Chirky

NPR published an article last month that has been haunting me, and this is why: it pretty much said that if I don't speak 2100 words per hour to Rayah, she won't grow up to be a high achiever. She won't be as intelligent as she has the potential to be.

I mean, basically. It might have said more than that. That 2100 words per hour? It scares me a little. I don't know if I think 2100 words per hour. That seems like a lot of words. So for the past month, I've been going out of my way to talk even more to Rayah than I already was. Instead of saying, "Rayah, let's put your shoes in your shoe bin!", I say: "Rayah, let's pick up your brown sneakers with the velcro closures and carry them to your closet, where we can put them into your shoe bin!" See that? I took a simple nine-word sentence and snuck in an extra 17 words. Impressive, right?

Except I don't feel impressive when I'm saying it. I feel like I'm overwhelming my 17-month-old daughter with an instruction that could have been a lot more concise. Now, I'll be the first to admit: I don’t do this with every sentence – my brain just doesn’t work that quickly to remember every time. But I do it often enough to induce a lot of eye-rolling at myself. Rayah has awesome comprehension - she knows exactly what to do when I tell her to take her shoes to her shoe bin...but for all that extra talking, she can't get a word in edge-wise. Which leaves me to wonder if the NPR article was right.

The article was a study conducted over a period of three years, following 40 families -- "rich, poor and in between" -- transcribing EVERY WORD that was said to the children of those families for the first three years of their lives. Every. Word. They analyzed the results, and this is what they found:

"In the end, the finding that most struck people was not about the quality of the speech -- how often rich versus poor parents asked questions or positively affirmed their children -- but about the quantity. According to their research, the average child in a welfare home heard about 600 words an hour while a child in a professional home heard 2,100."

Why does that number matter? The reason this study was conducted in the first place was because they were "trying to teach underprivileged kids how to speak like the children of professors at the University of Kansas." They failed time and time again to expand the vocabularies of the four-year-olds, hoping that if they succeeded, the underprivileged kids might go on to experience similar academic achievements as their wealthier peers. Their report concluded:

"That adds up. [They] estimated that by the age of 4, children of professional parents had heard on average 48 million words addressed to them while children in poor welfare families had heard only 13 million. It was no wonder that the underprivileged children they saw at their preschool could not catch up and often lagged behind once they went to school. They simply weren't getting the experience with language provided to their peers."

As a work-at-home-mom who is also a stay-at-home-mom, I'm the first to say that I don't spend as much time pouring into my daughter as I'd like to. I work during Rayah's naps, which buys me about 4 hours throughout the day. I work while she plays independently, which is another hour or so throughout the day. I work while she watches her Praise Baby video, the only show she's mesmerized by, which buys me another 30-45 minutes. If it's nice outside, she'll play in the backyard while I sit at the patio table, working, for another 30 minutes before I join her. After she goes to bed, I work for another two to four hours, depending on how much is left on my plate, what kind of deadlines I'm up against, and how much I was able to accomplish throughout the day. On days I have childcare (aka my Mom), I'll try to hole up in a room and be as efficient as possible. And then there are the weekends, when I’ll often respond to emails and take care of certain tasks to lighten my load during the week.

Mostly, I just feel like a failure. A failure at work, because I've never reconciled in my brain that it's okay not to work standard 8a-6p hours -- I worked in corporate America for far too long to wholly believe that, and so I intermittently work 8a to 12am or so, trying to balance time with my daughter with my responsibilities at work. A failure at home because there is a laundry pile on our guest bed that needs to be folded, and it is usually about two feet tall; because I am *really* good at making messes - see also: anytime I cook - and not as great at picking them up; because I have a ridiculously long list of Things To Do with Rayah, and either I can't do them because my schedule gets in the way, or I can't do them because her nap schedule gets in the way; because I don't know if I'm talking to her enough, or playing with her enough, but considering the amount of time she plays alone and entertains herself, I'm thinking the answer is a resounding "no." [This is not a commentary on traditional roles in the family, though those do work for my husband and me. He helps tremendously around the house, when he's home. Unfortunately, his work demands regular 70-80 hour weeks, which means he leaves home before we get up in the morning, and usually gets home between 8-10pm, sometimes much later. He is one of the most ethical people I know, and works so very hard to provide for our family.]

Someone has suggested that I just put our daughter in daycare, and every time I hear that, I remember my daycare days from 1987 and become a little bit depressed. I don't want to leave my daughter in a center with germy children who will teach her to hit and bite; with adults who won't care as much as I do whether she eats foods with high fructose corn syrup, or whether she has a quiet place to sleep each morning and afternoon. And I know that daycare has improved a lot in the past 25+ years, but I still believe that the right place for her is home, with me. I am so blessed, so thankful that I am in a position where I get to make that choice, because I know that many parents would love to stay home with their children, to see them all day, every day, and can’t. It's not something I take for granted.

And that means I go out of my way to make her days active and fun, even if it means I go to bed later than my body would prefer. I talk with her about everything in her world, from her shoes to the airplanes overhead to the color of leaves and why some don't fall from the trees in winter. I'm paranoid about pulling extra books to read to her, to make sure we hit that lofty 2100 words per hour hanging over my head, and I've gone so far as to count the number of words in her favorites (including titles, not including anything we discuss in the book, etc):

Goodnight Moon: 128
In My Nest: 36
I Love You, Good Night: 97
The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear: 158
That’s Not My…(Bunny, Dinosaur, etc.): 48

All together, that’s 467 words if I were to read all five of those books to her once EACH HOUR. That alone doesn’t even get me to the 600 minimum. I talk to Rayah a great deal throughout the day, but I’m convinced it’s not nearly enough. So now I’m REALLY wondering how some parents speak 2100 words PER HOUR to their infants/toddlers. (Not 2100 words spoken within their earshot – the words must be spoken TO the children.) Is that even possible? What do you think? Do you hit that 2100 mark, easy, or are you going to be just as haunted by this as I am?

[This post? Just over 1,400 words. STILL NOT ENOUGH. Also: if you have favorite children's books, I'd love to know what they are!]

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A couple years ago, when my co-worker, Lori, was planning meals at BlogHer '09, she asked my thoughts on an oatmeal bar one morning for breakfast. My answer was an emphatic YES! because I was seven months pregnant, was persistently hungry, and will admit, unabashedly, to an abiding love for oatmeal.

That's how my nickname, Oats, began. It stuck because after I responded so enthusiastically, I laid down the law of what must be included on that oatmeal buffet (among other offerings): cinnamon, brown sugar and raisins. Specifically, the raisins had to be black (not the golden kind, which she had originally slated, because the golden kind blend in too well in your bowl). And so it was.

This past week, while in San Diego planning for BlogHer '11, the Marriott included something special on the breakfast buffet the last morning our team was in town: Oatmeal Crème Brûlée.

Did anyone else just hear a chorus of angels, or was that only me?

Let me repeat that for added effect: Oatmeal! Creme Brulee! A combination of one of the best breakfast foods, with my absolute, all-time favorite dessert? Yes, please! I'm applauding the inventor of this delicious combination - creamy, melt-in-your-mouth oatmeal, sweetened with a hardened sugar glaze and rich, melted butter pooled in the center. The Marriott topped it with thin-sliced, bubbling hot peaches, and I knew the moment it hit my tastebuds that I'd need to re-create it in my kitchen.

Oatmeal Crème Brûlée

INGREDIENTS
1.5 cups oats
3 cups milk
1 t vanilla
12 thin peach slices (about 1/8" thick)
4 T extra-fine white sugar
2 T organic brown sugar

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Over medium heat, stir together oats, milk and vanilla. Cook, stirring frequently, until oats absorb liquid and take on a thick consistency.
2. Spoon cooked oats equally into four ramekins and arrange three peach slices atop each oatmeal portion.
3. Blend sugars, then divide equally (approximately 1.5 T each) among the four ramekins and spread evenly on top.
4. Using a torch, melt the sugar and form a crispy top.
5. Allow the oatmeal creme brulee to sit for at least 5 minutes before serving.

NOTES
A. If you haven't tried organic brown sugar, you're missing out. It's got an amazing flavor and texture - waaaaayyyyy better than regular brown sugar. You can thank me later for introducing you.
B. I don't have a torch, so I used my broiler instead. It melted the butter, but didn't form a crispy top. I'm not sure why, but it's possible I didn't leave it in for long enough. I think I was too afraid of burning the sugar to a charcoaled crsip.
C. You don't need to add extra sugar or sweetener to the oatmeal while cooking - this topping will partially absorb into the oatmeal beneath it, and it will be plenty sweet. Eating this is almost like eating dessert.

THE GIVEAWAY!

Incidentally, this coincided with National Oatmeal Month (probably something to do with all those "Be More Healthy" resolutions for New Year's). In celebration, Better Oats sent me samples of their oatmeal and offered to give away a one-month-supply of their oatmeal to ten Chirky.com readers! I had never tried Better Oats before, but after researching their company and taste-testing their product, giving away their oatmeal on this site was a no-brainer. Besides serving up delicious food (which, let's face it, is the most important criteria - the Better Oats instant oatmeal doesn't have that chemical taste that I've disliked in so many other instant oatmeal brands), they make it easy for me to like them:

• The carton packaging is 100% recyclable, unlike the waxboard cartons of other brands.
• Each packet is pre-measured in 1/4 cup portions, and the packet itself doubles as a measuring cup. (The bottom of the fill line is 1/2 cup liquid, the top of the fill line is 2/3 cup liquid.)
• The packets are super-portable, perfect for a busy mom to an on-the-go toddler. I've already stashed a couple in the diaper bag for emergency meals.
• The oatmeal is made from 100% whole grain oats, with added flax seeds for an extra dose of Omega-3. Nutritious!
• Better Oats offers a ton of varieties, from plain to fruity to cinnamon to maple and brown sugar to -- get this! -- chocolate. (Why did I never think of adding chocolate to my oatmeal? YUM!)
• For every coupon downloaded from their site, Better Oats will donate a bowl of oatmeal to local food banks.

So! To the good part: the giveaway! I want to know your favorite way to serve/eat oatmeal. Do you like it plain? With certain spices or fruits or sweeteners? Do you come down hard on the cooking method line between milk vs. water? Do you have a favorite recipe using oatmeal? To receive an entry:

(1) entry - Leave a comment answering the question above

(1) additional entry - Leave a separate comment letting me know you've tweeted this blog post (using this shortened URL: http://bit.ly/eQGF4H)

(1) additional entry - Leave a separate comment linking back to your own blog entry, pointing your readers to this giveaway

The contest is open beginning NOW, and closing 11:59pm on Monday, January 31, 2011. Ten winners will be selected at random to win a one-month supply of Better Oats oatmeal.

Now tell me...Did you already know about Oatmeal Creme Brulee? Am I the last to find out? And do you have a better recipe than mine? I made it up off-the-cuff, so I'm pretty sure there's room for improvement! I think I'm officially on a quest to find the best Oatmeal Creme Brulee, ever, ever, ever.

* * * UPDATED! Winners have been selected via Random.org and were notified Feb 1, 2011! * * *

Though this post was compensated with free product, my good opinion of products cannot be bought. I genuinely liked BetterOats instant oatmeal, and hope that you will, too!

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I've been thinking a lot about what moms really want for Mother's Day (this Sunday!). And I've been wondering if working moms and stay at home moms want the same things. (Note: By "working moms," I mean mothers who are employed by a company, since I know that stay at home moms also work, just in a different way.)

Lately I've been struggling with balance. (Lately equals the last eight months.) (Coincidentally, my sweet daughter is eight months old.) (I'm pretty certain these two are related.) My life is overflowing with busyness. I'm a full-time mom, and a full-time employee. And I don't mean that I leave the house to go to a full-time job, while someone cares for my daughter. I mean that I stay home and care for her, and that I'm also a remote employee for a company I love. So I work 40+ hours a week at home, while also *attempting* to spend that time with my little girl. Hiring a nanny is out of the question right now, because of the way this economy has affected our family's finances. Which makes for early mornings, and late nights, and busy days. Add to that meals, and grocery shopping, and cleaning the house, and laundry, and I'm willing to bet you can guess which of those slide. (Answer: that entire last sentence.) But I get to spend the entire day with our daughter, and for that I am thankful. She's pretty awesome.

Roger, on the other hand, usually leaves for work before Rayah's up in the morning, and comes home after she's gone to bed. He walks into her room several times a night, just to watch her sleep. And just thinking about that makes me depressed. To love someone so much, but not be able to hold her or read her books or even to listen to her "talk" about her day. To only to get to spend two days each week with her. And even then, it's a weekend filled with busyness, trying to do all the things that the weekdays denied us.

So I've been thinking about Mother's Day. I've been thinking that, sure, perfume or flowers or spa certificates are nice. A thoughtful card is nice. But what do I really want? I want time. I want time with my husband and daughter, without the added stress of everything else that needs to be done. I want a carefree day. A family picnic at the park in our neighborhood. Reading books together in Rayah's reading corner. I want a day to re-connect as a family, a day to take pictures, a day to remember.

But I realize not everyone wants the same things that I do - so I'm curious. What do you want for Mother's Day?

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I think the best part of the Dallas bloggers meetup was not spilling food on myself. (Have I mentioned how messy I've become lately? I think it's nature's way of preparing me for motherhood. I can rarely go through a day without finding food somewhere on my shirt.)

Okay, well, no. Maybe the best part of the meetup was getting to know all the great bloggers who came out to meet each other! It was a small group, but was fabulous because we had the opportunity to get to know each other, hang out and talk, learn about each other's blogs, and have great conversations about everything from driving traffic to your site, to rodeo queens and big hair, to privacy and censorship, to summertime TV, to topical blogging, to parenthood, to BlogHer. We had a fun giveaway with several gift certificates to places like Charming Charlie, Sip-n-Swap and Target. And then we promised to do it all again soon, very soon. (If you want in on the action, join the Dallas BlogHer group.)

Continue reading "DFW BlogHer Meetup" »

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Last week, my laptop crashed. I've never had that happen before, where it worked fairly well the day before and the next day wouldn't even turn on, so I wasn't sure what to do. And then I remembered the Geek Squad.

Now, truth be told: before February, Geek Squad wouldn't have been on my radar. But I attended BlissDom '09 in February, and Geek Squad was a highly visible sponsor at the conference. I thought: "Hey! They support bloggers! I will patronize them and see if they can help me." Because we've got to support each other, right?

So I took my computer to my local Geek Squad (at Best Buy) and explained the problem. The goal: either to fix the problem, or to recover all the data from my hard drive. While I was standing there, the Geek tried to plug in my computer to "run diagnostics." Except he couldn't get it to power up, so he told me all was lost, and my only option was data recovery.

I blinked.

I understand that my laptop is almost 3 years old. And that laptops need to be replaced every so often. And really, the most important thing to me is the data. Every work-related file I owned was on that laptop, and I couldn't really work without those files. Every photo and video from every trip that Roger and I have taken - both foreign and domestic - was on that laptop. And I was desperate to get those back. And then there were the recipes that I've been collecting for that cookbook I'm writing (the one that I've been writing for the past five years, but still), and they were all lost too.

Data recovery suddenly became all I cared about, so yes, I paid $108 to have them extract my files and folders and bookmarks. It was an easy decision.

Though the Geek told me it would take 3-4 days, I was elated the next day to receive both an automated email message and an automated phone call: my order was ready! My laptop was ready for pickup! And with it, I assumed, ALL MY DATA. I rushed to Best Buy, and excitedly approached the Geek. He looked up my order.

Geek: "Oh, it looks like we owe you a refund."
Jes: Blank stare
Geek: "I'll just put that back on your MasterCard."
Jes: Blank stare
Jes: [This is where it would have been helpful if someone had actually called me to tell me what was going on, rather than sending me an automated message to inform me that my "order was ready."] "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. Why are you giving me a refund? I don't understand."
Geek: (as though I'm an idiot) "Because we couldn't pull your data off your hard drive. It's broken."
Jes: Blank stare
Jes: "Well that's not my last option, is it? I mean, it can't just be un-recoverable just because you guys can't get it off. Can't you extract my hard drive and plug it into another computer?"
Geek: "That's what we did. It just kept spinning. Your hard drive is physically broken. The only way to recover that data is to send it off to our White Lab."
Jes: "What is a White Lab? Where is that? What is the cost?"
Geek: "A White Lab is a like a giant clean room, like where FBI-like people take apart the computers of white-collar criminals to investigate them. Our service center is in Kentucky. I've seen it cost as low as $260, and as much as $1,700. Plus $34.95 for shipping."
Jes: Blank stare "Ummm, yeaaahhh. I think I'm going to look into other options. You can go ahead with the refund and I'll take my laptop."

Because I REFUSED to believe that sending my laptop off to a service center in Kentucky was my last option. I live in Dallas. Dallas seems more...advanced...than the entire state of Kentucky. Certainly there is SOMEONE in Dallas who can help me.

A man in Best Buy, who overheard the conversation, stopped me and recommended The Computer Wizard. "He's a computer forensics expert, he's been doing this for a llooooonnnnggggggg time, you should check him out," he says. If he can't help, he'll know who can. [Actually, the conversation was much longer than that. But I'm paraphrasing.]

As it turns out, The Computer Wizard is just two blocks from my house in Plano, Texas. So I took my laptop, with my flailing faith in Geeks, and explained the situation. He listened to me talk (on and on and on) about my Geek Squad nightmare, and how I refused to believe they were my last option, and then I told him about the problem I was having with my computer. And then he told me that just last week, he had someone in his office saying the exact same thing. That Geek Squad told them they couldn't fix the problem. And the Computer Wizard could. My hopes soared a little. So I trusted my laptop to him, and left his office, fully confident that this man knew his business.

And two hours later, he personally called me:

Computer Wizard: "There's nothing wrong with your hard drive. I was able to pull all nine gigs of your data off with no problem."
Jes: Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! "That's awesome news! Thank you!"
Computer Wizard: "Your [something I don't remember] is broken, but it doesn't affect your hard drive AT ALL. This was easy. So just bring in your new computer and we'll transfer the files over, or you can buy a 16gb flash drive and we'll put the files there."

So in the end, I got all of my data. And I'm so thankful for The Computer Wizard. And no offense to those nerdily cute Geeks with their wrinkly shirts and unbrushed hair, but the moral of the story is: DON'T USE GEEK SQUAD . They're really, really, REALLY incompetent.

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Since I’ve been working from home, I’ve become more and more aware how my daily style and interaction is changing. I work in silence most of the day, aside from conference calls. I chat with friends and co-workers online. And mostly, I like it.

Since we are remodeling our house, the room that will be our office is out of commission. So for the past month, I have been working in my bedroom. Sitting on my bed. Laptop on my lap. Wearing my pajamas. I generally don’t get dressed until noon, when I walk into the kitchen for a sandwich and realize: Wow. I am kind of sloppy. Maybe I should put on real clothes. And sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. Unless I am going out to get the mail, and then I always put on real clothes. What would the neighbors think if I were in my pajamas? Are my neighbors even home? Or peering out their windows when I happen to be outside? These are my burning questions.

So lately I’ve been thinking that maybe I should get up and get dressed every day at 7am, the same way I did when I worked in an office. Just because I’m working from home doesn’t mean my main clothing choices have to be robes, exercise clothes, or pajamas, right?

And to take it a step further, I’m even considering fixing my hair (a style other than a ponytail would do) and – gasp! – wearing makeup. I mean, if I don’t wear makeup, what exactly will I be washing off my face with my fancy new skin care system?

Do you ever work from home? And if so, do you have this same problem? How do you combat a month-long case of the frumps? Not that you look frumpy, darling.

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I’ve been off work for the past week, gearing up for my new position with my new employer, and I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of my time off wandering around the house, wondering just where I packed all my old makeup. Because with all that makeup are skincare samples from Estee Lauder and Elizabeth Arden and Lancome. Anti-aging and wrinkle-defying samples. And since I’m currently having a little problem with two pesky creases between my eyebrows, I thought those samples might come in handy.

Except I can’t find them. What I did find was kind of miraculous: several months ago, a publishing company sent me a bevy of books to peruse, with the hopes that I’d review them on this site. I’ve never quite gotten around to it, what with the move and the never ending house remodel. And the fact that 80% of our boxes are still packed, including all those books. And I still can’t find my underwear. Anyway, so the title of this book stood up, waved its (color-coded) pages in the air and screamed at me: How Not To Look Old. When I first received the book, I remember thinking to myself: Hey, Hatchette. Who do you think I am? Why in the world do you think I would ever need this book? But when I discovered it again this week, I couldn’t NOT sit down and flip through it right then.

And, yes, those chapters on what jeans and jewelry to wear or how to apply your makeup and have your hair cut were interesting, but I found just what I was looking for in Chapter Eight: Manage Your Wrinkles. It is the holy grail of skin care – everything I ever wanted to know about age spots and fine lines and deep creases and large pores and broken capillaries and uneven skin tone. The book included solutions for each trouble, along with suggested cleansers and moisturizers and home micro-dermabrasion kits, everything from drugstore brands to upscale brands to prescription-only brands. Included was an explanation of dermatologists along with reasons why I might want to visit one, and what treatment I might want to get during my appointment. And to top it off, the book included a listing of recommended salons and spas in several large U.S. cities – including Dallas. I kind of feel like I’ve been let in on some big secret, with my go-to list of who does brows best in Dallas (Eliza at Exhale Spa in Hotel Palomar), where I should slip in for a facial (Renee Rouleau Salon in Plano), who I should visit to get the sexiest bangs in town (Richard Hayler at Neiman Marcus/North Park Mall).

But anyway, my point was that, thanks to this book, I now have an Official Skin Care Regimen. It sort of makes me feel certified as a woman. I spend a lot of time each morning and evening smearing products across my face, but in reality it’s probably not any more than you were already doing. (You look smashing, by the way. Have you lost five pounds?) I have an army of special cleansers and exfoliants and moisturizers and serums and deep-wrinkle treatments. Truth be told, I actually have a starter kit. I went into the store this week to buy a full line of products, and the sales lady simply would not allow me to do it, encouraging me instead to get the beginner’s kit so that I could even see whether I would like the product. I do like it, very much in fact, and I think I’m going to turn my starter kit into my travel kit.

The first night I used the products, I floated into the bedroom. Roger was distracted and didn’t even look at me. I left for ten seconds, thinking maybe he just didn’t realize how important this was, and then I slipped back into the room and cleared my throat. He still didn’t budge.

J: (exasperated) Roger!

R: (looks up, is clueless) What?

J: (staring at him, half-throwing my hands in the air ) Hellloooo! Don’t you notice anything different about me?

R: (swallows hard, looks me up and down, wishes for a Twix to shove in his mouth) Ummm, you look … pretty?

J: (cocks head to side, isn’t buying it) Don’t you mean that I look younger? And maybe wrinkle-free?

R: (remaining clueless) Can I just answer that in the morning? You know – after your de-wrinkler has had all night to soak into your skin and … de-wrinkle?

I’m not quite sure when I became so infatuated with whether or not my skin is aging. And even though Roger didn’t IMMEDIATELY see a difference (although as my husband he should already know to say that he did, even if he didn’t, though I suppose it’s good that he didn’t lie, because I totally would have caught him in it since I had only used my new skincare treatment ONCE, as if he’s really going to see a difference that soon), I can say at this point that I love my new cleanser and moisturizer and exfoliant and serum and all that other stuff I now use. Because they make me a Certified Woman Who Cares About Her Skin. The products haven’t made me break out yet, and to be honest, that is really all I care about. (Well, that and my new obsession with my wrinkles. Obviously.)

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Being an ethical person is sometimes bittersweet. Take today, for example. I randomly checked my bank account from work, something I rarely do. More money was in the account than I expected, so I took a closer look.

I realized what had happened: my employer double-paid me. Initially I thought, “Score! We could totally use that extra cash!” Before my mind completed the thought, I felt my stomach drop as I realized the extra deposit probably wasn’t intentional.

I scoured the past few months to check whether it was a make-up payment. My spirits lifted a little when it occurred to me that perhaps my company hadn’t paid me the last pay cycle, which would make the deposit rightfully mine.

Nothing was amiss.

I carefully crafted a letter to the HR department, informing them of the double-payment and asking whether it was intentional. I mean, hey, there’s still a chance it was! Maybe it’s a six-month bonus they didn’t tell me about! Maybe they decided I deserve that raise I requested after all! Maybe it’s a make-up payment from a long, long time ago! Maybe pigs will fly! (I’m nothing, if not grotesquely optimistic.)

If I kept the money, I’d have a slightly fattened wallet and a seriously guilty spirit. I wouldn’t be the woman I claim to be, and I couldn’t stand for the things I say I stand for. I know I wouldn’t be able to keep the money without clarifying why it was given to me. It wasn’t necessarily difficult to give the money back, since I wasn’t counting on the extra amount and it wasn’t mine to begin with. As a bonus, being honest makes my heart feel a little lighter.

The entire situation made me curious: what would you have done? Would you keep it? Would you give it back? Would you tell anyone? Would you just wait and see whether your employer issued a withdrawal from your account? An inquiring mind wants to know.

(Anonymous comments welcome.)

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You may know by now that I work as a writer for hotels.com. One of my favorite parts of my job is researching what to do once you get to a city. It may be the obsessive planner in me, since I take great pleasure in researching everything about a city that I'm personally planning to visit. I want to make sure I experience everything, from touristy attractions to destinations only locals know about, and the fact that I get to do this for a job is kind of mind-blowing to me.

When researching local city charms, I sometimes come across very, um, interesting attractions. Most destinations are normal -- expected, even -- such as Washington D.C.'s International Spy Museum (which I plan to visit in May) or New York City's Times Square, which I trekked to for the first time just last month.

But in Dublin, Ohio, they do things differently. Sure, the city hosts a wildly popular Irish Festival each August (the first weekend of the month, in case you'd like to plan on attending). And yes, it's only 10 miles from the Buckeyes' stomping grounds. But I'm positive unsuspecting tourists are surprised to drive past a field of concrete corn. No, really.

Click HERE for larger image

Created from three different molds, each is six feet tall and designed using concrete. After staring at the picture for a while, thinking about what it must be like to wander amongst these larger-than-life vegetables (or are they fruits? Debate ensues.), I have to wonder who shucked them?

And if these were real, would one kernel be enough to fill a grown man's stomach? (If so, I think I might have just cured the world population's hunger problem. At 800 kernels per ear, we could feed an entire village for days on just one ear of corn. Genius!)

(Though don't misunderstand me - if I ever make it to Dublin, Ohio, you can bet you'll find me here. I imagine I'll lay out a blanket, enjoy a picnic among the sculptures and nosh on - you guessed it - a buttery yellow cob.)

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For at least a year now, Holly has been lauding her favorite lip gloss: CoverGirl LipSlicks in "Daring." She has written blogs about it and, when one sees a picture of her, is frequently asked about what type of gloss she's wearing. And every single time, it's the same lip gloss. It's the perfect shade, she says. And it seems everyone agrees with her.

Which is why I ducked into CVS to buy the gloss this morning on my way to work.

Now, let me say this: when I first saw it on the shelf, I thought it looked too dark. This can't be right, I thought, and then quickly reminded myself of how highly it has been recommended. So I grabbed one. Okay, fine, I grabbed two, but it's only because they are currently on sale BUY ONE GET ONE HALF-OFF. It was on faith, you see, that I bought two even though I was kind of worried that it was too dark for me and that it wouldn't be moisturizing enough.

I tore open the package as soon as I climbed back in my car, tilted the mirror toward myself, and swiped the stick over my lips.

I swear to you, my lips have never looked (or felt) so good. Things I love about CoverGirl LipSlick in "Daring":

1. Perfectly sheer
2. And yet, perfectly tinted
3. Moisturizing, like lip balm!
4. But not in a gloppy or waxy way
5. Only $4
6. But currently on sale, which means I paid only $3

To top it off, someone in the elevator asked me -- not five minutes later! -- what kind of lip gloss I was wearing. (And I think one man might have even winked at me.)

This lip gloss, it has magical powers. Had I only realized that the first time she mentioned it, I might have been Daring enough to buy the LipSlick sooner.

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Roger and I usually don’t make a big fuss about Valentine’s Day. We keep it low-key with dinner at home, something a little nicer than we generally eat, and we just spend time together. I love it so much more than going out to eat or to some sort of performance, or whatever it is that other people do on Valentine’s Day, because in general I think the holiday is just too commercialized. There’s too much pressure on guys to do something special for that one day, which I think is lame. Guys should do something special because they want to, not because they feel obligated by society. And since Roger does special things for me so frequently throughout the year, Valentine’s Day is really just like any other day. Except with more dishes for me to wash.

During lunch on February 14th, I got a wild hair and decided to make chocolate-covered strawberries. Blame that ad I saw in AmericanWay magazine, if you’d like. Here’s how I did it:

I dropped off some of the chocolate-covered berries at Roger’s office for a sweet after-lunch surprise, and took the remaining strawberries to share with my co-workers.

They’re best to eat the day they’re made. This isn’t usually a problem, since the strawberries don’t last long.

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The problem with buying gifts for a white elephant gift exchange at work is that I always end up picking out something that I want, and then I spend hours scheming on how to either (a) wrap it so that no one will pick it or (b) steal it the third-time-round so no one can steal it away from me.

And then I wonder: why go to all that trouble? Why not just buy one for myself? It’s only $10, afterall.

The problem with that, you see, is that then I’ll look like a copycat. I can’t buy something for someone else and buy one for myself also, and then give one away because then I’ll either look like I’m copying them or I’ll look like I think my little cubicle decorations are so awesome that everyone needs to have the same type of decorations that I have.

Even though the ONE cubicle decoration I have IS awesome. It’s also the gift that I had originally planned to give away in the white elephant gift exchange, before I sequestered it for myself. I just couldn’t bear to let it go.

Meet Harry. That’s not his given name, of course. He’s an Ugly Doll, and his original name is Target. I can’t call him Target without wanting to take a trip down the street to SuperT, so I renamed him Harry. This is why:

A one-eyed, snaggle-toothed doll with a hairy chest! Am I alone in thinking that is unbearably cute? Perhaps a face (and, er, a chest) that only a mother could love?

I’ll tell you what I’m NOT alone in, though: keeping gifts for myself that I’ve bought for someone else. And I know I’m not alone in this because Roger also has a white elephant gift exchange at work. And Roger loved his gift so much that he decided to keep it for himself, too. (Wow, all this gift-buying and gift-keeping makes us sound incredibly selfish. We’re not actually selfish at all, we just happened to find two things in a store that we were each destined to have, even though we didn’t know it at the time. Well, okay, maybe we DID know it, but wouldn’t keeping it for ourselves just make us responsible members of society, since we could recognize that we wanted it, keep it, and vow to buy another gift? That seems very responsible to me.)

Roger’s gift: a tape dispenser (in red). Get it? Tape? Ha!

Anyway, so now we both need to go shopping for gifts again, and neither of us know what to get. Roger is thinking something along the lines of a gift card, but I can’t tell you where because some of his co-workers read this site. (I’m looking at you, Lulabelle.) I can tell you this, though: it’s a good store. I would totally steal that card.

But what should I get? Internet, I need your help. And since I know how opinionated you are, I figure you’re just the ones to help me. What have been some of YOUR favorite gifts to give (or receive) at a white elephant gift exchange?

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Before you pick up that hotel drinking glass, let me warn you: It may
not be as clean as you assume it is.

After watching this video, I think I'm going to have to ask Santa for
some lightweight travel cups.

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My family got our first computer in the early 1980s. It had a hideous quad-panel Windows system and came with a programming book that taught us how to code in DOS to create swirls across the monitor. And though it was low-tech compared to today's standards, it was the most amazing thing we'd ever seen. (Technologically speaking, I mean.)

Soon we graduated to playing family Quest games - namely, King's Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest. (And guess what?!? Roger knew how much I loved those games and got them for me last Christmas! The games have been reprogrammed to work on Windows XP. Long live 1985!) Then there were the educational programs, like Macon Beavis Typing. (Or was it Beavis Macon? Whatever.)

Ever since then, I've been (a) obsessed with inserting two spaces between every sentence I type and (b) traumatized by having to push the Shift key opposite the letter I'm attempting to capitalize. Does anyone actually use the Shift key on the right? Because I can't be the only one who feels this way.

In my new job I'm being re-programmed to use only one space between sentences, and it's almost killing me. How do I conquer this? For now I have turned on that little paragraph-icon key so that I every time I hit the space bar it inserts a mark. And then I painstakingly look for double marks and delete one of them. By the end of the day my nostrils are flaring and I can begin to see permanent creases across my forehead.

So I'm taking a survey: Do you insert one or two spaces between sentences?

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I can always be bribed with food.

The Latin team brought in authentic tacos – the real kind, not the variety from Taco Bell or Dairy Queen (no, seriously: a friend swears by Dairy Queen tacos) for breakfast this morning. Homemade white corn tortillas. Homemade hot, hot, hot salsa. Limes. Steak. Marinated pork (al pastor).

Have I mentioned that I love my new job?

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I never wanted to be a starving artist. You know: those people who stand in a walkway, pretending to paint a picture and hoping you’ll buy it, or bent over on a crowded side street squeezing out a tune from a gleaming saxophone. Inevitably there’d be a hat turned upward and discarded on the pavement, indirectly begging for any amount of change, though dollar bills were preferred.

Through high school and college, that’s what I equated with writing. It was fools’ gold, something that you could only do if you never expected to have a mortgage or regularly pay your bills. So I earned my degree in Technical Writing and Editing, since I figured that would be the only way to get to do what I loved, writing, and still earn a salary. (Somehow journalism didn’t occur to me, and I’m still not sure how that is possible considering how many hours I spent with my academic advisor, laboring over the decision to apply for an English degree or to choose something more practical, like Business Management.)

For the last several years I’ve worked in mergers and acquisitions. I handled the legal side, drafting contracts and researching the companies whose assets we were purchasing, and for the most part, it was fairly interesting. Then a year ago, on a whim, I started interviewing outside my field. I just thought there had to be something more – something better suited to me – out there somewhere. Turns out there was.

I’ve taken a writing position with a subsidiary of one of the largest travel agencies in the world. That subsidiary’s headquarters is here in Dallas. And today was my first day.

For a long time, Roger and I thought we were moving out of Texas – that maybe we’d settle in Seattle or San Francisco – and that may still happen in the future. But for now, we’ve found our treasure. And it’s every bit as real as we’d hoped it would be.

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"Well, the day has come…" I say as I smile nervously, lingering at the door of my manager's spacious office.

He smiles and jokes back with me: "What day? What has come?" I silently wonder: If I keep everything light, maybe he won't notice the fact that I'm resigning...

In the end, he did notice. And while I'm sad to leave the friends I've made here, I'm ecstatic about making the move.

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I don't really know that much about makeup. In fact, I know horrifically little. I rarely wear foundation and I wouldn't know how to apply concealer if Ru Paul had a mirror in hand, straddled me on the cold, hard bathroom tile and forced me to take blending lessons. I can't apply eyeliner without smearing it in all the wrong places (one time I even discovered it on my forehead half an hour later) and I just don't understand lip liner.

My makeup routine is made of three simple components: blush, mascara, lip gloss. Sometimes, when I'm feeling fancy, I'll even dab my finger into a little pot of shimmery cream-colored eye shadow-like-stuff that I got at Sephora and I'll rub a little on my eyelids. And on very, very special occasions, I'll wear my coveted foundation. I try not to do it often because, well, for one thing it's expensive. It also makes my makeup take a lot longer because of all the smearing and rubbing that has to occur. I generally only wear it when I'm trying to impress someone with a dewey, youthful complexion and perfectly even skin tone. Like when I know I'll be in front of the camera. Or when I go on an interview.

I'm sure you're much more adept with powders and goopy creams than I am, so maybe this wouldn't be a big deal for you. But for me, it's a recipe for catastrophe.

As you probably suspect by now, I had an interview recently (no cameras involved) (to my knowledge) (though I did have to hike up a little grassy hill wearing heels and I don't know why it hasn't occurred to them to put a sidewalk up the embankment between the parking lot and road). I also tried to wear foundation.

Bear with me for a minute here, because I have to explain my process to you. It's sort of in this little pump bottle, right? So I squeeze one pump's worth onto my finger, and then dab it between my fingers until I have an even amount on each of my index fingers because I'm king of anal about symmetry. And then I put little dabs all over my face so that I won't cover only my cheeks with it and not have any left for my forehead or chin. So anyway, I dabbed some on my cheek, and it kind of gooped and dribbled down my face. I panicked, looked down to be sure that none had landed on my blouse, and then went about smoothing it all over my face.

It's important to note here that any landing on my blouse would be a disaster for one reason alone: it was the only shirt that I could wear. You see, this running class that I've been taking has made me break out in hives, or get a heat rash, or maybe both, all over my chest. I don't know what is happening, but everyday I find tiny new red spots that have developed overnight and it's ruining my wardrobe, I'll tell you that. I only have so many boatneck shirts to my name and wearing a v-neck or scooped line or square-cut blouse would only highlight the blemishes, not hide them. And I definitely wanted to hide them.

I finished with my makeup and did a double-take in the mirror. Right there, right on the most prominent area of my chest, was a nickel-sized dollop of foundation. As I jerked my body to swing my jewelry out of the way, I watched in horror as a streak of foundation trailed behind my necklace and transferred onto my shirt. The only shirt that I could wear.

I frantically grabbed a washcloth, ran it under the faucet, and started furiously rubbing my shirt. I rubbed. And I rubbed. And I rubbed. I got almost all of it out, but by the time I was through my shirt had a gigantic mono-boob water stain across the front. I snatched my hairdryer, thinking that I could dry it quickly and dash out the door, since I was running late. And not to throw any heat at my hairdryer or anything, but that sucker gets hot. Hot enough to bend the fibers in my shirt, in fact, making one little area look kind of wonky and discolored. Hot enough to burn a hole in my shirt. A hole that I ignored. A hole that I simply covered up with my (cleaned) necklace.

I stepped in front of the full-length mirror to give myself a once-over before rushing out the door (I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!), and what did I see? A smudge of deodorant stretching across my blazer.

I'm not positive, but I think the Law of Luck requires that I get the job offer simply because Murphy's Law massacred my wardrobe.

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When Roger and I got married, I didn't know that he had been hiding an addiction from me. We hadn't lived together beforehand, so there was no way that I would have known, right? It was easy to hide, especially because he kept this addiction hidden away in the storage closet on his balcony, and I really had no occasion to suspect him of foul play.

He has an addiction to saving boxes. He squirrels them away every chance he gets, mumbling something about the potential for such a strong, sturdy, unmarred box. He doesn't ever use them, mind you, and he doesn't know just what that potential is – but he knows that it must exist. The box must be useful for something. Like taking up space.

Periodically he'll sort the boxes and decide to throw some away, usually at the encouragement of the loving nag he married (hello, self, no one likes a nag). We did this at the beginning of the summer, once we realized we couldn't fit onto our porch any longer, what with all the boxes spilling over onto the chairs. I watched as Roger consolidated the boxes, keeping some and relenting with others. I watched as the trash pile grew larger and larger with each box he threw onto the pile. I watched as his spirit deflated when he headed to the dumpster with them in tow.

Then I watched through the kitchen window, in disbelief, as he took some boxes to the dumpster, threw them in, and took the other boxes to our car and put them in the trunk. He was trying to hide boxes from me to bring back upstairs, and when I called him to the carpet, I think he was a little shocked that that woman he married could see right through him.

For the past several months, Roger and I have lamented that we are outgrowing our little apartment. It felt crowded, like we were practically stepping on top of each other to move around. And we were.

You see, for the past couple of months, we have been collecting boxes. Again, but with reason. We have been preparing to move somewhere, anywhere, we just didn't know where that place might be. The door was wide-open for us to move internationally, or nationally, or even to stay in this city.

Nearly every day one of us would bring home a box or two from work, a beautiful unmarred box, until one day several weeks ago when I visited my employer's mail room. We haven't brought any boxes home since then, because in that mailroom were Boxes Galore. Like, lots of them, all pretty and shiny and sturdy and ripe for the taking. And we did lots of taking, involving dollies and mail room employees helping us carry them. They are the good kind of boxes – and believe me, I'm now well-qualified to be a Judger of Boxes – the kind that reams of paper come in and that have lids and that don't fold down to space-saving containers.

We stuffed them in the trunk and in the back seat and in the passenger seat of our 4Runner, and then Roger drove them home and stacked them up in our hallway and in our living room and in our office, most notably blocking the entrance to both the study and the guest bathroom. Because I've sequestered the guest bathroom for the time-being (it's far easier for two people to get ready in two bathrooms than in one, you know), that presented a problem for me. The boxes reached the ceiling, I kid you not, and there was about a 12-inch gap I had to squeeze past to get into and out of the bathroom every morning.

Over the weekend, while I laid on the couch all sickly and puny-like, Roger set about consolidating boxes, once again, and moved them all into the office, where they're still stacked to the ceiling. He folded all the packing paper and neatly organized it in one of the boxes according to color and texture. And now our hallway is empty. Alarmingly empty.

Every time I've exited the bathroom this week, I've been startled. I almost feel like we've been robbed. I had grown so accustomed to the boxes, like I had my own personal obstacle course to run each morning. It was the only exercise I ever got – the sucking in of the stomach, the flattening of my body against the door frame, the clenching of my cheeks as I shimmied past the tower of boxes, careful not to knock them over (and oh boy, if they fell over? They caught the door on their way down, and with a great swoosh the door would shut, the boxes would pin it closed, and then I would be stuck in the hallway wearing nothing but a towel, literally digging my way to the door) – and absurdly, I kind of miss them now.

If ever a Cardboard Anonymous class starts, I think Roger and I will need to join.

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It's kind of bizarre that I own a curling iron, particularly when one considers that I have naturally curly hair. I'm not sure why I ever bought it in the first place, but this morning it came in handy in the most unexpected way.

I've never been much of a morning routine type of person. I don't wake up at a certain hour, eat breakfast, shower, get dressed and do whatever morning-routine-type-people do. In fact, my lack of routine has never really been an issue before.

(Unless you count yesterday: I had been at work for two and a half hours when I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to put on deodorant – and how I forgot this, I'll never know, because it's kind of a crucial part of my morning, like getting dressed or brushing my teeth – so I monitored myself all day long, so vexed was I that my hygiene might be askew. I made it all the way through the day without experiencing offensive odors until I got on the elevator to go home that afternoon. And on the elevator were only two people: a man and me, and the stench of body odor hit me so fiercely that I started gagging and toppled over. I assumed that the man couldn't smell it because he didn't seem visibly concerned about the olfactory offense at all. When he got off the elevator, the pong followed him. I stared at his armpits as he walked away, expecting little field mice to pop out and glower at me with their beady little Bubonic Plague eyes, because it smelled like HE had skipped deodorant for a lifetime, not just a day.)

Rather, my mornings go something like this:

7:00 a.m. -- Alarm clock trumpets a tune from the local Classical station. On off-days, it blares the March of the Day, and believe me, it's enough to make one levitate – eyes open and hand raised in a salute – from a dead sleep.

7:14 a.m. -- Still lying in bed, ignoring the time and drifting in and out of sleep.

7:26 a.m. -- Roll over, look at the clock in horror; realize I need to get out of bed so that I can get to work on time.

7:34 a.m. -- Still lying in bed, pretending to think about what I want to wear to work that day.

7:41 a.m. -- Throw back the covers. Run to the shower.

7:56 a.m. -- Pull clothes out of the closet, hurriedly get dressed, fix hair and smother face in makeup. Luckily, I'm fairly low maintenance and only wear blush, mascara and lip gloss. Except today, because I skipped the mascara so that I would have time to brush my teeth. I do have priorities, after all.

8:13 a.m. -- Walk out the door, pray for no traffic.

Today, however, something happened between 7:56 a.m. and 8:13 a.m. that concerned me, and my eyes darted around like Bill Clinton caught in a lie. I needed an escape route, a worthy substitute, because something was wrong with my shirt: it desperately needed to be ironed. I was running late and hauling the ironing board out of the laundry room closet, setting it up, plugging the iron in, waiting for it to heat up, ironing my entire shirt and putting it all away again required more time and energy than I was willing to allow myself.

One thing you may not know about me is that I have an uncanny ability to improvise, and I think it's genetics since my dad was a Navy S.E.A.L. It's ingrained into everything I do – from putting on makeup to cooking dinner – and at the drop of a hat I could probably make an explosive device out of a toothpick and a bottle of Heinz 57.

So I dusted off my curling iron, plugged it in, and thirty seconds later I was ironing the top four inches of the vertical opening of my blouse, which was the only part that I cared about. Since the rest of my shirt would be hidden beneath my sleeveless sweater, I reasoned that no one would care whether that part was rumpled. De-wrinkling a shirt with a curling iron is relatively easy, as long as you take care not to give your shirt a temporary spiral perm. I knew that one day owning a curling iron would be advantageous. Now I know why.

I think there's something to be said for improvisation, especially when everything you need is at your fingertips and you're too lazy to assemble it all. I mean: why make a pipe bomb with gun powder when you can use steak sauce from your refrigerator instead, right?

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For the past couple days I've been trying to figure out how to sum up our trip to San Francisco. In a word: Fabulous. It was more than everything we thought it would be, if that is possible, since we had high expectations. And if you told us that we had to return tomorrow or never again, I think we might both head straight home, pack up everything we could possibly fit in our collective suitcases, and go.

I can't possibly renumerate to you the number of times my thoughts drift back toward our few days there, how often I send silent pleas to God in hopes that Roger will be offered a position soon, how frequently I've found myself on Craigslist looking at apartments, or how many times I've redesigned in my mind's eye what our moving announcements might look like. I am already planning weekend trips to Muir Woods and picnics to nearby beaches and the places we'll take our family when they come to visit. The problem is that we don't even live in California. Yet.

And that's why I want to give you a little piece of advice, Internet: If you've never visited San Francisco, don't. She'll seduce you like a kid in a candy store. She'll overload your senses with the sights and sounds and smells of her city. She'll give you just enough to leave you full and satisfied, but you'll still find yourself wanting a little more. And just when you're starting to get the hang of things – maybe you're finally pronouncing Haight correctly (note to Non-San Franciscans: it rhymes with "late," not "kite") or perhaps you've finally figured out which bus line to take without first asking every driver whether you're getting on the correct vehicle – she'll turn you out to make room for more visitors. As you walk away from her, your shoulders hung low, you'll discover that you're already trying to figure out how quickly you can return.

And perhaps that is the best way I can sum up our trip to San Francisco. We're stuck in limbo, asking ourselves how quickly we'll be able to return.

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This decision would be so much easier to make if we hated the city. The problem, though, is that we fell in love with it the moment we stepped foot off the transit system escalator. Laden with our suitcases, we hiked a nearby hill to our hotel. It was the dead of the night, and considering how vibrant the city was at that hour, we couldn’t wait to see what awaited us the next morning.

We sat in bed talking about the job, and the longer we talked, the more obvious it became to us that we needed to get ourselves to the city where the position was located. We powered up the laptop, made flight arrangements and reserved a room at a hotel. We wanted to show potential employers that we were serious about making the move and while we were there we needed to line up as many interviews as possible. In a week’s time, I had six interviews lined up – all of them backup positions to the one I had been pining over.

When I discovered that the job that had been the catalyst for this flurry of travel was filled, reality set in, mainly in two forms: concerns about the high cost of living and questions about raising a family in the city. And why were we making plans to move there before we had even visited together?

The morning of our flight, in perhaps one of the more brazen moves I’ve made over the last several years, I canceled all but one interview. That one I kept was with a headhunter. You see, things were just moving too fast. I had already had one phone interview that went exceedingly well, and it seemed likely that I would have secured a position quickly, but it was a backup job – not what I really wanted to be doing – and I couldn’t justify moving to a new city for a job I didn’t want to do. Roger was the deciding factor. If we moved, we decided, it would be because he was hired at a killer design firm. There are a lot of great design firms, so it should have been easy enough, except that he had only five days to make arrangements. It proved to be too little time.

So here we are, me having canceled nearly all my interviews, him dropping off his portfolio with the most prestigious firm in the city (a firm, by the way, that had offered him a design position many years ago, which he turned down in favor of another). My face is slightly sunburned and my belly is full of clam chowder (the bread bowl was delicious, too).

Last night, just as we fell asleep, Roger murmured, “I love it here. I want us to move here.” As I listened to him, I didn’t feel the fear about money and family that I had felt before. I was both excited and content, and I squeezed his hand a little bit tighter.

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This weekend I hopped on the scale for the first time in several weeks. Three weeks, to be exact. Three grueling weeks of eating less food on a daily basis than I've consumed in maybe the past twenty years of my life. And what I found wasn't all that surprising.

The scale displayed a three pound weight loss. That's only one pound a week, though somehow I was expecting an average of five pounds a week – that's how little food I feel like I've been eating – regardless of how absurd that expectation might be.

I suppose a pound a week is not horrible, because my track record could have been a pound a month. Which, let's just say, wouldn't get me to my goal until the year 2011, and by then I'd probably have already given up and started wearing muumuus.

Of course, that tiny little drop in weight was expected, considering that my clothes are still fitting just about the same, and considering I really haven't exercised all that much. Unless you consider the five flights of stairs I take to work each morning, which takes less than two minutes. I guess. I haven't actually timed it, but if you see a girl heaving in the stairwell tomorrow morning and staring at her watch?

Say "Hello." It'll be nice to meet you.

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A couple weeks ago, Roger gave me a diamond nose pin to replace the one that I lost last year at BlogHer. I'm still not sure how that happened – it was on the bathroom counter when I fell asleep and was mysteriously displaced when I woke up – but that's another story for another day.

This past Friday night I decided to wear the diamond all weekend, and after work I spent an hour coaxing it into my nostril. I figured it would take a little extra effort because it has been a couple months since I last wore a nose ring, but I didn't realize that in that short period of time the flesh inside my nose would grow over the hole. I hadn't planned on re-piercing my own nose (read: ouch, hot tears streaming down my face, and what is it about pain that makes one's nose run?). I also wasn't prepared for the dull ache that would occur every time I flared my nostril (which I do surprisingly often, I've learned).

I'm not allowed to wear my nose ring to work, which has been a constant struggle for me because: Diamonds. How can you tell me I can't wear diamonds to work? And it is yet another reason, though a very small one, that I want to … well, you know. That, and the impending move. (Wait. Did I just slip that in there, all sly and unassuming?)

That's why I took the diamond out on Sunday night while preparing for the week ahead. Since I had to re-pierce my nose just two days before, I decided to wear my "placeholder" ring – it looks like a tiny brown mole on the side of my nose – to make sure the hole didn't grow closed again, and set to work inserting it. Here's the outcome of that, in numbers:

Two: the number of nights I spent tucked into the bathroom sink, trying to get my face as close to the mirror as possible

Two: the number of hours I spent each night before giving up, realizing I just can't do it, it's just not working, I might as well stop trying

Two: the number of hours I'll probably devote to it tonight, yet again, though I probably won't sob like I did that first night, wailing about it to Roger in a way that would make only Jane Austen proud (and Roger laugh – laugh! – at me), though admittedly (don't tell Roger), I was a bit obsurd (okay, very obsurd), what with the wailing and gnashing of teeth at 1 o'clock in the morning

Last night, when I tried to put in my placeholder ring, I got it about halfway in before I realized: Hey. This isn't coming out the other side of my nose, and it should have been there an eighth of an inch ago.

After a little more prodding and investigating, I realized that the screw (the type of nose piercing I wear – the back is curled so that it lays flat against the inside of the nose and holds the piercing in place) was actually curling through the cartilage of my nostril instead of poking through on the inside my nose and laying flat against the interior of my nostril. Does that make sense? To clarify:

So here's my conundrum: Should I suck it up and try to re-pierce it again, hoping the ring goes through this time instead of burying itself within my cartilage? Or do I wait a couple months, go to the Indian jeweler, and ask them to re-pierce it and insert the screw for me? (Assuming they'll do that. I don't actually know. Yet.)

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So far, this is how my day is going:

Am bored. And you?

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For the past couple of days I've been at a conference, completely robbed of Internet access, which for me is akin to bludgeoning a limb and watching it bleed. Or, worse - like involuntarily mutilating a limb while in a coma - that was how impossibly dull one particular speaker was - and I was entirely incapable of doing anything about it. Like leaving.

I looked over at my manager, wishing I had my laptop, and watched as he nodded off to sleep. He had made a gallant effort to complete a crossword puzzle - so far he had 4, 6 and 12 down, as well as 7 and 21 across. Not bad, considering he was taking a nap.

In previous years, this particular seminar presenter has threatened to put me to sleep, as well. I've done shots of espresso beforehand, dug my fingernails into my arms to help me stay awake and propped my head in my hands, which were simultaneously prying open my eyelids. But this year – this year was different – I had a plan.

In an effort to remain alert throughout the presentation, I kept myself busy. And so I bestow upon you:

Things I Did While Everyone Else Slept Through The Seminar

1. Made a list of my work responsibilities
2. Mentally perused my closet and made a list of clothes I want to purchase, like a gray A-line skirt that hits just below the knee and a cream-colored suit. I'm also imagining that I can find the exact shade that I desire of each, and that no tailoring is involved. Pretty!
3. Noticed that the sconces hanging on either side of the entrance doors were unevenly hung, and that one of the six sets of doors was missing a sconce. Entertained myself by inventing reasons why the sconce might be gone.
4. Searched walls for wallpaper seams. Could not find.
5. Wrote a note to my manager asking a relevant question regarding the seminar topic about our business line, folded it into a paper airplane, and threw toward him. It pelted him in the chest, he woke up, and was clearly impressed that I was paying attention to the lecture. So impressed, in fact, that he gave me the rest of the day off.

Maybe attending the conference wasn't that bad, after all.

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As I suspect you do, or at least hope you do, I have an email account that I use when I don't want to give out my own address. I checked the account today for the first time in several months – I had more than 4,000 urgent emails waiting in my Spam folder – and decided that deleting the unread messages wouldn't do.

Instead, I've compiled a poem for you from the subject lines of a few choice emails:

hows your love life
your guy could use this
embark in the dewy chronograph of heterostructure,
a wanton women

Answers Now on the Distortion of Evidence;
Benefit from Technology
At first I thought he was a wild animal, because he wore around his waist and over his shoulders a ragged piece of bearskin.

For once Love comes to you!

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There's been a lot of talk lately in our home about graduate school, and for fun during my lunch break today, I took a sample GMAT test online.

The quiz began with the quantitative section of the standardized test, and perhaps now is an appropriate time to explain just how much I loathe math. When I am assaulted with an algebraic equation, my heart stands in abeyance, my breathing ceases and I just stare in horror. Was there ever a time in my life when I knew what to do with x?

Are those equations supposed to make sense? 1/x = 3.5 means nothing - nothing - to me, and although I got the answer right you I should tell you that I had to do some Internet research before solving it. You see, my addiction to the Internet isn't limited to reading news and blogs and celebrity gossip. I use it for algebra, too.

It's because of this fact that I hope I'll have a few things available to me during the exam, like Internet access, a calculator (admittedly, I used it today to add 15+8 – if I hadn't done that, I would have just counted on my fingers, and since I never know who is lurking around my cubicle, I thought the calculator was the smarter option since at least I would give the appearance of intelligently calculating very, very difficult problems), Swiss chocolates, and loads of extra time.

Because I'm quite certain there is a more direct method of finding the correct answer than taking the multiple-choice responses supplied and plugging each into the equation to see which fits it the best.

Of course – I'm not terrible with math. I'm quite adept at calculating 40% off when I’m shopping, and I’m the one in our household who is responsible for balancing the checkbook. What's really a wonder, though, is that each time the checkbook balances correctly.

I was working along happily, or as happily as one can when one hasn't taken math in six years, when I happened upon this question:

Frank is 15 years younger then John. In 5 years John will be twice as old as Frank. How old will Frank be in four years?*

I stared at that question for about ten seconds, and ten seconds is a long time to stare at text – go ahead, time yourself. I'll wait – and all I could think was: "Frank is 15 years younger than John.
TTHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN."

Naturally, from there I began picking apart the sentence: Why isn't the number 5 spelled out, like the number four? Who wrote this? I don't think this question would actually appear on the GMAT. Can I report it anywhere? Is there a suggestion or complaint link? And how do I report it without seeming OCD?

Alas, I could not report it, and had I done so, there would be no avoiding my OCD tendencies.

I scored well on the English portion of the test, as I suspected that I would, but my math score was sub-par. I'm blaming my score on the grammatically unsound equations, and also a significant lack of chocolate in my system.

Who knew dieting could have such an effect on arithmetic?

*The answer, by the way, is fourteen.

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Today I went with a group of coworkers to lunch, specifically to take the "new girl" out, to flash around money and to show her how fabulous we are.

Our goal was to make her feel welcome, to get to know her a bit (don't think I haven't already Googled her and found her online personal ad) and to convince her that we are normal. Which, by the way, we aren't. Good thing I'm okay with that.

My manager was flaunting our "fun" office oddities, like how we've adopted a "word of the day" that lasted for all of four days – not even consecutive days – and that hasn't been a part of our working environment in the past three months. That aside, perhaps it is time to re-institute the program, boost our vocabulary, and become more intelligent citizens. Part of that avocation – and I'm not quite sure how it happened or how I was volunteered for the venture – included my manager instructing me to find out how to refer to people from New Hampshire (incidentally, she's not from New Hampshire).

I prefer to approach these tasks by pretending that they are part of a Mensa Quiz. (By the way, I took a Mensa quiz last week, and apparently I missed 35% of the questions. Does that mean that I'm still smart, considering that: Hello! It was Mensa. That means that I got 65% correct!)

Anyway, the best answer to the following question is what I'll report to my manager:

Texan is to Texas as ____________________ is to New Hampshire.

Go!

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What is that smell? You smell it too, right?

I've tried everything: the pits (no, they're fresh and powdery), the shoes (ugh – not quite sure how to describe that scent – a mixture of cotton and sweat? Is my shoe-lining material cotton? Polyester? What does polyester smell like?)

I've sniffed my chair (unscented), my fingers (cherry almond lotion) and my hair (clean).

I've inhaled the scent of the cubicle walls (musty), my lipgloss (minty), the toner cartridge (plastic-y). I've leaned over my desk, snuffling books (mmmm…love), my fake orchid (dusty), my phone receiver (in need of an anti-bac wipe) and my keyboard (Lysol-ish).

But the smell is still lingering. And it smells like gas(oline).

(I kinda like it, but shhhhh! Don't tell anyone.)

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It is never a good thing when you've sucked all the chocolate off of your miniature Heath Bar and pushed it as far out of your mouth as possible, while carefully balancing it between your teeth, in an effort to see the color of the bar's innards* without having to touch it with your fingers. Because right at that moment, your boss will walk up to your cubicle door.

* Was toffee-colored, as suspected.

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I'm a guest author today over at No Pasa Nada. Go! Enjoy!

An excerpt:

I worked as an assistant to an elderly man two days a week. My job was to (a) iron his shirts and pants, (b) cook him dinner and (c) vacuum his house. For this he paid me $15 per day. He loved me, naturally, because I’m a good ironer. I love starch. And so did he. It was a match made in heaven, except he was a good 60 years older than me. That didn’t stop Anna Nicole Smith, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

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Someone just popped a bag of popcorn.

My manager is out of town and I am holding down the fort.

The temp just told me she has an allergy to the scent of popcorn.

(?)

She needs to leave, and asked if I mind whether she leaves for the rest of the day.

(?)

::I met her question with a blank stare::

(?)

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At work, we have a large crate in the hallway. I do not know why.

It is on wheels. I do not know why.

Furthermore, it is bright orange. Hunter's orange. I do not know why.

And though I've seen it every day this week, this morning I saw the phrase "RENT-A-CRATE" stenciled on the side. And read it as "PROCREATE."

Something is amiss.
Please send help.

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As part of Project: Stay Out of Debt, I rarely go shopping for clothes for myself. Or, let me rephrase: I occasionally go shopping for clothes for myself, I rarely actually buy any thing that I find.

Roger and I have "fun money" built into our monthly budget so that we can buy anything we want without having to first ask the other. Within reason, I mean. If Roger spent $5,000 on a new tv without first discussing it with me, that might be an issue. But if he calls me every time he wants to buy a book? Or a CD? Gah.

Sometimes when I go shopping, nothing fits. Other times, I have good shopping days. Nay, great shopping days. Everything fits! Everything is cute! And on those days, I hate telling Roger how much I spent over my fun money budget. Because then I feel like I'm confessing to a priest, and frankly? I feel a little guilty. (And oddly justified because: clothes that FIT me!)

Today was that day.

"Sweetie!!!!!!"

[When I talk to Roger, I usually begin the conversation with a high-pitched greeting, one that typically omits or alters certain consonants so that it ends up sounding like "Seeeeeeddddddddiiiieeeee!!!!!!" and it always has just that many exclamation points. Sometimes more.]

"I went shopping on my lunch break. I bought a skirt. It was $12.99." [This is my way of easing him into the news.]

"That's great, babe."

[Encouraged by his good nature, I continue.] "Ummmm…I also bought a pair of pants."

"Oh, gosh. I can see where this is going. Just give me the bottom line and tell me everything you bought."

[Giggling.] "Okay. I bought a skirt, and two pairs of pants, and a shirt. And a cookie cutter. But they're all neutral colors and will go great with so many things and will totally be great if I get that new job, or even if I stay in this one! I mean, I don't even own a navy skirt, and the pants are that kind of material that…"

"A cookie cutter!? Why do we need that?"

"Because one day we might have kids who want cookies at Easter-time, and it's shaped like a bunny. For Easter."

"Is that all?"

"I also bought two necklaces. They're soooooo cute! I can't wait for you to see them. One is black and has lots and lots of strands and buckles in the back with a little crocheted button. And the other has different shades of turquoise stones and is in three different layered lengths, and I really think it will look soooo cute with a black tank…"

"Well, I'm glad you have some things that you're excited about wearing and that you feel good about."

"Okay. Me too. Talk to you later!"

I think that went well, don't you?

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This morning I flipped to my favorite radio show while driving to work, and the first thing I heard was a (male, of course, because no female would do this) caller saying ON AIR:

"Is it lazy that I reuse my bath water? On the first day I'll fill the tub a third full of water and take a bath. Then I leave the water in the tub, and the next day I add another third of hot water to warm the old bath water so I can bathe again."

I ask: Why not just drain the water each day and fill the tub one-third full of warm, clean water each day? You're not using any more water than you would otherwise. It just makes sense.

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Earlier today I began taking a free career test online, since I am not incredibly passionate about what I do, and I kind of think it would be nice to have fun doing my work once in a while.

And, y'all? I think I have ADD. About one-third of the way through the test, and again at halfway mark, I thought, "Ugh. I am soooooo over this test. 71 questions? Who has time to answer 71 questions about this nonsense? Who cares if I'd rather (a) Work at a wildlife rescue & rehabilitation center, (b) Work to restore wolves to wilderness areas or (c) Have vacations at a comfortable resort? And anyways, isn't the answer to that question a little obvious?

And so I'd minimize the window, go back to working, and less than a minute later I had already maximized the window again because there is a project that has not been finished, must finish it, my very future lies in the sweaty (and figurative) hands of the Internet, for lo – this will tell me what to do with the rest of my life. And I need to know.

And so I finished the test. And after all that? They want me to pay to get my results.

How is that free?

I mean, I guess it was free to take the test, and that is totally how it was advertised ("free career testing"), but it stands to reason that I should assume the results would also be free. Don't you think?

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As part of Project: Lose Weight, I took the advice of one of my readers, Laura, and signed up for SparkPeople.com. Please stop telling me to sign up for these delicious goodies, because you know that I will, I cannot possibly stop, for the brilliance of the Internet consumes me.

I have approximately twelve different email addresses, many of which I do not use, and three of which I check every few weeks just to see what's there. And do you know what lurks in those old accounts? Junk mail. And every time I begin to wonder why I keep checking any of the accounts, I come across an email from an old friend who doesn't know my new(est) email address, and so I'm compelled to keep checking my old accounts because you just never know what you'll find there. And it's a bother, really.

SparkPeople.com is my favorite new toy for this reason alone: I can track things. You must know by now that I love to make lists simply because I can cross things off of those lists, and it always makes me feel so accomplished. Usually my weekend list looks something like this:

Wake up
Eat breakfast
Laundry
Grocery shop

And, see? Already, when I wake up, I can cross something off my list. And even if I don't do anything for the rest of the day, I'm satisfied because something got crossed off the list. And that feels good, doesn't it?

On SparkPeople I can track how many calories I consume, and how many I burn, and lots of other things. I can even track whether I'm getting enough folic acid. I can create meal plans and grocery lists, and best of all, I can track the amount of water I'm drinking.

And y'all? I have a problem drinking water. But not just water. All liquids. I'm convinced that I'm permanently dehydrated, as noted by my ashy skin and constant thirst. I think it boils down to a pure, slothful laziness because if I want a Styrofoam cup (my employer is classy) of water I have to stand up, walk halfway across the building to get it, and by the time I get back to my desk the water is already gone. See my predicament? This is why I just try to ignore my thirst. Because otherwise, I might get the teensiest bit of exercise, several times each day, on the way over to the water dispenser, and we just can't have that.

Back at Project: Lose Weight, I was trying to figure out how to, well, you know…lose weight. Yesterday I managed to drink three entire cups of water, which may be a personal record of sorts. I might have also dropped fourteen ounces from my body due to all that walking around the building in search of water. My new goal is to drink eight cups of water each day, and I swear, I’m getting to my point.

The water consumption tracking device on SparkPeople taunts me. It dances around, practically advertising that I’ve only had three cups of water to drink, laughing at me and sometimes even calling me names.

Last night, to silence it, I decided: enough already! I’ll just drink the remaining five cups and be done with it!

So I drank two cups of water, back to back, before dinner. And you know what? I was full afterward. Miserably full. I didn’t even have any room for dinner because all that water was swishing around my belly, taking up all the space in my stomach that is generally reserved for food.

And now I’ve finally figured out how to lose weight quickly: I can’t consume a pan full of brownies – oops, did I forget to tell you that I made brownies while on my diet? – when my stomach is full of water.

All that to say, maybe dieticians know what they’re talking about, afterall.

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Earlier today I wrote Roger the following email:

Hi,

Guess what I just did?

Cancelled Reservations.

Oh, yes. You read that correctly. I had my boarding pass in my hand and everything! And then? They said: "We need you here." And they snatched that boarding pass right out of my hand! (Figuratively, not literally.) So. I'm almost crying. (Not really, but I was so looking forward to going to DC.)

Last night as I double-checked my luggage, I felt my heart thump with excitement about visiting DC. It's been far too long since I've been there –eleven years this month, in fact – and though it's just a business trip, it's long overdue. This morning I dragged my suitcase behind me, thumping my way across the parking lot, purse and briefcase in tow, wondering whether any of my neighbors were looking at me with longing and trying to figure out where I was going. I do that to them, afterall.

Traveling is always exciting: visiting someplace new, the way my stomach drops when the flight first goes wheels up, the contest I run against myself on longer flights to see how long I can hold my bladder before I finally break down and make the dreaded trail of tears to the stainless steel micro-stalls, where I undoubtedly will stand in line for three and one-quarter minutes while waiting for a vacancy sign and wishing all the other passengers weren't trying to guess whether I would be the one to hand them a stink bomb on a silver platter. I feel sorry for the people who sit near the toilets.

I walked into our CFO's office and sat down for a conference call. We waited. And waited. And left voicemails. And waited some more. The other party never called us back. I laid my boarding pass to Dulles on our CFO's desk, along with my pad of paper and pencil, and left to talk to a friend while we waited for the call to begin. The other party called back two hours later.

Half an hour after I left the CFO's office, he walked into my cube, laid the boarding pass on my desk, and then said, "Here's your ticket, even though you won't be needing it anymore."

And then he turned and began to chortle with others standing nearby.

I looked at him, like Wha? Why wouldn't I need the boarding pass? My manager walked up behind him and said, "I think we need you here. Call the travel office and tell them to cancel your flight and hotel."

And so here I am, sitting in my cube instead of enduring that blessed 18" airplane seat; and there my suitcase is, hanging around in my trunk with my lip gloss and lotion meticulously packed in a quart-size Ziploc bag instead of being subjected to an inspection and stored in an overhead compartment; and there my CFO is, on the airplane, flying right now in First Class because he was upgraded, which I'm convinced is the only reason he was in such a hurry to leave the office for his flight, completely relishing in the fact that he is going and I am not, because the truth is that my company was sending me just to ensure that he doesn't screw things up. Closing acquisitions isn't really his forte, if you know what I mean.

And so there he is, sitting in his leather seat, and here I am, still sitting in my cube.

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My slacks should not be fitting like leggings.

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Best thing about taking the day off work?

Not having to figure out what to wear in the morning.

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I have not told you yet that I am sick, mostly because it seemed like uninteresting news. Who wants to hear that every time I blow my nose, I could be an actress in a Mucinex commercial?

Or that this morning I was especially proud when I blew my nose and produced a wad about the size of my face? I nearly took it to show Roger, and then remembered that having mucus (ewww!) shoved in your face probably isn't the most thrilling way to be woken up in the morning. Romantic, aren't I?

My voice is hoarse, but not sexy hoarse. I know this because when I asked Roger whether I sound sexy, his reply could not be mistaken for anything other than a big, fat, sodden with disdain, NO. With as much love and tenderness as he could muster, which was a lot, the answer was still decidedly NO.

I've been hacking and coughing at work, but no one really cares that I’M DYING. I know this because the only questions asked of me are, "You're not contaminating those documents, are you?" and "Will you draft a letter to jackass competitor? They're infringing our patents again."

Today I was leaning over my manager's desk, discussing revisions to a contract (gah – sorry, my work is b-o-r-i-n-g) when all of a sudden, from out of NOWHERE, my nose leaked onto his desk. I couldn't prevent it. It just…happened.

Let me repeat that. My nose? IT GUSHED ONTO HIS DESK. And there was this gargantuan drip of my snot on his desk, dangerously close to his pristine crystal glass of iced water.

I stood there for a second, mortified, and then said, "Oh. Sick. … That's really gross. Hold on."

And I dashed out to grab a tissue and an alcohol wipe. Mere seconds later I was in his office again, armed with cleaning supplies, and he had already wiped my snot off his desk using anti-bacterial gel he had on-hand (for such emergencies, apparently).

Reminder: My face oozed onto my direct supervisor's desk. GAH.

And even though he had already cleaned it up, I double-wiped it with alcoholic wipes because (a) I'm anal, (b) they were already open, and (c) I cannot let these go to waste when my snot was frolicking around on my boss' desk!

I am so gross. SO GROSS. How do you possibly recover from that? My voice sounds like a man's, my cough sounds like I'm bringing forth the dead and I just saw goo fall from my face and collect on my director's desk.

I think it's time to go home, y'all.

Technorati: sick, snot, ill, medical, allergy, allergies, anti-bacterial, work

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What do you do to prevent your pantyhose from sagging?

Ready? Go!

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Today I ventured out from my cubicle, determined to make a grocery store run and to go home for lunch. This trip generally takes me only ten minutes. Fifteen minutes into my drive home, and still less than half a mile from my office, I decided to take the highway instead of the back roads.

First mistake.

As I sped up the on-ramp, I quickly realized everyone was stopped. I slowed, pulled close behind the Lexus in front of me, and waited.

And … waited.

And … waited.

Then my car started to overheat. Overheat! On the highway. On a ramp. Where I couldn't go anywhere, or do anything about it, except just sit there.

I turned my car off. And thirteen seconds later, the car in front of me started moving, so I turned mine back on again. And I drove ten feet, and then turned my car off. Again. This continued for the next half hour, during which I called Roger every time there was a new development:

"I'm running out of gas!"

"My car is overheating!"

"I can't go anywhere!"

"I'm stuck on the highway!"

"The jerk won't let me over!"

"Can you charter a helicopter with extreme magnetic sucking power? And it could just suction me up and carry me away? Please?"

"I keep turning off my car! Do you think it will help the overheating?"

"I'm thinking of just parking my car on the highway and walking back to work. Do you think that would be a bad idea?"

"I just coasted down the on-ramp and my brakes locked up. I forgot I turned off my car!"

"Do you think it's overheating because we took it to get inspected & have the oil changed, and they didn't replace the coolant? I mean, it's 75 degrees outside. It's hot."

"I was able to exit. Do you know how to get to the grocery store from Blackburn and McKinney? I don't know where to go."

"Nevermind. I found it."

By the time I got to the grocery store and grabbed the two (TWO) items I needed - plus coolant and a six-pack of bottled water that was on sale for 88 cents (I know! How can you pass that up?), okay, fine: I also had some sushi and pistachios in my basket, only because they looked good and I was hungry - it had been over an hour since I left the office. And still, I had ventured less than three miles away.

Not wanting to deal with people any longer, I guided myself to the self-checkout, the lanes created for people who (a) are really impatient or (b) always kinda wondered what it felt like to be the grocery store cashier and sacker, and I started scanning my items.

I finished, fished in my purse for my wallet, and glanced at the line of impatient people who were gathering behind me.

And then I realized: I left my wallet at work.

I left the grocery store, defeated, and called Roger with the last development.

And then I died*.

*Not really, but I kind of wanted to, because I had been on the road for an hour and a half and had nothing to show for it except an empt[ier] gas tank, no radiator coolant, no groceries, no lunch, and no money. And an impossibly bad hair day.

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Y'all: the turkey just arrived.

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"A bunch of us are going to try the Beyonce Master Cleanse diet starting today and we're going to do it for the entire week. Want to join us?"

"Hmmm. Well, I've kind of already done that one."

"Oh." [Looks at me.] "So...the diet doesn't work?"

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The short story:

I was mistaken for a prostitute this morning. More than twice. And? What's more? I was propositioned as a prostitute this morning. MORE THAN TWICE.

Continue reading "On Harry Hines" »

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When you see that I am busy, and ask how you can help me, and I delegate something to you to do, do not return it to me untouched, say you agree with matters listed in the document, and tell me to go ahead and make the changes. THAT IS WHY I GAVE IT TO YOU TO DO.

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It's been a while since I've indulged my artistic side, and I heard a rumor you were starting to go through withdrawals.

…

Wait. What's that? Do you hear it? That kind of high-pitched chirping noise? You know – kinda like crickets.

…

Huh. Just me then? Okay.

We have a new employee at work. I met her on her first day, and lo, she liked me. Two days later she stopped by my cube, and I was apparently scowling concentrating very hard.

The next week I saw her again, and she actually said to me, "If I hadn't met you my first day, you'd be the last person around here that I'd want to meet."

Uh…what? Why? I mean, HELLO. I'm me. Everyone likes me!

When she told me this, I was a bit surprised and asked her why, for the love of all things holy, would she not want to meet me and be friends with me and loooovvvvvveeee me. And then I reminded her: I am me, after all.

When people come by my office, they stop to say hello and I look away from my computer where I am concentrating and working very diligently. My brow is sometimes furrowed, and when I look at them my brow has not yet unlocked itself. And so coworkers see my brow and pursed lips, and they think it is kind of scary. And they make excuses for me, saying such things as, "Oh, Jes? She's just intense."

That's why I am resolved to go shopping this week for a small mirror to hang on my cubicle wall, the wall adjacent to my computer, so that I can see the look on my face each time I whip around to say hello. It's a public service, don't you think?

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Every year for Thanksgiving, my employer hosts a luncheon for the legal department and caters turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and corn. Our group supplies the rest: side dishes (carrots, green beans, yams, salads, etc.), desserts (chocolate, pecan pie, cheesecake, pumpkin pie, apple pie, etc.), drinks (soda, tea, etc.), bread (dinner rolls, cornbread, specialty breads, etc.).

The first year I signed up for it, I arrived a little late on the scene and all the normal vegetable side dishes were already taken, but there was still one remaining slot for a vegetable. The dessert openings had already been snatched up, and I was unwilling to bring something like a single tub of Cool Whip, mainly because the males in our group should be responsible for bringing that since they don't cook.

I am also an attention whore and love showcasing my ability to cook. When you've got the talent, it's important to flaunt it appropriately. In my case, "appropriately" is defined as: every opportunity. (Thus, the new cooking website, yet to launched.)

After staring at the list of vegetable dishes, I came up with a mental list of veggies not represented: zucchini, mushrooms, bok choy. Not great choices for Thanksgiving, save the mushrooms – but what could I do with those?

I made stuffed mushrooms, which were a hit with the crowd and have since been a tradition at work. Plus, they're pretty. And easy. And I'm all about no-fuss food.

Want to make them for your next party? Keep reading.

Continue reading "Stuffed" »

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It may be ridiculously lame that I took this quiz, but it's the weekend. And for me, weekends call for laziness.

I've always been ridiculously proud of the fact that I have no accent. When I answered these questions today, it confirmed it for me only one thing: I should have been a telephone operator. My accent is that non-existent.

Someone? Want to hire me for voiceovers? Anyone?

Continue reading "Without a Trace" »

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I've taken up the habit of eating pistachios. I love cracking them open and popping them in my mouth.

Except, GAH. They don't just "crack open" like one would expect, particularly considering they're already pre-cracked for my convenience.

Recently I've found myself sitting at my desk, straining to get the nuts out, attempting to pry the shell open with my metal mail opener. The pistachio inevitably flies across my cubicle, which means seconds later I'm scouring the carpet looking for where it might have landed. AND WHEN I FIND IT, I STILL EAT IT.

How ghetto is that?

Dude. After all that hard work, I'm eating it just on principle. I worked for that sucker.

I just crawled out from under my desk (where my last pistachio landed) in time to see a coworker (male) walk into my cubicle, glance at the open shell on my desk and then say, "Everything okay with your nuts? I noticed you were struggling with them a bit."

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This morning I received an email stating that every employee needed to attend an IT-related meeting. Initially I felt a littler nervous, because: IT? Are they going to tell us we no longer will have access to the Internet?

If so, I might have to quit this job because the Internet is my sole addiction. (Much healthier than some, don't you think?)

I got to the meeting and was immediately informed that I didn't have to be there, since I already knew the material. They would be discussing an upcoming conversion that I had already undergone because I am merely a pawn in the hands of this corporation. Not unlike a lab rat.

I happily returned to my desk, and then realized it would be a prime opportunity for me to run to the ladies room, since I hate public peeing. It's just so awkward to go into a stall, knowing the person next to you is also peeing, and the only sound in the entire bathroom is sychronized peeing. The thought makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Blast some music. Turn on the faucet. Do SOMETHING. Just: don't pee with me. I need my privacy.

While I was in the restroom, someone opened the bathroom door and I heard a male voice call out, "Jessica?"

My jaw clenched (okay, fine, everything clamped shut) and my tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth while I rolled my eyes in frustration. THIS IS THE LADIES ROOM. No males should even be TOUCHING the door. Let alone cracking it and TALKING TO ME. Wait thirty seconds, let me finish, wash my hands, and come out of the bathroom on my own accord. GAH.

"Yes?" I replied with every bit of calmness I could muster. It wasn't enough - the edge in my voice made it obvious that I was irritated.

"Uhhh...Just wanted you to know that we do need you in the meeting, after all."

"Okay. I'll be out in just THIRTY. SECONDS."

The door closed and I felt the heat draining from my entire body. After washing my hands I slipped through the door and sat in the back of the meeting room. Thinking about what had just occurred, I felt myself becoming more and more irritated. I slumped in my chair. I decided I would have rather listened to someone in the stall next door to me than to the voice of a male coworker richocheting off of the restroom walls. I felt oddly violated. And I was completely useless in the afternoon meeting. Next time, I'm retreating to another floor in the building, if only for my own sanity.

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When I was younger, I begrudgingly went shopping with my mom at yard sales. I likened it to hell because of the hot, burning sun boring down on the roof of the car, in which I undeniably slumped my body and crossed my arms in protest. I would stare out the window, watching my mother, hoping she would see how miserable and pathetic I was. I secretly hoped she would come to my rescue and say, "You don't want to do this, honey? Let's go to the movies instead!"

Rather, she would come to the window, knock on it, and crouch down to tell me in a sweet, motherly tone that I should at least roll the window down so I would have fresh air. She would invite me to come look around if only to get out of the hot car – had I known that was a ploy of hers to get me shopping, I certainly wouldn't have done it – and I would undoubtedly find a couple books or a skirt or some decorative item for my room.

When I was little, I hated those days. Now that I'm older, I cherish my memories of them. I still (albeit rarely) go yard sale hopping with my mom and I love watching her milling around, looking at someone else's belongings, whittling the price of a Pottery Barn mirror (great condition, original tag still affixed on the back of it: $69) down from the marked price of $10 to a mere $4.

From my mother, I learned the skill of bargaining. She is the reason that I prefer to shop the sale racks at the mall: if I only have $100 to spend, wouldn't I rather have 3 shirts, a new skirt and a couple pairs of slacks from the racks in preference to the one pair of jeans I could buy otherwise?

Continue reading "Now on my business card: Chirky, B.E." »

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Attending the BlogHer workshops confirmed to me that what I’m doing at work, while I enjoy it, is not my passion. My passion is writing and connecting with others – building a community where people can meet and share their lives. I’ve always known that my talents center around hospitality. I think blog communities are a great way for me to exercise that talent.

I have several ideas storming for new community websites, but am overwhelmed by my own ambition.

Several of you have asked me who I met at BlogHer. My answer? Everyone. Almost. There is no way I could ever give a recap of my thoughts on the people I did meet (but Miss Zoot did an excellent job of doing just that) - there were too many to name.

I met women whom I admire. I met women who made me laugh. I met women who are brilliant. I met women that I wished I had taken longer to talk with.

I learned a lot from the different sessions that were held on Day One and Day Two. But more than anything, I learned so much about myself. And perhaps that is the best thing that I could have taken from the conference.

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I've suddenly come to the realization that I'll never lose weight if I don't actually exercise. And since I'm planning on doing a triathlon sometime in the next few months, it seems that exercise would be a key part of my monthly weekly daily life.

So I'm sitting at work, wiggling my legs back-and-forth. How many calories do you think I'll burn?

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At this time, this is all I can say:

I'm at a loss. I have toyed for so very long about what I should write about on this website, how I should write it, and whether the Internet wants to read it. I've mulled over how the Internet's opinion of me would be changed if it knew what I don't want to say.

I am really a man.

Continue reading "Dissatisfied" »

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In the first half hour of my arrival at work, I follow a simple routine: log in to my computer, check my personal email, check my work email, read a couple of blogs, start work. Sometimes I even read blogs while simultaneously working. I can multi-task like that.

However, this morning my routine was thrown into chaos, rendering my morning useless. I was at the "read a couple of blogs" stage of my morning, checking out a new read of mine. While scrolling down through the page, I accidentally clicked in the mango-colored margin. Thinking nothing of my random click, I continued reading.

Suddenly a new, smaller screen popped up. And then another. And then two more. Before I knew what was happening, six pop-ups had infiltrated my computer. Each time I tried to close the ad, two more would replace it.

Being my computer-savvy self, I immediately closed all windows and opened my control panel. I deleted all software programs that looked like adware, and went on my merry way. I never got to the "start work" portion of my morning routine, though, because the ad programs had hidden themselves on my system, and pop-ups were still appearing even when no Internet window was running.

I'll have you know that I finally got it resolved, but I won't be visiting that new blog anymore.

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Today a sound occurred that you never want to hear when you are squatting under your desk, ready to rush off to lunch. My entire body went into shock, and I remained motionless for a full six seconds before I settled back into my chair, where I sat very still for four more seconds, all the while thinking, "Oh, God. What was that? Don't let it
be true. Sometimes it is easier to play stupid and pretend that you don't know, even when you do because you heard it AND you felt it. It was The Feeling. I even prayed that I was mistaken.

But God doesn't bargain, and perhaps He would like me to exercise rather than sit like a sloth in front of the TV for eight hours at a time while I watch 24 until 11:30 pm just to be forced out of bed in the morning by an alarm clock that WON'T. SHUT. UP.

I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch, so I quickly stood up, swiped my hind parts, and ducked into the ladies room to view the area affected by The Feeling. I stood staring at myself in the mirror, at all different angles, for a full two minutes, and then went into the stall to assess the damage.

Thankfully, that ripping noise I heard was the lining of my pants and not my slacks. Little flaps of ripped lining folded over and caused odd-shaped lines and wrinkles in my hind parts, which I happily accepted considering what COULD have happened.

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No need to call the state troopers. Keep the national guard abroad, where they are needed. Don't tell the FBI where I am - they've been hot on my tail since that Girls Night Out chicken liver incident.

As for the Chipmunks, the Globetrotters, the Rockettes, the Rocketeer...bring 'em on. I'd love to see cartoon animals and ginormous basketball players running around with high-kicking, scantily clad women.

As for my absence - for those of you insistent on an explanation - I was in Raleigh yesterday on business. And I earned lots of miles. Just doing my part to support the airline industry. Afterall, AA knows why I fly.

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It's 9:38 a.m., and I am eating FUDGE. Heavenly fudge. The kind your grandma makes at Christmas, and that you sneak little pieces of when she's not looking. Not because you're trying to be sneaky, but because it's SO GOOD you just can't keep your little fingers out of it. I'm obsessed!

There's a woman in my office, the grandmotherly type, and I just walked past her desk on my way from the copier. And then I quickly retraced my steps, heading back to her desk again. Because on the top of her desk, as I walked by, I saw an enormous plate of fudge squares. And I took one.

Now I'm not sure how I will have enough self control not to go back to that plate again. I just want to trade desks with that woman for the day and sit there, fat and happy and eating all that fudge. Heavenly, HEAVENLY FUDGE.

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Next time I get an invitation to a Christmas party that reads "Holiday Attire" or "Business Casual, Holiday Dress optional," please point me toward my own website.

This year my employer held such a party. And coworkers were really vague about what that meant. And I didn't know what it meant. And lo: I am ignorant.

I mean, I know what business casual is - I dress that way everyday to go to work. But Holiday Dress??? What IS that? I assumed it meant that some people could wear holiday attire if they wanted. I didn't know what holiday attire was, but apparently someone did. I was imagining the ladies wearing sweaters and vests of sorts with black slacks. The kinds of sweaters and vests that are embroidered with christmas trees and jingling bells. Or perhaps with ribbons and bows and laughing snowmen and prancing reindeer. You know: the kind of sweaters sold in the old lady section. (Uhhh...sorry mom. But that is where they are.)

I WAS NOT IMAGINING FORMAL DRESSES AND SUITS. AND LOTS AND LOTS OF SEQUINS.

Continue reading "Business Casual, Holiday Dress optional" »

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In my office, it is a steadfast rule that when screeching tires, horns, or sirens are heard, everything else must stop and you must become fixated at the window closest to the noise.

So today when I was in a meeting at work, that very thing happened. I wish I had been watching just a bit earlier so that I already knew what happened and didn't have to be curious about it. Not the case, because I am glued to my window now. I have counted two ambulances, 7 fire engines (three hook-and-ladders, three regular, and one that I've never seen before: a sort of big truck pulling a trailer (think U-haul, except red and a fire dept logo) behind it (James, care to comment?), three fire suburbans, and one fire F-150 truck. Something BIG happened. I wish I had binoculars and a police scanner so I could listen to it all! (Mom? Christmas?) Maybe I'm in the wrong business. I'm much too nosy.

Channel 5 News came, and a helicopter. After both ambulances left, FINALLY the police showed up. But just one. In the midst of all this action, I was humored to look up the building (it's about 20 stories tall) and see all these
construction hats peeping over the railings on each floor. EVERYONE was staring.

IThe trees hindered my view, and right now I wish I were one of the rappellers so that I would have a good view of what happened. Or maybe I don't wish that!

I've been checking http://www.nbc5i.com/ incessantly to see what is going on, but they haven't reported it yet. If anyone finds out what happened, be sure to post it here.

In other news, I'm craving candy corns.

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I've never taken part in a chili cookoff, but given the opportunity I think I would. Especially if cameras and FoodTV endorsements were involved. Just saying.

This week, Roger braved the crowded aisles and long lines at the grocery store, carefully choosing fresh ingredients as he shopped. After unloading his finds from the car, he lugged the grocery bags up the stairs to our apartment, and proudly lined his new assortment of spices and seasonings along the bar in front of our kitchen.

He rose early this morning to begin a cooking adventure in our small, hallway-sized kitchen. As I showered, I heard him chopping onions. Later I hugged him, because they made him cry. He was embarking on new territory: cooking chili for a contest at work. He made everything from scratch, mixing together ground beef and sausage, soaking the beans a day early so he could cook them, carefully measuring teaspoons of delicious seasonings like cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper and chili powder.

Every so often he would ask me how it looked, and it looked great, so I would tell him so. He was pleased with my encouragement, and when the chili was ready, he transferred it to our crock-pot to keep it warm for work.

In the contest, he didn’t place as high as he would have liked, but the chili was delicious (I know, because I’ve tested it!). We’ve got plenty left over, as well as a new addition to our home: Chef Roger.

I hope he'll be as enthusiastic about cooking dinner for me!

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I've earned the name "The Incredible Hulk" at work. Yesterday, right outside my supervisor's office I was absent-mindedly determined to pull open a door (not realizing that it that pushes open). Instead, I managed to pull off the entire, commercial-grade door handle.

Don't ask.

I popped my head in my supervisor's door and asked if that had ever happened before...He smiled, and immediately joked that I would have to pay for it. I didn't, thankfully. He offered to call someone to get it fixed, and that was the end.

So embarrassed. It was my third day on the job.

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Oh, after so much drama, the day has finally come... FOUR interviews. INFINITE waiting. One message that the position had been filled. Another message that it hadn't been filled. The corporation has finally made a decision!

(Drum roll, please.)

I start my new job on Monday. This has been long awaited. I'm ecstatic to be making the switch from a private law firm to a major corporation.

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Have you ever felt like you are in interviewing hell? Like it is going so poorly that perhaps one more step down the ringer could land you in a pit of fire?

Continue reading "Interviewing Hell" »

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