Take this job and shove-it

I forgot what working is like.  After I moved here and didn't have a job I thought "how am I ever going to fill up all of this time?  I'm SO bored".  Well, I filled it up.  I just filled up all my time with lots of stuff and now that I'm strapped for time again I don't like it.  Not one bit.  

I see the value in hard work and I fully intend to teach my children all about it as they weed the garden at 7am every sat morning.  I just don't know how much value it has for me anymore.  I've worked long hours as a waitress, called people to survey them, folded and re-folded clothes in retail, filed and ran excel sheets, wrangled other people's kids and stamped and stamped books in the back of the library.  I've had a wide variety of jobs but maybe I've peeked.  Who says you have to wait until your 50's to top-out?  

I was sooo good at keeping up the house and making sure the kitchen was fully stocked.  I mean, I was REALLY good at it.  Service with a smile I like to say.  And I penciled in time for a bike ride and some quality time at the pool occasionally.  It most certainly is a crime to keep me away from what I excel at, right?

You know they say that we never use our full brain capacity and that is probably true...for people who work.  You get focused on and really good at only a couple of things like payroll and time cards or mergers and acquisitions.   But when I wasn't working I think I was operating at 98% brain capacity.  I was reading all sorts of interesting books - some of them science related - and listening to NPR and watching videos of string theory and extraordinary people with super-human brains.  I cooked new food all the time and started sewing and watched 4 seasons of Friends.  

Tell me I'm not a better, stronger, faster human after that.  Now I sit down 8 hrs a day staring at a computer and all the super awesome knowledge I had obtained the past couple of months is draining.  

"I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on this mug all day..."

Fiveteen + Fifthteen = Turdy

Dear 4th graders of America, 

 For the past couple of days I have been grading "America's report card" and evaluating all the answers you have given.  And after staring at hundreds and hundreds of answers I have something a bit shocking to tell you that I think might help you out in the future when you are "old" just like your parents.  English is not a phonetic language, or "funetik" as you might say.  I know that it makes sense to follow fourteen with fiveteen, but I'm afraid it doesn't work that way.  Fifteen is its own number, a new kind of beast.  And not to break your dear sweet little hearts but tewenty is actually one letter less so just "subtrackt" the first 'e' and then you get twenty - a real number.  Don't worry, I know you are having too much fun on your computers to be bothered with spelling and I would let it go it's just that I get so distracted by all the dyslexic numbers that I can't let this one slide.  

One or both problems should get fixed as soon as you can please.  And don't worry I get it, I was a 4th grader once too more worried about whales and the playground than "America's report card" but golly gee whiz I could spell A LOT better than you can.  Ceriosly.

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S

I bought a one piece bathing suit today, it's been a long time since I agreed to that.  And trust me, it is not about modesty because when all is said and done with all the riding and pulling and compensating by making the legs high-cut they don't cover much more than the rest.  And even when they do cover you up more than most the consequent pushing out and over of your skin through various seams - much like sitting on a hammock - can be much more frightening than just baring it all in a bikini.  So I guess I better say that I gave into it.  I had to, it's absolutely glamorous.....and all white. 

 Ahh, the all white bathing suit.  A feat many have tried but usually fail to achieve.  In fact, I have always had a specific aversion to white bathing suits after a traumatizing elementary pool party.  My friend Naoma hosted it for her birthday and she had an all white bathing suit, only she had developed MUCH more quickly than the rest of us and it was definitely see-through and I couldn't shake it until today.  But there it was on the rack of my local TJ Maxx just begging to be tried on so I indulged it.  And the moment I put it on I felt the opposite of what you normally feel in a one piece, just supported.  But I felt so much more than that.  Suddenly I was on the French Riviera wearing high heels and a big floppy straw hat with my bathing suit.  It was....magical.  So I brought it home with me and took it out for show at my ultra glamorous complex pool.  And when I closed my eyes and drowned out the large polynesian family from my hearing I could almost smell the ban du soleil and white diamonds perfume swirling around me.  I looked for a picture on the internet to show you all because I was not going to take a picture of myself in it, and for the first time EVER I can say with complete confidence that I look better in it than the model:

I don't know how, but she just doesn't do it justice.  It was just made for me.  I can't promise anything, but check back again and there might be an updated picture of me for comparison.  Maybe.  That's how good it makes me feel.

Take off your jacket and stay a while

I'm getting that urge again.  The one where I want to permanently park my keister on the front porch and laze the days away.  It is quite possible one of my favorite things to do - ever.  Add in a popsicle or some sort of cold beverage and bingo!  Heaven.  I have always had some sort of porch to sit on no matter where I lived.  And while some people used their porches to collect newspapers or put cutesy crafts designating the upcoming holiday, I chose to use mine for sitting.  Just what god and everyone in the south intended it for.  We used to have a specialized term for it, "porch-monkeying".  Don't know why.  But I really love it.  I love it so much that in interviews when people ask me what I like to do for fun I tell them I love to sit on the porch.  I even loved it when I lived in a condo on 9th east in Provo and every 5 minutes your talking would be drowned out by gangs of bullet bikers zipping past on their death machines.  

But now I don't have a porch.  I  only have a porch with a large concrete retaining wall around it so that if I sat down to enjoy the porch then I wouldn't be able to see anything other than the top people's balconies, boo.  

The other solution is to go sit on the curb by the parking lot and hang-out there.  But the only people who hang out there are the Indian man who only stares and won't talk, or the girl who likes to sit almost in the bushes next to the dumpster in all black and drink from her paper bag.  Don't worry, they are both regulars.  For some reason I just don't lean towards the curb option in this scenario.  But don't get me wrong, I still love sitting on the curb, but mostly just at the gas station.  

I don't know what to do!  We are having the perfect weather right now and I need to take advantage of it.  It is pretty much akin to Utah spring/summer right now.  I know in another month or maybe less it will be hotter than hades.  Maybe I will just sneak over to Sunland Village, the retirement community across the street, and borrow a porch or two there.  Watch people walk their dogs by running them alongside their golf carts.

The help

Ricky made the bed today:

Awww, thanks man.  You didn't have to.  I mean, I would have if I knew that all you had to do was throw pillows on top and call it a day.

I am seriously SO blessed.

Could you lent me a dollar man?

Oh I remember this time last year when I decided to give up vh1 for Lent and Ricky decided to give up Youtube.  I lasted a couple of weeks, but definitely not the whole time.  How can you blame me when there is Best week ever to watch?  But this year as Lent descended upon me I couldn't figure out something to give up.  There was just too much that I had already given up this year; my name, my single status, my home and the worst one of all, TV.  I had nothing left to give Lent.  

So this year for Lent I am giving up Lent.  I'm just not doing it.  Ha.  

Looks like somebody had the same idea too.