In the “Be Careful What You Wish for” Category

The other day, a friend and I were discussing various stomach ailments one could get while traveling abroad and the resultant weight loss, and I expressed regret that I never seem to get stomach viruses anymore, and how it would be an easy way to drop a few pounds.

I lived to regret those words not long afterward, when I threw up for 7 hours straight. Apparently, the universe heard me and decided to laugh in my face. I haven’t been that sick since I was a kid. It was so bad that I had to keep a bucket next to the bed since I was too weak to make it to the bathroom half of the time.

The last few days have not been the most fun ever. Here are some things I am totes sick of: flat coke, saltines, and dry toast. I’m trying to get back to regular, non-bland, non-carb food now. I am craving protein or anything with taste really.

And the kicker: I don’t think I’ve lost any weight. Thanks for nothing, universe. Why do you hate me?

Summer Notes

My least favorite thing about summer (and there are many) is the extra-smelly garbage trucks. They pass me every day, and when I seem them coming, I hold my breath until they’ve passed in an effort not to smell the stench. I did this yesterday when one passed me by. I managed to hold my breath for another half a block. When I breathed in the stench hit me hard. And continued to hit me for another block and a half. That is some powerful stench.

*********************************************************

My cute, new, walk-to-work flats have apparently already bitten the dust after less than two months. I realized this when I got to work this morning and went to change my shoes. My feet started the morning off perfectly clean. They were now covered with black grime. The flats have small open panels and apparently these panels let in massive amounts of dirt, which have now become ground into the interior of the shoe and transfer to my feet every time I wear them. It’s revolting. I am totes bitter. I am a little OCD about dirty feet in the summertime, and scrubbing my feet is pretty much the first thing I do when I get home in the evening.

*********************************************************

The other day I was walking behind a woman wearing a cute jersey wrap dress. Unfortunately, this woman (like me) had a not so firm ass. There was VPL and jiggling and jersey catching in the fold of flesh at the top of her underpants. I felt bad for her as I’m sure the dress looked good from the front when she put it on. I made a mental list of things to remember about wearing jersey.

1. Proper undergarments are key.
2. Always check out your backside in the mirror before leaving the house.
3. It’s not enough to ask “Does this make me look fat?” You need more specific questions like, “Do I have VPL?”, “Is there visible jiggling?”, and “Is this dress sticking to my fat ass?”

Thank You for Not Mentioning That Thing on My Face

I was at CVS the other day morning, picking up a few necessities, wearing my Ipod and trying to ignore the masses of humanity around me. “The Lady Is a Tramp” by Frank Sinatra played, and it was just so peppy and jazzy that I totally wanted to bust out a couple of dance moves. I refrained, but I realized as I was walking out of the store that this was the Dupont Circle CVS, and I’d have to do something a lot more extreme than dance if I wanted to get anyone’s attention. Like maybe vomit blood.

***********************************************************

I considered working from home yesterday because of a massive growth on my face. And by “massive growth,” I mean “enormous pimple.” This is completely unfair. I am too old to still have pimples. To be honest, aging completely sucks, but one benefit should be a complete and utter lack of pimples. This pimple is of the unfortunate variety that I only get every 5 years or so. It’s big, it’s red, it’s throbbing (actually painful), and it’s impossible to hide, being that it’s smack dab in the middle of my cheek. The concealer helps a bit with the redness, but all the concealer in the world can’t hide the fact that there is a very three-dimensional entity poking out of my cheek. Lord Kissington has been nice enough not to remark on it, but it probably helped that I left the house before Blindy McCan’tSee put in his contacts. I would try medicating it in some way, but all anti-pimple creams do for me is dry the skin around the pimple out while leaving the pimple throbbingly intact.

***********************************************************

In sad DC-related news, the venerable Reeves Bakery and Restaurant closed last Friday. Reeves has been a DC institution for since 1886 years. When I was just a wee tot, my dad used to take me to the original Reeves (which was a really amazing place that sadly burned down sometime in the in this amazing old building that burned down sometimes in the 80s). They had these awesome ham salad sandwiches. Their cakes, pies, and doughnuts were to die for. They vacated their last location because of problems with the lease and are currently looking for a new location. Here’s hoping they find one soon.

This Lamp Better Have a Genie Inside

My mother has issues with driving on highways (even on the GW Parkway, which barely qualifies as a highway). Her highway phobia isn’t as crazy as it sounds (i.e., there are reasons for it that I won’t get into, because, ummh, they’re just not that interesting), but it does mean that there are a lot of places she can’t get to. She left a lamp at a lamp store in Old Town to be repaired about six months ago. The lamp store has (not surprisingly) been calling her and asking her to come get it. So, she asked me to do it. Lord Kissington and I went out to Old Town on Saturday. While we were out there, we had brunch (which included mimosas, a key ingredient in making the whole day slightly more bearable). Then we drove to the lamp store. As soon as I handed the woman who runs the store my claim ticket, she said,

“I called you about the lamp, right?”

I explained that she had called my mother, not me, because I do not want to be known as a person who sends her lamps out for repair and doesn’t pick them up for 6 months. I can be a person who wanders into a lampstore and gets really giggly about finials because she just had a couple of mimosas at brunch, however.

She goes off to the back to look for the lamp. She comes back 10 minutes later, telling us that she can’t find it. She goes off to look again. She returns empty-handed. She keeps asking if my mother could have already picked it up, and I explain that this is impossible. My cell rings. It’s my mother calling, so I go outside to take the call. I tell her that they seem to have lost the lamp. She’s dumbfounded. It turns out she was just calling for… some completely boring, unrelated reasons that I’ll spare you from. She also describes the lamp as a “ginger jar lamp.” I have absolutely no idea what that means. I go back into the store. Lord Kissington has now disappeared. Apparently, he’s in the back helping the woman look for the lamp, which is totally insane since he has no idea what the lamp looks like, other than that it’s peach.

They didn’t find the lamp, of course. We left the store and decided to drive to Pentagon City because I (apparently feeling supremely masochistic) wanted to stop by the mall. After 20 minutes at the mall, we were both frazzled and cranky (but I did get a free lipgloss at Sephora!). We had split up to go to different stores and had both become quickly overwhelmed by the crowds and general ickiness. It took us a while to find each other, since our phones didn’t work in the mall. As we were heading back to the car, I noticed that my mother had left me multiple messages.

Lo and behold, they had found the lamp. So, we drove back to Old Town. Only when we arrived, it had been temporarily misplaced. Again. But they did manage to locate it after a few minutes. We paid for the repairs and left. I came really close to smashing the stupid lamp on the sidewalk outside the store. Clearly, I have anger issues. On our way back, some friends called and invited us over for drinks. Like the mimosas at brunch, this went a long way toward making the day bearable.

I'm Just Not Feeling This Movie

The other night we watched Laurel Canyon. It’s one of those films that I always sort of meant to see but never got around to it. It finally came up on the Netflix queue. It’s not a bad movie, it has some awesome music, and it made me think that living in LA wouldn’t be bad if one could live in Laurel Canyon, which looks awesome (the house is the movie is to die for). But for the most part, the movie just seems wildly implausible.

(Warning: spoilers for this 4-year-old movie follow.)

For example, at one point, Kate Beckinsale’s character does a shot and promptly strips down to her bra and boys shorts, hops into the pool, and starts making out with her boyfriend’s mother and her boyfriend’s mother boyfriend. I don’t think there are enough shots in the world to ever make me think that’s a good idea (especially when your boyfriend’s mother is Frances McDormand).

Earlier in the movie, Kate Beckinsale tries to go down on her boyfriend (Christian Bale, looking surprisingly not hot for some reason—possibly his really awful hair). He says no, because he’s “tired.” Lord Kissington was incredulous.

Lord Kissington: Kate Beckinsale offers him a blow job and he says no?!
Me: This movie just lost you, didn’t it?
LK: I’m going to fold the laundry.

The movie did have the saving grace of the very hot Alessandro Nivola, who sings a really amazing song (that plays over the end credits).

Random Again

1. I’ve been quite distracted lately, hence the lack of posting. Just how off my normal self I am was made clear to me this weekend. As I made half-hearted attempts to straighten up the bedroom, I found a pile of magazines and realized that the last three issues of Vogue have gone basically unread. This is unheard of for me. I’m not sure if it’s me or if it’s the increasing lameness of Vogue. I have to admit that when the last issue arrived, I said, “Hmmh, Keira Knightley. Again?” and tossed it into a pile. Still, I’m inclined to think it’s me, since the last few weeks of US Weekly haven’t brought me my usual level of schadenfreude. (Seriously, a cover story about a baby? Perhaps in 16 or 17 years when Shiloh is puking outside nightclubs and dating daddy’s aging Lothario friends, she’ll be worth the cover, but now? In a week when Paris is off to the pokey and Lindsay was arrested, I expected more.)

2. Another reason for the lack of posting is that I’ve actually been trying to write some fiction, and my, err, creative energies have been focused in that direction. The stuff I am working on is still in a very early gestational stage, and I’ve forbidden Lord Kissington from reading any of it. To that end, every time he comes near me when I’m working on the computer, I stand up or minimize Word or flail around flapping my arms in front of the monitor so he can’t see anything. He’s invariably offended by this sort of behavior, as he had made no attempt to read anything. I started to wonder why I was so paranoid, and I realized that it’s because if the situation were reversed, I would be insanely curious and would have a very difficult time keeping myself from sneaking a peek. Clearly, he is a far better human being than I am.

3. I recently found, for a low low price, a collection of extended dance remixes of Depeche Mode songs. For me, this is like being caressed by angels. For Lord Kissington, not so much.

4. NIH is apparently *still* under the mistaken impression that I am in menopause, as they have asked me to join another study. I have no idea why this is the case. People, I am not getting any younger, but I am still far from menopause age. Actually, they are quite lucky I am not menopausal, as if I were, I would probably take my hot-flashy menopausal ass down to their headquarters, smack someone with the tasteful card they sent me inviting me to join their study, and scream, “I’m not old enough for this” over and over again.

Randomness

1. Can someone please explain to me why, even though I quit smoking over 5 years ago, and DC bars are now smoke free, I woke up Sunday feeling like someone had sandpapered the inside of my throat. It’s just not fair, people.

2. I spent most of Sunday in bed. Every 3 or 4 months, my stomach rebels against my daily treatment of it. It holds up a white flag, screams “no mas,” and subjects me to excruciating pain for no apparent reason. The only way to deal with this is to spend the day in bed, groaning and eating bland food. I crawled out of bed and attempted to eat breakfast, which left me writing in pain on the couch. I soon returned to my bed, equipped with lots of magazines and DVDs. Sadly, The Princess Diaries was not nearly as entertaining as I had hoped*, although it did elicit the same response from both Lord Kissington and me: “Damn, Julie Andrews still looks pretty good.” (I have to put in a disclaimer, lest Lord Kissington want guest post privileges to rebut me: He wasn’t actually watching it, he just happened to wander into the room when Miss Andrews was on screen.)

3. Lord Kissington has excitedly informed me that next year, Lost won’t be coming on until the second half of the season, which will give me “plenty of time to watch season 3 on DVD!” I stopped watching after the first couple of episodes last fall, which would mean I have about 17 or 18 to watch (although I do know some major plot points from wandering in and out of the room while he was watching). Is it even worth going back? The few episodes I watched made me want to throw things at the TV.

4. This morning, I trotted out of the house with freshly shaven, extra-moisturized legs. When I arrived at work, I looked down to find them covered with mud splatters (almost up to my knee on the right leg). Had I inadvertently walked through a field on my commute? Not likely in my neighborhood. How did I not notice all this mud splashing on me? Apparently, the moisturizer really helped the mud cling. Very attractive.

5. I almost took a header off a bar stool on Saturday night, having caught my heel on a rung, but I somehow managed to not end up face first on the floor. It wasn’t particularly graceful, but it wasn’t completely embarrassing either. I should add that I was sober.

6. Did anyone else hate Spiderman III as much as I did? All I could think at the end of it was “that’s 10 bucks and 2.5 hours of my life I’ll never get back.” Hint to the filmmakers: introducing a new character as a potential romantic foil doesn’t really work when the new character appears to be mentally challenged. (An out-of-control beam is heading for the window you’re standing in front of, so you, of course, walk toward the window?) Also, any movie that messes up James Franco’s pretty, pretty face is just wrong. So wrong.

*An ongoing issue with having such a long Netflix queue is that all those movies I put on there in a flush of enthusiasm 18 months ago no longer seem quite so watchable now. After watching this one, I moved The Princess Diaries 2 (which was next on the list) far far down (I couldn’t quite bring myself to delete it; it probably has something to do with my love for Julie Andrews). When it shows up in another two years, maybe I’ll be more in the mood for it.