Move It or Lose It.

It's official: all of our belongings are moved to the beach save one suitcase that I will be living out of for the next month. I would love to sit here and tell you that the whole process went smoothly, we became besties with the movers, and it was such good times that we decided to make moving an annual event for the foreseeable future. In actuality, it may just rank amongst the most frustrating experiences I ---nay, anyone---has ever had. And I am talking put all of the cell phone companies, cable companies and confusing instruction manuals together and they still don't compare to the white hot rage I felt this past weekend. Satan himself would have spent five minutes with this moving company and been like, "Man, you guys are kinda some shady bastards."

Sky Moving and Storage, which I have since dubbed Sketch Moving and Storage, was originally supposed to come get our stuff on Friday and do a same-day move to St. Simons Island for $1250. What actually transpired was several changes of plans about when our stuff would get there, some of the more questionable business people I have ever met, and a total bill of over $2600. And you had to pay in cash. Let me tell you, paying someone $2600 in cash kinda makes you feel like you're slinging drugs.

As if that wasn't enough, the guys from Sketch said that other moving men would be joining us in St. Simons to help them move things upstairs. This ended up translating into them wanting to drive around and see if we could pick up any cheap laborers around town. Not. Cool. To top it all off, the very first thing they pulled out of the truck, Mark's dresser, was broken. That was followed by a broken suitcase, ripped couch, broken CDs, and my broken hopes and dreams. When they finally left, Mark and I just sat amongst piles of boxes in utter, disheartened shock and exhaustion. What asshats. Dad wants to sue them as a fun side project, and who am I to deny my father what he constantly reminds us are the very few pleasure he gets in life?

We got an impressive amount of stuff unpacked and situated in the following days before I made the drive back to Athens. Now I am staying in my boss's empty house trying to resist the urge to drink by myself at night just for something to do. I had a moment the other night that brought the full extent of my loneliness to the surface when I caught myself talking to a spider the size of my face that I was attempting to kill by spraying it to death with Lysol Kitchen Cleaner.

"Okay, spider," my monologue began as I sized it up, bleachy weapon in hand. "The problem here is that you are larger than I would prefer to just flat-out squish you with a paper towel." This lead to me demonstrating by cupping my hand into a claw to see exactly where my boundaries were.

"So what's going to happen here is that I am going to drown you now with this kitchen cleaner, and it will be much more pleasant for both of us if you just go peacefully. Okay here I go...DIE SPIDER DIE!! Alright, you aren't moving so that's a good STOP IT! DON'T YOU DARE CRAWL AWAY FROM ME WHEN I AM TRYING TO KILL YOU! Take a little more of that...okay....okay. Time to flush you down the toilet."

As I watched the spider disappear into the plumbing of it's final resting place I realized I needed to get out of the house. Conversing with insects can't be healthy. Luckily I have tried to fill up my evenings with social functions as much as possible over the next few weeks. That didn't stop me from having the time to watch two very dramatic movies on ABC Family this morning: The Face on the Milk Carton and Death of a Cheerleader. Such emotional roller coasters.

I don't know how much more blogging will get done since I have no internet where I am staying and as I currently sit being one of those people typing away on my Mac at Panera I'm not sure how much more of this setting I can take. So possibly the next time I write will be from the beach. Or it may be after I succumb to the notion of drinking alone and need the distraction after realizing am chatting it up with some ants.

I Dreamed a Dream

Moving is expense as hell. I put my foot down last year as I was crankily fighting with our mattress trying to get it down two flights of stairs from my old apartment and up one to the apartment Mark and I are in now. (Whoever invented mattresses: First off thank you, because sleeping on them is a lot better than when cave people had to make beds out of leaves and hair and berries. But do you think you could have come up with an easier way to carry them? Not doing humanity any favors here.)

Anyways, pools of sweat were dripping down my face as I looked at Mark and said, "Light of my life, it would be my preference for the future if we would enlist the help of several capable men via a professional moving company to assist in all of our moving endeavors."

Okay... so maybe it wasn't quite that polite. But I avowed, as God as my witness, I would never move mattresses again. So as our move to the beach approaches, I started calling moving companies for quotes. I had no idea what to expect, but holy balls it's pricey. Apparently, since last summer proved I am capable if not willing to move crap from apartment to apartment, I should go into the moving business because I would make a killing. We are moving a minimal amount of stuff and it is still going to be over $1,000. I just keep having to remind myself that it will be worth it when I can point and laugh (and then shell out a crap ton of money to) the professional guys that will be moving all of our stuff instead of me.

As you can deduce, we finally locked down someplace to live at the beach. That makes two out of our three Components of Major Life Change: Mark getting a job, me getting a job, and finding somewhere to call our humble abode. Now it's just up to me to secure some kind of occupation. We all know that's not easy right now, but a small coastal island that totals 36 square miles? Damn near impossible. I realize I am just going to have to get down there and schmooze for a bit and hope something pans out.

In the meantime, I recently got inspired to start a new project, hence the blog neglect. It started when I went home for Father's Day this past weekend. Mom got us tickets to a small community theatre play called Till Beth Do Us Part for no other reason then the name. We joked that even if it was bad it would still be great fun.

So. Not. True.

We didn't know what to expect as we walked into the theatre, but we almost stopped dead in our tracks seeing entered the smallest theatre in world (I am guessing). The seating area was the same size as the stage, with enough chairs to house an unheard of mere 75 people. We nestled into our places as the show started.

I can only describe what happened for the next two hours as a trifecta of utter, utter sadness and failure: horrible acting, horrible directing, horrible writing. Now keep in mind I am a total supporter of community theatre, having had one of the best experiences of my life being in Little Shop of Horrors. But this was just unforgivable.

The premise of the show: a husband and wife's lives are shaken up when the wife hires a southern belle (Beth) to organize her life, but Beth's presence only drives the husband into an aggravated bonkers. We realize at the close of the first act after Beth tricks the wife into kicking husband out of the house that she has sinister motives and is just trying to oust the wife out of a job. The second act couldn't even be saved by a man cross-dressing as part of the husband's counteractive plan. It was overacted badly and the writing left a lot to be desired to say the least. I wanted to laugh, I tried to laugh. But when you feel a part of your soul dying it's not really that funny.

But not everyone seemed to feel the way my family did as we looked at each other trying not to let our mutual feeling of disgust show on our faces. Oh, no. There were two couples in their seventies sitting behind us, and one of the women giggled through the entire show. I kept being torn between turning around and saying, "Whatever you're on, I want some" or "WHAT IS SO EFFING FUNNY?" On top of this she had the desire to verbalize things about the play as she figured them out, but she was a couple of beats behind everyone else. At one point when she blurted, "That's a man dressed as a woman!" after about five minutes of him being on stage I wanted to pull my hair out.

We jetted out of there as soon as it was over and railed on it the entire 35-minute drive home. At some point I likened it to a festering turd in the plumbing of life.

"I could write something funnier than that," I moaned.

"You should!" My mom and sister said almost simultaneously.

This got me thinking. No one has told me my blog sucks yet, and I like making people laugh. I have certainly had enough crazy characters and stories come into my life that I can retell. Goodness knows I am going to have some time on my hands with no job prospects at the moment. So I am going to try my hand at writing a T.V. script. This may be ridiculous and unfruitful, but I need a project that is a little ridiculous. I've been fleshing out ideas, figuring out ways I can weave some real experiences Mark and I have had with some amped-up what ifs. We'll just see how it goes, because why not aim for the impossible?

*Cue inspirational music, applause and roll credits*

Knock, Knock.

Not meaning to sound paranoid or anything, but my landlord is out to get me. It has been a constant passive-aggressive battle with them since I moved in with Mark after we got married, mostly because they are slumlords and not very nice ones at that. They went through about a three-week period a few months ago where they decided to use our apartment as the model to show potential new residents. Our lease says this is kosher as long as they give us a day's notice, so while it was inconvenient there was not a whole lot we could do. Luckily they must have walked in and felt the hateful vibes toward them radiating from the apartment because they cooled it and left us in peace for a while.

Thursday morning, Mark took his car for routine maintenance so I hopped in the shower to start getting ready for work. As I was getting out I thought I heard a knock at the front door, so I poked my head around into the living room to listen. Another knock, and I still just thought it was a persistant FedEx employee.

But then the lock started jiggling as if someone was opening it. "Hmmm," I thought to myself. "I wonder why Mark knocked before unlocking the door? He's soooo special."

All of the sudden the door opened...and in walks the Leasing Lady for our apartment complex.

And there I was standing in a bathrobe, towel folded into a turban on top of my head sporting glasses and no make-up, toothbrush dangling from my mouth as I gawked at the woman who had just entered my apartment while I was at my most vulnerable.

"Oh!" she said. "Didn't you get my letter?"

"No," I said through a mouth full of toothpaste, not-so-subtly double checking that none of my lady parts were peaking out of my robe. "Whatsh gon om?"

"I have the person who is moving into this apartment here to look at it. But I caught you at a bad time."

I wanted to yell, "NO SHIT IT'S A BAD TIME! DON'T YOU SEE I AM NAKED AND OUR APARTMENT IS A MESS? GET OUT, YOU HORRIBLE WOMAN! LEAVE, AND NEVER RETURN! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!"

"Ub," I stammered instead, trying not to choke or spray Colgate Total everywhere. "Gib me ten minish."

I scrambled to get some clothes on and made sure nothing embarrassing was laying out, all the while cursing under my breath at how just minutes ago I was blissfully belting Adele into a shampoo bottle at the top of my lungs in the shower like a scene out of a Disney Channel Original Movie. I opened the front door to look out and found Leasing Lady with some dude.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I really thought I had sent you a letter."

"It's fine," I said curtly with my best Totally-Not-Fine face. "Come in. Please shut the door behind you so the cats don't get out."

The guy awkwardly stepped in behind Leasing Lady into the apartment.

"Uh," he said sheepishly. 'This looks good. Pretty much what I was expecting."

Leasing Lady tried to make painstakingly awkward small talk with me while he looked around but I was having none of it. I reaffirmed that we were to be out July 15th (free at last!) and that we would have to pay ourselves to steam clean the carpets (ridiculous) before ushering them on their way.

I dialed Mark's number, fingers still shaking with my agitation. After confirming that he did not in fact get said letter and neglect to tell me on accident, I made a sassy call to the landlord to tattle on Leasing Lady before finally hauling ass to get to work.

What a nightmare. But HA! We found a condo at the beach to live in and *fingers crossed* we should be set. The sooner we can blow this joint the better.

For anyone that is curious, the crazy people downstairs with the cat poop and horrible parking jobs moved out in the dead of night a few weeks ago. No joke, totally was the sketchiest operation ever. Now I am just dealing with the guy next to us that likes to turn his bass up way too high so that, even with out T.V. on, we constantly hear thump thump thumpthump thumpity thump.


Home. Sweet. Friggin'. Home.

A Little Bit Homeless

The following is a re-blog from my attempt at Tumblr. It scares me and I don't know if I like it.

This has been a Big News week. A lot of life-changers are happening to people I know and it all seems to have fallen over the last few days. I am like, people, whatever happened to checking in to just see what’s up? I’m getting paranoid to answer my phone or check my Facebook because it’s probably going to be another piece of Big News and make me want to dig my heels in because I don’t like change. If you only knew the inner turmoil that happens when I grocery store and debate whether I want to stick with the same cereal or try something else. Therefore if something life-changing happens to you that you think I need to know about, try me next week. I have filled my quota for now.

The saddest part is that my only big news is that I am going to be a little bit homeless come July 15th. You might wonder how someone becomes just a little homeless, because it doesn’t seem that homelessness is a thing you can half-ass. It happens when your landlord decides to break his promise of a lease extension and boots you out to make room for a shiny new tenant. Too bad your job goes through the first week of August.

So Mark will go ahead and move to the beach in early July, but I will be left slumming it for a month. Lovely. Luckily when I approached my boss about my soon-to-be nomadism, she generously offered her house for me to stay in. I think part of the motivation is free babysitting, which she will soon regret when she sees how helplessly awkward I am around children.

While I am tentatively taken care of, there is the issue of finding someplace Mark can actually move into come July. In a college town, if it is February and you don’t have somewhere locked down to live for August you need to get it in gear. Apparently, me looking in early May for somewhere to move in July means that I am over-enthusiastic and need to wait until closer to move-in time. This is simply not suitable to my need to have a plan for everything. I get uncomfortable over minor unplanned things, like not knowing what I am going to wear the next day. Not knowing where I am going to move in two months? Please. Stress city.

There is also the matter of me not having a job lined up at the beach yet. I haven’t yet ruled out the possibility of entrepreneurship, like opening a tiki stand on the beach and making a career out of carving famous people’s faces into coconuts. But something a little more legit and less knife-wielding would be preferable.

People question why I am not falling all over myself with unbridled joy at the thought of no longer having to be so pale I am practically see-through and spending half my time in a bathing suit. But I am sure that all of our friends, family, and probably some people that will conveniently try to re-connect with us want us to have someplace for them to stay. Also they probably don’t want us to be so broke that we charge them a rental fee.

And the obligation to spend more time in a bathing suit? Please. If you think that is something that brings me joy you clearly fall into the need-to-re-connect category.

As things settle more into place, there will be joy. It may even be unbridled, who knows. But til then, I am just trying to avoid even a little bit of homelessness.

New Look...

So I have started using Tumblr as I am re-entering the blogging world. Don't know if it will stick, but we'll see!

hitchedat22.tumblr.com

All the World's A Stage

Alert the media everyone, because I am poised to make a comeback. You are now looking at (well, looking at the text of) the newest member of a community theatre production of Little Shop of Horrors. The part? Church Lady. Go ahead and Google search it, but you won't find anything. That's because it is a made-up ensemble part. And I couldn't be happier.

I was one of those theatre kids in high school who you probably threw dirty looks at because we were obnoxiously in-your-face and fancied ourselves hil-ar-ious. After a phase of treating everything like it was a performance, I calmed down, went to college, and busied myself with other things. I always missed theatre but it seemed like you couldn't be involved unless you were a "serious artist."

Around Christmas I happened to go on the web page for the local community theatre and saw they were holding auditions for Little Shop of Horrors. I put the idea in my back pocket for a while, and by the time I decided to casually check the site again I was startled to find auditions were taking place that evening. An internal debate ensued culminating in me making the decision to just go for it and scrambling to find and practice 30 seconds of a song to sing for the audition. I belted a few ballads in my car on the way home from work, eliciting a few double takes from passing drivers. A quick hello and kiss for Mark and I was off to the theatre.

I had no idea what to expect, but was still taken aback by the turnout for auditions. Thirty or so people were crammed into the lobby filling out info sheets and sizing each other up. I grabbed a paper and nestled into an empty space on a bench sandwiched between two people who were about 15 years older than me. The woman to my right looked reasonably normal, but it was when I took a look at the Guy to my left that my nervousness ebbed away for a second while I choked back a snicker.

Here, at a small community theatre in a small college town, Guy had come to the audition dressed up to look exactly like the main part. He had the nerdy outfit of the lead character down to a tee, sporting thick rimmed glasses, a sweater vest and bowtie. I caught a snippet of  the conversation he was having about recently moving to Georgia from Chicago where he was trying to make it as an actor. I didn't catch how exactly he went from Chicago to small-time Georgia, but I could only deduce that he held his talents in a little higher esteem than they actually deserved.

I turned my focus to filling out my own form, relieved to see this wasn't going to be a super serious audition when two of the questions were "What is your street name?" and "Draw a picture on the back of this paper of a unicorn doing something unlikely." Just as I was finishing my drawing of a unicorn sitting at a computer and complaining that someone defriended him on Facebook (brilliant, I know), Guy tapped me on the shoulder.

"Do you think I should staple or paper clip my resume to the form?" he asked, holding a copy of an actor resume and two full-page headshots. I looked at him blankly.

"Uh....." I managed to get out.

"I think I'll see if they have a stapler," Guy said, completely unfazed. As he got up I shot a confused look to the woman on the other side of me, who just shrugged a little.

The director came out and explained that we would all wait in the lobby and go in the theatre one by one to sing our song snippet. The first audition started, and we realized that we could hear the audition from the lobby. We all lapsed into a nervous silence. All of us except Guy. Oh, no. He's a thespian. He stood up and started making a production out of stretching and shaking it out while we all watched him out of the corner of our eyes. When they called his name I curiously listened to see what kind of chops this ridiculous human being actually had.

The sound that filled the lobby next was something of a cross between a 13-year-old boy going through a particularly rough patch of puberty and a goat being castrated. I winced as Guy kept trying to hit higher and higher notes, voice painfully breaking which he seemed to think he could fix by just singing at a louder volume. After what felt like a million tortured years, it was over and Guy made his way out of the theatre to sit back next to me.

"I am glad we did those vocals warm-ups," he said a little breathlessly. "I think it went better than usual."

I mean, really. This is just not even the kind of shit you can make up.

By the time I was done with my audition Guy had whipped out a Macbook from the large man bag he'd brought with him and was silently mouthing words to a script he had pulled up on the computer. Complete with hand motions and everything, he sat their pantomiming while I waited for the rest of the auditioners to have their turn. Guy suddenly turned to me.

"What kind of acting experience do you have?"

"Oh," I said, caught off-guard. "Nothing major, just a few things in high school. But that was a long time ago."



"What is your job?" I asked politely.

"Well, I'm working as a janitor."

And that was the end of that conversation. But it must have sparked some fond memories of the Shakespeare production he was in because the last time I looked over before the director came back out Guy was grinning ear to ear watching a computer slide show of himself onstage.

They didn't call my number to stay for the next phase of auditions, so I didn't feel too encouraged about my chances. To my surprise, the cast list arrived in my e-mail inbox the next morning and my name was on it. I made the rounds of calls to my family, telling my sister that I met someone that will be a lot of her musical theatre major peers in 20 years. Just to be on the safe side, I waited until we had our first read-through last week to be absolutely sure something had gone terribly wrong in the order of the universe and Guy was going to be my fellow castmate. As soon as I could breathe a sigh of relief at his absence I knew it was totally blog-worthy.

So now I am resuscitating my career as an actress extraordinaire, though Mark doesn't seem to fully appreciate that he is now living in the midst of celebrity. I just can't work in these conditions. No one understands my genius.

Except maybe Grover. He's just the gift that keeps on giving.

Hair Today, Gone Tommorow

On the whole, I have had an extremely lame couple of weeks. My routine has consisted of work, home, sleep, work, home, sleep, etc. I made the determination a long time ago that I was not going to be one of those people that word-vomits a stream of consciousness onto their facebook/blog/twitter, documenting every little thing I eat or mundane thought I have. Therefore, I have not blogged.

But something horrifying happened last week. The catalyst to shake up my monotonous routine was making a truly sobering, tragic discovery: not one, but two WHITE hairs growing on my poor, unsuspecting head. At the same time. Like two little white hair friends set out to be a bad influence on the brown hairs and turn them against me too. Not to mention this was coming on the heels of having already discovered one a few weeks ago and yanking that sucker out before it stood a chance. For those of you counting at home, that is a grand total of three white hairs growing on my otherwise brunette, 22-year-old scalp.

You may be thinking this is an overreaction and a few white hairs is nothing to justify these dramatics. I might agree with you if my dad hadn't gone prematurely white in his thirties, thus setting me up for a little smack in the face by genetics. I had always thought I would be the kind of person to age gracefully, but not starting this young. This young I plan on being dragged kicking and screaming if my body continues to not act its age. The saddest part of it all was that I pulled out several perfectly nice brown hairs trying to get at those white bastards. If they insist on trying to come back around, I can promise I will be even less forgiving.

Feeling prematurely old is bad enough, but then something happened to make me feel dumb. And feeling dumb is bad enough when you are fully loaded with brown hairs. Feeling dumb with white hairs is just demoralizing. I've been casually applying to jobs in Athens because filling up my tank three times a week due to commuting and additional travel is just not ideal. I saw there were openings for a few jobs at JcPenney, which is definitely not my department store of choice but I figured I could fake it. I go in with my resume in hand before realizing that of course you don't actually meet with a person so they can evaluate your people skills. That would make too much sense. You sit at a kiosk and fill out an application on a computer. A computer is way better qualified to gage how you might do at a customer service position.

So I filled out the basics about who I am and where I've worked, and proceeded to the 50-question survey portion of the application. This basically consisted of personality assessment-type questions: "How would you best describe your character? A) Honest, B) Hardworking, C) Determined, or D) Loyal?" Mixed in with these questions were ones that anyone could plainly see what the correct answer was: "If you were to catch a co-worker stealing from the company, how would you react? A) Report them immediately, B) Warn them that if you caught them again you would tell the supervisor, C) Not say anything, or D) Join in with them?" Oh yes, I am absolutely going to divulge that I would be totally on board to become a criminal, Caribbean Joe Fuddy Duddy Shirt-Stealing dream team with my delinquent coworker.

The final portion of the questionnaire was a series of two opposite descriptions from which you had to determine how much either of them fit your personality. Example: On one end you had "I openly express my feelings" while on the other you had "I never show how I am feeling," with the "strongly agree" option for both, "somewhat agree," and "neutral." I tried to tailor my answers to make me sound like a superstar potential employee- agreeable enough to work on a team but strong enough to work independently, confident enough to say I am right but humble enough to know when I am wrong, ambitious enough to have goals but wise enough to know my place on the totem pole. I thought I was a shoe-in....

Until I got to the end of the 50th question and hit the submit button. A window popped up on my screen, which I cheerfully read thinking it was further instructions or just letting me know someone would be in touch. But as I read further, it went a little something like this:

"Based on your answers and application, you have been determined to be unqualified for the position(s) you applied for. You may reapply to JcPenney in 180 days. Really, you are better off trying to find something else, because JcPenney kinda sucks anyway. I mean, if you look at our junior section it is reminiscent of what your grandmother thinks the kids are wearing these days but in actuality is completely devoid of anything attractive. And we really don't even have good deals. So you are better off going to Macy's or Belk. Hell, even Sears seems to know what the trends are and they sell dishwashers! Overall as a company, we just fail."

Okay, maybe that last portion may be slightly exaggerated in my memory. But the part where they essentially told me I am unqualified to fold shirts is ingrained forever. I sat there stunned for a moment then got up with my head held high and sauntered out of there. As soon as I was in my car, I gave Mark a ring.

"Those mother effers at JcPenney told me I am not good enough to work there!" I spat as soon as Mark picked up. "I have a college degree in public relations! PUBLIC RELATIONS! That means that the University of Georgia deemed me fit to RELATE with the PUBLIC. But nooooooooooo, apparently that is not good enough for JcPenney. There are people that get jobs there that don't even have a HIGH SCHOOL diploma. What the HELL? I am never shopping there again!"

"Whoa," was Mark's reply. "That sucks. Whatever, screw 'em. You don't need them."

"Damn straight," I said, bitterness ebbing away. "You can still shop there, though. I know you usually find stuff there that you like."

"Cool. Thanks."

I then got an earful of mockery from my parents, which was fine because it had evolved from humiliating to hilarious. I know that there are plenty of jobs out there I am qualified for that are a lot more stimulating than cleaning out dressing rooms. But my boycott of JcPenney still stands. Never again. Long live Macy's!

Snow Country for Cold Men

As I trudged through the snow and ice with Mark in Chicago on December 26th trying to find the train stop at the close of our Christmas adventures, I thought to myself, "Everything from my toes to my teeth to my hair follicles is freezing right now. I can't feel my face. I shall never complain about Georgian forty-degree winters again."

Even as our plane touched down to snow flurries in Atlanta, I reckoned "Ah, well, I guess I missed our yearly winter snowfall."

Oh, how wrong I was.

When you live in Georgia you learn to become immune to the ominous reports the weather channel doles out when they think there is a chance of snow. If I had a dollar for every day the Board of Education pre-emptively canceled school in a frenzy because of the foreshadowed blizzard only to wake up to a perfectly un-precipitated day, I would have, like, twenty bucks. (Okay, maybe that is not a dramatic enough example...but you get it. And twenty bucks is nothing to sneeze at. It buys you almost two whole movie tickets as long as you don't want to see it in 3-D.)

So when I kept hearing rumblings of snowfall last weekend, I didn't really start getting my hopes up until mid-Sunday. The weather channels seemed sure of it, and I was texting my fellow co-workers throughout the day about what the implications would be for the following work day. As the predicted 7:00 p.m. beginning of the snow came and passed without so much as a flurry, I started to become grumpy.

"I'll bet nothing is going to happen and I got all excited for no reason," I pouted grouchily to Mark.

And then around 8:30 the skies opened up and I have never seen so much snowfall in all my life. We were fascinated, the cats were fascinated- we just sat there in awe watching the world turn white in record time.

"Well, shit," Mark said as we gaped at the window. "We probably should have picked up some more stuff at Wal-Mart."

"Yeah, and maybe not have called everyone we saw there who were stocking up on supplies dumb and panicky..." I said sheepishly.

When we went to bed the snow was still coming down steadily, and we woke up to what we later learned was just shy of nine inches of snow. Mid-afternoon we bundled up and ventured out to one of the main roads close to where we live to see if we could find any sort of life form. God Bless America, because while there was not a car in sight, the Waffle House on the corner was open and ready for business. It was comforting to know that even in a snowstorm, the sign on their door held true: "We've got you covered. Scattered, smothered, and covered."

The notion of being snowed in sounds wonderful and romantic, sipping hot cocoa by a crackling fire and reading stories and poetry to one another by candlelight as you gaze into each other's eyes. In actuality, the closest we had to cocoa was Diet Coca-Cola, a crackling fire doesn't really work out in a second-story apartment with no fireplace, and we never lost power so the reading by candlelight turned into playing hours on end of Donkey Kong Country on the Wii. Sensual. And when I tried to gaze into Mark's eyes, he just said, "What is wrong with you? You're creeping me out."

The other problem you encounter when Georgia gets subjected to abnormal winter weather elements is that the lovely, powdery snow quickly gets buried under a layer of ice that stabs your ankles as you sink through eight inches of it and then when you complain about it a certain husband of yours says, "Well, maybe you should have rethought the outfit." Which he was probably right, because my winter weather ensemble consisted of sneakers, black leggings and shorts (a look I would NEVER sport in any other circumstances), striped knee socks, several layers of mismatched shirts and coats, a further mismatched scarf, and an even further mismatched head-warmer. I looked like a walking episode of What Not To Wear: I Live In The South and Don't Have A Clue How To Dress Myself For The Snow Or Really At All For That Matter Edition.

As the next few days progressed, alternating between slightly above freezing temperatures that slowly melted the snow and temperatures in the 'teens that just re-froze it into a precarious sheet of ice over everything, navigating anything on foot or in a car became damn near impossible. It is a wonder I did not break my ass bone.

Ultimately, the better part of last week saw me spending the majority of it as my alias Diddy Kong and Mark and I dipping into the Island of Misfit Foods as we began resorting to eating things that had been hanging out the pantry for quite some time. I was pretty excited to finally get out of the house and back to work on Thursday.

And then I quickly realized, what was I thinking? Work sucks! Why didn't I appreciate the time off when I had it? Man, I really need a break...

Two Thousanleven.

A week into 2011 and I am still working off my holiday hangover. No, this doesn't mean that I went on some kind of crazy drinking bender from Halloween through New Year's. If I had, I would probably be dead and you would have gotten some far more exciting blog posts (from when I was drunk, not some kind of creepy, post-death blog haunts). 

This hangover is the kind where I become bitter towards how holidays fall on the calender. How is it fair that we get three magical months containing Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas before crashing down onto the cold and depressing months of January, February, and March? Yes, each of these months has a holiday. A LAME holiday. Let's review:

New Year's. A whole lot of build-up with a minimal yield of excitement. You spend the whole night drinking and watching a ball on T.V. Then you finally get to do a countdown for the clock to turn midnight and...nothing really changes. Happy New Year! Now you get to date all of your papers and checks wrong for the next month and try to figure out if you are going to go with "Twenty Eleven" or "Two Thousand Eleven" and how to say the latter without it coming out as "Two Thousanleven." So many syllables. I think I'll just pick a time each day to get wigged out about when it finally hits. "Three! Two! One! Woo! It's 2:34 p.m.!" I don't see people getting annoyed by that at all.

Valentine's Day. It's only made for people who have a significant other and even then there is no guarantee you will get a good Valentine's day. (Though if other people's men are like mine and got them a wireless router for Christmas, they will be needing to do some Valentine's Day damage control. And Mark, I know that you will end up reading this. I love you and your gift to me on our first married Christmas of faster internet was, ah, beautiful and romantic. Just know that chocolate, jewelry, stuffed animals, and spa treatments are too. 'Nuff said.) Frankly, I can't fully enjoy a holiday I feel apologetic for knowing that there is such a strong movement against it. It's more like I Am Sorry I Am Not Single And Get To Enjoy This Holiday Day. And you certainly don't want to be that jerk that gushes on and on about how in love you are and your Valentine's Day was just perfect to a single or recently broken-up with friend who will just sit there and have one of those daydreams where they picture themselves strangling you like in the movies. It's a very precarious holiday. Very much indeed.

St. Patrick's Day. I don't get this holiday. You wear green and get drunk. I can do this any of the other 364 days of the year. And you run the risk of forgetting to wear greenand people continually pinching the bajeezus out of you all day. How is this even fun? Plus, we just stole it from the Irish and bastardized it like so many other holidays we celebrate here. Talk to me again when there are real leprechauns who take you across real rainbows to real pots of gold. Now that's a holiday.

I guess I should be appreciative that we have any holidays at all these months and take what I can get. It's not like May, June, or August have much going for them either. (Except August has my birthday, but that's become somewhat of a lame holiday as well.) But at least they are warm. Now I am just stuck inside watching T.V. But at least Grover likes T.V. too.

Beth on a Stick

Alright, enough of this holiday hiatus. I have officially survived, relatively unscathed and only minimally frostbitten. Let me tell you though, Chicago and South Bend are cold. And at a high of 25 degrees, I heard from multiple northerners that it was "surprisingly warm."

...WTF? Note to self: never live north of the Mason-Dixon line.

All in all, I had two wonderful Christmases- a faux one and a real one. My family and I designated December 18th "Faux Christmas," with Santa obliging to make a visit early and us going through the usual Christmas morning routine. We woke up and Dad filmed me and Kate like he does every year when we come out to see what bounty Santa hath brought forth that year. (Our geek-out factor has only diminished slightly as the years have gone by- we still run out and squeal "Santa came! Santa came!" I don't know if I should be proud or disturbed by this.) Then we open gifts and go through stockings, which now always include scratch-off lottery tickets but absolutely does not mean we are hillbillies with a gambling problem. We just support education. I also am going to be a scratch-off katrillionaire.

We then flew out for the real Christmas with Mark's family, and by comparison to my usual Christmas celebrations it was fairly tame. The highlights included going ice skating (my butt and the ice got to be besties), going to Christmas Eve Catholic mass (I grew up Methodist. Catholicism vs. Methodism = similar cast, two totally different productions.), and several huge family dinner parties (I am such a charmer. They like me! They really like me!).

The sadness of being apart from my family really only hit me when we returned home the day after Christmas. Having to get back to work while they were just starting our normal trip sucked to say the least. However, to keep my spirits up, they created what we lovingly deemed Beth on a Stick. They basically took my pictures and taped it to one of the handheld fans we used as programs from the wedding. Kate periodically sent me text picture messages of all the fun things I was doing via Beth on a Stick. So rather than trying to describe it, I have decided to present some of the highlights. Enjoy.

Beth on a Stick : What I Did(ish) This Christmas

A Photo Essay.

...with lots of subtitles and punctuation in the title like real artists do!

On the car ride, gearing up
for the big trip.

Spending a little quality time with my cousins

Wouldn't be complete without
playing some cards

Ready to open some gifts!

My grandpa was highly amused
by my gift of a bathroom aid called
"Trap a Crap"

Got to add the last piece to
the jigsaw puzzle

Getting some wisdom from Grandpa

In Kentucky now with my
favorite rolls in the world

And the Beth was hung by the
stocking with care. Merry Christmas
to all, and to all a good night.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Our first Christmas season as a married couple has so far been a little on the anti-climactic side. Not to say it hasn't been nice, because it has. I don't know exactly what I was expecting- picking out a Christmas tree in a romantic montage with a great backing soundtrack, decorating it with the help of birds and our other little forest friends while singing a perfectly executed duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," playful snowball fights that induce passersby to throw up in their mouth just a little by our nauseating couple-y cuteness. Well, other than it being the south and not having gotten much colder than 50 degrees outside, I thought they were fairly attainable dreams. Ha.

So far it has been mainly the heartbreaking realization that while the people around me (including Mark) are winding down with finals and looking forward to the prospect of a whole month's break, the real world isn't split into semesters and if I want to have any kind of Christmas vacation I get to take unpaid time off. Woo.

We did have a nice time going to pick out a tree. I am ashamed to say that we did something that I have frowned upon and judged others for doing as far back as I can remember: we got our tree before Thanksgiving. We justified it by saying that since we were going on our trip to see Mark's family the week before Christmas, we wanted to have as much time with it as possible to get maximum bang for the buck. I hardly think I am on the same level as department stores and places like Hobby Lobby, who were fully stocked and pushing Christmas merchandise as I was running around getting last minute wedding things in July. I mean really, that is just blasphemous. But whatever way you look at it, we committed a serious holiday grievance and I can only hope that the Christmas gods will be understanding and one day forgive me.

The only snafu we hit was during the decorating process. We each had a few ornaments from our trees back home, and grabbed some gold ball ornaments from the dollar store (we keeps it real) to fill the rest of the space. We got the tree home and lit while Mark serenaded me, singing "Christmas balls! Christmas balls! I've got great big Christmas balls! Wrap them up like Santa Claus, I've got Christmas balls!"

Lovely.

I took a break and went back to our room to return a call from my granny that I was unable to answer as we were making about the 16th attempt at getting the tree straight in the stand. She and I got talking for a bit, and when I walked back out into the living room I came to a halt as I stood before a fully-balled tree.

"You..." I said breathlessly. "You decorated without me?"

"Just the ball ornaments!" Mark said cheerily before taking in the look on my face. "I got finished with the dishes, so I went ahead and did the boring ornaments too... are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said gruffly. "I'll be right back."

I then went into the bathroom and started bawling. My husband, God bless him, can be completely oblivious sometimes. My family is all about sentiment and tradition, to the point where we are some of the biggest cheeseballs you will ever meet. Mark completely didn't realize how badly he hurt my feelings by decorating our first Christmas tree without me.

Fast forward to a few hours and nasty little fight later during which I fully brought the dramatics, making a case about how this instance was just one in a series of instances that were indicative of a larger problem with the way Mark does things (blame me having a lawyer as a dad- always trying to make my case beyond a reasonable doubt). It was not one of the prouder moments of our fledgling marriage. Finally, exhausted, we chalked it up to having always done the holidays completely differently in each of our families. Neither of them were bad or wrong. They were just different. We each just needed to be more understanding of that and patient with the other one while we adjust.

When all was said and done, the tree is rocking and our apartment is all decked out and fab. Mark even surprised me yesterday by putting up a bunch of blue icicle lights in our room. It is not quite at the point where my family's house in Canton is, which looks like Christmas itself came in and vomited joy and magic all over the place. (Mom is on Christmas crack. No joke. Another rare but addicting drug- decorating your entire house with Santas, snowmen, pictures, lights- anything cheerful you can get your hands on. An intervention has been staged.) But it is hopefully the start of our own little tradition, which is still going to be great.

And we also dressed Grover up like Santa. I sat him on my lap and told him that my one wish was for him to stop waking me up every morning at 7:00 by pawing at my face.

Texting and Blogging with Molly

Well, Mark and I successfully made it through our first big holiday of married life, handling it very diplomatically by spending two nights and each of our parents' houses. And my family actually made (most of) the Thanksgiving meal, which anyone who knows the Johnsons knows that is truly a sight to behold. For some reason, the cooking gene skipped my mom and ever since I can remember, she has simply not been interested in being one of those dash-of-this-dash-of-that, Food Network-watching, new recipe-trying kind of people. We have probably been to every restaurant within a 25-mile radius of our house. Whenever there's a new pizzeria opens, we'll be there. Whenever there's a new Chinese joint, we'll be there. Whenever there's a grand opening of a sandwich cafe- well you get the idea.

So this was a far cry from our normal routine of escaping down to Gulf Shores Beach, Alabama in order to avoid having to cook. Our desperation to dodge home-cooked meal-making transcends state borders. It is truly sad. But really, who can pass up the opportunity to have Mahi Mahi and turkey in the same meal? Nonetheless, it turned out pretty well, and I contributed macaroni and cheese that I made from scratch right down to the cheese sauce. I kicked Kraft's ass and I kicked it hard. I twisted Cheesasaurus' little mascot arm until he cried uncle. It was fantastic.

Another thing I love about being home is getting be around a dog. My cats, though slightly annoying at times as we all know, are my darlings. But my dog growing up was one of my BFFs, and when she died in February it devastated our whole family. Right after our wedding, my parents and Kate got a new dog named Molly. She is a stocky flat-coated retriever mix, which basically means she looks like a Golden Retriever that got dipped into black ink. She is extremely sweet and definitely has her quirks, one of which being the fact that she settles for no less than two walks per day. While our old dog became a nervous wreck at the mere sight of a leash, you mention something about a walk and Molly goes nuts, leaping in the air with such a great vertical that Shaq would even be jealous.

And then there is her other major quirk: she only goes to the bathroom while on her walks. She never wants to be let out to go in the yard, and if you try to go out with her she just sits and stares at you until you give up and take her inside. While out on her walks, she also feels the need to stop and sniff everything, peeing in about a dozen spots along the way. Molly also uses this time to have a little, uh, "extended personal time," if you know what I mean. So Mom and Dad load down with a plastic bag and butt inspection gloves every time they walk her, and often make fun of each other about who had the misfortune of having to take care of Molly's little souvenirs.

The first night I was home for Thanksgiving, Mom came home with Molly from their evening. When Dad asked how things went, she said, "Well, Molly did some texting and some blogging tonight."

Kate and I looked at each other, confused.

"What do you mean she 'texted and blogged'?" I asked.

"Well, we decided that when she pees in all those places during her walk, it is like her equivalent to texting with other dogs," mom said merrily.

"And blogging is just what we say when she poops," Dad said frankly.

"Let me see if I get this straight," I said slowly, completely affronted. "You are using the term blogging to refer to dog feces? Which would therefore mean you are equivocating my blog to poo?"

"Hmm, I didn't think of it that way," Dad replied with a smirk.

"It's not funny!" I retorted, trying to look pains and not crack a smile, because let's face it. It was kind of funny. "What. The. HELL?"

So now I have to come up with a completely new name for this because I inevitably keep thinking about poop every time someone asks me about my blog. I mean, how hard can it be to change the name of a long-standing and well-respected form of internet communication? Oh, who am I kidding? Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your twisted sense of humor. I hope Molly wrote you a nice big blog tonight. ;)

I Got Here As Fast I Could!

I really freakin' hate Mondays. Nothing good ever seems to happen on Mondays. In fact, my experience dictates that Mondays go out of their way to serve up a healthy dose of sadness and despair, and sometimes are feeling a little more aggressive and administer a nice Monday Morning Ass Whooping. Last Monday, I got my ass whooped: I got my first speeding ticket.

I had to make a trip to a nearby town first thing in the morning to visit a car dealership for my ad sales job. We all know how much I loooove car salesmen (ha) and trying to sell an advertising to a salesman is tricky. It's a total game of who can make the biggest power play (ultimately it is me, as I am the one who has boobs) and on a Monday morning I was certainly not bringing my A-game. I was driving down the road, busy feeling sorry for myself and dreading going to the second car dealership, when I came around a bend and saw a cop car in a parking lot on my side of the road.

It was one of those moments where you just instantly know you are screwed. He didn't waste any time whipping out behind me and turning on those dreaded flashing blues. As I pulled over, the first thought I had that didn't contain a large string of expletives was, "Ohmigod, you have to start crying." I proceeded to think of everything sad that I could, but nothing. I watched a middle-aged cop get out of his car, hike up his pants, and saunter over to me.

I had always imagined what I would do if I got pulled over for speeding. One option was to blame it on female issues in the hopes of making the cop so uncomfortable that he just had to let me go on my merry way. The other front runner idea was to blame the high speed on trying to get to a restroom due to digestive issues. It would take a pretty heartless person to not sympathize with that, right?

But nope. I completely choked. He went through the standard procedure of spending an absurd amount of time asking me stupid questions and taking my license back to his squad car to spend as long as possible sitting there with his lights on so that everyone passing by knows that he means business. After waiting for what felt like a million humiliating years, he strolled back up to my window with ticket in hand.

And I burst into tears.

I could tell Officer Monday Morning Ass-Wooping was totally thrown as he came back to someone he had left fairly composed now blubbering like a headcase. He explained the ticket to me as I thought to myself, "Dammit, tears! You couldn't appear just a little earlier? Fat load of help to me now, you bastards."

As he handed me that cursed piece of paper, he gave me this awkward look and asked, "Are you okay, m'am? Are you experiencing some sort of personal crisis?"

I looked at him blankly, biting my tongue as to not say, "OF COURSE I AM EXPERIENCING A PERSONAL CRISIS! YOU ARE GIVING ME A SPEEDING TICKET YOU IMBECILE!"

But I just shook my head and he peaced out pretty quickly. And fittingly, now that the waterworks started there was no turning it off. I pulled into a gas station parking lot to cry and sulk, then thought I had reached a point where I could call my dad.

"Dad, you are going to kill me," I said before bursting into tears again. (Really, the female issues thing may not have been too far from the truth.) Luckily he wasn't too angry, as he pointed out that now that I was married I got to pay my own fine. Fantastic.

Fast forward to Saturday, when I visited Canton and was riding in the car with my parents while ironically enough discussing my speeding ticket debacle.

"You know what I should have done?" I joked. "I should have just let him walk up and been like, 'I am sorry officer- I got here as fast I could!"

Not five minutes later, we turn a corner to a cop car just waiting to catch some prey.

"Oh, dad," I said as the cop pulled behind us with his lights on. My dad let loose of several of the expletives I had gotten to know so intimately just a few days beforehand as he pulled into a parking lot. Apparently it was the PoPo's lucky day because we were not alone- he had somehow managed to pull two cars over. He walked up to our car.

"Sir, do you know what the speeding limit is on this road?" he asked.

"Thought it was forty-five," my dad said defensively.

"No, sir, it is thirty-five miles per hour. Even if it were forty-five, you were still speeding."

I wasn't sure what move my dad was going to make- profuse apology? Disbelief? But he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Sorry!"

"Oh, man," I said as the cop visited his other catch. "You are in trouble now. Now what were we talking about? Safe driving?"

Too soon. Dad was not amused.

We waited that everlong period of time while the cop does whatever he does, and finally he approached again.

"Sir, today I am going to let you off with a warning, but pay attention from now on," the officer said. My jaw dropped. After my dad made a little we're-totally-cool-now-because-you-didn't-give-me-a-ticket small talk, we finally continued on our way.

"What the hell?!" I said angrily. "How is that even fair? I can't believe you got off with a warning after totally giving him 'tude!"

"Well, I, unlike you, have not had a speeding ticket since 1984 and am not twenty-two," my dad said, spirits considerably lifted from a few minutes beforehand."Good day, isn't it?"

Hmph.

But It Means We're Passionate!

Last Wednesday was Mark's birthday. Because he is a few years older than me, during our relationship I tried to take every opportunity that I could to remind him that he was almost 25, which was halfway to 50, which was almost dead. Well, this birthday he actually turned 25 and I woke him up with a card expressing that I certainly was not going to remind him of his proximity to being an old geezer. I'm nice like that.

When I got to work, I hopped on the computer and of course the stalker feed had a list of all the people who had wished Mark happy birthday on Facebook. Now, recently Mark and I went to see The Social Network at the movie theater, which is basically the story of how the guy that started Facebook is the biggest asshat in the world and we should be ashamed of ourselves for making him a gazillionaire. Or at least that is what I got out of it. Also that Justin Timberlake is still extremely good-looking. So the fact that movie isn't enough to make me give up Facebook Crack (Oh, yes. Diet Coke is just a gateway drug compared to Facebook Crack.) makes me squirm a little on the inside every time I log on.

But that morning, I automatically typed in my obligatory "Happy Birthday, Husband of Mine!" message on Mark's wall, hit send, and froze. I already saw Mark earlier in the morning and wished him a happy birthday. And I was going to see him that night to celebrate his birthday with him. He was already very much aware that I acknowledged his birthday and subsequently wished him good tidings...so why did I robotically feel compelled to wish him a happy birthday on Facebook as well?

Maybe subconsciously I thought that if people looked at Mark's list of Happy Birthday wishers and saw that my name was conspicuously absent they would think, "Wow, that Beth sure is a horrible wife. She can't even take a moment to wish Mark happy birthday on Facebook, and therefore we can naturally draw the conclusion that she obviously doesn't love him." No, it does not make any logical sense, but how logical can we be if we are addicted to something where we can take care of virtual farm animals, find out which character from Twilight we are, and stalk an ex's new love interest all in one sitting?

I am certainly not going to bash Facebook because it does possess a lot of qualities of merit. Positives: reconnecting with old friends, getting the word out about an event (or a blog!), sharing funny videos or stories. This is the purpose of Facebook for me. But it does come with Negatives: having to involuntarily find out tidbits of information that people mistakenly think are important about themselves (i.e., what they had for lunch, how much they love their significant other, what song lyric they decide to be mysterious and vague with by putting as their Facebook status, etc.), risking your parents and/or other family members becoming your Facebook friends (Love you guys. I have nothing to hide.), getting invitations to fifty things a day that you don't give two shits about.

The biggest downside is that Facebook has propelled us into the Too Much Information Age. Unbeknownst to many people on the World Wide Web, there is such a thing as oversharing and people are getting ridiculous with it. The most recent example I can think of ended up launching me into a tirade of a whole different nature. One of Mark's friends had a convoluted status on Facebook about how he loved his girlfriend but at the same time hated her as well, but that was all okay because it meant they were passionate about each other.

Okay, first and foremost, you really don't need to be displaying your relationship drama over Facebook. Contrary to what you may think to be true, no one cares. If they do care, they will engage into some kind of meaningful interaction with you to find out how things are going with you and your boo and convey that they are emotionally invested in your problems. You know, like a text message saying "R U & sally doin ok?"

Second of all, I don't know where people get the idea that if two people are dating and are ripping each others' throats out every five seconds, it means that they are "passionate." Newsflash- it actually means you are delusional and the rocking make-up sex afterward simply indicates that you are horny. Not passionate. And it makes me passionate about wanting to smack you in the face.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to put the fact that I have a new blog post on my Facebook status...

That Thing Called Compromise

I don't really know where the hell October peaced out to so quickly, but now we are into November and quickly nearing the holiday season. Being that this is the first holiday season Mark and I will spend together as a married couple you would think that I would be all aglow with that newlywed aura, eager to send people Christmas cards with vomit-inducingly cute pictures from our honeymoon and plotting how I can get us into matching Santa hats or Christmas sweaters at every possible opportunity.

Yes, I am thrilled that we are about to spend the holidays as husband and wife for the first time. But marriage and compromise happen to be besties, and that is especially pertinent for us at the holidays. This particular compromise involves me deviating from the holiday tradition I have had with my family every year of my life and spending Christmas with Mark's family in Southbend, Indiana.

Don't get me wrong- after meeting many of Mark's family members for the first time at the wedding I am looking forward to spending some quality time together without the smile continually plastered on my face and the bulk of our conversation being me thanking them for coming to the wedding all the while thinking, "Oh my gosh, what did they say their names were??"

I have just had a routine for the last 21 years that has been both comically and comfortingly consistent. More often than not, it is the only time I get to see my extended family during the year and the predictability of the week-long trip to Kentucky (mom's family) and West Virginia (dad's family) comes all the way down to knowing what stories are going to be told about us when we were little. (A few highlights being the time I dropped my stuffed bear in the toilet and when my Grandma spent hours putting my hair into hot rollers only for me to hate it when I came out looking like a cross between Shirley Temple and a poodle who stuck its paw in an electric socket. She, however, thought it was precious and doesn't hesitate to remind me that it is her favorite hairstyle I have ever had. I was also five. She needs to let it go.)

Mark came along for the ride last year, and the fact that he survived and still wanted to marry me is a testament to his character (or a lapse in his sanity) and the reason why it is my turn to be the outsider on a new family Christmas. So my response has been to throw myself into the new set of plans headfirst and try not to think about how sad I will be when I stop to really think about it. But that is just how being married goes. It ain't no Burger King and you can't always have it your way.

Speaking of compromise, shortly after I wrote my previous post about my downstairs neighbors I ran into the guy as I was leaving for work in the morning. He was shirtless (and no Taylor Lautner, mind you) and rummaging through the girl's car. I pictured several scenarios, all involving me being really sassy and putting him in his place and one even involving me going all hot warrior chick on him and kicking his butt, before finally saying in a resigned and polite voice, "Excuse me. I have been hoping to catch you- I was wondering if you might be able to straighten your cars in the parking spaces. It's been raining nonstop and the last few times I have come back I haven't been able to get a close parking spot."

He looked at me for a second before shrugging and saying, "Sure."

And sure enough, when I got home both of their cars were neatly aligned in parking spaces and have been ever since. True, it may have had something to do with the fact that I had also gotten Mark to go to the landlord that morning to let him know about this problem and later finding that everyone in the building had received a note saying to be courteous and not take up two parking spots. But as far as I know, my last resort of patience and communication solved the problem. Who would have thought that kind of junk actually works?

"I Just Kicked Cat Poo On Her Car!"

For the last three months, I have been feuding with our downstairs neighbors. I am not entirely sure if they are aware of this feud, so it may very well be non-consensual. In any case, this couple (not sure if they are married or not) moved into the building just before Mark and I got married and have been the bane of my existence ever since. The reasons I curse their very names (or at least I would if I knew their names) have been accumulating steadily over time.

It started with them never having their two boxers on a leash, and on more than one occasion they (the dogs, not the people) bounded over to me as I was innocently getting out of my car and harassed me all the way to the stairs. They then had a baby and the boxers disappeared causing me to feel a little guilty that I had ever wished them ill, but that remorse was fleeting.

An ongoing issue is the fact that neither of them even bother to park their cars in the lines of the parking spaces. Now, whoever designed our parking lot was obviously a dimwit that thought they didn't make automobiles larger than a Smartcar and subsequently painted some of the most impossibly small spaces I have ever seen. Still, the rest of the tenants in the lot manage to fit their cars within the lines, but noooooo. Not my downstairs adversaries. I can always count on their two cars taking up three spaces as I drive in and have to park three rows away from my apartment, all the while silently hoping that the ground beneath their self-appointed three parking spaces opens up and swallows their cars into the bowels of hell.

On top of all this, there have been several occasions in the last month of piles of animal crap being left right on the walkway in front of the apartment, which I suspect were a gift from my favorite boxers owned by my favorite couple. After making this unpleasant discovery not once but twice, I finally went to the landlord like a tattle-taling five-year-old and made him aware of the crappy situation (I am very punny). We promptly found notes on all of the doors that afternoon firmly forbidding non-leashed dogs and their inappropriate defecation.

This all culminated to my breaking point. Beevus and Butthead also own a cat, which they recently decided would be more of an outdoor cat than an indoor cat. We see this poor, obviously malnourished cat hanging around the complex, and it recently took a liking to laying right outside our door. Maybe it just needed the assurance that there was a better life out there and wanted simply to gaze longingly at what a loved cat's life looked like, I don't know. But one night last week, I started walking down to my car only to find a pile of cat poop sitting right at the top of the stairs.

As you can imagine, I was outraged. I marched back into the apartment to where Mark was studying Latin and said through gritted teeth, "Just. Come. Look."

I grabbed his arm and steered him to where the pile lay.

"Do you see that?" I ranted. "I can't even believe this! This has just gotten ridiculous! These white trash people have no sense at all and I hate them!"

With that, I brushed the poo off our second story balcony and watched as it landed with a thud...right on the hood of the bitch downstairs' two-space-occupying car.

Mark and I exchanged one open-mouthed, horrified glance before tiptoeing as fast as we could back into our place and carefully shutting the door quietly behind us.

"I can't believe you just did that," he said, shaking his head.

"Oh my God!" I whispered (like they could hear me from downstairs). "I just kicked cat poo on her car! It's not like I did it on purpose! Okay, maybe it wasn't quite an accident per se, but still."

For the next few minutes I was plastered to the window, waiting to see if the neighbors downstairs would realize what had happened. Sure enough, after several minutes the guy came out to examine the gift I had inadvertently left on his woman's car. I watched as he disappeared for a moment then reappeared with a plastic bag to put the poo in.

"Well, I can't go to the gym now," I informed Mark (I will use any excuse to not go to the gym. It was convenient.). "They have me pegged."

The next morning, as I was getting ready I asked Mark, "You don't think they would have keyed our cars, do you??"

This was clearly completely dramatic, and a normal person would have dismissed it as being ridiculous.

"No," was Mark's response. "I checked already."

All things considered, I definitely categorized it as a win for the good guys. We won the battle, and I fully intend on winning the war. So stay tuned.

Who Says You Can't Go Home?

This past weekend, I took a much needed hiatus from the soul-sucking world of ad sales and headed to my hometown of Canton, a glorious mix of country folk and people who want to be out of Atlanta but not be too far out there in case they change their mind. You really never know what you are going to find in Canton- in the same car trip I passed what looked to be a yard sale taking place in the middle of a closed down Save-Rite's parking lot as well as a hand-painted sign in a small shopping center reading "Elvis's Nurse's Book Signing Today!" I only caught a glimpse of a tailgate-style tent set up outside with an Elvis impersonator beneath it before rounding a curve and only being able to think, "What in the WORLD is going on with this town today?"

Mark did not join me in this particular trip, which left me the need to explain several times that things had not fallen apart already and that we, of course, have stood the test of time having been married for a solid almost three months and all. He decided to be responsible (a.k.a. lame) and work on the papers that he has to do for his equally soul-sucking world of graduate school. My dad certainly did not let this go without making a few quips about how "Mark always made the effort to come see us when he was courting you."

The great part about my parents, my sister, and me being together is that we are damn quotable people. This was demonstrated within hours of picking up my sister, Kate, from college. She was explaining how as a freshman she had just landed the understudy role of a character in an upcoming play (she's a music theater major). Referring to the director, I asked "Is it just a rumor or have you heard it straight from the horse's mouth?"

"No," she replied emphatically. "I heard it from him!"

"...He would be the horse in this situation, hon."

Usually my dad is the one that is always saying something completely off the wall:

"Do you see that squirrel there?" my dad quipped out of nowhere one afternoon as we drove through our neighborhood. "That is an evil squirrel."

"How do you know?" I asked him.

"Sometimes you can see their little eyes and teeth and sense the hostility," was his reply.

But one of the most horrifyingly fantastic quotes that has ever been uttered by one of us came from my mother on Saturday evening while catching up with Kate's former high school drama and chorus directors after the school play.

"How have you and Eric been coping with both of your daughters being out of the house now?" one of them asked her.

"Well, Eric and I have recently discovered BJs," mom said.

Now the background on this situation is that I received a call recently from my parents, who told me they were in the throws of their first visit to BJ's Discount Club. They had gotten a free three month trial offer in the mail, and were eagerly buying things in bulk and felt the need to inform me they now had enough toilet paper to last them a year.

These people from Kate's high school did not know that and after a brief pause while we let the weight of what had just been said settle n, the room erupted in laughter as my mom turned a bright shade of red.

"BJ's the store!" she said. But the damage had been done and we were all howling for the next ten minutes.

"Tell Eric I said congratulations," the drama teacher said as we were leaving, starting another round of snickering. It was a glorious moment in a glorious weekend.

Now I am back to the grind of the advertising world. Woo. Good thing I have Grover to help me with my work.

Hunt or Be Hunted

Since graduating college in December, I have not been afraid to work. At one point, I was holding down three jobs- at a Thai restaurant, a garden, and selling ads for a magazine. My resume is going to end up looking like the paper form of A.D.D.

Eventually the magazine gig panned out as a full-time job selling ads for the both magazine and its sister publication, a local newspaper. One of the projects I have somehow gotten tasked with recently is to sell ads for a Hunting and Fishing Guide. Just so that we are clear, I don't like fish and had never even touched a gun before this. Yet I set out with vigor researching taxidermists, deer meat processors, and gun shops that I could pitch the idea to.

This launched me into a whole new world filled with creepy stuffed dead animals and people who clearly were not impacted by Bambi in the least during their childhood: The World of Hunting. Have you ever noticed that there are some things in life that people just don't do half-assed? For example, people that drink Diet Coke don't just enjoy one every once in a while. Diet Coke is like cola crack- its drinkers can't ever have enough and practically don't drink anything else. I have even witnessed people get agitated when they go without it for an extended period of time.

The same goes for horseback riding. Equestrian is like the snobby hobby of the world- if you reveal that you don't know anything about it in the presence of horse people you will definitely get a look of disapproval and feel the judgment of whatever your far less superior past time is.

Hunting definitely falls into this category. In the last few weeks I have been introduced to a way of life, learning all about the lingo, different seasons and regulations, and seeing more pictures of kids with blood smeared on their faces holding the antlers of dead deer than I thought I could stomach. I have held a gun for the first time (the guy at the gun shop excitedly brought me over to a 30-lb monstrosity that he enthusiastically told me was "the kinda gun they have over in Iraq killin' all them terrorists") and have had one taxidermist tell me "I'll have to give you a call later- I am right in the middle of mounting a deer" (took all the discipline I had to not reply with "I bet you are, you dirty old man").

To top it all off, technology and taxidermy are not friends. Trying to get e-mails and ad materials from these people has been like pulling teeth. I gave up on one processing place that did not have an e-mail address or fax machine. I thought by now these were pretty standard when owning and operating a business, but nope. Not if you spend the day with flesh and dead things.

Though I am definitely ready to be out of this carcass-filled twilight zone, it has been informative and I do have respect for the people who are skilled in hunting and all associated practices. Has it made me want to camo up and shoot something? Hardly. For now, I will just stick with my Diet Coke cola crack.

Don't judge me. I control it, it doesn't control me. And I can quit any time I want. ;)

The Fried Okra Experiment

Though I am many things, I never will be Mrs. Suzie Homemaker, queen of domesticity who cooks in heels and has her initially monogrammed on all of her aprons and generally makes all women look bad. I am the girl who hasn't met an oven yet that could resist burning me, actually called the Jell-O company in the tenth grade to find out what I needed to set the stove on to boil water (not one of my finest moments) and generally is a disgrace to all women.

It doesn't help that I come from a family who would much rather go out to eat then cook a meal.We have been to pretty much every restaurant within a 35 miles radius of our house and probably know more waiters/waitresses/restaurant owners by name than it is ever okay to. They even put our picture up at one of our preferred local restaurants because we were such frequent customers. (I was in ninth grade, and my 15-year-old self like so didn't think it was cool. My 22-year-old self, on the other had, thinks it's hilarious. My how I have evolved.)

I think people have picked up on this lack of womanly skills if our wedding gifts are any indication-I got a whole bunch of cookbooks, most of which contain the word "easy" in the title. So lately I have been trying to find the dormant Paula Dean that I am sure resides somewhere deep in my soul. I have had several successful cooking ventures, which Mark either seemed to like or just said he did so that I would stop asking him "what do you think?" every 30 seconds while I watched him eat.

The other day, I decided I wanted to fry up some okra. I looked up the recipe and it seemed reasonable enough, so after getting all of the supplies at the grocery, I got to work. Turns out you about have to have six arms to fry okra- one set to bread them with, one set to put them in the fryer and one to get them into a bowl, so I enlisted Mark's help. While I oversaw the frying process, I tasked him with the breading process.

I was concentrating so hard that I didn't see exactly what happened that led to the thud I heard next. I looked over to see the full contents of a bowl of cornmeal/flour mix on the floor, with Mark standing over the white cloud of flour fog that was starting to rise as he launched into a string of obscenities. I silently handed him the broom, and he swept up the mess still cursing grumpily.

Five minutes and another thud later, Mark had somehow managed to dump a second whole bowl of cornmeal and flour onto the floor. As I looked from and irate and powder-covered Mark, to the disaster on the floor, it took all I had to not burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. But Mark was still in that phase of not finding it amusing in the least.

"I think...we've made...enough okra," Mark aid through clenched teeth. So in a dust cloud of flour we ate our okra in silence, me trying not to laugh and Mark throwing dirty looks at the pile of breading still on the floor. Luckily I got Mark to laugh about it later, but I think that is the last time we will be making fried okra.

No babies....

...a mantra that Mark and I developed early on in our relationship when we realized neither one of us was remotely interested in procreating. At the time, I was 19 and used to say that I didn't know what person my age was chomping at the bit to pop out babies, but I have now seen enough Maury and 16 and Pregnant to know that there are some teen girls out there that need to calm the eff down.

Not having babies was something that was my plan long before Mark came along. Complete horror of the childbirthing process aside, I never really babysat when I was younger partly because I found young kids really awkward to be around. I know that you are just supposed to smile and agree with whatever silliness they say in a voice that is an octave or so above your natural speaking voice, but sometimes I just don't know how to react when a four-year-old comes over to me, pats my face, and says, "Today is your birthday and you're five!"

I've mentally kept a "pros" and "cons" list for years on the subject, with the con column being pretty extensive and the pro column limited to really substantive and deep reasons, like being curious about what a mini-me would look like. So far, con column is winning by a landslide.

The strangest thing is how many people tell me I am going to change my mind when I nform them about my childless plans. I actually have bets going on that if I have a baby by the time I am thirty, I am going to owe several people some money. No one seems to take me seriously when I say I am happy to be a DINK (double income no kids) with Mark and get to travel and have the flexibility that kids does not allow.

For now, I am totally satisfied to be the cool, fun-loving aunt who gives the best presents at Christmas and when my nieces or newphews start to cry get to just pass them along to their parents. And besides, Mark and our kitty kids (who incidently woke my up at 5:30 this morning- a whole new low. I could have killed them.) are more than enough to keep me occupied at the moment.