Miguelina

Estrogen overload

Last night.

Husband: "What are you doing?"

Me: "Watching an interview with the Sex and City girls."

Husband: "No, I mean on the computer."

Me: "Researching blue nail polish."

Husband: "Is that Oprah?"

Me: "Yes"

Husband: "I'm going to Home Depot."

My harshest critic...

"You are not a princess today!"

What my three year-old said after seeing today's outfit (sweatshirt+jeans+slippers - SO SUE ME.)

The one where I break up with Pottery Barn

I'm overwhelmed by the task of decorating our house: I want it to be a comfortable place to entertain, a happy home for our children to grow up in, a beautiful place to live our lives. Of course, those high expectations have done nothing but paralyze me. That's my excuse for why my living room has looked like this for the better part of a year:

It doesn't help that I have a love-hate relationship with shopping and the general buying of stuff. I hate the actual "going" part of shopping (wandering aimlessly in a mall - OMG KILL ME NOW!), but when I do need to buy something I absolutely DESPISE spending my hard-earned money on junk.  I  like to surround myself with pretty things and will pay for quality - mostly so that I won't have to go shopping to replace things anytime soon.

What to do?

Well, one way I get around that is to look at catalogs. They're convenient, portable and are filled with pretty pictures. Add to that the fact that we moved into a house that's approximately three times as big as our old apartment, and that equals the very real possibility that I would eventually end up buying something from Pottery Barn. And if you live anywhere in the United States, you already get 3 copies of the same Pottery Barn catalog at least twice a month, so why not flip through them before recycling them?

(That's how they get us! We're powerless against Pottery Barn and their relentless catalogs!)

We moved into this house last May, and at the time I was still filled with enthusiasm for the whole decorating process. My first task was to buy a kitchen table and four chairs. Easy enough, right? I needed a place where the four of us could eat breakfast, that would fold out of the way when we needed the space, and that was easy to wipe down when the kids spilled their milk. (Which happens EVERY DAMN time we sit at the table.)

I was thrilled when I saw this table in the Pottery Barn catalog:

(Photo from potterybarn.com)

A simple,cute-enough table that folds:

He's got a point...

My husband, after inspecting the awesomely reusable, yet incredibly condescending shopping bag my new yoga mat came in:

"You should have asked the cashier to be your friend."

"Why?"

"It says right on the bag - 'Friends are more important than money' - apparently they would've valued your friendship more than your money."

(Here's a post making fun of some of the other things on Lululemon shopping bags - yeah, the bags are cheesy, but they're reusable so they're going shopping with me - all in the name of less waste!)

You win, Old Man Winter. FINE.

I've been in an incredibly good mood despite the two consecutive storms that hit Boston because we're going from this:

To this:

I was even getting a bit sentimental about the snow the day it started falling - but after driving in it I was reminded of why I hate it so very, very much. Soon I was feeling pretty good about escaping this icy mess and was already feeling my toes thawing out while dreaming about Christmas at the beach when we heard the smoke detector go off late on Monday night.

Long story short: Ice dams. Frozen front steps. Flooded basement.

Damn.

Now we've turned off the water in the house and shut off electricity in the basement and are hoping for the best. Seems old man winter won't release his icy grasp on us just yet. I'll be stuck watching weather reports thinking about thaws and snowplows even as I vacation at the beach.

This is what they call positive reinforcement

Mom #1 : I'd been trying to get my husband to kill a fly that had been in the bathroom all day. It was driving me crazy! I finally told him I'd give him 10 blowjobs if he killed it. You never saw a man kill a fly so quickly.

Mom #2 : Wow. You must really hate flies.

(I love my mom friends.)

Tales From The Fridge

UPDATE:  Last night, after spending another hour on the phone with GE I was informed that the part we needed was out of stock and that they couldn't service my fridge until next week.  Which would put me at 20 days without a refrigerator.

That is the point where I LOST IT.  I don't even know what I said on the phone, but it must have been pretty scary because a repairman was at my house by 8 AM today.  With the part that supposedly was out impossible to get until next Wednesday.  "I just happened to have one in my truck.  What a coincidence!" he said.

I don't see another GE appliance in our future is all I'm saying.  I know that you can all sleep better at night knowing that I can finally buy some ice cream. 

This is my fridge:

It's pretty, isn't it?  I don't think I've ever mentioned my refrigerator because, well, it's pretty boring.  It holds our food and keeps it cold.  That is, until Saturday, October 27th.  That was the day I woke up to find this:

The interior of my fridge was 71 degrees.  My house was 69 degrees.  I had a freezer packed with frozen appetizers because we were having a party the next day.  A party for 35 people.  And my mother in law was staying with us.  As was my brother in law and his wife.

In other words, I NEEDED MY STUPID REFRIGERATOR TO WORK.

But it was a Saturday, and the fridge is under warranty, and GE would not come out until Monday.

So me, being resourceful and cool-headed (for once) called good friends of ours and asked (begged!) them for freezer space, as I did not want to serve our friends salmonella-infested quiche.  They understood, of course, and kindly made room for our food. The party was saved!  Hot drinks are on me!

Monday came.  The GE repairman came.  He looked at our refrigerator for a total of 5 minutes and announced that he needed parts, and that they would not arrive until Friday.

We were leaving town on Wednesday and would not be back until Sunday.  No worries!  I made an appointment for Monday (yesterday) and cleaned out the fridge.  We left it looking like this:

That night the cleaners feasted on Trader Joe's pizza and cheese, and our wallet cried real tears.  All that food!  Gone!  Poof!

Yesterday, I waited all day for the GE guy to come.  He fixed our fridge and left.

Joy!  Living without refrigeration when you have small children is damn near impossible.  I made plans to go grocery shopping for those things you never think to buy - things like mayonnaise and mustard. 

Last night I took a peek at the fridge before leaving for the store.  The temperature?  74 degrees!  AAUURGH!

I've been stuck at home all day waiting for the GE man.  He just left, and informed me that he needs ANOTHER part and we will not have a fridge until Friday, maybe Monday. We have guests arriving Friday.  I don't need to tell you why this sucks.

Sebastian is very upset that we have no food in the fridge.  He keeps saying "We no food!  We need to go growcery!  I drive red cart!  I fix frid-gerator!"  He makes me read him books about grocery shopping.  I think he thinks we're going to starve. 

Bermuda Breeze

Dudes.  Duuudes.

I was on a good blogging roll when life got in the way - sorry to drop you like that. 

In the past three weeks, we've had eight house guests stay with us (age range: 9 months to my mother in law).  Breakfast meant a dozen eggs and endless espresso, plus I don't even know how jars of marmalade.  I made dinner almost every night.

Oh, and our refrigerator broke.

It was awesome, despite the technical difficulties.  I love house guests - catching up with friends and family, spoiling them, giving them a taste of our life.  There's nothing better than entertaining the right people.

But this time it has left me exhausted - I was taking naps every afternoon and that left no time to finish my Morocco story.  Our last guest left on Tuesday night at 9 PM, and we were up until 2 AM packing and cleaning up the house.  Then we got up at 5 AM so that we could catch our flight to Bermuda, where we've been flirting with Noel the entire time.

I firmly believe that things happen for a reason, as gale force winds mean that I've spent the last two days sleeping and getting massages and facials at an amazing spa (one massage was so good I FORGOT MY NAME.  That's talent, people) instead of snorkeling or trying to be adventuresome or productive.

Guilt-free laziness is priceless.  I've got a couple more days of sloth left, and then I'll be back to finish my story.  I'm going to finish before my brother and my sis-in-law arrive later next week.  I hope the fridge is working by then, because he likes his beer.

What's that saying about the road to hell?

I spent a good part of yesterday evening getting organized so that I can finally stop wasting so much time.

I woke up at 6:30, showered and was ready to go before the kids were awake.  This has never happened before, but I was a woman on a mission.  Today, I was going to Get Things Done.

And!  Today is babysitter day, so I was going to have a fabulous morning of productivity.

I scheduled my first exercise class in a long, long time so I arranged my morning around it (because health comes first!)  My plan was this:

9:00 AM - 10:00 Breakfast and reading at the coffee shop. 
10:15 - 11:15 Pilates. 
11:30-12:00 Shopping for a baby shower my playgroup is throwing this weekend. 
12:00 - 12:30 Quick grocery run.

Instead, this is what happened:

8:45 AM Grab keys to head out the door.
8:46 AM Where are my keys?
9:00 AM  Seriously, where are my keys?
9:15 AM (email husband who is all the way in San Francisco) "Check your pockets - do you have my keys?"
9:30 AM  Think to check safe for a spare set of keys.  Forget combination.  Get self locked out of safe for two hours.
9:45 AM (email husband) "OMG WE'RE STRANDED!  SEND HELP!"
9:46 - 10:30 Turn entire house upside down while sitter, toddler and self look for keys.
10:31 AM Find keys in pocket of jacket left in the dirty clothes pile (also known as Mt. Rush-no-more)

I have two hours of sitting left and I'm about to run out the door like a madwoman, trying to get everything done at the last minute.  In other words, it's business as usual around here.  Maybe I should stop trying to fight the damn universe.

Mostly, I'm pissed that was up at 6:30 AM for nothing. 

Marketing Pooh-Pooh

Today I went to the doctor.  (Don't worry, I'm fine!)  I needed to go in to have a few things checked out, and can I tell you what's sad (other than the fact I'm telling you about this)?  It felt indulgent.  The fact that I went to see someone wearing a white coat and they there to take care of me and ask questions about me, and it had nothing to do with my kids or my reproductive parts made me feel like I was pretty special.

Which goes to show you that I'm way overdue for a Spa or Salon visit of some sort, because I'm starting to confuse internists with estheticians.  Not good.

Of course, this illusion of indulgence didn't last very long.  In fact, it lasted about as long as it took for the nurse to close the exam room door and I was faced with an instructional poster detailing the correct procedure for collecting fecal specimens:

Yes, I felt stupid whipping out my cell phone and taking a picture of this poster but I had to do it.  I may be currently living the carefree life of a SAHM, but once, not so long ago, I was a marketing worker bee and this poster brought back many emotions, not the least of which was empathy.  I know that somewhere out there, probably in New Jersey, there is a product manager at some medical device company who spent hours, maybe weeks, on this poster, probably more hours than were spent on strategy (so why did they spend so much time at school on the 4 Ps?  It's a rhetorical question.  I don't know.)

This poor product manager (whose business card probably reads "Manager, Fecal Testing Devices" --let's pray that they're not single.  THE HORROR.) had to write a brief detailing what they needed ("a poster about poop handling"), and send it out to illustrators and ad agencies and then look at the work of people who have done similar illustrations, and then hire someone and send countless emails back and forth asking the illustrator to make the poop on the collection strip less obvious (and really, do we need an "after" shot?) and then they had to make the poop more, um, realistic, in order to illustrate correctly how to "pierce the specimen in at least 5 different sites" only to come up with this work of art:

And this process goes on and on, and there are meetings about the illustrations, and there are re-writes and copywriters are involved - as well as the legal department and the regulatory department - and yes, this as exciting as it sounds.

Boy am I glad I no longer work in pharmaceutical marketing, is all.

I was once in charge of three canker sore products.  I won't go into detail about how I spent precious hours of my life on illustrations for the packaging, and how to this day I can't help but stare people at CVS when they're standing in front of the canker sore treatments, probably waiting for me to leave them alone so that they can make this borderline embarrassing purchase IN PEACE.

(No one ever looks at the illustrations.  Bah!)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my business card read "Manager, Oral First Aids" I kid you not.  I always made sure that final s was there.  Too bad I wasn't single at the time because I have a feeling that title would have made me VERY popular at bars.