Thirtysomething. Really?

Young Hipster 1:"Why is that old lady here?"
Young Hipster 2: "Her kid must be in the band."

As I woke up this morning feeling totally old, I thought of that show THIRTYSOMETHING that my parents, particularly my mom, used to be totally obsessed with. I don’t remember much about it other than that guy who looked like he was in CATS (and ew, wasn’t he “the hot one”?) and that I found it excruciatingly boring. It was one of those shows like MASH that old people like that made me feel sick to even think about. Uggh, I just shuddered even now. And uch, double shudder, when I realize that I am now the target audience for both those shows and ugh! that I might even like them now and that I am supposed to be at home, watching old people TV like that as opposed to listening to noise rock at Webster Hall...I’m proud/ embarrassed to say that is where I was last night and is the genesis of this whole old feeling. I mean, really. It’s sad when you look at the band and you’re like, those kids aren’t old enough to be able to play a guitar, and then you realize that no, rock bands always have been and always will be that age; I am the one who has changed.

I guess that’s not 100% true because I bet I’d still feel really young at a Rolling Stones concert.

At least I am not into musical theater.

Timber!

Exciting times down at the farm this weekend. I cut down a tree- my first time ever. I sort of felt bad except that it was killing this big pine tree so it had to be cut down to save the pine. A tree for a tree kind of situation. That is a pine, right?

And now that you've

seen the little guy- two of them actually- you are going to laugh when I say that it was actually hard to chop down. This might be because I was using a handsaw and a small ax:

or it might be because I am a total weakling. All I know is that I did it! yes! and I also moved all these loose branches and crap. And! I found an adding machine. I thought it was a typewriter at first, but it's just numbers. So cool. I'm totally dusting it off and keeping it in the house. I had visions of placing it in the guest bedroom, on an old desk. Antique-y.

dreams dreams. The other exciting event of the weekend was the arrival of this other tractor thingee. It was like Transformers down there.

OH and my husband also bought himself a dirtbike. This farm is slowly but surely turning into some sort of boyhood dream/ backwoods hick world. I just have to keep focusing on landscaping, otherwise I might start to get seriously disturbed. Well, at least he looks happy...

Margaret and Mat

My 80 year old neighbor Margaret left this outside our door last night:

It's undeniably fucking weird. And obviously used. And yet, it came from a place of goodness so it makes me feel bad to ridicule it in cyberspace but let me reiterate, she's 80 years old. She'll never find this blog.

Oh Margaret, poor sweet Margaret. Madge. That was actually my Nana's name, god rest her soul. Anyway, Margaret left this suspicious looking object outside our door with that label. She used to leave flowers for my husband daily that didn't actually make me jealous, not necessarily, but maybe a little, but at the end of the day, while I may not be perfect, time is on my side. At least when it relates to Margaret. Anyway, this was really weird, this gift for our puppy. This used rattle slash perverted object.

I'll just close up this rambling bit of odd info about my neighbor with a live image from her doormat. Yes, this is what's going on out there right this very moment.

The clutter pile is expanding and the laminated wolves photo is still there, looking at me every morning. It's sort of romantic.

Home Alone 33

I think that part of why being married or living with someone else is healthier than not is because women do weird things when they are alone. My husband has been at the farm since last week and I had to stay in town to speak at this conference thingee in Tribeca. It's been fine since I’ve been keeping myself really busy with work and the gym. And then last night I went to a dinner and drank a little too much vino and then I guess I came home and started taking weird photos of myself? I found this one particularly strange:

It’s actually not strange at all when you know the genesis- I was wondering how bad my roots are and how much longer I can hold off on scheduling an appointment. My camera happened to be in the bathroom (I honestly can’t remember why) and so I took a shot. Then I proceeded to take hundreds of shots of myself in front of my full length mirror in order to figure out if my legs are really as fat as I think they are or if I am just being too hard on myself. Then I went to arms and did the Amy Adams pose to make them look thinner. My arms looked okay but my legs still keep me up at nights, wondering how I can fix them. Running doesn’t seem to help, Physique 57 makes them less flabby but there is nothing you can really do about fat knees. If there is, I haven’t found it yet. Am I resigned to these legs forever? Should I just accept it? Wow. These are the musings of a slightly hungover gal as she recounts her late night photo shoot/ intense critique. My basic point is that none of this would have happened if my husband was here. We would have come home, walked the dog, brushed our teeth, washed our faces, changed into our pj’s, and snuggled under the covers. Perhaps we would have gotten jiggy with it but that is about the extent of the craziness. As we’re married, I don’t even think that counts as craziness. All I know is Jim never would have partaken in some crazy 2 hour photo shoot of self-degradation. I wish he would come home so I could control my insanity. But like my plump knees, I think I have to accept that there are things about me that I cannot fix.

Wasabi Lobby

You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a sushi restaurant by its name. Which is why I sort of deserve the food poisoning that I got from Wasabi Lobby last night.

You know what the worst part is? I knew that eating there was a bad idea and so I thought I would be safe and only order the seaweed salad. Which made me sick while Jim is fine despite the tuna handroll and yellowtail sashimi. I keep thinking it might be my karmic retribution for talking about the now infamous bedwetting. Like his dreams of peeing, I kept having dreams that I was throwing up all night and then I woke up and was like, wow, that was not a dream.


P.s. Does Obama’s new health care bill cover food poisoning? I’m going to look into it because if I don’t stop vomiting soon, I may have to go to the hospital

Supplement to Things that Go psssst in the night

Two days of that? You'd wet the bed too.

Sniffer and Groper

Before we had a dog, my husband used to grope me when I would walk past him- when I bent over, when I reached my arm up to grab a pan, when I got the trash out of the bin, when I brushed my teeth; really any moment of vulnerability in which I could not slap him away. Imagine my relief then when the puppy came in to our lives and added an additional element of confusion and G ratedness that I was certain would eliminate the groping game from my life once and for all. Then my husband invented a new game: Sniffer and Groper, Best Friends.

Sniffer and Groper, Best Friends entails the original groping mixed with the dog sniffing my crotch that the Groper not only encourages, but enjoys. Groper, as the one who can speak and therefore voice of the team, loves to talk about their hilarious new adventures every day. I find this very annoying especially in the morning when I am a) in a bad mood because Sniffer wakes me up at 6 am, which is 4 hours before I need to be at work and b) in a rush to get my clothes packed. I do not enjoy having a grown man with a soft dong hump my butt while a dog sniffs my crotch when I'm simply trying to get ready to go to the gym and be on my way. I do not enjoy this at all.

Things that go psssst in the night

WARNING: Do not read this if you are friends with my husband and don't want to worry about silently judging him the next time you see him.

This actually happened Sunday night but I haven't been able to wrap my head around it until now. Plus, I wanted to get permission from my husband which I didn't think I would get, but I actually did.

Saturday and Sunday we were down on the farm. Jim and Carlos the Mexi were doing some serious hard labor that involved drilling through concrete. I'll be honest, it looked like torture. I was assigned the menial job of picking up nails since I have a bad cold. *PHOTOS COMING* And I honestly did take a break to get a manicure on Saturday. It wasn't just to pump up the blog, I needed one. I'm losing focus here. Okay, back to my husband...

So Jim and Carlos were sawing into concrete all day long. More of the same on Sunday. Sunday night, Jim was understandably exhausted. (I'm sure Carlos was too but I didn't spend the night with him). He was so exhausted that he fell into a very very deep sleep. I know this because the snoring was ungodly. I finally fell asleep through the snores around 2 only to be awakened an hour later when Jim sprung up out of bed like a total weirdo. I remember saying "is everything okay"? and he just grunted then ran out of the room. I was like um...and then he came back and took off his underwear. I thought he was sleepwalking but then he looked at me, dead serious, and said, I just pissed the bed. I threw back the covers and sure enough, there was a wet spot on his side of the bed. I then noticed that his undies were soaked. After my initial bout of hysterical laughter (quietly because yes, we were sleeping at his parents' house), I looked at him and started to feel bad. He was sort of laughing but also sort of confused. So I got up and helped him take off the sheets. Thankfully he caught himself early so it wasn't a huge pile of wetness and we were able to get back onto the dry mattress cover. As we lay back down, I asked him what the hell happened. Turns out it was one of those classic dreams where you're in the bathroom and trying to pee. He said he even had that moment of waking up and realizing it was a dream because he had to pee in reality but he was too physically exhausted to get up and went back to sleep. A repeat of the standing over the urinal dream started immediatly, although this time, he was in a public bathroom at UC Berkeley. Apparently, he feels freer there and that's the dream that let it out.
A part of me feels bad for sharing this obviously deeply personal story, but well, it happened. I also feel bad because it worries me that he is working so hard that he is losing control of his faculties. This has certainly not happened before in our 7 years together. My poor little man.

Mental European Vacation

I sometimes feel like Audrey Griswold when she imagines herself eating until she is the size of a house. When I came home late from an event last night, I was really hungry because I didn't eat dinner. It was 2am and I should have just gone to bed hungry. But like Jamie Foxx, I blame it on the alcohol.

It's really amazing how two glasses of wine and a cosmo can make you ravenously hungry. I got home and threw open my cupboards only to find two bags of rice cakes. Score! The second Jim walked out the door to take the dog for a walk, I shoved that shit down my throat like I hadn't eaten in days. I even got to that point where in my head I knew I was no longer hungry, but my hands just could not stop and the chewing started to become obsessive. I was in the zone. When Jim finally walked in the door, I snapped out of my daze and looked down at the empty bags in my hands in horror. Did I really just do that? I quickly threw them away before he realized that not only is his wife a hog, but she is a sneaky hog. I then pretended that I was merely sipping a Diet Sprite all along. When he wanted to get it on later, I had a really hard time feeling sexy with 80 ounces of rice cake in my stomach but I endured it somehow. When we finally went to sleep, I was tortured by visions of rice cakes and giant hams and golden turkey wings plagiarized directly from Audrey Griswold's dream. I woke up with a bloated face and a dark sense of shame.

Why can't I be a man? Rusty's dream was so much cooler

What?

There is a man who shall go unnamed who is also my husband who I'm very angry with. This man is sort of an idiot. Let me explain.

Last night, he finally arrived back from his little escapade to Vail during which time he left me home alone with the dog (HIS dog technically) for three days so he could snowboard with his brothers and basically not have a care in the world. Which would have been fine had I not discovered that I'm not allowed to have dogs in my office and had I not spent all of Saturday at home, worrying, all of Saturday night cleaning up dog vomit and worrying, and most of Sunday at the animal hospital, worrying. Then coming home to clean up dog vomit and diarrhea that was not only in my home but also on my bedspread. I blame myself for letting her sleep on the bed but I really blame that man I mentioned earlier. Technically I blame him for pretty much everything. But I'm digressing.

Last night, he was finally home to help take care of his little animal who, no thanks to him, has fully recovered from her near death experience, all thanks to me and the 631 dollars I paid the vet in the emergency room. I called him before I left the office because at that point, I was looking forward to seeing him and told him to get my keys from our 80 year old neighbor, Margaret, who had watched the dog while I was at work yesterday. Okay, he grumbled.

Cut to two hours later. I was wandering around the dog park and up and down 87th Street from 8pm to 9:15 pm. That man and my KEYS were no where to be found. I called him of course, close to 60 times, but no answer. I pounded on the door. No answer. So naturally I assumed he took the dog for a walk and forgot to take his phone. Fine. But as it is still winter, standing on my front stoop for over an hour became unpleasant rather quickly. I tried to occupy my time with emails and squats, but it got harder and harder to ignore the cold, minute by freezing minute. THANK GOD Margaret got home before the frost bite kicked in and let me into my apartment where, lo and behold, there was that infamous man's iphone, laying on the table. And wait, did I hear movement in the back? why yes, I did. Because there he was. Laying on the bed with the dog. Both asleep. I managed my fury as best I could and asked "why the fuck didn't you let me in?" "I didn't hear you" was the reply. "I didn't hear you." Let me repeat that "I didn't hear you."

You didn't hear me knocking on the door or calling you seven hundred and eighty times? You didn't think that I was way overdue in coming home and since I expressly told you less than two hours ago that the NEIGHBOR HAD MY FUCKING KEYS THAT I MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO GET IN AND MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, YOU SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT YOUR PHONE INTO THE BEDROOM. He says "I have an ear infection, I can't hear." Really? Can you hear this: