Would you like some cheese with that whine?

There is this commercial on TV now... I think it's for a discount department store?  It features a group of people drinking wine, eating hors d'oeuvres, laughing and chatting in their cocktail-party clothes, while candles on the table gently illuminate the fancy place settings. 

And every time I see it, I think, "I WANT TO BE AT THAT PARTY!  It looks like fun and it doesn't even involve objects that must be thrown, driven really fast, or smashed into each other."


(I don't know who these people are -------------------->
but they look like they're having a good time, except for those really uncomfortable chairs they have to sit in)

Don't get me wrong: redneck stuff is fun.  Well, the redneck stuff that I've done anyway.  Which is actually pretty mild as far as redneck goes.  I mean, NASCAR and country music and beer does not a redneck make.  You need to add a few things, like a mullet haircut and a t-shirt with the arms cut off, and subtract a few things, like, um, teeth, and then you get a redneck.

But I did live in a 38-foot fifth wheel for almost two years.

Let me repeat that.  I LIVED in a TRAILER for almost two YEARS.



You know that old saying, "You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house?"  Nuh-uh.  I could live in my house and drive my house.  

My husband did some fancy number-crunching with the budget and all the money we'd save, and how we'd be spending our living allowance on something we would eventually own instead of pissing it away on rent, blah blah blah.  I agreed to 8 months.

1 year and 8 months later, we finally retired the fifth wheel and moved into a rented house with some roommates.  I prefer to think of the fifth-wheel time as the "marriage test."  Because if two people can live together in a trailer with a dog and a cat, and then get up and go to work every day (at the same place) where our offices are so close they literally share a wall, and the husband can learn to deal with a closet allotment the size of a toaster (because, let's face it, the closet wasn't big to begin with) and the wife learns to deal with banged shins (because, let's face it, she's not graceful in normal-sized rooms), and these two people don't kill each other?  Ah, marital bliss.

The Price of Beauty

Q:   What is the difference between the $40 hair spray and the $9 hair spray?
A:   Whether or not you want to smell like a classy lady or a cheap hooker.

When one has to be at work at 6am to stand outside in the dark/early dawn for half an hour, having wet hair is a big downside (especially in the wintertime).  And getting up earlier to allow hair-drying time?  Ugh... I believe we've already established how I feel about the early morning hours.

So I have become a fan of the "dry shampoo."  It's basically really expensive baby powder in an aerosol spray can.  And for those of you not in the know, aside from its uses on baby's butts and making young actors look like old people in high school plays, baby powder is also good for reviving your hair to its freshly-washed look.  With the aerosol can, I can shower the night before, and just spray a quick pick-me-up in the morning.

The problem with the dry shampoo is that you can't find it in any old store.  And the only specialty stores I've found here don't carry the name brand stuff.  So I bought the knock-off stuff:



(Doesn't the pink-and-teal canister with the awkward flowers just scream class?)

Oh, boy, was that a mistake.  One tiny spritz of this stuff and the whole room smells like 20 teenage girls getting ready for their first prom.

Chris walks in the room and immediately asks, "Um honey, what is that? Did you get a new...um...perfume?"  And he says the word "perfume" with a kind of question in his voice and a pained look on his face.  I'm sure he is thinking something along the lines of please don't tell me you like that awful scent.  I reassure him that I, also, think it smells awful.  Kind of like somebody raided the perfume aisle at Wal-Mart, poured out the contents of every single bottle on to the floor, and then rolled around in the mixture.

Chris almost sighed in relief at this, since had I answered "Yes, it's my new perfume do you like it?" he would have been in a very tricky situation for any male: having to answer one of those lose-lose questions like "does this dress make me look fat?"  If he agreed, I'd be happy but he would have to smell that wretched scent for several days until the bottle "mysteriously disappeared", and if he disagreed, he wouldn't have to smell it but he would have to deal with a pissy wife.

I think we are both in agreement that the fancy stuff is worth every penny of that extra twenty dollars.

The Sniff Test

Chris and I have differing opinions on when food in the refrigerator is still edible.

For the most part, as long as the food item still passes the "sniff test," I figure it is still edible.  The only foods which don't get the sniff test: bread, and meat.  Bread does not get the sniff test because you can usually tell if it's bad long before you need to smell it.  It's either hard as a rock, moldy, or (if it's been long enough) hard and moldy.  Meat does not get the sniff test because the thought of eating rotten meat really, really, really, grosses me out.  Sometimes I throw away meat before the expiration date, if it's been open in my fridge long enough.

Chris openly mocks my "sniff test" but, hey, I made it through college without once getting food poisoning.  Although I hear that all it takes is one really good bout of food poisoning to change a person's mind about how soon is too soon to throw food away.

Chris, on the other hand, is a tosser.  If the food item is even slightly questionable -- in the trash it goes.  "Honey," he says, "we can afford to go to the store and buy more cheese.  You don't have to cut the moldy spot off and keep eating it."  And he then proceeds to throw away the moldy cheese, the bendable carrots, and the lettuce that was only slightly slimy on some of the leaves while I follow him to the trashcan wailing, "nooooo...I was going to eat those carrots, I swear!"

Okay, maybe it doesn't go down quite that dramatically.  But you get the picture.  So given our history, you would think Chris would've worked on his approach a little bit.  You know, try and let me down gently to expect that certain items in the refrigerator would be missing.  Nope, not my husband.  I walk into the kitchen tonight and am immediately bombarded with, "Honey, I cleaned out the fridge and I threw away EVERYTHING!"

Now, had he started with, "Honey, the fridge was getting a little crowded so I had to toss some things that were spoiled." I might have been a little more receptive.  But I was immediately on the defensive after hearing that he had tossed, as he put it, EVERYTHING!

"Like what did you throw away?"

"EVERYTHING!"

"Um, okay..." since he won't give me specifics, I open the fridge and start digging frantically through the vegetable drawers.

"Where is my spinach?"

"It was slimy."

"No it was NOT.  I just bought it a few days ago!  I just ATE some YESTERDAY!"

"It was slimy.  Even our roommates saw that it was slimy."

"Whatever, so it magically got slimy overnight?  Hmph."

Chris holds up a tupperware container.  "How about this?  Can I throw this out?  It's been in the fridge forever."

I glanced at it.  "That's not mine.  I don't care if you toss it."

"Are you sure it isn't yours?  It looks like something you would eat."

It finally clicked, and I realized that was the Thai Stir-Fry Chicken that I cooked last month.  "Oh, yeah, maybe it was mine.  But you can toss it."

Chris laughed. "See, it's been so long that you don't even REMEMBER it."

I just rolled my eyes (because that last part was kind of true) and walked out of the kitchen, leaving him to his fun.  However now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing that half a red onion that was only barely dried out at the cut part and still good for dicing...

Why, oh why, do you taunt me food commercials?

So recently I joined a new gym.  I am super excited because this gym is very clean and does not smell like dirty socks, like my last gym did.  Also, I do not believe the homeless schizophrenic lady who dances at the corner of the AM-PM has a membership to this gym.  Maybe you think I'm joking.  No, there really is a homeless lady (at least, I think she is homeless since she spends 95% of her free time in front of the AM-PM) and she really is schizophrenic (it's like listening to a one-sided telephone conversation, only the other side isn't on the other line, it's in her head), she really does dance in front of the AM-PM (she wears her sports bra and shorts and has on headphones and dances to the music, on the sidewalk in front of the gas station) and she really is a member of my old gym.  As in, I hear her talking to herself in the ladies locker room and have to use equipment after her, member.

But enough about my old gym.  Let's talk about my new gym.  Aside from being clean, the people that go to this gym are a lot more serious about working out.  You see a lot of people who are in shape, and everyone who is there is actually working out.  At my old gym, there were a people who just wanted to say they went to the gym, so they spent their time wandering around amongst the equipment while texting on their cell phones.  My new gym is a lot more hard-core: they have this boot camp thing that's run by this guy who I think is super nice in real life but a total drill sergeant during boot camp time.  Boot camp involves very loud music and lots of yelling and really hard-core looking activities.  There is even one that involves shaking a large metal chain, which only adds to the noise and hard-core element.  Everybody is always sweaty and tired-looking, but they seem to enjoy it. 

I haven't needed to try the boot camp yet because I got myself a personal trainer.  My trainer is awesome.  He really knows his stuff, and he is dedicated to his clients.  Even if you are not there for a training session, he will help you with your workout at the gym.  He's "that guy" at the gym -- the one that everybody comes up to asking advice about working out and nutrition and stuff.  Even after my first training session when I was sore for two days and winced every time I had to sit down, I still thought he was awesome.  I have a lot a faith that this guy is going to help me get back in shape.

But you want to know what doesn't help?  Television advertisements for food.  Friday evening I was at the gym, and I had snacked before my workout but it was too early for dinner.  I didn't really think I was hungry... until the commercials started on the gym TVs.  Who would have thought that EVERY SINGLE commercial just had to be about food?  Like Pavlov's dog, not only was I now hungry, but I wanted those delicious looking meals they kept talking about on the television.  It was like the TV gods knew I was trying to eat healthy, and while I was at the gym working out they would taunt me with images of all the delicious, unhealthy foods I was not eating at that exact moment.

The upside to seeing all those commercials while you are at the gym?  You can remember exactly how hard you worked that day, and so you don't want to destroy all your hard work for a slice of pepperoni pizza or a holiday cookie or fried chicken.  It just doesn't feel worth it, somehow.

Put Away Your Tinfoil!

People are silly.

Hollywood makes a movie and suddenly, everyone believes that the world is going to end in 2012?  I mean, it's all fine and good if you follow some sort of conspiracy theory based on Nostradamus' predictions or Mayan calendars or even actual scientific fact... but don't start jumping on the bandwagon because Hollywood tells you so!  I mean, c'mon, if everything Hollywood says is true, giant alien robots are secretly living amongst us, vampires are mostly-harmless tortured souls struggling against their evil nature while falling madly in love with teenage girls, and every bachelor party in Vegas ends up at the hotel room with a baby in the closet and a tiger in the bathroom.

I mean, I KNOW people who had their bachelor parties in Vegas, and I'm pretty sure there weren't any tigers involved.  Mostly sure, anyway.  I wasn't there, after all.

But here's the thing.  NASA comes out with a statement that basically says, "The world is not going to end in 2012 so please stop calling us."

Okay, my first question is, how do you find out the phone number for NASA?  Which is closely followed by my second question, why do you want to contact NASA anyway?  Even if they DID have the answers, and there WAS some sort of conspiracy theory, do you really think that after dozens of years of keeping this big fat secret, they would answer some random person's phone call with, "Oh, yeah, that.  Sure it's true.  Don't tell your friends."

No, I don't believe the world is going to end in 2012.  And you shouldn't either.  At least, not just because Hollywood says so.  Find some science, people, before you put on your tinfoil hats.

The Giving of Thanks

Ever since I was a kid, I made it a point to frequently remind myself of the blessings in my life.  I have a very clear memory of myself at eleven, sitting in my bedroom and mentally ticking off all the things I was thankful for.  And it wasn't even Thanksgiving.

I've continued the tradition throughout my twenties.  In college, I once spent several months being bummed over a particularly painful breakup.  At the same time, I had to deal with the aftermath of an auto accident that put my car in a rather shady auto shop being "repaired" for over six weeks.  I had to walk everywhere.  In the wintertime.  And it was finals.  To combat my blues, I made a list of all the things that I did have to be thankful for, and carried it around with me everywhere.  It helped to put a little perspective on the whole thing, like when I found out my car was going to be yet another week in the shop because, ahem, apparently some rats got to the sun visor when it was being stored in the back of their shop.  Not kidding.  Rats.  So, without further ado... My list.  (And I do so looove making lists).

I AM THANKFUL FOR:

My Husband.  (What kind of wife would I be if I didn't list him first?)

My Family.  Mom, Dad, Brother, Brother's Wife and Little Evyl (who is the sweetest little thing EVER).

My Family-by-marriage.  Chris's family is so cool.

My Friends.  I feel honored to know people who truly care about me.

My Job.  It may not be my dream job, but it's nothing to sneeze at, either.  And one should be especially thankful in this economy.

Of course, all the old standbys still apply: clean water, food on the table, money in my pocket, a roof over my head, and clothes to keep me warm.  And let's not forget the luxuries:  hot showers, chocolate-chip cookies, and movies-on-demand.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Race Day at the NASCARs

So, previously I mentioned that people-watching is one of my favorite pastimes at The Nascars. On Saturday night, A-Star, Fashion, Sassy, and I made our way to the “Speed Cantina”. For Fashion and Sassy, this was not only their first Nascar, but their first “wilderness” camping trip. Fashion wondered if she should bring a dress. Sassy brought her cowboy boots. Turns out, it didn’t matter what they wore, because the bar attire was anything-goes.

The bar party that night was 80’s themed -- but that translated into “wear any sort of costume because who really brings their leggings and hairspray to Nascar.”  Welcome to a NASCAR bar party:

• There was a man wearing a plastic Viking helmet with a balloon tied to one of the horns.
• There was a man in a giant fuzzy purple hat and pimp coat with a baseball-sized mardi gras bead necklace
• There was a man with a detective mustache, and a hairstyle that hadn’t changed since the 80s, who was NOT in costume
• And then…. There was a man in a giant, sparkly, turkey costume.

That’s right. I said GIANT SPARKLY TURKEY COSTUME.

Because, you know, when I’m packing for Nascar I think, hmmm, now what I am going to wear to the bar on Saturday night? Jeans? No. T-shirt? No. Something a little more unique… I KNOW! My giant sparkly turkey costume!!!

So we cut a rug on the dance floor, and I gave the DJ his first tip of the night. The girls leaned over to request a song, and the DJ says, “Okay, here’s to Krista, my first tipper of the night!” .....And then he played “Single Ladies” by Beyonce. The DJ had misunderstood the girls’ request, so the dedication was a little awkward, because none of us were single.

Our biggest competition on the dance floor was a Chad Kroeger look-alike (well, I should say the drunken redneck version of Nickleback’s lead singer). He kept stumbling into us and spilling his drink on us, and generally being obnoxious. He couldn’t figure out why Sassy kept giving him the death glare. At one point, he informed Sassy that “her hair was invading his dance space” which earned him another Death Glare. Later on, he pushed his way into the front of the dance floor, knocked us out of the way, and then proceeded to drop to the ground and do ten pushups.

Yes, PUSHUPS on the DANCE FLOOR.

A-star made fun of him by doing mock situps on the dance floor. The DJ thought it was hilarious, but I was afraid the giant sparkly turkey or the old man with glow-stick in his water bottle might accidentally step on her, so we quickly aborted her efforts at mockery.

Finally, our ears were ringing and we were tired, so we left the bar and walked back to camp. The next day was race day, after all, and we had GOALS to meet.

Krista
Goal: sneak two cans of beer into the track. (It’s expensive in there!).
Status: Goal attained.

A-star
Goal: watch the entire race
Status: Not accomplished.

Fashion
Goal: Fit in with the Nascar-folk
Status: Goal attained (mostly)

Sassy
Goal: Buy the tackiest, most redneck-hick t-shirt possible, preferably with camoflauge, the driver’s face, an American flag, AND an eagle on it
Status: Goal attained.

I enjoyed my two tasty beers, Fashion discovered that the only dresses that are acceptable to wear at Nascar are the type of dresses she is too classy to wear, Sassy noticed several fellows with her same shirt that further proved she did indeed choose the tackiest one, and A-star…. Well, A-star fell asleep for the last 20 laps of the race. Actually, A-Star and Sassy and Orange County fell asleep. At the noisiest sporting event known to man. It was so funny, that random passer-by going up the stairs stopped to point and laugh.

What can I say? All that dancing the night before… they were just plumb tuckered out.