If your Cat were someone famous, who would they be?

My husband is infamous for coming up with random games. When we go to brunch, he makes me compete with the jelly containers to see how many times out of 5 I can get it to land right side up. He makes goalposts for straw wrappers. And he comes up with great 'what if' questions.

The other day he came upstairs and requested that I pause the Twilight movie I was watching in bed to ask me "if our cats were people, who would they be?". Before I tell you some of the celebs in the running, let me fill you in on the kits. (That's a kid/kitten combo that aptly describes my emotional attachment/cat lady tendencies).

This is Pants. He is about 2.5. He is both really crazy in terms of high energy, running around, chasing moths, and the other cat and also really cuddly as he routinely in the morning almost knocks you over trying to get his head pet and at night likes to curl up and watch tv with me.

And this is Stella. She turns 11 this month and is a sweet, gentle Himalayan Persian. She is like a loyal dog, following your every step just to be near you.

So what well known people could personify each of these guys?
For Pants, after toying with Usher, we settled on Busta Rhymes. Youngish (at least he was when we were younger, which is where my brain still lives), feisty-they both kind of get those crazy eyes occasionally and racially and gender appropriate.

Stella was tougher. I tossed out the late, beloved Jessica Tandy. My husband didn't like comparing her to someone who was in the iconic film, Cocoon, because it aged her. He proposed Sigourney Weaver. I almost lost my mind. Apparently, I have a thing against Sigourney Weaver that I have never acknowledged because I was outraged. He tried to calm me down by referencing her Jane Goodall role as opposed to her Ghostbusters alter-ego. I think we left undecided.

So I am both open to suggestions and curious who your pets would be. Go!

This really happened. Otherwise known as "People are Odd Ducks"

So some of you might remember from a recent post that I am currently wearing a wrist brace. It's just for tendonitis and I'm really making out on the whole deal because every time I go in for my "certified hand therapy" I get a paraffin treatment to relax my muscles. Having never broken a bone, I had no idea how much attention braces/splints/casts get you.

In addition to my "real" job, I work a second job (the same one I worked when I was 16, thank you very much) and am a cashier/phone girl. Yes, he really calls the title Phone Girl and no, a man can't do it. I'm only there 1 or 2 nights a week, depending on the week and it's actually kind of relaxing because no one ever cries or puts their life in my hands; they just want their chicken parm. The other night I was ringing a guy up and when I handed him his change he asked about my wrist injury. It went a little something like this:

HIM: "So did you hurt your wrist cheerleading? Doing a handspring or something?"

ME: (a little caught off guard by the weirdness of this) "Ah, no".

HIM: "So did you hurt it playing softball?"

ME: (really perplexed by my options and what they imply) "Nope, not sure how I hurt it."

He eventually faded away and began to chew his food, leaving me stumped behind the register.
Is looking like a cheerleader a good thing? Is this a shout out to my youthful visage? Or should I feel bad that I am an adult doing a job that a high schooler could (and my high school version once did) do? And why is playing softball the default if I didn't get hurt at cheer practice? Is he questioning my sexual orientation? Is this his version of flirting? He was totally serious, by the way. It certainly didn't seem like flirting or joking or anything other than sincere guesses, even though they were the two most random guesses anyone so far has come up with.

One Liners and Other Blogs (and lack of title creativity)

I love reading my blog stats. Today I learned that one of the phrases that people search and find my blog is "i bought a pair of skiny colored jeggings and i am 45".  Please note that the spelling error is original to the seach. And I have a reader in Moldova, which I couldn't identify on a map if I were on a game show. Sir or Madam, could you make yourself known and teach me about your country? I like to travel so maybe I can add it to my to-see list once I know in which direction I should start flying.

Another great liner was self-produced. I didn't realize how awesome it was until it was all typed out and then even I wanted to be my own friend. In an email to a friend I offered the hook " Franti was AMAZING. I have such stories for you including a near death experience, a ride in a police car and sexually harassing the band". That story  might be tomorrow's blog post so come back for more if you are hungry for the details, which you clearly should be.

Finally, because my left contact hurts too much to keep writing, I will take the lazy route and direct you to read someone else's blog instead. My very funny friend Jenn wrote a post last week that I just stumbled upon about how to be a good neighbor. You can read it here. I find it inspiring because I recently had to send a neighbor anonymous, respectful hate mail about her dog barking and waking me up every morning. I am proud to report that it hasn't happened since so she is earning back some good neighbor street cred!

Monday night revelations

I've never blogged from my phone before and it will probably take a month to type and be riddled with errors but I have learned so much on the last hour that I can't help myself. Sadly, most of them are about The Bachelorette.
First off, how can anyone think these people are for real? Where do I begin?! Guys sitting around talking about each others dating strategies? No. This girl is super cheesy. Why does anyone want to date her anyway? Of course she is beautiful but everything she says is irritating.
I think this show would be leaps and  bounds better if they let me narrate it and mock them. Like when the single dad is crying about his kid I could be in the bottom right corner making faces like a crying baby rubbing his eyes and laughing that Rob Zombie wife laugh. She has the best make fun of you laugh on the planet.
Another idea I had was to be the next bachelorette. Now hear me out. Yes, I'm married and no I don't actually want to make out with those clowns. But it would be fun to hear their lame-o lines and to catch them in their insincerity. We could take it from vanilla to cotton candy pop rocks.
Side note that I just shamefully recalled: when my husband proposed he said "will you accept this ring?" and I made a Bachelor reference. DURING MY PROPOSAL. A moment I had dreamed about and I tainted it with this filth.
Ok, back to the rose ceremony and to eagerly awaiting the potential gem of The Glass House.
P.S. I just scored a 108 point word in Words With Friends. Booya!

Ch Ch Changing

That title is from a song. Do you know it?

Do you know any songs with the word ennui in them? I do. If you do, too, please share!

But to the point, I'm thinking this blog is changing again.

It has been my experience that for a blog to have a reader base there has to be a theme. You know what you are getting. You read that blog when you are in the mood for it's stated theme. Fine.

I have tried that and found myself feeling claustrophobic, in a sense. What word would Lucy from Charlie Brown's gang use to describe feeling trapped by theoretical confines I, myself, created? I have enjoyed writing about travel and will continue to do so but what about everything in between trips? For a while, I thought the in between would be filled with my pursuit of home loveliness and personal domestication. And sometimes it is. But more often the in between, the real stuff of life, has no theme. Life, at least mine, is an ongoing balance of work vs play, should vs want, mind vs body, etc. "Aspiring to the Middle" was always about finding a balance between the different parts of my life, which sometimes clash up against each other. And my goal has long been to be successful in all sorts of varied arenas, not to be the star in just one. So really, it makes sense that trying to box myself in to just talking/writing about a couple of topics felt yucky.

As a result, I hereby reclaim this blog. It will be not just about travel and home but everything and anything in between. As Cartman from South Park would gloriously say, "I'll do what I want". Some days I might write about television because it's all I can think about. Like last night I stayed up until 3:30 am, unwise the night before staring my new work week, so that I could watch multiple episodes of Downton Abbey and be up to date. And sometimes I might write about the books I like, a funny experience I had, or something more serious like a cause I am passionate about. You won't really know what you are getting if you choose to read.

But I'd encourage you to think of it like reaching into a goody bag of candy you filled at the bulk candy aisle of Wegman's; you will like whatever you pull out. Most of the time. Unless you get a stomach ache. Because I would argue that I am one of the quirkiest people I know and I think that makes me endlessly interesting. How's that for modesty? Even people who have known me for decades don't always get it right when they try to guess what I will think about something or what my reasoning behind something is. My brain works differently. My view of the world is different. And I hope that variety will entertain you, even if you don't see it coming.

So there you have it. Recreated.

Creeper in the Bathroom

So there's this guy who works in my office building (which only has three floors and houses only a few companies) who always uses our bathroom and I think it should be stopped.
My organization takes up two suites = the whole top floor. This guy works on the basement floor. Point being he has to walk up 4 flights of stairs to get to our bathroom. Oh, and those four flights are in a structure that is topped with glass that acts much like a greenhouse, creating intense and often uncomfortable temperatures the higher you climb. For further illustration, he has a bathroom (technically two) on his floor and the same options on the floor in between us. For purposes of gender identity inclusion, we don't have a "men's room" and a "ladies room" but rather two restrooms that anyone could use. One of them, "the suite", is a one person stall and you can lock the door and have the space all to yourself. Which one do you think he comes up and invades? You guessed it. He hikes up four flights of stairs in the grueling heat past two other sets of bathrooms to muck up the one place no one will knock on the door and disrupt you.
A firm believer in citizen justice leagues (and if you know how I can start one of these, please let me know), I feel it's my duty to confront/shame/stop him from this intolerable practice. It's gotten to the point that if the door to the bathroom suite is shut and I don't know all my coworkers whereabouts, I sometimes hide behind the office door, peeping through a tiny window awaiting a glimpse of the bathroom hog. Usually it ends up being a legitimate coworker who somehow fell off my radar. And this guy is good.....he seems to only physically appear when I have a client with me or am otherwise truly busy with the important work that goes on here to be able to stage my planned bathroom intervention. But I hear rumors of him being around much more often than I see him and just the thought of him in our sacred spaces creeps me out.
Most fascinating to me is his motive. What is going on with this guy that he has to go so far away from his coworkers for his bathroom break? It can't be that he is embarrassed because he shows absolutely no pride in busting onto a floor that is soley occupied by one company and, I might add, IS FILLED SOLELY WITH FEMALE EMPLOYEES. We didn't  need a men's room so we got rid of it and he keeps coming up here and imposing his will!
What's up with this guy? I am now accepting hypotheses.

And the Winner Is........

I have been entering contests like squirrel hoarding nuts for a long winter lately. Maybe I should start playing the lottery, too, because I really have myself deluded into thinking that I stand even a slight chance in all of these sweepstakes. Want to name a cruise ship? YES! Want to win a trip to St. Croix? OF COURSE! How about a gift certificate to a local restaurant you have only been to once? SURE!

Actually, last night I even had a dream last night about scoring special privileges at a concert that started out as Counting Crows and morphed into New Kids on the Block. By the way, if they ever decided to go on tour together, the likelihood of me quitting my job to run away and become a groupie would be a bet you could be sure to make some money off, in case my name ever comes up in Vegas.

So does this all mean I am one step closer to an official crazy cat lady label? Am on the cusp of checking my mail every day to see if Ed McMahon sent me a check? (1. I've never actually spelled his name before! 2. Is he still alive and giving out checks, even? another dream dashed.....). Or is my stress-less initiative working so well that it has launched me into the realm of fantasy?

Summer Lovin'

Tuesday marked the official start of summer, thank goodness! Of course, in the Northeast, that means the lovely weather left town and was replaced with rain. Mother Nature knows we are sarcastic in New England so she likes to play little jokes on us like that.
The start of summer apparently inspired the Dirty Dancing page on Facebook, which in turn inspired me! They posted something about summer love/first love, asking readers about their experiences with it. If you think about it, there are a ton of movies that have this as a theme. The most obvious, from the title of this post, is Grease but for some reason I am also conjuring up Uncle Buck. So random!!
So did you ever have a summer love? A crush that only lasted as long as the warm temperatures?
Let me entice you to share with an embarrassing story about myself.......
When I was like 10 I went to Lake George, NY with my best friend and my family to visit an amazing amusement park they had there, The Great Escape, and to hit the beach. Me and my friend, clearly inspired by Dirty Dancing (only about 3 years old at that time) and the like, MADE UP boyfriends who we named Ricky and Richie. PS-they were supposed to be brothers. See the problem there? Ricky and Richie are both nicknames for the SAME NAME. Of course, being 10, we didn't think of things like that. I think it only occurred to me about a year ago as we laughed at the memory.
Ok, your turn!

Happy Belated Quahog Day!

Although quahog day came and passed yesterday, this link provides information about other upcoming activities on Cape Cod this week. What's on the calendar: on Thursday you can compete to eat the most stuffed quahogs in 90 seconds or on Sunday you can attend Chowderfest at the Cape Cod Melody Tent.

Admittedly, I had never heard of quahog day until last week when the Cape Cod facebook page started teaching me how the Cape has an "official" quahog named "Doug" (get the pun here?) who predicts the weather at the beach for the summer. He is the Puxatawny (no idea how to spell that) Phil of mollusks!

It's just cute. Having just been "down the Cape" this past weekend, I really wish my timing had overlapped to see this self-proclaimed star-studded event. Community festivals and local traditions are some of the most fun activities to stumble upon, especially when they are as quirky as a quahog turned meteorologist:)

The Hulk joins the Interview

At work today we interviewed a potential new coworker. After, we all gathered in my office to weigh the pros and cons.  My coworkers commented on how I still look so relaxed so I said it was because I brought home a little souvenir and I pulled up a picture of a young man on the beach who called himself Hulk, flexing.  I kept him on the screen while we talked about the girl and every once in a while we would look over to him and ask "Hulk, what do you think?". It really lightened everyone's mood.....

What kind of wife are you? I'm hilarious.

My friend Sarah posted this on her blog the other day and it made me smile. I think the best part was when her friends were comparing their low scores which ranged from 5-9 out of 100. I got a -7. Just sayin.
http://www.magatsu.net/maritaltest/

Peeing in the Water and Blowing your nose on the Bike

http://www.cracked.com/article_19164_5-things-that-are-apparently-ok-to-do-in-name-sports.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

I usually reserve passing along articles for things I think are though provoking but sometimes it's nice to just have the truths of the world pointed out in a humorous way. I couldn't help but want to share this article from cracked.com about how much you can get away with in the name of athleticism. My favorite was a line about peeing at a family bbq being a social taboo but peeing anywhere you want during an endurance event means you are focused and driven. Hahaha.
When I do triathlons, I try really hard not to think about how many people peed in their wetsuits in the water I am now gliding through. Runny bike noses, as mentioned in this article are so problematic to me! Even on a bike, I have the imaginary audience going on, sure that someone will see me wipe my nose on some article of clothing if i so dare. And let's face it; we all workout so we can eat, no matter which way you cut it, so the article hit that one spot on. In fact, Honey Stinger makes these fruit gels you eat on your bike/run that are so good, I sometimes go for a run just so I can have some. They are like fruit snacks on speed.
Enjoy the article! Then go for a workout so you can live how you really want to: dirty, well fed, and breaking all the rules.

Nothing to Blog about

You would think that if I have nothing to blog about that I just wouldn't blog, right? Wrong. I'm taking a mental break from work at the moment. The client who is supposed to be sitting across from me right now never called or came. And that's ok. I wasn't feeling attentive anyway so it's all for the best.
We had a training on S&M in our staff meeting today. Yes, really. My favorite part was when one of the older women asked how one finds out about parties. Oh the visuals I visualize!
Other than that, what can I tell you?
I brought my spare sound machine (of course I had a back up!) from my office back to my bedroom and slept like a very tired baby last night, meaning I didn't wake up every few hours like a regular baby. Or like I have been because the cat has been coughing up hair balls between 3-5am the past few nights. I kicked the cats out of the bed and shut the door and enjoyed my water noises from the machine. I'm also enjoying a particularly comfy blanket while my usual one is being cleaned. I could have picked it up on Monday but who has the time? Too much work = fatigue = boring paragraphs related to  my desire to be back in my bed.
I could also tell you about getting put on blast by a woman in a group I was leading last night. That felt good. The women asked us to self-disclose our traumatic experiences, which is a professional no-no. When we nicely avoided the question, not everyone let it go quietly. Ah, vacation Maureen checked out sometime last night during that meeting.
Oh, I could also tell you about how I have not done my taxes yet. I am the kind of person accountants hate at this time of year. I had the best intentions of doing them tonight but when I went to gather all the documents, I can't find my form from my job, my 401k, or my mortgage. Awesome. So I'm going to see a movie tonight instead.
Something about all this makes me want to laugh. I hope it does for you, as well!

Thriller?

Any chance my beloved mj was reincarnated as my cat?

Easter Bunny Car

Some people take issue with cars that are decorated for holidays or season but I really don't see why......
How do you not smile a little bit when you see a car with a pink "nose"?

Personas

In addition to the Sex and the City names from a previous post, the four girls traveling to Spain  (see more here) also all have Jersey Shore personas and (drumroll......) Golden Girls names!
Here's the breakdown-
Dana=Samantha=Deena=Blanche
Sio=Carrie=Sammie=Dorothy
Sanya=Miranda=Snookie=Rose (Sio assigned that one because it's just not nice to equate anyone to flaky Rose)
Me=Charlotte=JWOWW=Sophia

That's how I roll

A life dream came true about a week and a half ago when I got to attend roller derby! There weren't ramps and railings like on tv so it was a wee bit anticlimatic but there were crazy names (I'm pretty sure the one in this pic is offensive in French), and awesome outfits.

Have you played Robot Unicorn Attack?

 YOU SHOULD

Best of all, though, was the people watching. Check out the hot pink pants center stage!

What kind of food would you consider eating off the floor?

Ok, if it was a pretty clean floor, non carpeted, in my own home or the home of someone even cleaner, I would eat most dry foods. At least I'm keeping it real!

Now picture this: a carpeted floor in an office you have vacuumed 2 or 3 times in about as many years? I almost reached down for a piece of muddy buddy (chex with melted chocolate and peanut butter, covered in powdered sugar). I had the good sense to stop myself but if it had been the last piece, this might be a very different blog post.

Metal Detector Man

there has been a man on the playground i can see from my window for the last half hour with a metal detector and a shovel. he focused heavily on the slide area, as if a toddler may  have dropped some precious gems. i did, actually, see him pocket something. i think i would rather panhandle...

A Love/Hate Relationship with Pants

Why do pants feel comfy standing up but tight sitting down? If I bought them bigger, they would be too baggy when I was standing. Why do they show my socks when I sit? When I am standing, they are touching the floor! I feel duped. (Hate)

On the other hand, I let Hubby name our kitten (Love) and he chose the name Panthro, inspired by the Thundercats. It just doesn't roll off the tongue. Try it and I'm sure you will agree. We have nicknamed his Pants, in part because of his long legs and a tail that is always curled over  his back, exposing areas that would nicely be covered by a pair of pants. The kitten is a little naughty and jumps on places and things that my other beloved, old lady cat, Stella, would never even think of disturbing. As a result, I find myself yelling for him to get down from the counter or the sink or my leg a lot. Only after a few months of such hollering did Hubby point out that the neighbors often loudly hear me yelling "No Pants!!" or "Pants, down!!" or, worst in my opinion, "Pants, off!". They much think I am a pretty aggressive wife!