Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Sunday, December 22, 2013

This Weekend I... Volume 24





This weekend I... finally saw "Catching Fire." I saw "The Hunger Games" with my friend, Amanda, so we planned to see this one together too. But Amanda recently had a baby and has been busy keeping it alive, so it was a little tricky for her to find some free time. I know, some people have messed up priorities.


This weekend I... went to Bar La Grassa with the boyfriend for our annual Christmas dinner. Our families live several hundred miles in opposite directions, so we split up for the holidays every year. It's kind of sad, so we make up for it by having a fancy date night before opening presents. 

And speaking of presents, holy mother of God, the boyfriend got me a diamond ring. (Not the diamond ring, just a diamond ring.) It's shiny, and sparkly, and pretty, and I love it. 


This weekend I... started reading "Game of Thrones." The boyfriend read them a while back and I gave him lots of shit for being a nerd. But then there was nothing on tv Saturday morning, and I was desperate, so out of curiosity I grabbed the first volume of the bookshelf. And now I'm hooked. 

It's the worst when you end up liking something you thought you hated.


Tuesday, December 17, 2013

I Never Met a Cookie I Didn't Like


As I mentioned in my last post, I did some drunken baking with my friends this weekend. I used my grandma's recipe for chocolate chip cookies. They've been my favorite since I was a little kid. But originally getting that recipe from her was like prying secrets from a Russian spy.

It's not that my grandma is particularly secretive or anything, she's just really old school. She doesn't use recipes. And since she's been baking those cookies for over fifty years, she doesn't even use measuring cups. Doesn't even have to think about it.

So this is how that conversation went:

Grandma: Then you'll want to add some brown sugar.

Me: How much?

Grandma: Well, not too much.

Me: Oh, okay. So, um, how much?

Then she'd shrug and hold out her hand as rough approximation. Like I'm supposed to write down, "Add 1 Grandma's handful of brown sugar."

It's weird to feel insanely frustrated with your own grandmother. I think that was the only time I ever felt like swearing at my grandma instead of with her.


Sunday, December 15, 2013

This Weekend I... Volume 23





This weekend I... did some drunken baking with my sister Amy, and our friends, Jess and Megan. We went to Jess's house intending to spend the day baking Christmas cookies. But that's not exactly how things worked out. 

I got there early, so Jess and I decided to have a champagne bottle's worth mimosas while we waited. Then, when the other girls arrived, we went to the bar to get some dinner (it's a really small town). We were only going to have a drink or two, but then some guy bought us another round. Then someone suggested a round of shots. And then another one.

We did eventually get around to baking our cookies. At midnight. Turns out baking with your friend while you're hammered is hilarious. 


This weekend I... spent several hours recovering from a booze and cookie dough hangover. Once again, Netflix saved the day.


Friday, December 13, 2013

I Want Things


I still make a Christmas list every year for my mom. It's full of practical, reasonably priced things that I will be extremely happy to receive. However, there are a handful of things that I really, really want but I had to leave off the list. Because they are not practical. And they are certainly not reasonably priced. But I still like to look at them and imagine having them.


1.) An aqua Kitchenaid Mixer To be honest, I'm not even a hundred percent sure what you use a mixer for. But I feel like if I had one of these then everything would be perfect, and I would be perfect, and all of my problems would be solved.

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2.) A cashmere hoodie Like this one from J. Crew. I could be fancy and casual at the same time. So it would really be a timesaver, mostly.

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3.) An emerald cut engagement ring I told the boyfriend we don't even have to go through with the wedding. I just want a ring that will make all the other girls jealous.

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4.) A fur-lined coat Winter has been brutal this year and I can't stop thinking about cold weather gear. This one from Burberry looks warm as hell. Classy as hell, too.

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5.) This bookcase Exorbitant price tag aside, the columns in my condo mean I could never feasibly have one. But I don't care. I want it anyway.

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

You Have to Fight for What You Believe In


I got into a color fight with the boyfriend a few days ago. As in, we had a fight about colors. And it got pretty heated. We almost broke up over the color red.

The boyfriend (and Wikipedia) says that cardinal is its very own shade of red, with no connection to the bird. He thinks that the color and the bird exist completely independent of each other and just happen to share a name.

I disagree. Vehemently. I say cardinal is a color the way eggplant is a color. The name offers a comparison that serves to describe the color. So when you say the name, you picture a cardinal, and then you know exactly what shade of red we're talking about. Obviously. It's so blatantly logical that any argument against it is maddening. Like arguing against science.

Anyway, the shouting eventually devolved into ignoring one another for the rest of the evening. Neither of us is willing to concede the point. We're going to have to put cardinal in the "off limits" category for now. We should probably just avoid any discussions about colors and shapes for the near future. It's still a pretty sensitive topic.

Such is life, I guess. All grown up relationships have their ups and downs.


Monday, December 9, 2013

This Weekend I... Volume 22






This weekend I... was freezing! With temperatures hovering around zero for the last few days, I spent most of the weekend wearing wool socks and a winter hat.



This weekend I... had Sunday Funday. My friend Nathan and I decided to bundle up, brave the cold, and get daytime drunk at few bars in my neighborhood.



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This weekend I... finished up my Christmas shopping.

I also got a little something for myself. I was walking through H&M was literally stopped in my tracks by this number.

The boyfriend warned me that people will think I'm going to an ugly sweater party whenever I wear it. He may have a point, but what can I say? I'm a sucker for clothes with animals on them. I now have a deer sweater, a deer t-shirt, a horse sweater, a raccoon tanktop, and a great dane t-shirt. I may dress like a four year old.




Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Day Disaster Struck


Someday I will likely be one of those ladies downtown pushing around a grocery cart full of my things. For the time being, I just carry a whole lot of shit in my purse. I carry so much shit around with me that I used to go through two or three bags a year. They would just wear out and fall apart after a few months.

So a few years ago I decided to get a really nice purse, one that would hold up for a while. I kept my eye on Neiman Marcus, saved up for a couple months, and splurged like a mofo.

Then one morning, like six months later, I was using the purse precisely as intended. I was carrying all my usual junk, plus the stuff I brought to work for the day: a can of pop, a frozen lunch, and a thermos full of chocolate milk.

When I got to the office I set down my bag and settled in. I reached for my breakfast, the chocolate milk in my purse, and was met with a swampy, cold mess. The top of the thermos had popped open somewhere between home and work leaving and inch and a half of sticky ass chocolate milk sloshing around the bottom of my fifteen hundred dollar handbag.

I pulled out all of my dripping wet things (leaving faint stains in the carpet that remain to this day), then went to the bathroom and poured out fourteen ounces of catastrophe. I spent about twenty minutes scrubbing, and rinsing, and fighting back tears. But miraculously, I managed to save my precious baby. By the time I was done, you couldn't even tell that the unthinkable had happened.

A few months later, I set down my purse to dig out my keys and a can of Dr. Pepper exploded inside it.

Despite what people say, I refuse to stop carrying liquids in my bag. I don't think that's the problem. I think the bag cursed by the ghost of a still living Marc Jacobs. But I also refuse to stop carrying the cursed bag because, you know, pretty!


Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Rappy Rirthday (That's supposed to sound like Scooby Doo)


Gordy's fourth birthday was on Sunday. Well, approximately. We just know he was about ten weeks old when we got him. And that was in early February. So we decided his birthday is December first since it's easy to remember.

His actual birth date was not the the only thing the boyfriend and I were totally clueless about that night. (As you may recall, we got him while we were drunk. At a rodeo.) The lady told us he was a blue heeler, but neither of us knew a thing about the breed. We had to Google it when we sobered up and got home.


Puppy's first Google

Every single website we saw stressed that blue heelers are extremely high energy dogs. They said they need to be on farms or ranches and are certainly "not suitable for apartments." The boyfriend and I live in an eight hundred square foot condo in the middle of the city. Which means we accidentally got the worst possible dog for our living situation. Oops.

But it's turned out surprisingly well. I guess I took all of those warnings as a challenge; sort of "like hell we can't." It helped that the boyfriend has a home office. And it really helped that there's a dog park about fifty feet from our building. (Something we barely even noticed when we bought the place.)

Also helpful? Gordy was f-ing adorable, so I was less inclined to drown him in the bathtub when he was acting like a total shit. Which was often. He was a god damned monster as a puppy.


I fell for that look every time.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

This Weekend I... Volume 21





This weekend I... went home for Thanksgiving, and I mostly just ate and napped the days away. Every time I go home I spend an absurd amount of time sleeping. My mom thinks it's because I feel so comfortable there. I think it's because they may have a carbon monoxide leak. Either way, I'm not complaining.


This weekend I... celebrated Gordy's fourth birthday with him. I tried to make it festive with a sparkly birthday tiara. It lasted about a half a second on his head before this happened:


Come on, Gordy. You're almost thirty (in dog years). Start acting like it.

This weekend I... read Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder by Kent Nerburn. It was a really good book that I finished in two days. But it made me feel super guilty about a bunch of things I had nothing to do with. It's so hard being a white girl.