Moved

Remind me why I was so excited about moving. We are officially moved into our new house & I am surrounded by seemingly insurmountable chaos. Boxes everywhere. Only some of them are actually labeled. Even less are labeled with information that makes any sense or has any relation to the contents actually found therein. We had to brush our teeth with Listerine on Sunday (the toothpaste was eventually found in a box labeled "office supplies") and I couldn't find my underwear (in the "sleepwear" box) until Monday. And the best part is, I have imposed upon myself a completely arbitrary & utterly unrealistic deadline to have everything unpacked & our new house in perfect order within one week. Why?, you ask. Well, clearly I am a total idiot.

But I am an idiot that will have a clean, well-organized house within a week.

Or I will crack from the pressure and Chris will come home to find me hiding under the dining room table, clutching a box cutter and weeping over our lack of adequate storage space.

In case you're wondering, no, I haven't found my mind yet. It must be in one of those unmarked boxes.

Of All the Things I've Lost

I miss my mind the most.

I just wandered around my house for, literally, ten minutes, tossing things aside & tearing through boxes, until I finally just stopped in the middle of the upstairs hallway & said - out loud, even though no one else was there, not even the cats - "For the love of God, where in the hell did I pack the . . . ponytail . . . holder . . . thingies . . .". Because not only could I not find a ponytail holder thing, I couldn't even think of what they are actually called. Elastics? Hairbands? Whatever. Either I am in the beginning stages of early-onset Alzheimer's, or I have so much crap going on, I can't even string two coherent words together.* Which is a perfect segue into . . .

One Word Sarcomical Sunday #5
(Only Five Days Late)

• Your Current Footwear: pink
• Something You're Doing Later: packing
• Something You Wish You Could Do Right Now: unpack
• Your Age At the Time Of Your First Kiss: ?
• Your Feelings About Global Warming: worried
• A Sport You Wish Would Never Be Shown On Television: fishing
• Something On Your Desk that Shouldn't Be: piles
• A Word To Describe The Current State of Your Sex Life: hopeful
• How the Sky Looks Right Now: dark
• Which of Snow White's 7 Dwarfs You'd Be: Grumpy
• Your Preferred Birthday Cake: pie
• A Magazine You Subscribe To: none
• Number of Piercings You Have: two
• Your Favorite Delivery/Takeout Item: Chinese
• A Game You Hate to Play: cards
• The Name of Your First Real-Life Crush: John
• The Hand You Write With: right
• The Hand You Wear Watches On: left
• Your Clothes Closet: trashed
• The Side of the Bed You Sleep On (from the on-the-bed perspective): left
• A Flavor You Love: cheesy
• Your Car: beast
• The Last Thing You Misplaced: mind
• Your High School Mascot: Spartan
• Your Wasted Talent: talent?

* Did I tell you that I cut off all of my hair? Because I did. Chopped it all off way back in January, the same day that I got a call from Jack, telling me "Hey, remember how you thought your house was going to sell? Yeah, not so much." So now it's at about chin length. Which is not exactly long enough for even the most pathetic ponytail. Which did not stop me from searching for a holder (elastic? band?) for ten minutes. Perhaps my mind has been packed already & I will discover it after we move.

Found

In my post-offer haze, I almost forgot to tell you my really exciting news, which totally beats out we-got-an-offer-on-our-house-today-well-sort-of-yeah-okay-not-really. Are you ready?

Are you sure? You might want to prepare yourself 'cause this is exciting stuff. Okay, here it goes . . .

I found my sunglasses!

Aren't you excited? Me too! In fact, I was so excited, I may have actually said the words "Woo hoo!" out loud. I want to go on record that I still believe that the cats are behind this. Because I found my glasses in the top drawer of the linen cabinet this morning. Which, first of all, is not exactly a normal place for one to keep one's sunglasses. And second, I am in & out of this drawer several times a week. And yet, today, suddenly, there they were! Nestled in between the hairdryer (which I just used last night, by the way) and the Aveda travel kit, right next to the extra tube of toothpaste that I just put in there last weekend. So, it had to be the cats, right? I'm not sure how they got around the whole lack-of-opposable-thumbs thing, but clearly they did. Because the only other option is that I have completely & totally lost what was left of my mind. And obviously that can't be it.

Missing

Remember how, a month or so ago, I was complaining about losing a diamond earring, a brush, dental floss & a pair of pants, all in the space of a week? And then I lost my favorite pair of boots? Well, now, I've lost my favorite pair of sunglasses. In my own house. I know I had them on when I came home Monday night. I know this because I went shopping after work & my hair was in my face & driving me crazy (crazier, more like), but I was too lazy to actually pull a clip or hair band out of my purse, so I just pushed my hair back with my sunglasses. My sunglasses spend the majority of their time on top of my head (see below) or lost, obviously. Anyway, I distinctly remember taking them off because I was going to wash my face & put on my pajamas. What I don't remember (again, obviously) is where the hell I put them. I have completely torn the entire house apart.

What is the matter with me?

Am I really this scatterbrained?

Are the cats stealing random objects & hiding them from me to get back at me for withholding the cat nip?

I'm not sure which thought is more disturbing.

Lost

IT'S 10 O'CLOCK.
DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BOOTS ARE?

Somehow, I managed to lose my favorite pair of red boots. Seriously, how do you lose boots? It's not like a pen or keys or sunglasses (which I lose all the time; I lost the last pair in a bathroom in Chinatown) or, I don't know, something normal. Who loses boots? Well, apparently, I do. While I was searching my closet, I decided to try on a few outfits that I was considering wearing this weekend. That wasn't fun. The thing is, size 2 pants don't fit all that well when your ass is now a size 6. So now I'm going to have to go to our nephew's baptism in a white linen sleeveless sundress because basically that's the only thing that fits other than yoga pants, capris & one pair of jeans. Too bad I can't find my boots, I'll bet they really would've pulled the whole thing together. I don't think white linen is inappropriate for October in Pennsylvania, do you?

Damn my thirtysomething metabolism. I should have enjoyed the days of sitting around like third base, eating pie & gaining precisely nothing while they lasted. When I lived by myself, I would eat something like cereal or salad or rice for dinner & rarely ate breakfast or lunch. Probably not the healthiest diet, but I was lazy. (Was, she says! Funny!) Then Chris moved in. He's a great cook & likes to have actual food type things in the refrigerator, not just milk, spinach, condiments & cheese. Imagine that. By the time we were engaged, I'd gained five pounds. I did try to lose the weight before the wedding. For six looooong weeks, I exercised for at least an hour a day & monitored every single thing I ate. I restricted myself to 1200 calories a day (amount calculated by a nutritionist), which quite frankly is not a sufficient amount of food for a normal person. Or even a semi-normal one. I have to imagine that I was not pleasant to be around. (You know, unlike my normal, sunshiny self.) And at the end of those six weeks, do you know how much weight I lost? Not. One. Ounce. Not even water weight. And don't give me that, "muscle weighs more than fat" business because my clothes fit exactly the same too. So I figured, if I'm going to weigh the same whether I exercise like a fiend & eat celery or lie on the couch & eat bon bons, well . . . wouldn't any rational person eat the bon bons?

Ten pounds worth of bon bons later, I fit into virtually nothing I own. And, ya'll, I have some cute clothes. If you come over, we can sit in my closet & admire my wardrobe. In fact, if you're a size 0 or 2, help yourself, because I sure as hell can't wear this stuff anymore. I cannot motivate myself to get on the treadmill or keep myself from eating an enormous bagel with cream cheese. (Oh, Lord, the cream cheese. I simply adore the warm, melty cream cheese.) I used to think that I would never gain a significant amount of weight because I have so much willpower. Turns out, that willpower thing? More like a phase. Or, at any rate, I've completely lost any trace of it. Maybe it's with my boots.

Is It the Weekend Yet?

This has been such an odd week. Not like "I went to New York & became an assassin" or "I ate a live cockroach to get to the front of the line". More like mundane mixed with just a bit of "what the . . . ?".

• Received an offer on our house. Excited? Yeah, me too, until I realized it was for over $20,000 less than our asking price from an investment company looking to buy homes for much less than the market value & then "flip" them.
• Had a squirrel sit on the roof outside my window & stare at me. (This actually happens all the time at work, but it's still disconcerting.)
• While screening a prospective tenant, discovered that, other than her name & social security number, virtually everything she had put on her application was false.
• Met my new dentist, Malibu Todd.

  

• I swear to you, he looks exactly like Malibu Ken, except for the outfit.
• Watched United 93.
• Realized that I am an idiot for watching United 93. Five hundred kleenex later, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball & hide.
• Watched The Wild (or, as I refer to it, Madagascar Lite) in an effort to cheer up after United 93. Not even Eddie Izzard could save it.
• Had a "customer service" person hang up on me when I asked to speak to her supervisor. After I sent a fax to the company, I received a very nice call from the head of the department, apologizing & generally kissing my ass which is always kind of fun. At least for the first few minutes, then it just gets annoying.
• Steam cleaned the carpets on the 1st floor. Note to self: the little wet, soapy balls of cat fur that shoot out from the machine (yuck) are not mice, so stop jumping out of your skin every time it happens.
• Steam cleaned the carpets on the 2nd floor. Little wet, soapy balls of cat fur still aren't mice but still make me jump out of my skin.
• Had a colleague tell me she married her husband because she thought he'd be "good in an emergency".
• Lost one of my diamond earrings but had no idea when or where so I couldn't even begin to figure out where to look for it.
• Also lost my brush, dental floss & a pair of pants, all before 9 am on Thursday.
• Had lunch with my mom, who could only drink tea since she's on the BRAT diet.
• Wondered if my assistant ran away from home since I haven't seen her all week.
• The UPS guy tracked me down as I was walking home from work to deliver a box full of hair products that I apparently won last month on allure.com. Yay!
• Found my diamond earring quite by accident on the floor by my bed.
• Brush, dental floss & pants still MIA.
• Watched ER. Managed not to cry.
• Started reading a (so far) really good book by Anne Tyler, Digging to America.
• Had to call the police not once, not twice, but THREE times last night. From 11:30 to 12:30 last night, one of our neighbors played with an excruciatingly loud remote control car in the middle of the street & then spent 20 minutes revving his Harley & three-wheeler. The noise could wake the dead. Lights were going on all over the neighborhood. We can only assume he has completely lost his mind.

So now it's 11 am on Friday & I am sitting here drinking chai tea, staring at my computer & the piles of work on my desk & trying to wake up. And I just realized that I have a huge deadline that has to be met by the end of the day today. Completely forgot about it. Thank God I glanced at my calendar.

How many hours til Happy Hour?

My Husband Rocks

Last night, I was watching Jaws & eating cheese popcorn for dinner. (This is what happens when I am left to my own devices.) When Chris called to tell me that he was on his way home, I said to him, "Why don't you have a baby blue suit with little anchors all over it?" and he said, "Mr. Mayor! He did have some fly outfits, didn't he?"

That's why I love him. How many other people would have instantly recognized this obscure pop culture reference? Is it any wonder that I married him?

AND he made me lunch today. WITH CHOCOLATE. I'm so lucky.