obnoxiously for me to move off the road. I responded with a kneejerk “STFU!”, put the car in park, and looked back to see a crumpled minivan on my rear end.

After a bit of stunned hesitation, the driver and I got out and she apologized profusely for being too caught up in a text message to realize that I wasn’t going as fast as she was and subsequently driving her car into my spare tire. Fortunately, she was super nice and kept asking if I was ok (physically, yes, but almost shocked enough to walk right into oncoming traffic). And since it was pretty obviously my first rodeo, she even told me exactly what information I needed to take off of her insurance card.

Moments before we parted ways, a cop pulled up, asked if we were ok, and then chastised both of us for not being of sound enough mind right after our accident to think of the other drivers on the road: “Next time, pull over,” he ordered. Oh absolutely, officer, I’ll be sure to pencil in “Move it, lady!” right next to date I’ve picked out for my head-on collision.

Anyway, thanks in one part to the lady’s pleasant attitude about the whole mess and in another to the fact that my beastly car showed no outward signs of damage (as always—Honda CR-V FTW!), I managed keep it together long enough to not cause a scene and put it all back together by the time I got to Sean’s.

The moral of this story (apart from the obvious “don’t text and drive” one) is that the road is a violent and unruly place for the humble commuter, so your job sure as hell better be worth it.

Things That Are Awesome!

This week has been so dull, lame, boring, miserable, (your adjective here) that I’ve put off going to bed at night for fear that each day would bring more of the same. But I didn’t spend all my time wallowing in the grumps! I also put together this list of all the happy things that I’ve got going on. At first I’d planned on calling it “Things That Don’t Suck,” but in the spirit optimism, I went with “Things That Are Awesome!” instead:

1. After a long, blistering summer, the Ember months (and October! God forbid we forget October!) are here again, meaning the beginning of autumn is nigh! While the first day of every other month barely registers on my radar, the first day of September is always a big event. It’s sort of like the finish line to a marathon that begins allllllll the way back in January. (I’m fairly sure I even fist-pumped once or twice yesterday morning.) The first day of fall technically isn’t until September 22 (It’s a little early this year! Fist-pump!) but no matter, I can smell the pumpkins and feel the breezes already. 
2. I found alfalfa sprouts in my non-alfalfa-eating parents’ fridge on Tuesday night, so I had the distinct and unexpected pleasure of eating a turkey, alfalfa, and ranch sandwich for lunch on Wednesday and a turkey and alfalfa salad today.
3. I’ve had a secondary source of income since I started my big girl job three months ago. (A freelance writing job, y’all, nothing untoward!) Having two sources of income has been a treat, and having a boss who appreciates my writing abilities has been the cherry on top!
4. I’m saving boo-koos of money by living with my parents. Instead of spending every other paycheck on rent, electricity, and groceries, I stick every other paycheck in a joint savings account and then sit back and watch it collect interest. And what of the paychecks that don’t go into the joint account? They sit in my checking account and dream about the day their miserly master will finally let them out to play.
5. My coworkers. Six beacons of Fabulous! in a company full of Can-I-Buy-You-A-Drink?s.
6. I’m finally eligible for my 401K and paid time off! Retirement’s nice and all, but PTO is the stuff of fairy tales—you mean I can get paid to watch HGTV in my underwear, pick the cookie dough chunks out of the ice cream, drink Ballatore from the bottle, and brush my hair with my fingers? Well why in the hell did I ever do those things for free? Even though I haven’t been allowed to use it, I’ve apparently been accruing time off since day one, meaning if I wanted to call in too-sloshed-off-mimosas-to-put-down-my-book-and-get-out-of-my-bubble-bath tomorrow morning, I totally could.
7. The movie Chicago. It’s been off my radar for a while, but I decided to re-watch it yesterday while I was on the wedmill and durn near fell off three times because I was too busy singing along and shaking my hips to put one foot in front of the other.
8. My mom walked into my room this morning and announced that today would be the perfect day for me to call in sick to work. A little perspective: my brother and I were not allowed to skip school unless we were puking up stomach lining and shooting blood out of our pores. But a little inclement weather on a workday and I might as well have woken up headless. Due to a rare genetic condition, I only get sick on Mondays and Fridays (weird, right?), so I had no choice but to trudge to work in the rain this morning. Still, it’s nice to know my mom has her priorities straight.
9. My Labor Day weekend plans! Saturday drinking wine in the Hill Country, Sunday shopping for antiques and eating German potato salad in Fredericksburg, and Monday doing a little bit of both. And how’s this for spontaneity—Sean and I planned the trip Monday morning, booked the trip Monday night, and will leave on the trip tomorrow at 9:00PM. Not bad for a couple that usually starts mulling over vacations three months in advance!

Self-medicating

Today was a double ice cream sandwich-chocolate chip cookie dough-coconut cake ball-chocolate chunk brownie sundae kind of day. But since I couldn’t have that, I powered through an episode of Top Chef on the wedmill and then sequestered myself and my cat child in the media room for a couple rounds of my current favorite TV show.

The real world is driving me to Dexter, which, when you think about it, could potentially be more harmful than all the other job-related vices combined.

Sunday Funday

My parents spent all of yesterday moving the youngest into his new house in the Promised Land. (Don’t even get me started on how jealous I am of his return to college. I may be 1.5 years a post-grad, but that doesn’t make me any less heart-sick for the glory days. Heck, I was even jealous of the elementary kids who were waiting for the bus when I left for work this morning—all those wonderful years of schoolin’ ahead of them that they won’t even appreciate until they’re standing in the break room on Monday morning, waiting for the coffee to perk, jabbing plastic forks into their eyes, and hoping they’ll come down with something—rabies, Ebola, leprosy—to keep them in bed until 5:30 on Friday. That’s how I’ve heard it works, anyway…)

As I was saying, my family left me to hold down the fort yesterday, so I spent the better part of the morning putzing around in my underwear (J/K! Brain bleach, anyone?) before paying (boy did I!) a visit to my therapists, New Dress and Work Jeans, at Nordstrom Rack. Two hours later, I returned home for a little bit of this:

(You can probably tell by the pear that I’m trying to stay healthy.) My one and only stopped by during pool time for a surprise visit, and the two of us proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon lazing around the empty house baking a pie (me), recovering from a booze-soaked guys’ weekend (him), noshing on homemade quesadillas, watching whatever we wanted on my dad’s sacred television, and trying to contract malaria so we could do it all over again today.    

Working for the weekend

Don’t you just love Thursday? It’s so close to the weekend that it tastes strongly of free time, but not quite close enough to reek of Monday morning (I’m looking—mostly sympathetically—at you, Sunday). This Thursday is a particularly welcome one, as it brings with it the promise of nuptial nirvana and plenty of quality mother/daughter time, as my dad and brother will be out of town, and my fiancé will be counting lug nuts, or whatever it is he does at Saturday inventories.

Tonight: I came home and embarked on my usual wedmill routine (See what I did there? “Wedmill” sounds so much more friendly and goal-oriented than the dreary “dreadmill.”) consisting of a 3.5-mile (or 400 calorie) run, The Next Food Network Star, and buckets of sweat. Afterward, I poured over an old issue of Brides in search of helpful articles and pretty dresses that I may have missed when I was still just a girlfriend, while riding a football-induced high. (Know what was better than the start of the preseason last weekend? Absolutely nothing.)

Friday: I’ll don my casual best and drift through the workday on fumes of motivation, long conversations with Florence, and the inevitable company-wide feeling of ecstasy that is always so prevalent at the end of each week. Then I’ll go home, hop on the wedmill, and spend the rest of the evening either A) mindlessly channel surfing with my mom, B) mindlessly web browsing, or C) finishing my mindless book. Whatever activity (or combination of activities) I choose, it will be (you guessed it) mindless.

Saturday: I’ll get out of bed early to hit the wedmill if I feel so inspired, or later if I hit the snooze button. Then I’ll curl my hair all nice and bridal, collect my momma and a couple of my lady friends, and have my first go at dress shopping!

Before I got engaged, dress shopping almost never crossed my mind. I knew what I liked and definitely what I didn’t, but the idea of standing on a pedestal in front of a mirror in a white (or, you know, ivory) dress, smiling and wiping away runny mascara was pretty foreign to me. Until Sean popped the question. Since then, I’ve been wondering how soon was too soon to hit up the bridal shops. Ultimately, I decided that now was as good a time as any to at least get an idea of what looks good on me.

After we’ve had our fill of satin and lace, the four of us’ll go out to lunch before we go our separate ways. After running some necessary errands (car wash, laundry, jeweler) mom and I will go to church and then return home for dinner and The Wedding Planner.  

Sunday: Never one to tire of weddings, I’ll pop out of bed and head to a bridal show with my mom, my partner in wedding planning crime (whose nuptials are but six months before mine), and her momma. Now, I’ve been to a bridal show once before, and by the end of it I was ready to punch every single vendor who tried to harangue me into “signing up to receive spam win $100 worth of free votive candles!” However, I also walked away with a boat load of brochures, a tummy full of cake and hors d’oeuvres, and a free t-shirt. This time, I’m hoping for more of that. And I’m going armed with a taser.

Finally, it’ll be off to spend the last few glorious hours of the weekend relaxing and watching Mad Men with my one and only.                  

How about you, blog faithful? Any big weekend plans?

Three years a cat lady

**I wrote this on Layla's actual Gotcha Day with every intention of posting it as soon as I took our annual picture. Too bad I'm a horrible cat momma who A) didn't get around to taking the photo until the next day, and B) waited nearly three more days to finally pull it all together. I am so not digging being a social media deviant! Anyway, please imagine it's Tuesday, August 3 again as you read. I promise to have you back to your regularly scheduled weekend in just a couple of minutes.**

Three years ago today I made a split-second, very un-Sarah-like decision to adopt an a-DOR-a-ble kitten that I’d just discovered on PetFinder.com. She was tiny when I got her—just skin, bones, and tufts of fluffy black hair. She spent the first night at my house curled up on my pillow next to my head, and I spent my first night as a cat owner worried that I was going to roll over and squish her.

Our relationship during our first year together was tenuous at best—she hated being locked in a bedroom all day every day; I hated her for letting me know it (loudly) at 4 o’clock every morning. Once she got older, though, she stopped being such a menace we moved into a bigger space, so her devilish ways weren’t quite as bothersome.

Nowadays, she’s still prone to whining, to hurling herself halfway down a flight of stairs, to bouncing off walls, to knocking everything off my desk, and to jumping on the kitchen counter, but she’s also prone to running to the door when I come home from work, to checking on me while I’m on the dreadmill, to diving over my head when I’m doing Pilates, to begging for ham when I’m making my lunch, and to falling asleep in the crook of my knees every night at bedtime. She may be as programmed to be a pest as I am to be a female, but she’s my pest, and I can’t imagine life without her.

Happy Gotcha Day, Miss Layla Lou! May you always be just as nutters as you were the day we met. Now c’mon, let’s go eat some deli meat!

I. Was. Run. Ning!

I know I’ve written about my distaste for running before, but I thought I’d mention it again to help you understand the gravity of the statement I’m about to make in the fifth paragraph. So here it is again, for those of you who’ve forgotten: I am not a runner. No wait, that’s wrong. What I am is the antithesis of a runner: I am a sit-on-the-couch-and-eat-cake-balls-er. What I’m trying to say is, I’m not a big fan of aerobic activity in general, and since I consider running to be the mother of all aerobic activity, I also consider it to be absolutely not my thing. I’m winded and writhing in pain on the floor just from writing about running. Would you be so kind as to hold on while I recover? I’ll be back to finish this story next week.

Except not! Ever since I had The Surgery, I’ve been pretty inconsistent with my diet and exercise regimen. It was sort of like “here are your boobs and your discharge papers; don’t let the wagon hit you on the way out.” For a while I sort of relished the opportunity to be bad—Want to go for a walk? Can’t, I’m post-op. Should we go get ice cream? Well…it might make the scars less noticeable…—and I wasn’t exactly inspired to hit the salad bar while I was in NYC, or during those weeks that I was learning how to be a commuter. But as soon as Sean proposed, visions of engagement photos and bridal showers started dancing in my head, and I suddenly found myself wracked with fear about muffin topping all over sample size wedding dresses. (I even had a dream about it! Oh yes! Wherein none of the standard sizes would zip. Who zips a wedding dress, by the way?)

Ever since July 3 (well, let’s be realistic—July 5—I drank too much champagne and Messina Hof wine to claim my engagement day as the starting point) I’ve been acutely aware of every bite and step I take. Still, I’ve had trouble latching on to an exercise routine that I’m willing to commit to. I tried to get back into Power 90 because I know it’s effective and not terribly time-consuming, but it’s just so darned repetitive (cardio, weights, repeat) that doing it felt like a chore. Plus, it’s tough to be consistent because I’m back and forth between my parents’ house and my fiancé’s apartment so much, and I can’t take the DVD with me because my mom uses it too.

My new friend at work (I should really give her a pseudonym, huh? Like “Florence?”) My new friend Florence is a runner, and an avid one at that. She quite frequently regales me with stories about half-marathons, 8-minute miles, and being able to eat 3,000 calories per day at the height her training (I know, right!?). Yesterday, after Florence and I had each enjoyed a cake ball (my first and second-to-last of the week, thanks—the rest of the office has been gobbling them up since Monday) and after I’d read on my company’s wellness webpage that running is the most effective calorie burner around, I realized that 30 minutes of weight training with Tony Horton wasn’t going to cut it. So I made a radical decision—rather than go home and slog through P90, I would go home and run!

I’ve made decisions like this before, but I’m always quick to change my mind when I’m three minutes in and death is imminent. Still, what kind of bride would I be if I didn’t at least try? So when I got home, I put on my workout gear, turned on the most recent episode of The Next Food Network Star, hopped on the dreadmill, and I ran. And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. In fact, I ran for a whole 23.5 minutes and 2 miles and never once stopped! (Although the thought did cross my mind a couple of times. But all I had to do was look at my ring and poof! It was gone.) In fact, so tolerable was this run that I did it again today even though my legs were sore and I could have talked myself out of it if I’d really wanted to.

I was so surprised by my success that I told Florence all about it as soon as I got to work this morning. “But,” I said, “I think the reason I was able to do it is that I was distracted. When I run outside, all I can think about is how hard it is to breathe, how much my knees hurt, how tense my shoulders are, how hot it is, how much I’m sweating, how eager I am to quit, etc, etc. But when I run on the dreadmill, I can focus on the fate of the characters on my show instead of my own.” And then Florence, who was understandably excited by my change of heart, took things just a wee bit too far: “Awesome! Now we can run 5Ks together!” No, Florence, no we cannot. Not unless I can hook a TV to my shoulders and charge through episodes of Mad Men.

The blessing

The prayer that my family recites before every meal goes like this: "Thank you, Jesus, for our food, amen." Originally the idea was to start with something easy to remember and transition into a prayer that was more, I dunno, reverent or something, when my brother and I were old enough to manage one. Except we never quite got around to doing that. Now whenever Sean and I sit down for a meal together we, too, rattle off "Thank you, Jesus, for our food, amen" before digging in.

This afternoon, as we sat down to Whataburger (it was medicinal, I swear, #worsthangoversincecollege) Sean mentioned that we needed to thank Jesus, so he lead us in the prayer: "Thank you, Jesus, for our--" and then, without skipping a beat, he said, "Whataburger, amen." (Which I suppose was appropriate, given that Whataburger is more or less modern-day manna.) 
 
We were sitting together in the living room tonight, enjoying the last few hours of the weekend, when Sean said, "Hey, remember this afternoon when we thanked Jesus for our Whataburger? I bet He thought that was funny. He was probably saying to himself, 'Oh, that Sean! He's such a character!'" And you know, I like to think Jesus really does have a sense of humor. Or at least an ear for sarcasm, otherwise that manna reference could land me in hot water.

Up for air

Joining the throngs of Americans in a daily slog to and from the office has really thrown me for a loop! I thought working 10-hour days at home was rough, but back then I had no concept of a daily shower, a morning commute, or an alarm clock that rang before 7AM. Riddle me this: how does an eight-hour workday last six months when a five-hour evening lasts 10 minutes? It’s like I get off, get home, change clothes, and BAM! bedtime.

When I was working from home I would regularly tisk tisk Sean from my high horse of veggie burgers and P90X for not eating right and working out consistently. Now that I’m a commuter, however, I’m lucky if I even get to sit down to dinner, let alone figure out how many Points are in it. And exercise? Forgeddubouit. 

Sean and I get off around the same time every day, so we usually call each other to chat while we’re sitting in traffic. After a particularly tiring day last week, Sean mentioned that he was driving past Canes on his way home and OMG chicken fingers, Texas toast, Canes sauce! Ho boy, did that sound good! Freelance Sarah would have rolled her eyes and whined about fat, calories, and a 12-mile run for dessert. All that 8:30-5:30 Sarah whined about, however, was how unfair it was that none of that tasty comfort food was available in her neck of the woods.

Of course, diet and exercise aren’t the only things that have fallen by the wayside since I got my big girl job: gainful employment has also set me back about 20 years, technologically speaking. I haven’t logged into Twitter in nearly three weeks; I’m lucky to make it through my News Feed every day and even luckier if I can muster a status update; I’m equal parts annoyed and worried by my email inbox, so I avoid it; I frequently forget about Google Reader until it’s so full that I have to set aside 45 minutes to just get through it; and (perhaps worst of all) I’ve become a bad blogger. I used to take great pride in my ability to rattle off three posts per week. Now all I feel is shame that I’ve barely felt compelled to post since I arrived home from NYC.

I hope that in the coming weeks I’ll settle into a routine that’ll allow me to return (at least in small part) to my former glory. Perhaps then I’ll finally be willing to eat cabbage and climb up on the treadmill. Perhaps then I'll finally be able to respond to messages and friend requests on Facebook (hi, Facebook friends, I haven’t forgotten you!), check emails and Google reader more regularly, and blog about something other than how I never blog anymore. If I’m really feeling crazy, perhaps I'll even set up mobile Twitter so I can update my followers with important deets about my day: “I am sitting in my cube.” “Man, Keurig hazelnut coffee is good!” “My co-worker is fluent in barrio.” Until then, please forgive my negligence. Growing up is hard to do.

Queen of the Over-Share: New York Trip, part 1

**Once you’ve blogged about boob surgery, not much else is sacred. So in keeping with recent tradition, this post is full of TMI. Fair warning: it’s about some medical things; it contains a few blood-and-guts references (Just kidding! No guts were involved!); and it’s technically part one of my New York story. (If you choose not to read it, however, you won’t be lost when part two comes out.)**
    
It was 9:00 on Monday night. I was packing for New York in a fury (last minute as I am wont to do) in hopes of finishing in time to watch a bit of TV and decompress before hitting the sack early (my flight was scheduled to leave at 7:15 the next morning). My mom was about to leave for the grocery store (for reasons that are irrelevant to this post but still mysterious at 9PM) and she stopped by my room to see if I needed her to pick up anything. Snacks for the plane ride? Band-Aids for my New York feet? Xanax for first-day jitters? I needed none of those, but I did request a bottle of cranberry juice. “For what?” you and (she) ask? Well, I was having some troubles, you see, in the lavatory, which I won’t explain in detail but THIS IS THE BLOOD REFERENCE I WAS TALKING ABOUT Google “urinary tract infection” if you want to know the other symptoms.

After I explained my situation to my mom she was all, “Um, yeah, you probably shouldn’t leave the state like that. See if any doc-in-the-box clinics are open on Memorial Day.” The results that turned up initially looked something like this: “haha yeah right,” “not on your life,” and “die, sicko, die!” so we decided to just hope and pray that an industrial sized bottle of cranberry juice would do the trick, my mom headed off to the store, and I started in with the “WHY ME!?”s. I was indescribably nervous about starting a new job, you see, and even more nervous about navigating a new airport and a new city not known for welcoming newcomers and oh great all of a sudden it feels like I have to pee all the time but it hurts when I do and there’s blood and what’s that sharp but unrelated pain in my foot? If I’m going to die I hope I do before tomorrow so I don’t have to suffer on the plane or in a cab. 

Two seconds (I kid you not only a little) after my mom left, the straits in the loo got direr (MORE EXTREME BLOOD REFERENCE!). So after a good bit of fit-pitchery, I moped to the closet to find an outfit suitable for sitting around in the ER for the rest of the night (I was, of course, dressed to pack and sleep). But then, a breakthrough! Sean found a local clinic that was open until 10:00, so we booked it to the garage just in time to meet my mom (with two bottles of cranberry juice and cranberry pills in tow!) and sped off toward the clinic.

After I’d filled out a fair bit of paperwork, a very surly young nurse called me back and started mumbling a series of hard-to-understand questions at me: “howmuchdoyouweigh?” “currentlytakinganydailymedications?” “anymedicalhistory?” “peeinthiscupandbringittome.” Then she led me to a brightly colored exam room and said “thedoctorwillbehereinaminute.”

When the doc showed up, he asked me (clearly!) why I thought I had a urinary tract infection, banged around on my kidneys in hopes of eliciting a reaction (nope), and told me he’d be right back with the results from my urine analysis. And right back he was with the obvious UTI diagnosis, the promise of meds (hooray!), and the unfortunate news that the grouchy nurse was on her way with a shot. A shot in the hip! “Thisisgoingtostingalittle,” the nurse said as she swabbed me with a numbing solution, reared her arm back, jammed the syringe in as hard as she could before anything was actually numb, and screamed “damnyouformakingmedomyjob!” Actually she didn’t say that, but I bet she wanted to, just like I wanted to say, “Look lady, I did not contract this UTI 12 hours before I was scheduled to leave for a business trip across the country just so I could screw with you on Memorial Day, so take it easy!”

After she spent what seemed like hours administering the painful shot she shooed me back into the waiting room while she tracked down the doctor. When she returned, she handed me a sheet of paper with a prescription for antibiotics and one for a pain reliever that she said would “turnyourpeeafunnycolor” and sent us on our way.

Mom and Sean graciously volunteered to fill the prescription for me so I could finish packing and continue peeing every five minutes. (They call this symptom “urgency,” and boy is it ever!) By the time they’d returned, I’d finished packing, drunk half the bottle of cranberry juice, taken two cranberry pills, and driven my parents’ water bill to record heights. I downed the antibiotic and the pain reliever with another glass of cranberry juice and was finally able to do the TV decompression thing. When I wasn’t in the bathroom, that is.

One week ago.

8:00PM Dinner at Hooters. How apropos.
10:00PM I start reading over my surgery info packet. Foolish! Sean and I joke about electrified boobs and crusty nipples and I announce that I've changed my mind.
5:00AM Alarms are ringing. Mom and Sean jump out of bed and start getting ready for the day. I snooze.
5:10AM I get out of bed, wash my face, put on my track suit, and pack my bag. I'm ready to go.
5:45AM Arrive at the surgery center. All the lights are off. We sit and wait.
6:00AM Nurse lets us in. I sign paper work and am prompted out of my track suit and into a too-big gown, toeless support hose, and circulation booties.
6:45AM Nurse sticks me with an IV. Says my doc will arrive shortly. Calls me "tiny." SCORE!
6:50AM Mom and Sean are allowed to sit with me in the pre-op room. I instruct them not to let me forget being called "tiny." Mom and Sean misunderstand, think she was referring to my boobs.
7:15AM My doctor arrives, doodles, and asks me some preliminary questions (to which, fear not, he already knows the answers): "Where are we making the incision?" "What size are we using?" "Silicone or saline?" I get an A+.
7:20AM My anesthesiologist arrives. He looks fabulous! No wonder all the nurses told me I was lucky to have him! Why wasn't I allowed to wear make-up OR deodorant today? It doesn't make much difference, because he's wheeled me into the operating room and knocked me out cold within five minutes.
10:00AM I wake up next to a nurse. He asks me how I feel. "Busty" I muster. He calls my mom in and asks me what kind of snack I'd like. Room service!
10:15-11:30AM I eat half a bag of Gold Fish and drink a few sips of Sprite. I take a pain pill. I doze. I try to get up. I feel nauseous, take prescription nausea meds, and doze again. Mom's getting antsy, eats the rest of my Gold Fish. I sit up and move to a chair. Nurse prompts me to go to the bathroom and get dressed. He wheels me out to the car. I fall asleep.
12:30PM We arrive home. I trudge past my dad and into the guest room. I'm in no state to take on stairs or my mile-high bed.
2:30PM I wake up from a nap. I feel ok, but I'm sniffing around the hydrocodone never the less. I trudge into the kitchen to see about breakfast. Mom makes me toast. I eat two bites, feel nauseous, and go back to bed without any pain pill.
4:00PM I wake up from another nap. I finish my toast and finally take a hydrocodone. It makes me sleepy, foggy, and irritable. Seriously, who gets addicted to this crap?
6:00PM Dinner time! Chicken breasts (apropos again!), mashed potatoes, and peas for my still-sedated tummy.
7:00PM My bestie comes by with a vase of pretty pink flowers. "Pink for breast um...cancer" she says.
7:45-10:00PM My family watches TV. I doze through everything, including the Project Runway finale. Oh well, good job Seth Aaron's Hot Topic collection. You were leaps and bounds above Fumpy Shadows and Color Me Outerwear.
1:00AM I wake up from a nap, text Sean, and go back to bed.

[Flowers! From left: Breast...cancer flowers from Jordan, roses from my momma, and a big, beauteous arrangement from my beloved.]

["The florist gave me a funny look when I filled out your card."]

[A birthday card re-imagined! Obviously, Sean wasn't excited AT ALL.]

My brother also sent me a birthday boob day card! And it sang!

Yesterday.

Was perhaps the most monumental and exciting day I have lived thus far, and I spent approximately 18 hours celebrating it with sleep, whine, trudgery, slovenliness, and curmudgery. And it was awesome!

Stay in school, kids. Forever.

Have you ever crashed head first into the U.S. tax system on Sunday evening (self-employed people have to pay in HOW MUCH each quarter!?); spent all but three hours of Sunday night/Monday morning working to meet a (recurring!) deadline; tried and failed to spend 5:00AM-6:30AM napping in preparation for Monday; gotten an email requesting a job interview within either seven or twenty-four hours; spent Monday working furiously to please clients, visiting the dentist, tutoring, prepping for a very important Tuesday doctor visit, and compiling a portfolio for the very unexpected Tuesday job interview; discovered at 11:30PM that not a single one of the four printers in the house worked; stayed up until 1:00AM waiting for drivers to install while wishing you didn't have to wake up in less than five hours and stress out all over again and wondering just how long it would be before Aunt Flo showed up to make things really interesting? I wouldn't recommend it.

Sarah Elizabeth and the THNGVBD

I was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (replete with tear shed at the most inappropriate times--on the way to pick up my girls, on the way to a meeting, thisclose to in a meeting [omgwtf, Hump Day + post-grad angst + PMS!?]) and then the craziest thing happened! I got on the dreadmill, watched the first 45 hilarious minutes of Too Young To Be a Dad, and received a veritable treasure trove of job postings from my sweetheart-cum-personal-job-hunter, and wouldn't you know it? I don't feel so bad anymore! Bless you endorphins, Lifetime, and best boyfriend ever. Bless you.

Annnnd wouldn't you know, my mom just walked in from her Wal-Mart run and handed me a Martha Stewart (eeee!) Weddings magazine and a tub of cotton candy, presumably as balm for my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Suddenly I'm feeling even better! I'm also so eating all 4 Points of that cotton candy. In bed. With Martha. Bless my mom and her Band-aids, too.

Shearly you jest

A few months ago I posted that Sean had grown so tired of spending $10 for a haircut every month that he decided buy his girlfriend-cum-stylist a hair trimmer. (I'm a lucky lady, y'all!) About three days before I left for my weekend College Station trip, my baby brother requested that I bring the hair trimmer along, for he too had grown tired of his usual hair maintenance routine. My mom was vehemently opposed to Trey's decision to turn his styling duties over to someone whose experience consisted solely of clipping on the #4 comb and buzzing away. "His hair is too temperamental, you'll never make it look right," she said. "He'll look terrible with a shaved head! His face shape is all wrong!"

It took a whole hour, a new #8 comb, some mad blending technique, and a couple of close calls (it turns out boys are just as horrified by "OOOOOPS!" as girls are) but his head? Not shaved. His hair? Gelled for the first time since...high school? His style? No longer poofy. His mom? In awe.

Playing catch up

- For the past month I've been driving two freshmen girls home from track and soccer practice every day and three days a week (respectively) to earn a little non-taxable income (aka: the best kind). Both of the girls are complete darlings and I actually quite love talking to them on their rides home (I've even taken to referring to them as "my girls" in conversations with my family). I've determined that I don't necessarily dislike kids as individuals (in fact I'm actually quite fond of them), what I hate are kids as a raucous group. As such I'm prepared to redact my statement about never having kids, so long as the kids I do have don't have any friends.

- I dearly love Maybelline Express Finish nail polish. It goes on smoothly, drys (dries? Did you know that both forms are acceptable? I had to look that up.) in about a minute, and stays on just as long as the more costly brands that I used to buy until I realized that all I was really doing was paying top dollar for the exact same chips in my color, and I'm way too chintzy to do that. ANYWAY, I was in the market for dark purple nail polish recently, but when I discovered that such a color was tragically unavailable from Maybelline, I cheated on it with Revlon Nail Enamel (first mistake--buying a nail polish brand that did not have a kicky name like "Express Finish"). The color I got is LOVELY, but it chipped an hour after I applied it the first time. "No problem," thought I, "I only applied one coat because I didn't really want it to last anyway." (It was a Friday, you see and I didn't want to have purple nails the following Monday.) So I tried again a week or so later, and this time I didn't skimp on the coats. It didn't chip, which turned out to be a darned shame because somehow applying the second coat made the color look less saturated. In other words, buyer beware.

- Did you know I write a second blog? It's true! It's also for work, but if internet marketing, web copy writing, and search engine optimization tickle your fancy, you can catch a new post every Thursday. And that, folks, is all the shameless self-promotion you'll hear from me today!

On the agenda

This overcast Sunday is the perfect day for brunch at The Original Pancake House and a Mad Men; New York, I Love You; and Match Point marathon (side note: Sean has hijacked the Netflix account). I do solemnly swear that by the end of the day Sean's couch will be permanently marked by my 200-pound butt.

Be mine

[This lovely Valentine's bouquet is compliments of my daddy-o and my sweetheart. You'll learn about its origin in just a bit.]

I'd planned on doing a fairly thorough post about Valentine's Day (aka: my fourth or fifth favorite holiday or something) the day after it ended, and then two days after it ended, and then you know those times when you're employed as a writer and after hours upon days of doing your job you just want to step away from the words? That's me right now. But instead of putting the post off until 2011, I've decided to give you a quick and dirty break down of the weekend activities.

On Friday I...
- Built a snowman with my mom and dressed it up as both my brother and my Valentine.
- Made snow cream. Yum!
- Drove my dad to Costco so he could buy four dozen roses for my mom. Thirty red for the years they've been married + six white for the years they dated = six red and six white left over for yours truly.
- Arranged said roses in vases. HO BOY do I suck at that job.
- Welcomed my sweetie home from work at 7:00 only to learn that he had about four more hours of work ahead of him. Yuck.
- Drove all over the Metroplex Dallas looking for binder clips for Sean's take-home work project. Seriously, Target, Walgreens, and Tom Thumb are on my bad list for life. Especially Target, because how can you sell sets of multi-colored binder clips of various sizes that come packaged with sets of multi-colored paper clips but not just boxes of small black binder clips? Team Wal-Mart 4eva!

On Saturday I...
- Lifted my head off the pillow just long enough to mumble "good-bye" to my sweetie as he left for work at 5:30AM.
- Visited Tom Thumb (it may be on my bad list, but that doesn't make it any less conveniently located) five hours later to shop for ingredients for lunches for Sean + ingredients for dinners for both of us.
- Cooked lunches for Sean while working on, well, work.
- Welcomed Sean home from work at 7:00PM and received a beautiful bunch of baby blue hydrangeas. "You kept talking about how much you like them," said Sean, "so I figured that was a hint or something." The man is good!
- Didn't have a vase for my hydrangeas and I didn't want to plop them in an oversized cup that my parents got from Texas Stadium and passed down to Sean, so I got creative and stuffed them in with the roses I got from dad. (When I say "stuffed" I am referring to my ineptitude at arranging flowers and not at all trying to indicate any negative feelings about my bouquet, which is in fact the only bouquet that I have ever endeavored to keep alive. I'm failing, of course, but I'm doing so with a lot of extra elbow grease.)
- Watched Good Will Hunting for the first time in like, 10 years. (Hint: It's WAAAAAY better when you're 23.)

On Valentine's Day I...
- Woke up too early for Sean's taste.
- Made breakfast for us to share.
- Tried to catch the 2:20 showing of Valentine's Day but missed it because I am a slow dresser. Tried to catch the 4:00 showing of Valentine's Day but missed it because the ticket lady said it was sold out. (Not so, said the board behind the ticket counter. Lame.) Bought tickets to the 5:20 showing.
- Wandered the mall waiting for show time and SURPRISE! Managed to save all of my money excepting the one dollar I spent on a drink at Sonic.
- Didn't breech the subject of how inane the movie was until we were almost at the car. I certainly did not like it, but I don't feel strongly enough about it to say that I hated it. It's like this--if you regularly spend $10 to take a nap, then by all means, see Valentine's Day. If you prefer to nap for free, don't see Valentine's Day ever. Not even when it comes to a Redbox near you.
- Returned home to chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and some pretty interesting show about human love (and some pretty nutty show about human sexual disorders. Weird.)

So yeah, I guess the actual quick and dirty version is this: More or less uneventful because my poor Valentine had to work through 2/3 of it. No matter though, because it just so happens that chick flicks (even truly awful ones), chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, and hydrangeas! are the keys to my heart. The end.

Snow-topia

Oh what a happy blizzard we had today! It started snowing before I woke up, snowed hard and pretty all day long, and will probably continue to snow after I go to bed. (Texas doesn't do all-day snow. In fact, it usually doesn't do "snow" so much as it does "ice" and "sleet," but that's another show.) I was afraid that all of the pretty weather would squash my productivity today, but once I moved my computer out of my house's window-less office and into our wide open living room, I actually got more work done than usual. Go figure. In fact, I worked so hard (and I was so afraid of disturbing the loveliness) that I did not even take time off to play in the snow, which is a darn shame since the 10 fluffy inches that blanketed the backyard would have made a perfect snowman! I did, however, manage to snap a few pictures this morning before I got trapped in my work zone. Those of you who live in North Texas probably saw similar sights today. Those of you who live in the Northeast and Midwest probably see similar sights every other week (and will therefore be unimpressed by 10 measly inches. Whatever.) Those of you who live elsewhere in Texas are mostly SOL, but I invite you to click to enlarge :)

[This is my backyard as it appears from underneath the porch--it seemed like whenever I ventured out I got snowflakes on my lens, which is not conducive to taking clear pictures, so I was hesitant at first.]

[This is a snow-covered bush in the uncharted territory of my backyard. You should have seen the snow covered branches--moments away from snapping. Eep!]

[Here's a pile of wood that is in our backyard for reasons of which I am unaware, as we have a gas fireplace. I like the contraption it's sitting in. Come to think of it, I might have actually piled the wood into that contraption myself.]

I'm hopeful that the snow will stick around tonight so I can roll around in (and take a few more pictures of the heavy accumulation) before it inevitably melts tomorrow morning/early afternoon. This might inhibit my ability to sleep until 8:45, but I have a feeling that I won't be groggy for long.

Super (Bowl) weekend

Last night I dreamed that Eric Clapton invited my mom, my brother, and me into his New Orleans apartment for snacks in the middle of Mardi Gras. Whatever could this mean? That I watched the T-Mobile myTouch Fender commercial right before bed? That I'm cheering for the Saints on Sunday? That I'm overly enthused about seeing Miss Layla this weekend? Yes.