Him: We’re getting rid of the chickens, right?

Me: NO.

Him: But we’re getting rid of the cats, right?

Me: NO!

Him: You know that we have reached a point where we have so many cats that when you tell people how many cats we have, they automatically assume we’re weird?

Me: What? What do you mean?

Him: You know exactly what I mean! We have 14 chickens, 3 dogs, 1 turtle, and 5 cats! As soon as people hear that we have 5 cats, we’re labeled as the weirdos!

Me: Just tell them that they’re all rescues! Then we’re compassionate!

Him: ::shaking head:: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

Hee hee.

This morning, it was a text message I sent:

“Shut up! I don’t feel good.”

I sent it to a coworker who was giving me a hard time b/c I had planned on being into work at 6:30 in the morning (OMG) but drank too much last night and was therefore lucky to make it into work at all. But back to the text message.

So after I sent it, I got to feeling bad because I NEVER say shut up. Never. It sounds so MEAN. So HATEFUL.

And that got me thinking to where that came from and of course, it was my parents. My mom used to forbid us from telling each other to shut up b/c it was HATEFUL. (And she would say it to prove her point and it would sound VERY hateful. She could also make ‘yeah’ sound like the worst word in the english language- (she always corrected us to say yes in public))

Which led me to thinking about myself and MrC. I don’t remember him ever saying shut up very often, but in the very beginning of our relationship, I would say “Don’t say shut up! I hate that!” and he quit saying it very quickly. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard him say it.

And I think it’s one of those things that MrC and I probably do right. B/c shut up IS mean and not very respectful sounding.

And that got me thinking to things I say instead of shut up and they include: Hush up! Shut your mouth! Be quiet! Quit talking! (Really, I say hush up the most)

And then I got to thinking about how when I hear it in public now I think of the people as being angry, disrespectful, and sometimes uneducated.

Which got me to thinking about odd things like that from your childhood that influence your relationship or the way you perceive people.

And then my train of thoughts ended because I had to focus on not throwing up.

(**Shut up is totally different from STFU b/c saying STFU just sounds better**)

Guy: So, are we going to go to one or not?

Girl: (Who has never been to a strip club) I’ve always been afraid to go!

Guy: What? Why?

Girl:  I’ve always been afraid I’d fall off the stage!

MrC and I exchange WTF looks.

Me: Uh… YOU won’t be on stage…

Guy: Yeah, you just watch.

Girl: Well, you know what I mean…

We didn’t know what she meant, but apparently she thinks if she goes to the strip club, she will be forced on stage and then will fall off sometime during her show.

2.)  I’m happy to say that yeast infection cream DOES work to clear up ringworm. I found a spot of ringworm on my butt too. Which is great.

But it stayed around for a week and it had a ‘ring’ look to it. I started to think maybe it WASN’T a bug bite and figured I’d get to the doctor eventually. Then at work two days ago, someone said “That looks like ringworm” and showed me a picture and other people started agreeing.

So I immediately started picturing this WORM creature under my skin. So gross.

Then I did some research and found out that it wasn’t a real worm, just a bacteria infection. Whew. (B/c really? A worm under my skin is a little too much to think about)

So anyway, that’s how I found myself at the Walgreen’s take care clinic. “It’s great,” a coworker said, “They’re usually not too busy and a nurse practitioner sees you and it only costs half the price of an urgent care visit.”

So I went to the Walgreen’s take-care clinic b/c of his good recommendation and the fact that in my research it said that a doctor would probably prescribe a cream to fight the bacteria- no big deal. And I’ve seen nurse practitioners before and they were knowledgeable.

So I get there, sign in on the kiosk and wait for my name to be called. In fact, I waited AN HOUR. It was 45 minutes before someone even came out to call the person in front of me. I know, I should’ve left… cut my losses. But I kept thinking “I need to see someone about this and I might as well get it over with today.”

So, I wait an hour and finally get in the room where the nurse practioner (NP from now on) asks me some health history questions and gets my insurance information. After 15 minutes of paperwork, she asks me what she can help me with today and I roll my arm over and say “Well, I think I might have ringworm.” And she looks at it and says “Yeah, it kind of looks like that.”

THEN she gets a book out to read up on ringworm. I’m not shitting you.

So she reads, and tells me what she’s reading… “…and you’ll want to apply the ointment twice a day. And don’t use the same towel to drive that area off with that you use for other areas of your body….” I nod b/c it was similiar to what I had read online and I knew it was contagious.

THEN, she gets out another book to figure out what to prescribe me. THEN, she uses a computer program that tells her a couple of different options on what to prescribe me.

She picks one and writes a prescription.

So I leave thinking “Waste of time, but at least I have a prescription.”

Then I stand around for five more minutes while she confers with the pharmacy. Then she goes to another patient and I ask the pharmacy tech if I can come back to pick up my prescription b/c I have a meeting that I can’t miss.  She says sure and I rush out of there.

Fast forward to me getting off work and heading back to Walgreens to pick up my prescription. I walk in and tell the tech my name and she asks the Pharmacist “Is that the one that’s up front?” And he says yes and goes to the over-the-counter aisles.

“Is this an over-the-counter item?” I ask the tech.

“Yes. But the system says we’re out of it, so he’s just making sure.”

At this point, I’m starting to get a little pissed.

So, he comes back and says that they are indeed out of what I need. The tech says she can call and find it somewhere else so I ask if it’s available everywhere.

She says yes and then gives me the name of it and tells me I can find it in the YEAST INFECTION area.

Umm. Okay.

So anyway, I go to another store and why yes, it is in the yeast infection aisle b/c it’s a YEAST INFECTION TREATMENT product.

And nowhere on the box does it say it should be used for anything but a YEAST INFECTION.

But I buy it anyway hoping it’ll work.

So basically I paid $75.00 to tell the NP what I had and to have her write me a prescription for an over-the-counter vaginal cream.

Yep. I’m never going back there again.

But I do giggle in glee when I warn MrC to make sure he doesn’t touch my vaginal cream.

I was SO. DISAPPOINTED in Sex and the City 2. I wasn’t even expecting anything amazing… just my favorite characters doing funny things in great clothes.

Let me first say that I LOVE Sex and the City. I’ve watched every episode through the seasons. When Carrie dropped her cell phone on her (gorgeous!) wedding dress in the first movie, my heart dropped. I wiped away tears. Then when she moped for days b/c she had been stood up? I felt her pain.

So, I was a little prejudice going into the movie. It was going to be hard for me to NOT like it.

But yeah. Lots of things I didn’t like.

1.) The characters weren’t their vivacious selves. I always picture them skipping through New York in high heels, laughing. The first thought that comes to my mind from this movie is TIRED. They were just kind of TIRED.

2.)  Stanford and Anthony get married?! REALLY? And they seemed like they were going to go off on the subject of Anthony saying just b/c he was married doesn’t mean he wasn’t going to cheat. But then they didn’t. And all of a sudden it was more of a ‘We can make our own relationship rules’ thing.

3.) At the gay wedding, the couples (Carrie, Charlotte, and Maranda with their respective husbands) were just too… happy. Even at the wedding. It was too much of a ‘everything is so perfect’ scene that I just DID. NOT. LIKE. I mean, if they wanted to play Charlotte as the frazzled mom of 2, why not have her show up looking a little less Single Charlotte? and more like Mom Charlotte?

4.) Carrie = FABULOUS SHOES. But apparently she quit buying shoes so she could buy furniture. LAME. If I wanted to watch a show about furniture, I would watch HGTV (which I love!).

5.) Skipping to the end. Carrie kisses Aiden. And then tells Big. And she gets home and Big has… BOUGHT HER A BIG ASS BLACK DIAMOND. Really?! REALLY???

6.) The hot nanny is a lesbian. How convenient.

7.) I was disappointed that the relationships with the guys weren’t shown as much. It was sort of an ‘everybody has great relationships, so let’s go to Abu Dhabi’ feeling.

So yeah. And I know that Samantha is 50, but couldn’t they have portrayed her as a cougar? Instead of menopausing?

I was so excited to see this movie. And I’m glad I went and saw it. B/c it makes me appreciate the first movie SO MUCH MORE.

Have you guys seen it? What did you think?

MrC, myself, and a group of 8 of our friends went on a 7-day cruise to the Mexican Riviera (Cabo, Mazaltan, and Puerto Vallarta). It was our first cruise (love!) and MrC’s first time flying (eek!). But we got to LA in one piece and soon we were getting ready to get on this big ass ship:

Front half of the ship.

Back half of the ship

The ship was big. It held 3,006 guests and like 1,800 crew and staff. Crazy! I’m pretty sure that’s more people than the little burg I grew up in had.

We got to our room and found these from our travel agent:

Yumm.

And the drinks? Are strong. HEAVY on the alcohol. AKA- Perfect!

But anyways, back to the pictures:

I was a little scared to see our room. I knew it wasn’t going to be spacious, but I was afraid it would be claustrophobic-like. But really, it wasn’t bad:

They had an adults-only deck which was nice. (Especially when the well-muscled guy came out in his speedo… Ha!)

They also had an outdoor walking/jogging track:

And we found this little guy in our room when we got back from dinner:

Each night there was a different towel-creature on our bed. They even had a book on how to create the different towel figures.

Our friends had told us that the people on cruises are herded around like cattle. And they weren’t kidding. When we first got there, we waited in line to get our room keys (which also served as our pay-for-everything card), then we went and stood in a big group with a number we were assigned. Then they started loading according to numbers. But really, it was impressive that they got that many people loaded as quickly as they did.

So we got on the ship and went straight to eat b/c we were STARVING. They had the buffets open and I got my first fruity drink. And OMG it was fabulous. They tack on 15% gratuity to each drink so we had no problem getting servers to bring us drinks. But after my first drink? I was already buzzing. That’s how strong they were. And they had a ‘drink of the day’ each day which came in a special cup that you could keep.

One thing our friends commented on was how much we could feel the ship move, as compared to their previous cruises. The water was pretty rough for the first couple of days, but you could feel the boat moving all week. I never quite got my full sea legs.

Stay tuned for Day 2.

Cute house. But that wasn’t the first thing I noticed.

I guess moving the bike 3 feet to the right so that it was out of the picture would’ve been too much. That’s all I’m sayin.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for job openings that are closer to where I live. A 56 mile one-way commute isn’t horrible, but it’s really a pain in the ass. There’s been several times when I would’ve liked to come in just for 30 minutes to clarify things on a different shift, but driving an hour just to stay for 30 minutes and turn around and drive an hour home? Not really worth it.

Anyways.

I have a lot of reservations about switching jobs. And I can’t help but think that maybe a lot of women have these reservations and thus stay at the job they’re at instead of looking for better opportunities.

Reservations include:

1.) What if I REGRET it? I mean, I’m content with my current job. Why screw that up?

2.) I feel like I owe the manager who hired me at my current job. Granted, they are paying me well below market-value for someone at my career-level, and I know they took advantage of the fact that I was laid off for 9-months and VERY job hungry, but still. I feel like I owe him.

3.) What if I don’t like the new job?

4.) What if later on, I wish I would’ve stayed longer at current job to get more experience in this specific area?

Whereas MrC has said several times that if he got offered more money, he would jump on it right away, regardless of the current perks to his current job. (We’re being taken THREE different places this weekend alone by people he does business with)

Have any of you thought about (or did) switch jobs and had reservations? I’m curious if anyone else had the same reservations that I do…

That person ended up being “Lisa”. Lisa was my age, and had one of those personalities that make you want to be around her. She was friendly, smiled a lot, and had these beautiful blue eyes which were magnified by her blond curly hair. In between the first and second classes that I was following Lisa around, I met her boyfriend, “Tyler”. What struck me about these two that day, and that I can still remember, was that they weren’t the typical high school couple. There was no jealousy, no neediness… just a comfortableness that I could sense after a few minutes.

Tyler was a year older than us and played basketball. They had been together for four years, she explained to me in between classes. They didn’t hang all over each other, like most couples our age. Instead they laughed about something that happened in her previous class, kissed, and then he went to go talk to his friends so that she could show me around.

During the next class, I looked over at Lisa’s textbook and noticed that she had written “I love Tyler Lee Smith. Forever.” In the spine. Right next to it, in a more male handwriting were the words “And he loves you. Forever.” Tyler was in that same class as her and I smiled when I caught him looking at her. I took their happy, blissful relationship as a sign that myself and Ex-A would be able to stay together, even if we did move.

Two years later, we had indeed moved and I had been going to the school I had visited for a couple years. Lisa and I didn’t run in the same circle of friends, although we had some mutual friends. Secretly, I still smiled when I saw them in the halls. I also learned little things about them through random conversations.

Lisa had lost her father and uncle in a plane crash when we were in 8thTyler was really there for her through that,” a friend had explained. It made sense then, I thought to myself, why they were so comfortable with each other. They had already been through more things than couples much older than us. grade. “

“One time,” another friend explained, “Lisa forgot her lunch. So Tyler called his mom and had her bring some of Lisa’s favorite food for lunch.”

“His parents love her! They think of her as a daughter.”

There are moments in my life that I’ll never forget: Where I was on 9/11. Seeing MrC for the first time. And when I heard the news that Tyler had died.

I was a junior in high school and working as a casher at a local restaurant. A coworker had came in for her shift while I was standing behind the registers.

“Did you hear?” she asked me.

“About what?”

“Tyler Smith died in a car accident.”

I know it doesn’t make sense that I could feel such a loss for someone I didn’t even know, but my heart dropped. I got sick and felt like I was going to throw up. This couldn’t happen. This couldn’t be right. It had to be someone else. I blinked back tears so I could ask what I didn’t want to know the answer to.

“How did Lisa react?”

They didn’t tell her the day it happened. She had been away in South Carolina at a soccer camp and her mom and his parents decided to wait until the following day when she got back. They told her as soon as she walked in the door. She had passed out, as soon as they told her and had been heavily sedated since.

The rest of my shift I wondered what was going through her head. I pictured her driving back home from soccer camp, unaware of the news that waited her. Maybe making plans to see him that night. Just thinking of the pain of losing the person you thought you would spend the rest of your life with, the person who was right by your side through the death of your father brought the pain back to my stomach and the tears back to my eyes.

They retired his basketball jersey. His best friend wouldn’t leave Lisa’s side. People said that Tyler had made his best friend promise to watch out for Lisa if anything were to happen to him. Some kids at school started a petition to get the road widened where Tyler had had his accident. It was now known that he had slipped off the side of the road, over-corrected and hit a tree.

And still, life went on.

She’s my facebook friend and every once in a while I look at her profile. She’s been in a relationship for a couple years now… or she was the last time I checked. She still goes to Tyler’s parents house for Christmas and Thanksgiving. They still give her birthday presents.

And I know it doesn’t make sense, but my heart still aches for her loss. I can still remember him looking at her with complete adoration those many years ago. And I hope she remembers the same thing.

Scene: MrC’s mom’s husband (who is a recruiter) discussing gay men with a high school senior.

HS Senior: blah blah blah, gays.

MrC’s Mom’s Husband: Yeah, fuckin fudge packers.

MrC’s mom: I love fudge! My mom used to make the best fudge.

hee hee. And no, I do not agree with calling gay people names like that, but I’m pretty sure MrC’s mom’s comment ended that conversation. She kills me with her randomness.