I came home tonight to find Zack still wearing his pajamas.
“Are you still wearing your pajamas?”
“Sarah, they are very comfortable.”
“Yes, but they are Pajamas, and it’s 5:30 p.m.”
“Think of them as plaid scrubs.”
Zack having his weekends during the week, though it does have some benefits, mostly sucks.
Every once in a while, I weigh Scout to see how much she has grown. This was much easier to do when she was a puppy, weighing in at a mere 20, 25 lbs. That was a time when I was working out more consistently, a habit of mine which has been happening less and less frequently over the past six months because of the more and more science that I have been taking. And OH THE SCIENCE, it cuts into your work-out schedule. I promise.
Today, in a desperate attempt to evade the Chemistry which has been hanging over my head all week, I picked her up and carried her to the scale. Last time I weighed her, she cashed in at 54 lbs., just a few pounds shy of my dream weight for her: 60 lbs. Since she’s a super-mutt, we had no idea how big she was going to get when we first adopted her. She’s a lab/blue heeler/german shepherd/? mix, and those are all pretty big breeds. You know, except the ? breed, which we assumed couldn’t be too small, cause hey! look at her! Normal German Shepherd sized puppy!
So she was growing, growing, growing, at about the rate of 10 lbs./month until about 3 months ago, when she slowed down to 5 lbs./month. I wanted her to keep growing at that rate until her first birthday (a month from today) which would have made her EXACTLY the right size.
Right. So there I was, standing with a ? pound dog in my arms, still dressed in my pajamas at almost 5 p.m., weighing my dog so I could take a mental break from Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures, when I realized that we had gained 5 pounds since the last time I weighed us! So exciting! She was right on her way to sixty pounds! HORRAY.
That’s when I completed the last half of the weighing regimen, the part when you have to step on the scale sans-dog and then subtract me alone from me with her.
Turns out, Scout is not the one that gained 5 pounds.
HORROR.
Back to Chemistry. Maybe it’s a little boring, but at least it’s not personally insulting, right?
Just watched Quantum of Solace, and the whole time, all I could think about was Chapter Seven of my chemistry homework that I hadn’t completed the section on Quantum Physics, and now I need a nap.
The movie, however, was just as good as you’d have expected it to be.
**A Sunday Edit**
On the way home from the movie last night, He called the new Bond film, and I quote, “Deep.” I thought that to be a little bit of strange remark, but it was lost amid the grunting and the gun-talk that was happening between Zack and Michael, AKA The Cheese.
So when Boo and I were at breakfast this morning (morning is relative, it was 11:45), I mentioned something about the movie again, and he reiterated his previous statement, saying the he found the movie to be “deep.” I finally asked him what he meant by that, and he admitted that a lot of it was over his head because he hadn’t seen Casino Royale.
“HADN’T WHAT?” I calmly replied. Turns out, Boo had never before seen a Bond movie (and really, I just started with the Daniel Craig installments), and so he didn’t understand the bit about THE WHOLE THING. Vespa, the necklace, old guy being a traitor, vengeance is mine, thus sayth the Lord, none of it made any sense to him.
When we got home, I promptly pulled Casino Royale out of the DVD drawer, and made him watch it. He wandered into the dining room, where I was hovering above 6 or 13 stacks of Chemistry related papers, with a dazed look on his face. ”THAT WAS SWEET,” he declared, and followed with, “I get the bit about the necklace now.”
Sweet satisfaction. We can’t have my little brother going around describing James Bond as being “deep,” lest everyone become convinced that he is a fraud.
Okay. Maybe not the world.
Maybe just this post.
Farewell Fort Worth!
On to new and terrifying things.
Turns out, SisterKaty is moving sooner than we thought.
In psychology 101, a class that I took at the age of 18, I learned about the term “precipitating factor.” As my psychology professor explained it to me, the precipitating factor is the medical/mental/scientific equivalent of the saying “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Because I was already really fond of the “straw that broke the camel’s back” principle when I learned about “precipitating factor,” it really stuck with me. For years I’ve been going around telling people to feel better about X, the rash decision they made as a result of Y, even though Y was insignificant in the big picture. It’s okay, I tell them, because Y was just The Precipitating Factor.
This makes them feel better on two levels: not only am I validating their rash and life altering decision, I am also using scientific terminology, and scientific terminology can not be argued with.
So when SisterKaty called me the other day and announced that she’d quit her job because of a miscommunication, I did not freak out. Instead I said, “hey! it’s cool! no worries. You didn’t quit because of this miscommunication. You quit because you worked with a bunch of assholeish snot-nosed brats and bosses that didn’t love you, and who deserve to be left to wallow in their own misery! The miscommunication was juuuuust the (and you can say it with me if you want…) Precipitating Factor.”
Besides, she had the foresight to at least call her old boss and get her old job back. That’s what I call good planning. I guess a little bit of her old and boring sister has rubbed off on her during the year she spent living under my wings.
So tomorrow, Zack and I are officially losing our tenant. Katy, after having just moved all her belongings about 3 weeks ago, is moving them again this Friday. Back to Garland, where her friends are still cool, where her old bosses still think of her as their darling-favorite, and where she will no longer have once-every-two-week dates with me to go eat sushi.
My contrasting emotions here are namely sadness and happiness, pure and simple. Sad that she won’t be here, sad that we won’t be sister allies, a team that can not lose an argument in this household when employing a majority-rule argument settlement. Sad that I won’t get to listen to her day-to-day stories, or be involved in her life in such a tangible way. I’m happy, though, that she is moving back to a place where her work will be happier, easier, and where she will be appreciated for the stellar and dedicated employee that she is. Happy that when she goes back she will, at long last, officially resume her relationship with The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened To Her In All Caps.
Mostly I’m happy for her because she is starting to lead a character driven life. In her 21 years, her decisions have mostly been plot driven. She went to school, got a job, and settled in. When she decided she wanted to move out, and there was a large space in my home available to her, she took it. She didn’t move in with me because it was her #1 choice of places to live, or because she was just dying to see what married life was like first-hand. It was easy, and she’s resistant to change, so she did what felt natural and familiar: living with her sister. Now she’s taking a step out. She left a job by her own choice. She is moving in with a friend, one with whom she’s never lived before, and she’s committing to a relationship in a way that I’ve never seen her commit before. She’s making choices, the choices that she wants, not just the choices that are most convenient. Character driven. Self made decisions, and self made reprocussions, she’s down for whatever. So for that I’m thrilled. So even though she’s leaving me, from my perspective of the pseudo-parent/best friend/older sister, there’s nothing that could be better.
I’m less than 24 hours away from my third microbiology exam. This exam is cram packed full of information–more than even the last test, which I thought had set a world record for ‘information covered during one exam period.’
No matter, though, because all I can think about are Ninja Turtles.
The theme song for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been stuck in my head for days now. In bed at night, in the shower, washing dishes, and studying Microbiology, I’m always singing “Teeeenage Mutant Ninnnnja Turtles, Turtles in a half shell. Turtle Power.” Or was it Ninjas that were in the half shell? I can’t remember, so I sing it both ways just for fun.
Then Eden Kennedy at Fussy.org, a.k.a. Lord of NaBloPoMo, posted this video (which I can’t get to embed, no matter how much magic dust I sprinkle):
The ceremonial opening of the balcony, weekend edition from Eden M. Kennedy on Vimeo.
HOW DID THESE CREATURES EVER GET IMAGINED TO BE NINJAS? That turtle has the agility of a book! of a ruler! of a FAKE TREE. I admit! I didn’t even watch the whole video! It was (no offense, and I don’t think she’ll take any, because I think this was the point) a little bit boring! Because turtles CAN NOT DO ANYTHING EVER.
So what did the cartoon people do? They said hey. We’re going to take this creature, this creature that can baaaaaarley move on its own, this creature that by its very nature, lives inside a box and never comes out, and we’re going to make it a superhero. In fact, despite the fact that turtles have legs that are about 1/12th as long as their bodies (humans: legs>half), and we’re going to make it a superhero that is highly trained in using those teeny little legs to do Ninjaesque Karate moves, never mind that their limbs are so short, they could barely even put up their dukes. We’re not going to give them bazookas, or even guns. No, no. That would be too easy. Instead let’s see if we can make that turtle do a ROUNDHOUSE. Michelangelo would have probably been better of with some rope, at least that way he’d have some aid when it comes to his severely lacking armspan.
I just can’t even imagine how they sold all this in a board meeting. I suppose it made a lot more sense to executives than it does to me, plus, they drew their arms and legs to be extra long. Also, perhaps the executives had not seen this video of this poor turtle trying to get to the sunlight for some Weekend Baking. In fact, I’m pretty sure they hadn’t, because The OG TMNT was, by and large, pre-internet. It worked though. They totally sold it to me, too. I was all about TMNT when I was a little kid, before their cartoon name was so abruptly shortened to 4 letters. And here I am, 15 years later, still singing the theme song while scrubbing my hair, wondering how it is EVEN REMOTELY POSSIBLE that I ever believed that the turtle, a creature generally unable to do, well, anything at all, was living in the sewers, directed by a giant rat, saving me from an evil, oversized garbage disposal.
Yesterday I had a First Date.
It’s been a while since I’ve been on a first date with a person. I haven’t been on any with the male persuasion since long before Zack and I started dating. Zack and I never went on a first date, because by the time we began a committed relationship to each other, we had already been best friends for seven years. You can’t take seven years of friendship, sprinkled with forever untimely crushes, and then start over with a first date. That fact, coupled with the simple fact that Zack hates the word, and idea, of “dates,” resulted in us never going on a date. Sounds funny, but it’s true. I mean, we went to dinners and sometimes to movies, but it wasn’t really a date. There wasn’t the dressing up, followed by the awkward exchanges. There wasn’t ever the moment on my door stoop when he had to decide if he was going to implement Hitch’s 90%/10% kiss rule.
All that being said, I feel that I should clarify that this “date” was with a girl. Spring and I have known each other via the blogosphere and mutual friends for about 2 years now. I’ve been flowing her writing since we were both xanga’s darlings, and vice versa. We finally met face-to-face at an impromptu pseudo-reunion of JBU folks (Zack JBU’ed for one semester, but his brother, Jared, JBU’ed for his entire college career). Spring and I hit it off right away, and decided that Best Friendom was in our future. She was the slightest bit intoxicated at the time, but, turns out, she was rather serious.
First dates with new friends is also something that I hadn’t done in a long time, or maybe ever. I suppose I haven’t made a new friend in quite a number of years. SarahI is one of my newest friends, and she’s my sister-in-law. We didn’t have to get to know each other, cause we were tossed into a family together, and we clicked. No first dates, just family meals that resulted in an incredible friendship that is served with egregious amounts of baby kissing and, usually, shopping. Jennifer and I kind of went on a first date, but it was to the grocery store, and we’d long since been chatting endlessly on gmail. Our first date was less a date and more like a Central Market How-To session, for which I am forever indebted to her service. Mostly, Jennifer and I were 6 years friends-in-the-making that finally materialized when we became neighbors. Mary Pat and I are newish friends as a result of camp, too. (“New” meaning we’ve been friends for 4 years now.) In fact, I remember pointedly the moment when I knew Mary Pat and I were going to be friends. Our friendship was created because of our mutual love for girly items like makeup and heels. She and Josh had invited Zack and me over to dinner at their place and, on a whim, I dressed up. Zack asked me why I was dressing up, and I said that I didn’t know, I just thought it was the thing to do if we were going to dinner at someone’s house, regardless of whether we were going to walk from three houses over, through Camp Eagle dirt. When we arrived, I found Mary Pat dressed to the nine’s, wearing heels and make up, and maybe even eyeliner. As we stepped through the door, she said, “SEE JOSH? SARAH DRESSED UP, TOO. IT IS NOT THAT WEIRD. IT’S DINNER. YOU DRESS UP FOR DINNER.” At that moment I knew that I had an cohort, someone with whom I could discuss fashion trends, and drool over J.Crew catalogues and not be mocked for my overt girlyness.
So that’s my case. All my friends are old & dear friends, and my husband doesn’t take me on ‘dates.’ You could say that I’m out of practice. So when Spring started saying that we were going on a ‘date,’ I was thrilled. Dates! With people! Where you do things! And other stuff as well! I’ve read in many a forward (very scientific source there, right?) about the differences between men and women. One factoid that I’ve heard repeatedly is that Men say about 3,000 words a day, and women say about 10,000 words a day. I thought before I picked up Spring about that fact. If women usually say 10,000 words a day, and we’re both women, we’ll probably split it down the middle, and each of us will dish about 5,000, right? I mean, who has time for 20,000 words? What I didn’t realize, is that when you get two girls together with their 10,000 words each, it doesn’t add to 20,000 words. It multiplies. We didn’t have a plan laid out before us when we started the date. (dangerous, I know.) We set no time limit, either. We just knew that we were going to do some hanging out, some ingesting of some alcohol, and a lot of talking. I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised if we spit out over a million words yesterday. We talked in a solid stream of conversation from 2:30 p.m. until 9:15 when I dropped her off on her front stoup. To say that we ‘clicked’ would be, in my estimation, a gross understatement. On the way home, I wondered to myself how it was even possible to talk non-stop for almost 7 hours. I’m not sure. All I knew for sure was that I had hit my word limit for the day, and I was done talking.
When I crawled into bed with Zack last night, he asked what we did. I informed him of our physical path, and all the places we stopped along the way. Considering the hours we spent together, it’s a shockingly small number of places.
After we completed his tour ala Family Circus footprints, he said, “Oh. Cool. What’d you talk about?”
EVERYTHING.
The boob cake was a wild success beyond my wildest dreams.
It’s surprising that my dreams are so tame. In the world of my dreams, everyone is so pious and uppity that they wouldn’t dare eat something as gross and uncivilized as a cake that looked like two breasts, two unattached-to-a-body breasts, complete with two areolas. The world of my dreams is nothing like the real world, the world in which I toted two flesh colored mounds of sugary bread into a room of people that were dying to rip into them.
As the Birthday Boy held the breasts-on-a-cookie-sheet up to his own chest, grinning from ear to ear, to pose for pictures, someone from the back of the room yelled, “NO MOTORBOATING, DUDE.” I had been previously unaware to the astronomical number of possible breast-cake jokes. Allow me to assure you, there are many.
As person after person turned down Grandma’s Triple Layer Red Velvet Cake in lieu of my from-the-box boobs, I began to feel really guilty for stealing grandma’s show. So now I’m not only a Boob Chef, I’m also a Grandma Spotlight Stealer, and because of that fact alone, I had to sleep 11 hours last night.
Guilt. It can be exhausting.
Now I have to go. Scout has been chasing sunbeams reflected off her collar in the living room for the last 20 minutes, and Cruz is currently drinking from the toilet in the bathroom. Both of my (dumb) animals are in need of saving.
I just worked a sudoku puzzle. It’s been a coon’s age since I worked one of those. It was damn fun, too. I wish I hadn’t have done that. It’s making the “Web Sudoku” link on my bookmark bar really attractive, and it’s making this Chemistry homework REALLY SUCK.
Other news from the surface of the day is this: I’m going to make some boobs later. I have a friend who’s throwing a surprise party for her husband. A surprise party for which there will be a cake, shaped like boobs, and those boobs will have been constructed by yours truly. I asked her (in a begging tone) if she wanted those boobs to be wearing a string bikini or something. I could have done that and not felt nearly as weird as I’m going to tonight, presenting two breasts on a cookie sheet covered in foil. Two body-less breasts, nonetheless. Perhaps I should do an anatomical interpretation of “boobs,” and ice them as they would look with out the skin. Red flesh, yellow fat, and the modified sweat glands we all know and love: The Milk Makers.
This is what science class has done to me. It has made me think that perhaps, stripping the skin off of a body-part cake would make said cake LESS awkward. I could need counseling. Or perhaps I should just file the anatomical boob cake idea for the next time a nurse I know is having a baby shower. I’m learning to cater to my crowd. PUN INTENDED.
Despite popular assumption, SisterKaty still lives with us. There was (and still remains) much speculation about if she was coming with us, and when she would be moving out. SisterKaty has a new life plan that involves going back to Garland to return to a job where she likes the boss people, and where she can be closer to her old-turned-new again boyfriend-type-person.
Even though there is much less space in this house, and many, many less bedrooms, after some furniture shucking, we still had plenty of room for her and all of her 5 things. (Katy, being the migratory person that she is, does not own many objects. This made moving easy for her. This is a life lesson that I learned. Less things makes moving easier. Noted.) What we didn’t have for her (and still don’t) was keys. We have been here for a whopping 5 days now, and despite repeat trips to the local hardware stores, stores where keys can be made with ease for the price of One Whole Dollar, I haven’t remembered to have them copy a key for her.
This hasn’t been a problem, (because she hasn’t been around) until last night.
Katy called me last night and told me that she was planning on coming home. I said cool, we devised a key drop location, so that I could allow her late-night access into the house. The plan was set, and the plan was carried out. I left the screen door open, deposited the keys into the assigned location, and went to bed. But before I went to bed, I carefully locked the doors in such a way that they could be opened with said keys.
But really, I didn’t. Here’s the trick about this house. The dead-bolds that unlock the doors from the outside are also operated by a key from the inside. There is a keyhole on both sides, and if you don’t have a key, you can’t open them. But I didn’t realize that last night, as I methodically locked very single one of the Secret Dead Bolts, the bolts that can only be locked from the inside of the house. I swear, as I was locking them, I thought, “Okay, I am locking the door she can open. I am not locking her out. Go me, I am so smart.”
At 3:45 this morning, Scout started barking. I had set my alarm for 7:00, 30 minutes late than I usually wake up. Thinking Scout was upset that I was missing her usual breakfast time, and that’s why she was barking, I got out of bed and went to quiet her. On the way, I checked my watch, realized what time it was, and became very annoyed. (Later, I discovered that Scout was gingerly telling me in Dog Language, “HEY. JERKS. I DON’T FEEL GOOD AND I HAVE TO GO POTTY A.S.A.P.” Lesson learned.) I noticed while I was wandering the house in the dark that Katy’s door was still open. 3:45, as crazy as it sounds to me, old married lady, is not an unreasonable hour for SisterKaty to still be out with friends. I just assumed that she hadn’t come home yet. I went back to bed.
At 7:00 when I got up, I let Scout out (and also, discovered that she had been trying to tell me something earlier that morning, whoops) and saw that Katy’s door was still open. I assumed that she had fallen asleep at someone else’s house, and that she would be home later. I went to the sunroom, like I always do, to get Cruz’s food bowl, when I saw her. When she arrived home at 1:30 that morning, (hours before I found her room empty at 3:45,) she had pulled two of the chair cushions (2 chairs are currently awaiting their new home in the sunroom) and set them on the floor, and used a blanket from her car to sleep for the evening. She had to do that because I am an idiot.
I opened the door, let her in, and she laughed at me for locking her out of the house. Again. (I did this once before, maybe 6 months ago, at the previous house.) Then she went to bed in her room, like a normal person would do after a normal person’s crazy sister finally let her into her own house.
Zack left for work at around 9:30 a.m., and when he left, he locked the front doors behind him, as he usually does.
So at 4:15, when Katy was leaving for work this afternoon, she called me, ever so slightly frantic.
“DID YOU LOCK ME IN THIS HOUSE?” She screamed into the phone.
Calmly, I replied, “WHAT?”
I could hear her racing around the house, phone to her ear, muttering, “I FEEL LIKE SCOUT! I’M IN A CAGE” through clenched teeth. See how it’s important to this story that the deadbolts lock with a key both from the inside and the outside? In a house filled with 60 year old windows that have long been sealed shut by weather and many coats of paint, Katy walked to the back door, threatening my life, saying that if she had to call in to work because she was locked inside of her own house, she would never let me live it down.
Luckily for her, (and let’s be honest, for me), Zack left the key-locking dead-bolt on the backdoor open, so she could still get out. Good thing he’s got a bit more sense in his noggin than me, cause I totally would have locked her in.
Since I’ve lived in this house, I have locked Katy out of the house, locked Zack out of the house, locked myself in the laundry room (the doorknob only works to get in, but not back out again, so if the door closes behind you, GOOD LUCK,) and Zack has locked himself in the laundry room. I am seriously considering investing in a magnetic lock system, and then having the magnetic key embedded in my skin, as well as in Katy’s and Zack’s. Perhaps then, we can allow ourselves to move freely about our own abode.
