Life Lesson #4,984,564:
Friends ask if you're okay.
Good friends are sitting in the cell next to you.
Great friends clean out their bank account to post your bail and tell you not to worry about it.

Poetic thought for the moment:
Don't cry when you're in handcuffs, there's no one to wipe your tears.

because I refuse to twitter

I've decided to post a list of my more recent Facebook statuses (stati for plural?) so that everyone can enjoy them. These have been made pretty much in the last few months:


Had the same conversaion with two separate people which confirmed the theory, "eminem is everyone's guilty pleasure."

I don't get Farkle. So you just roll the dice, and take a risk on whether to keep rolling or keep your score? Really? That's it??

I've had FOUR false sneezing alarms today. My nose hurts.

Aww found a baby worm in my vermicompost bin! They're thriving!

Why do "Power Assist" doors take twice as much exertion to open?

my friend rachel wyman drove over a curb and her muffler fell off! Plus her car is an older honda so without the muffler people keep trying to race her. Hahaha.

my parents left for the weekend (on a trip I did not know about) just in time for their dog to throw up EVERYWHERE. Guess who gets to clean it up.

heehee my dog HATES the ringing of the house phone. I'm listening to him howl at it now. It's soo funny.

Nearly killed myself when my foot snagged on a plastic bag in the bathroom and my head came within inches of the toilet. Im so clumsy, HOW AM I STILL ALIVE??

Saw fresh drops of blood on a downtown spokane sidewalk. Welcome home lindsey, welcome home.

Serves me right i guess, sprayed on perfume and immediately inhaled like half of it. Gross.

ahhhh. the satisfying accomplishment of a sneeze well done.

eew just found a dead, pressed bug inside my book.

I keep sneezing then having the sneeze turn into a cough, so it's like a double assault on my throat. Come on cold, go away!

I need to get my mom to stop shopping at Grocery Outlet. All we have is American Finest sliced cheese and Shopper's Value tortilla chips. Neither of those brands actually taste like Kraft or Tostitos.

"zapped the fabulous right out of him" -House on his gay-turned-straight patient

Luckily I know the House theme song well enough that I can play it in my head while I race to grab my pizza from the oven and not miss a single beat of the show.

forgot the bathroom at work has an automatic flush and it scared the bejeez out of me. sigh. I really have bad nerves. (and follow-up later that evening: yay! I remembered the automatic toilet flusher so it didn't scare me!! Sigh. Sometimes I wonder how I make it through life...)

~~~~

had enough? believe me, there's plenty more where that came from. Feel free to stalk my facebook, if you're my friend already. One lesson learned on this path to self-discovery (or self-facebookovery) is that a large number of my statuses involve sneezing. hahaha.

yes, my dog is a child

Five Fast Findings:

1. I posted a few weeks ago that I had finally re-entered the world of popular music. It's so fun listening to music that isn't from high school! Of course, everything that is now deemed "overplayed" is still new to me. I still like Teenage Dream by Katy Perry, and I'm in love with Our Kind of Love by Lady Antebellum. Give it time though, give it time.

2. Are you eating? K, don't read on until you're done. My dog's habit of dragging his butt on the ground apparently indicates he may need his anal glands "expressed." eew, but apparently what you have to do is press on a certain spot under his tail to release the buildup of what's described as foul-smelling fluid. Anyone who's ever met my dog, please feel free to cue laughter now. My dog doesn't even like his collar, let alone some crazy person (me) poking around his a**. After one try, he caught on and simply refused to expose his backside to me. I felt like a pedophile. The vet will have to do it when he gets sedated for his nail trimming (which is a whole nother post).

3. I've started taking Vitamin D, starting at 4,000 IU for a week then will reduce to 2,000, because the Oprah Magazine said it may help me shed abdominal fat. Well, I'm paraphrasing. Here's the article: Super D

4. Because I have so much free time at work to play on the computer, I've begun playing Facebook games. My favorites are Sorority Life, Frontierville and City of Wonder, in that order. I love Sorority Life because you get such cute outfits. I get the rush of shopping, but without spending the money! It's awesome, and I can change outfits a hundred times a day if I want. Here's my latest one, obtained by finding each piece of the outfit through my "sorority sister" postings on facebook:



5. I wrote my very own song this week. Well I didn't do it on my own, my friend Skyler helped me with it, but I wrote the lyrics and he showed me how to play chords on the piano for it and helped me come up with the melody. It was fun. I'm hoping to write another one soon. It's quite a catharsis.

but paying bills is so boring

Next Friday will mark the official arrival of my SECOND full paycheck and I'm a bit overwhelmed at the ways I could spend it.

Here are my top ideas, of which I'll probably only be able to choose one:
1. Have my dog's nails clipped - $100 (yes, $100: $10 for the clipping, $45 for the sedative to knock him out and another $40 to bring him back to life, plus tax. I'm not joking. And that's an improvement, vets used to have to GAS him because he'd fight the sedative.)
2. Real laptop - $300 (my current one is a cute little netbook but cute is about the best adjective for it. It's portable, light, has great battery life, but I'd like to use Photoshop without my computer roaring with laughter at me.)
3. Camera - $150 (mine died about 2 years ago and I made do with my cell phone camera, but the camera on my new phone has actually set mankind back a few years with its crappiness. I'd like new facebook pictures please, and it'd be nice to have some visual stimulation on this blog.)

However. Bills beckon. I spent $40 on two pairs of shoes this week (soo cute. I'd post pics, but see #3 above) but other than that my money went to bills. So the right thing to do is forgo all of the above and just pay bills. right...? Though Hiro's nails/claws/whatever are getting really long. So that could be classified as a bill, but Hiro's sheared claws can't take pictures of my friends playing Extreme Spoons and they sure can't then edit for red-eye in Photoshop. Decisions, decisions.

I swear, I'm not that bad of a singer

So I started voice lessons on Friday. I found the teacher on Craigslist, but I had heard of her name before, she's a local singer. I arrived at her studio, and lo and behold, I had actually met her before at Ross Point Music Camp (which, sadly, is no more. I loved that camp), she had been a counselor there. She didn't recognize me but it definitely helped me feel better about my choice to finally take voice lessons. I learned that I'm a mezzo-soprano, I have good resonance, and that I have some perfection issues (as in, I have to be perfect, even though it's painfully clear I'm not!). That being said, it was a good lesson and I relearned a lot of stuff I was taught in high school choir, such as proper breathing, vocal exercises, scales and other basics. I'm looking forward to my future lessons, and her teaching style and voice philosophies definitely match mine.

Five maybe not-so-Fast Findings

1. I've decided to take both piano and voice lessons. I've been playing since I was 8 and singing since I can remember, but it's been many years since I took lessons, and I need to regain my confidence again.

2. My body has decided to catch someone's sore throat, and my nose is expelling GREEN phlegm. That's a new one for me.

3. I dreamt last night of a little boy, wearing a green T-shirt and blue cargo shorts with cute little brown shoes. He was maybe able 4 or 5 years old, darker complexion, fine brown hair in a bit of a bowl cut, long eyelashes and a smile that could knock me over. I wonder why my mind chose to create him.

4. I've been watching House seasons 5 and 6 over the last week or so, and perhaps I'm watching it too much because when I went to the post office yesterday, I kept waiting for someone to keel over of some heretofore undetectable disease. And old man stumbled and I immediately waited for the ambulance sirens. Of course, it didn't occur to me to find my phone to call 911. Hmm.

5. The package I sent Priority Mail yesterday at about 5pm to Seattle arrived TODAY before noon. Wow. Perhaps the United States Postal Service has a chance to redeem themselves here. I've lost soo many things in the mail in this past year, including checks, important insurance signature papers, cards, etc. Perhaps their motto could be "If we don't get it there fast, we won't deliver it at all."

if I'm working the graveyard shift, can I be called the groundskeeper?

I find it ironic that they call this shift I'm working the "graveyard" shift. Like it's okay to be dead, when in fact, the better part of the shift is spent rubbing my eyes and trying to stay awake.

I'm working as a reservations agent at Northern Quest Resort and Casino. Working here is wonderful. The people I work with are the cream of the crop, so to speak, of the customer service-oriented industry, because that is what makes or breaks this hotel and casino. We are chosen specifically for our customer service backgrounds and personable attitudes. So imagine a whole bunch of people who automatically smile when they pass by you, have proper manners, enjoy talking with people, and go out of their way to be a nice person, and that's what the atmosphere is like here. It's pretty interesting. Plus, in the reservations department, we each have our own desk and somehow, most of us chosen in this department are mildly OCD and like order. We all have our cubicles covered in information sheets and never leave our desk messy at the end of the day. It's fun not being the only crazy person in the office!

We also all read books in between calls (well, most of us) so it's nice being around people who get as absorbed in a book as I do! And the best part about the job? The Employee Dining Room. Yes. Northern Quest provides us with free food 24 hours a day. I don't have to cook, I don't have to pay for food, and what's at the EDR is nearly always healthier than going through the McDonald's drive-thru. Definitely my favorite perk of the job.

Anyway, I'm glad I enjoy this job, it helps make my life more enjoyable. I've been doing well since The Breakup. The first few weeks were miserable and I just wanted the pain to be over, but without pain, I realized I couldn't have learned how to recover from it and heal and become stronger than I was before. And everyday difficulties pale in comparison. While it would have been nice to not deal with such intense misery, I understand now that it helped me grow.

it's just an adult's way of legitimizing texting

So I was out with my dad tonight and he has a Blackberry. He got more texts than I did! I used to think people were pretty high-powered if they had a Blackberry because it's always been aimed at business people, but come on, at the end of the day, you're still texting people just like your 19-year-old son does 600 times a day. It was pretty surreal sitting there eating dinner with my dad merrily tapping away like a teenager.

I'll admit though, he WAS texting his boss back and forth, but MAN, times have changed. Remember when you called someone or had your secretary do it during business hours? Those time-wasters are long gone, now that texting is here to save the day! Sure, it may have taken longer to text back and forth than just pick up the phone, but in between texts, my dad and I had a conversation, whereas in the old days, he would have had to excuse himself to take the call.

I guess this again brings up the broader point of whether being more "connected" actually disconnects you from the people you're with. While my dad didn't have to leave the room to communicate with his boss, he WAS unavailable for about 30 seconds every 5 minutes to reply, even though he was sitting across from me. I guess it just depends on what the texts are. My dad's were with his boss, so maybe that makes it better? Do you think he should have excused himself, even though he was just texting? I think this will bear further scrutiny when today's teenagers enter the workforce.

Yes because Spokane and Mexico are right next to each other

I just got a "new match" from LDSMingle.com. The guy lives in Mexico and his entire profile was in Spanish. I'm serious.

Five MORE Fast Findings

Had more to say after I made my last post.

1. I just got an email from matchmaker.com with the subject reading: Don't let your soulmate meet somebody else. hmm...you'd think if he was my soul mate it would all work out...it's like a tarot card reader, don't leave without paying me $60!

2. It is so nice not being criticized for liking Adam Lambert or Lady Gaga or any of the millions of people that ex-fiance was personally offended by. I can watch Gilmore Girls without listening to snide remarks, I can watch Rent without constant ridicule, and I can sing loudly in the car again!

3. iTunes increased the price of most of their singles to $1.29. Sheesh. Stupid inflation. Or greediness.

4. So apparently Darius Rucker is Hootie from Hootie and the Blowfish? Hey at least I joined the party right? And I guess he's a country singer now. Who woulda thought, a black guy doing country. He has a good voice for it though.

5. Why is John Mayer still famous? His voice never ever changes, why can't he get a throat drop or something? Perhaps he's too busy bragging about all those girls.

6. I couldn't wrap this up without ending on a positive note: I now have re-entered the world of popular music!! I actually have some songs in my iTunes that are less than a year old! woohoo!!

Five Fast Findings

1. My professional opinion is that, if you are a boy and your voice hasn't changed, you have no business singing for millions of people (ahem, Justin Beiber). It's just creepy.

2. My dog now runs to the door when my parents arrive home, even though I, his owner who feeds him and loves him, am sitting right there on the couch. Traitor.

3. I love Wii Boxing. I'm still sore from the other day but my back is going to be sooo toned in a few months.

4. Secretariat was an awesome movie. My mom scored some tickets to a sneak preview of it last night, and it was totally worth the $8 overpriced, burnt and salty popcorn. I recommend Secretariat, it's a good, clean family film, which have been lacking in the past few years.

5. I'm picking up some worms tomorrow for my compost bin. Red wigglers, which are top notch for compost worms.

Musically robbed or robin hood?

I've been driving my dad's car for the past two days while he takes my car to get some small repairs. Naturally, each day I've forgotten to grab my CDs and am stuck listening to the radio for my half-hour drive to work.

I've actually been listening to country. Every 5-6 years or so I'll go through a country phase for a few months, then it ends and I don't listen to it for the next 5-6 years. But for the past few days, country has been nice for me to listen to, mainly because it's basically positive music. No loud, clashing drums, or screaming, just a guy and his guitar, boiled down to the basics. And the majority of the songs are about "wanting a good woman" or something to that effect describing the perfect woman, which is really just about someone he can spoil while she who loves and supports him, in nice terms that don't involve swearing, innuendo or other crass terms. Try singing about that, Kanye West. It's nice to hear a guy, for once, who's not too proud to admit he needs a woman, and not just the first girl on the street who will go home with him, but the right woman. So that's kind of why I've been listening to country. That, and since me and my ex-fiance never listened to country, it's a bit of a fresh start for me. One day at a time, you know.

After spending a few hours on match.com, here's what I've learned:

1. Many men are in the military.

2. Most pictures are either self-taken (very up close and personal) or something involving the great outdoors and far away, with the subject bundled in fishing gear, snowboarding gear, hunting stuff or perhaps a wetsuit. Useful.

3. All profess to treat a woman like a lady and are true gentlemen. So either nice guys really do finish last or that's a bunch of crap. Probably a mix of both. welcome to dating sites.

4. Creepy old men from across the country will "wink" at you.

5. Seems like most every guy has a dog or wants one. Too bad my dog doesn't want a new daddy.

6. There are a fair number of 18 or 19-year-old guys who are "so tired of trying to find the right one." Yeah. Wait til you're 23, then we'll talk.

7. Most say sex is the last thing on their mind, or something to that effect. Either that's a lie, or it really is true and that's why they're hanging out on match.com all weekend instead of trying to get some. It would be interesting to compare psychological profiles of these guys on dating websites.

Five Fast Findings

1. I just got an anti-pull leash for my dog, where it's kind of like a halter collar, and it pulls on his shoulders rather than his neck. He is super sensitive about his neck. Even putting a collar on can send him into a nervous frenzy of yelping and running away. So this collar is amazing. Now taking him for a walk is simple, I slip the halter over his head, slide two sherpa-covered pieces that go under his front legs, and he's good to go! Nothing rests on his neck and I don't have to try to buckle something tight on his neck and he just prances along, glad that when he runs too fast for me, the leash doesn't pull on a collar on his neck!

2. My dog has so much energy and is in such great shape (yes, at 12 years old) that he makes me tired by the end of a walk, and he's still racing circles around me (yes literally). Sad...

3. I started my first day of work at the Northern Quest Casino and Hotel. I'm going to be a reservations agent, but the first two days of orientation are just so we can get acclimated to the environment as a whole. My group is cool, there are 10 of us and we're going to all different areas, from food service, to the casino floor or cleaning, or to the hotel. Well, I'm actually the only one working at the hotel, but I'll see the others and be able to say hi.

4. Me and my mom donated several large bags full of used beauty products on Saturday. There's an organization called Project Beauty Share here in Spokane that accepts gently used cosmetics, toiletries (shampoo, etc) or other bath/hair/beauty products, and sanitizes them to be donated to local women's shelters. It was really easy for my mom and I too, because we have soo much makeup that we just bought and never really liked, or hair products that we bought on sale but never used, or in my case, I also have tons of samples of makeup I collected from magazines or makeup counters, etc. We also donated several flat irons, curling irons and a brush that we will never use but still work. It got us to clear out our bathrooms, kept items out of a landfill, and got products to people who need them. I've been poor enough that I've been unable to afford a razor or shampoo, and I'm glad we were able to help. (note: the best way to judge if the project will be able to use the product is, ask yourself if you would give it to a friend. Also, at this time they are UNABLE to accept mascara or types of lip gloss/etc that use a wand or similar mechanism.)

5. Who is Bobby Vee??? I got tickets to see him at the Spokane Fair (did I mention this already?) but he's the only one out of all the lineup I haven't heard of. I even wikipedia'd him and I know for a fact I have never heard of this man in my life. I put the tickets on craigslist, but no interest. Guess everyone's thinking that same thing as me! I kid, I kid, I'm sure lots of older people in the area are huge fans.

shoe a thon

I need new shoes so badly. And I can hear my mom's voice now, "you need new shoes like you need a hole in the head" (which is a dumb thing because you DO need holes in the head, a mouth to eat, nostrils to evacuate mucus, ears to hear a fire alarm).

But I digress. I need new shoes! Specifically, high heels. I haven't been to church in like two years but now I'm going back and I have a place to dress up! I have two pairs of heels: a hot pink pair that I was going to wear for my wedding but they're super cute so I'm keeping them; and a pair of low black heels that my mom just bought for me last week.

And there are so many types of cute heels! These are a few of my favorites from GoJane.com:

I love reading funny blogs. If the blogger has a particularly hilarious way of wording things, I will be their greatest fan. That being said, if you too enjoy funny blogs, this is a great one (note: swearing is involved):

http://thethinksithink.blogspot.com/2008/09/paper-problems.html

So on a whim I've been signing up for dating sites. however, the cost of these sites has gone way way up since the last time I embarked on this whim. Did you know that to sign up with eHarmony.com for a single month, it costs $60?? And that's for the basic plan! I know the argument is what's $60 compared with a lifetime of happiness blah blah BLAH, but still 60 bucks is a lotta dough for no guarantee.

Matchmaker.com costs $50 for a single month (and all of these sites offer discounts for multiple months, but that seems totally idiotic because who hopes to be single after 6 months of surfing internet dating sites??? How lame is that??) and there is no guarantee, plus it's super annoying because the site emailed me like 5 times to tell me someone sent me a message, but of course I can't read the message until I pay the toll. Moving on.

LDS Mingle used to be pretty good, I've heard, but I found only two guys within like 100 miles of me, which was expected since I'm not living in Utah anymore, but I'm definitely not spending $15 for two guys. If eHarmony were $15, I'd consider it, but regardless, the number of LDS guys on dating sites living near Spokane is going to be low.

So I guess I'll continue to do things the hard way, blind dates, singles ward, etc. I don't particularly enjoy the emotional ups and downs of dating, but since I can't order a good LDS husband by mail (that, I'd pay $60 for), I'll try this route. It's hard either way though, because I'm still a bit in the family/children mode after coming so close to being married (which was supposed to happen like 12 hours ago, weird), so I'm a little blinded by that. I wonder how long it will take for me to get back into the singles mode. Probably just long enough to get engaged again. Talk about ups and downs!

five fast findings: perhaps my life is a bit boring

1. omg Internet Explorer is SO slow. I heart google chrome.

2. My dog stuffed himself! My other dog, Shelby is staying with me for the night before I take her to a better home (literally, not like, code for killing her or anything), and I'm trying to fatten her up from being underfed for a month (I was the one who fed her but I wasn't there for a month), so I put out a can of wet food. Well, shelby went to relieve herself and who but my dog Hiro raced in to finish it off. He ate HALF A LARGE CAN of food and now his little belly is way distended and he's sleeping on his side cause it was uncomfortable sleeping on his stomach. haha.

3. Having a Wii is awesome. I've been playing Wii sports on it. It's even better when I don't have to share it with a precocious 7-yr-old who beats me at everything!

4. There are going to be pig races at the Spokane Interstate Fair (which starts tomorrow). I'm SO there.

5. I really like Miley Cyrus' CD, Can't Be Tamed. At first I thought it was loud and cheesy, but after a few listens, the songs are pretty cool.

five fast findings

I'm going to start doing Five Fast Findings, when I have little things that I don't want to do an entire blog post for.

1. I have a confession, I know the vast majority of dog owners HATE when their dog drags their butt on the carpet, but I find it hilarious!! I don't even mind vacuuming later.

2. My car has been leaking transmission fluid and antifreeze and needs some seals replaced and my first reaction was, thank GOD that's all it is. Man. My car sucks.

3. The "t" button on my Samsung Gravity sticks, so either I write "hanks for he noe" or ttthanks for ttttthe nottte." It's kind of annoying but I'm not really ready to bring it in to Radio Shack to be exchanged for a new one (I have radio shack insurance and I just bought the thing like two weeks ago anyway) so it will probably be one of those things I always complain about but never ever fix.

4. My mom just got a Wii, so that we can both exercise. I played Wii Sports, and did the training exercise in boxing where you have to hit the punching bags, and I got 16 on my first try. Who rocks. But I was out of breath. So I guess I don't really rock so much.

5. I've been addicted to this game on Facebook, Sorority Life. I started playing like a week ago and I'm already on level 42. Another one of those things where I rock, but the fact that I've been playing it so much kind of negates the rockstarness.

The things I do for him

After sleeping for hours at my side, he suddenly bolted awake. Seemingly unable to speak, but obviously needing something, I mimed out different possibilities with him. Hungry? eh. thirsty? nope. Outside? his tail wagged and his eyes went from puppy-dog to huge and excited. We raced to the door "come on buddy let's go!" and he twirled and jumped a circle in the air three times before I got the door open.

My dog Hiro is pretty funny. My mom says he kind of looks like an alien. He does, a little. But I think he's incredibly adorable, even if no one else does. He was abused, we think, before I got him, so he is pretty scared of most men and often growls at people before he gets used to them. It could be nice to have a "normal" dog, but it's not a big deal to me, I just tell people don't try to pet him and they back away pretty quickly!

He and I are pretty intuitive with each other. One time, my almost-niece-to-be asked, how did you learn to speak dog? She had just witnessed me training Hiro and my shared dog, Shelby, and was intrigued. I guess I started learning to speak dog a few days after I got Hiro. He was pretty timid at first, but then as the hours went by he slowly crept closer to me. By the next day he was jostling my hand while I was on the computer begging to be petted. How could I resist? At first, he had accidents in the house, probably because of being in a new environment AND because he and I still didn't know each other well enough to get that I-have-to-pee signal across. And I'll admit, there were several times over the first few months where I'd glance in his water dish and notice it was completely empty, with no way of knowing how long he'd had a dry throat.

But now, he is pretty well aware that he has me wrapped around his left front paw. I know that when he gets excited all of a sudden, I go through three possibilities and ask, hungry? thirsty? outside? Whichever one he needs, he wags his tail, jumps up and twirls around and gets all excited. Whichever ones he doesn't need, he either stops wagging his tail or just does a fantastic ice sculpture impression and freezes in place. It's pretty impressive, I think.

Later at night though, he can get a little cryptic because he's hungry, thirsty AND has a full bladder, but isn't sure which is most important. Like a few minutes ago, he ran outside, but then ran inside right before I closed the door. I got him food and he ate two kibble bits then looked at me pleading. So I put on my shoes (muttering "sheesh the things I do for you.." not really minding so much though) and walked out into the front yard with him, which has his favorite spot to mark. Then we went inside and I gave him a piece of leftover pork (he's been a good dog today, he needs a lot of meat, he's a boy), which prompted him to race around the house about two times after finishing it, then he went and finished his dry dog food (gross) and slurped half the water bowl. Of course, now he's back on the sofa and trying to wedge himself between me and the computer. Thanks buddy. You're welcome on the food by the way.

But there is nothing like having a dog as a companion. Yes, humans talk with you and sometimes make YOU food, but the loyalty and unswerving love and dedication a dog has for you is unmatched by any human. I don't know that I'd want a husband as dedicated as my dog is to me, but I'll take my dog any day. I've had a tumultuous few years, and he's lived with my aunt for a while, he's lived in Seattle, in Deer Park, with my parents, in Idaho, and now in Spokane with a crazy cantankerous dog who alternates between sucking up and growling at him for no reason. And yet he never trades me in for a newer model. Even though he loves my parents now too and jumps on them to be petted, I'm always his priority when I walk in the door. If I had a husband like that, I'd feel selfish and perhaps a bit guilty, but with a dog I just feel loved and wanted. There's a dog shirt at Target I thought about getting that says "Better than a Boyfriend." Got that right.

Hiro sleeping. Look at his little paw tucked under his chin and tell me that's not adorable. A mother's love..

I have a favorite blogger. I first discovered her on a lark when she wrote a parenting blog for Parents.com or something (and I was like, 19, and in no way interested in having kids, so who knows why I was there), and I followed her when that blog ended and she moved to a private blog. It's kind of funny because I've never met her and rarely even post a comment to her blogs, but I feel like I know her because her son wasn't even a year when I started reading, and now he is 4 years old with a sister. She is a hilarious writer too and my poor friends, mother and former fiance had to suffer with me as I read passages aloud from her blog.

Anyway, I bring her up because she recently recommended a book: What We Have by Amy Boesky. It is a memoir, so I was immediately interested. I found it at the library last week(I love our Spokane County library, they are so well stocked!) and just finished it last night. It is the story of a woman who has lived her life in fear of ovarian cancer. Every other woman in her family has died of the disease before the age of 50, and she and her two sisters have always known it was coming. It's a wonderfully-flowing book that follows her life and family interactions and how the big cancer target has altered who they are. It is well-structured and I often forgot I was reading a memoir, because it moves like a novel. I felt like I knew her at the end of the book and was rooting for her family to beat the cancer curse. Anyway, this review is sounding like I copied it from Emily's review, because she loves memoirs too, but if anyone is looking for an engaging read, "What We Have" is it.

I've been reading a lot lately. Ever since me and the fiance broke up, I've been throwing myself into books. Perhaps because he and I watched a lot of movies, but I think a lot of it is, books make me fully engage myself. Movies, I usually have to do a craft or fold laundry or something to keep from getting bored (a whole other post there), but books, I have to fully concentrate on what's going on.

I got really into the Star Wars books a few months ago. It's nerdy, I know, but this entire world created and detailed is really kind of fascinating. Plus, after the breakup, they were comfortingly devoid of romance. But alas, I caught up to the newest book in the sub-series I enjoy, and now have to wait until the next book is released at the end of this year. So Star Wars is done for the moment.

I've always enjoyed memoirs. I was thinking about why that was earlier today. I don't like biographies much, and I'm not really a non-fiction type of person, normally. But I love memoirs, because they are written by real people, who aren't always trained authors and who don't (hopefully) recreate their life just to tell a better story. It is what it is.

Despite my love of reading, I'm pretty selective on my choices. I don't have much patience for "the classics." Dickens, Shakespeare, even Hemmingway, I don't enjoy. They are too flowery for my taste, and I know it's mainly because they were written 200+ years ago, but I just don't enjoy taking an hour to read one page. I learned to read at an early age and I learned to read fast, because I enjoy the story, not individual words, and I want to find out what happened! That's why I love rereading books, because there are often things I skimmed over the first time. It's like a whole new book each time. Because my priority is the story, it makes sense that memoirs are interesting to me. It's someone telling of their life. Plain and simple. No allegory to interpret, no two-paragraph description of the freaking sunset, just the story. And you know what? There must be a lot of fantastic book editors and ghost writers out there, because there haven't been many memoirs that my critiquing mind has found issue with. I worked for a newspaper, and the average person is a crappy writer. They do too much or not enough, etc. A majority of my day was spent rewriting press releases to a readable format. I have a pretty careful eye and I've caught mistakes in many a paperback novelist's book (Danielle Steel is the worse when it comes to editing. It's like the editors just stamp it good to go without glancing at a single page), but rarely do I find glaringly obvious mistakes in memoirs, even more subjective issues like sentence structure or flow. Perhaps because this is someone's life. This is their legacy, if you will, not just the newest $7.98 Walmart paperback.

That's why I like memoirs. If someone is willing to take the plunge and tell me why their life is worth putting on paper, I'm willing to take a few hours to care.

The tech generation

I'm going to take a moment to reflect on the so-called technology generation. Now I'm 23, and I was one of the first people in the eighth grade to get a cell phone. But when I got to high school, it was becoming more popular. However, texting was still not a trend until I was older. I didn't even learn how to text until my last year of high school or so, and I got my first QWERTY keyboard phone less than a year ago. That being said, I feel like I was fairly on track with other people my age. People about 5 years younger than me, fresh out of high school now, have probably had phones since they were in middle school, if not younger. Phones aren't really a novelty anymore like they were when I was in the eighth grade. For younger people today (referring to middle/high school ages up until about mid-20s) is assumed that you have a cell phone and that said phone receives texts, and 99 percent of the time, that assumption holds true.

I feel pretty tech savvy, but at the same time, I have resisted the urge to constantly have my cell phone with me. I do depend on it for quite a bit beyond communication (alarm, clock, games, etc), but I do my best not to text constantly. As I type this, I think my phone might be in my purse in the kitchen, but I'm not sure. I know I haven't checked it in 2 hours, and I'm good with that.

I went out with a group of people last night, most of whom were younger than me, some who were younger than my 20-year-old brother. And several of us had not met others in the group before last night, so there were some awkward moments when conversation died.....OR THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN IF EVERYONE STOPPED PULLING THEIR PHONES OUT AT EVERY LULL. I was amazed at how, as soon as people stopped talking for a moment, no fewer than 3 people would pull out their phones, and not only check it for messages, but actually respond right then and there. I'm of the class that believes if you're physically with people, pulling out your phone for any reason that's not directly related to those people (ie. calling an errant friend to meet up with you all somewhere) is frowned on. Clearly, I'm getting old.

The worst part was, since there WERE some conversation lulls (and music was loud and made it hard to converse anyway), instead of making more efforts to talk with the others, I too am embarrassed to admit I found myself pulling out my phone to text other friends not there. AND I COULD HAVE WAITED. It's not like telling a friend about the lame-o music was important. But when everyone else is texting, what do you do?? Stand around awkwardly while they finish? Yes. I suppose I should have, just for the principle.

My former fiance had this problem. We would be sitting at Pizza Hut, and rather than sit in silence or talk to each other, he would be texting other people. It got to the point where sometimes I would text him, as we're sitting across from each other, just to get him to interact with me instead of other people not present.

Neilsen conducted a year-long survey on cell phone use that I read about a few weeks ago that determined that teenagers in the U.S. (ages 13-17) sent an average of 1,742 text messages per month, which not surprisingly, is the highest of any age group. The next youngest age group (18-24) only sent an average of 790 texts, which is a significant drop, but as age goes up, the average number of texts goes down. Interesting, yes, but not surprising. I was interested to learn though, that the 18-24 group made the highest average number of calls, at 265. I guess we still value talking to people, somewhat.

Until last night, I wasn't sure though, how results like this would play into everyday life. So teenagers text a lot. Who cares? Some people say it's a good thing because they're keeping in touch more often, and quite a few of those texts are probably to mom and dad. Well, I don't know what it may translate to in the future, but I'll tell you right now, compared to my days of being 17-18 and hanging out with people I'd never met before, last night felt a lot lonelier.

finding my street corner again

I need to start blogging again. I promise I will. Me and Calvin had moved to Lewiston and our place didn't have internet, then I got a job working for the Lewiston Tribune (awesome job, just didn't pay anything worth living off of) and was too busy to care about a blog.

Then me and Calvin broke up a few weeks ago, one month before our wedding was to take place. Enough on that.

So now I'm back at my parents' home in Spokane, where Quest provides high speed Internet and my new job at Northern Quest Casino/Hotel hasn't started up yet. and i'm putting off going through my stuff to store, donate or organize.

Right now, my parents are packing for an overnight trip to Nelson, BC, Canada, where they will drop my brother off at his new place. He is going to school at Selkirk College, in the ski resort management program. And let me just say this. WHY is it so bleeding hard to get a cell phone that works in both the USA and Canada without paying $1.49 a minute roaming fees and 75 cents a text? Apparently my brother has signed up with a prepaid verizon phone, and they assured him there are no crazy roaming fees. BUT I did lots of research last night and I'm convinced he will probably have some surprises on his first bill. Oh well, it's HIS PROBLEM! Live and learn, that's what I say. Just like he is set on getting a full sized bed for his room (in an apt he's sharing with 3 other guys), but believe you me, getting a full sized bed in a college apartment is easier said than done. I would have LOVED to have a larger bed in college (thank you, 3 years of twin beds on bed risers, for my fear of rolling off the bed in my sleep) but there's just a lot of logistics. a) a twin bed is cheaper, b) twin beds in a college town are generally easier to find, c) sheets for twin beds are cheap and come decorated with cartoon characters, and d) have you ever tried to lift your own queen-sized mattress? Even with two people, it ain't easy. I hope he makes good friends with his roommates and that they are big, strong guys.

So it's now 2pm, Nelson is about a 3 hour drive from Spokane, and HAVE THEY LEFT YET?? Nope! They are still puttering around throwing stuff in boxes (well, my dad is running errands for reasons only known to him) and my brother is still cleaning his room (as predicted by me and disputed three days ago by him, simply packing to go to college does not mean all of the trash in your room magically disappears), and I'm sitting here on my computer. Bored out of my mind but waiting for people to leave so I can have some peace and quiet!

Anyway. I'm sure I'll be posting a lot here because I have something like 6 friends in the world. 5 of them live nowhere near Spokane (Alaska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Michigan, see I wasn't kidding) and one WON'T CHECK HIS FACEBOOK AND HE LOST HIS PHONE AND NO ONE ELSE WILL RESPOND TO MY TEXTS BECAUSE I PROBABLY BORED THEM TO DEATH BUT HE IS STILL NEW TO MY WORLD SO I KNOW I DIDN'T KILL HIM YET. Yes I'm talking to you Skyler.

Welcome to my street corner.

They're always good for a laugh

I get frustrated with the pup sometimes because she's not fully housebroken yet, but every once in a while she cracks me up. When I brought her inside from the yard I saw this:

That black thing around her neck is a HEADBAND (like, for a human head). I threw it away so I guess she went dumpster diving and wanted to look pretty! I left it on her for a little while and it became her very own wearable chew toy.

We also got a laser keychain at walmart for $2.47 the other day. Worth every penny. It drives both the pup and tucker the cat MAD. I'll post videos as soon as I learn how to edit/compress them (currently they're something like 150 mb. that's what you get for using a basic digital camera)

I hate having such a crafty mind!

GAH!! I want a letter press! I've been doing research for my wedding invitations and have fallen in love with the idea of letter press printing, like how they printed newspapers for hundreds of years. It actually presses an ink-coated design into the paper, so it gives a wonderful texture. I'm in love! Problem is though, old-fashioned letter presses are really expensive. They used to be had for pennies on the dollar, but in the past year or two they seem to have surged in price. Sigh. If anyone knows of someone with an old printing press in their barn or something, let me know!!

Feed me

Okay so I'm pretty computer savvy. But I cannot FOR THE LIFE OF ME figure out what feeds are!! Like when someone has the little feed symbol or xml thing on their blog and you click on it, and it sends you to this massive page full of text and code and that's it, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT???

When I want to follow a blog (a recent development since blogs did not used to really be my thing), I just hit the Follow button on the top if it's a blogspot blog, an if it's anything else I usually just save it as a bookmark and forget about it until I'm cleaning out my bookmarks a year later. I use Google Reader to save blogs I like too, but that's another thing I usually misplace. Right now, I could not tell you how to get to my Google Reader.

So anyway, what are feeds?? How does one follow a blog that's not a blogspot blog??? I'm that dense. I even read the wikipedia article on feeds and I still don't get it.

everyday challenges

"What's up with Calvin being a BLACK name?"

My fiance is named Calvin. He's Native American but has passed for many different nationalities, so he's kind of sensitive about that. Anyway, while we were in the middle of a 3am viewing of Family Matters (yes that show is STILL playing reruns on Nick at Night) when he made the above comment. Turns out the last 3-4 shows we've watched all had black men named Calvin.

(By the way, the episode of Family Matters we were watching first aired in 1989. I was BORN only two years before that!! I might as well be recording it on my Betamax player and reading Beverly Cleary books in my oversized off-the-shoulder sweater. Oh wait, those are back in style now.)

As soon as Calvin said that, my first thought was, heehee I need to blog that! A few moments later, when I was in the middle of typing the first sentence on this blog I hear, "You should post that on your blog thingy." Guilty as charged. I am a blog whore!

the toilet seat

Let me first start by saying, I'm pretty lucky. Calvin has never ever sprayed on the toilet seat as long as we have shared a toilet. He flushes every time without fail AND washes his hands. HOWEVER. He also never puts the toilet seat cover down. I feel ridiculous even writing this because most women would die of happiness if their husband not only didn't piddle on the seat, but remembered to put the SEAT down. Flushing is usually a lesson entirely its own. No no, despite the fact that I have a wonderful fiance who does all of this, I'm still complaining; about the toilet seat COVER.

See, every time you flush the toilet, thousands of tiny little droplets OF YOUR PEE get flung into the air, swirling around the bathroom and all over YOU. Did I gross you out a little? Good. I hope so. Put that toilet seat cover DOWN before you use it! It's for that reason I loathe using public restrooms. Sitting on a toilet shared with hundreds of strangers doesn't gross me out at all, it's the lack of toilet seat covers that freaks me out.

Oh! Oh! And I have another, valid reason to put that toilet seat cover down. Maybe this redeems me from being housewife-zilla. We have a cat. And as most cats are, Tucker just LOVES playing with the toilet water. He has fallen into, yes INTO the toilet countless times, after which he bounds out of the bowl and saturates the toilet seat with toilet water and dirty little pawprints. Thus, when I'm having an EMERGENCY and must get to a toilet THAT INSTANT, I have to grab a wad of toilet paper and hastily but thoroughly wipe off the toilet seat before I can sit down. One more thing. Sometimes I don't turn on the light before I go because it's AN EMERGENCY FOLKS. and I plop down on the toilet seat. Words cannot express the fear that strikes my heart when I realize the toilet seat is covered in some sort of liquid. eeeew. All of this can be avoided if Fiance JUST PUTS THE TOILET SEAT COVER DOWN! Right? Who's with me?

red light district

I'm becoming a blogspot whore. If you'll notice by the fact that I now operate TWO blogs and have made multiple posts to each one in the past 12 hours. I've also been sucked into several blogs online (mainly related to wedding stuff) that luckily were Blogspot blogs, making it easier for me to follow them! Sigh. I've got to get a life. See, the problem is, it's either my blog and the Internet, or cleaning up what might appear to be a spot of liquid milk chocolate on the kitchen floor right now. It is no such thing. (has my puppy popped into your mind?). Think about that for a minute and THAT'S why I spend so much time here! I'm not so cruel as to post a picture of that liquid on the floor. You'd better be grateful I'm feeling so nice!

Puppies vs babies

We recently acquired a now 14-week-old puppy named Shelby. She's a Lab/Australian Shepard mix and very energetic. She's a lot of fun and thankfully does not bark much, but as a large-breed puppy, she loves to chew things. Her favorite seems to be computer cords and fabric like towels or expensive wool blankets. Luckily the blankets are stronger than her puppy teeth, but the cords? Not so much. She destroyed one side of Calvin's new earphones the other day. Just chewed straight through it.

That actually reminds me of my grandma's dog. Last July, she got a mini dachshund (named Mini, 0 points for originality there) that was just amazingly yappy and loved to chew on things. During this time, my grandpa was in the last stage of cancer, so he took a lot of naps. Often, he forgot to take his hearing aids out while he was sleeping. One day, Mini ran into the bedroom and PLUCKED A HEARING AID OUT OF HIS EAR FOR HER TO CHEW ON. My grandma found that $1000 chew toy later behind a chair and elected not to mention it to my grandpa, since he and Mini were already on the outs. It somehow became the dirty family secret until one day a few weeks later, when my grandpa mentioned that last hearing aid "that Mini got to." No lie, everyone in the room FROZE, wondering how did he know?? We had all been sneaking around for weeks trying to keep him from noticing he was getting sized for a new hearing aid or paying for another one, etc and he knew all along! Lesson learned: Grandpa always knew when a household pet did something naughty, even if Grandma didn't want him to know.

ANYWAY...

I have a computer fan under my computer at all times because it overheats (stupid HP Pavilion). Lately, my computer has been really running hotter than it ought to be. Yesterday, I noticed this:

That cord hanging free on the right side SHOULDN'T BE HANGING FREE! It took me at least 3 days to realize this, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that even when I was looking at this cord ball and playing with it, it took a full TEN MINUTES for my brain to process that yes, something was rotten in the state of Denmark. Shelby had chewed straight through the cord on the right side and through the rubber coating on the left side. Not good! Ever since then, I have been vigilant in making sure she stays the heck away from mine or Calvin's computer cords, because I can do without a computer fan, but computer cords are expensive.

Again: ANYWAY...

I keep getting sidetracked in this post. What I'm getting at is that I've been comparing puppies to babies a lot this week. Several of my friends have babies, so of course I'm privy to the ups and downs of being a parent. I'm starting to think though, being a parent vs being a puppy owner isn't much different! Actually, I'm beginning to wonder if a baby isn't easier. At least they don't chew through the computer fan cord or pee all over the kitchen floor I scrubbed for THIRTY MINUTES STRAIGHT. And babies don't steal pizza right off the plate on your lap. Frankly, babies don't go anywhere you don't want them to go. And you don't have to walk outside with them in the freezing air watching to make sure they REALLY poop before letting them inside. Babies also don't forget how strong their jaws are while they're locked around a squawking kitten's NECK.

On the flipside: Puppies don't have massive, soaking bags of diarrhea and yellow poop slung around their waists. Oh wait, puppies just leave the mess in front of the door, blocking you from leaving until you clean it up. And puppies don't...hmm...I honestly can't think of anything else that makes puppies better than babies.

Sigh. babies are clearly winning right now. NOT THAT I'M PLANNING ON GETTING PREGNANT ANYTIME SOON. But oh wise mothers, would you like to leave me reasons why puppies are better than babies? I could use the reminder!

I'm dying

I have this favorite blogger whose blogs I rediscover every few months and subsequently spend the next 2-3 days trying not to pee my pants from laughing too hard. Her style of writing is just amazing, not to mention, she has a gift for making everything in her life seem like a comedy central event. It's definitely awesome and if I ever turn out to be half the blogger she is, I'll be lucky!Here's the link (but you've been warned, go to the bathroom NOW and if you eat while reading, you WILL choke or spray your computer):

Not That You Asked...

Some people might consider this TMI but we've all been there!

Show of hands: Who here has a dog or cat? Keep your hands up if any of them have ever, uh, had GAS.

Someone in my family has been passing silent farts for the past few days. We've been slowly eliminating the possibilities. It's not me or Calvin. Today we learned it's not the cat, since he was outside when we got blasted with the latest silent killer (he used to have bad episodes until we weaned him off of wet food though). It's down to either Hiro or Shelby. I'm thinking now it's not Shelby because I've been the first one to smell it today and Hiro's closest to me. Calvin's convinced it's Hiro too. The thing that kills me though is that Hiro doesn't even wake up for it! He's like that gross old uncle from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days who just sits in his chair napping and tooting all day. THAT'S HIRO!

Oh man. When he lets one loose it makes me want to DIE. It's like falling into the sewer or sleeping next to the litter box. Sorry if that's TMI but hey, welcome to my life, apparently.

don't tell anybody

This seems to be the week of confessions. I have a few more to make:

All of the clocks in my house are wrong because I was too lazy to go look up the actual time before putting them on the wall.

(I know that the one in the bedroom is off by an hour and the kitchen ones are off by about half an hour, give or take, so I figure having a general idea is just fine until daylight savings hits. I mean, I've moved like 4 times this year. I'm boycotting setting the clocks one more time until I HAVE to.)

I hide from the animals.

I don't fold fitted sheets; I roll them up in a ball and chuck them in the closet.

I also don't match my socks as often as I should. I usually just take the whole lot of them and throw them in my drawer. Fiance's million socks are all the same brand and style, so he doesn't even have to match them, the lucky buster.

I love eating Lunchables and watching Disney Channel.

I read the Spokesman Review online multiple times a day.

I don't make New Years resolutions because I know I won't stick with them.

I play Bejeweled on Facebook and Mafia Wars on Myspace. And that's pretty much how I spend my day.

my vice

Okay. I have a confession. I love Keeping up with the Kardashians.

I never watched it before this year, and actually I started by watching the new spin-off, Khloe and Kourtney Take Miami. The girls are so annoying and catty but at the same time, it would be way fun to go clubbing with them or something. Their family is soo dysfunctional too, but what's kinda nice is how everyone still loves each other despite the craziness.

It's just a funny show! I've never been much of a tv watcher, but Calvin is and so we have the tv on all day. We pretty much stick to the Disney channel (Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly place) or Family guy, but if Kardashians is on or Brooke Knows Best, I'll watch those too. When VH1 did Real Chance of Love 2 and Tool Academy 2, I'll admit, I followed them. Calvin likes to keep a running commentary of insults and rude remarks (after all, it is a cheesy reality show), but once I tune those out, I'm quite entertained.

Anything other than those few reality shows though and I'm turned off. Sure, Biggest Loser is inspiring, but as soon as Real World or that new one, Jersey Shore comes on, I'm out of there. I may have gotten sucked into the reality tv world, but I'm not that far gone! hahaha.

Good riddance to 2009

It seems to be a common sentiment among friends on my facebook feed, but I'm glad 2009 is over. It wasn't a good year for me. It started off with my purse getting stolen from the place we were celebrating the new 2009 at and ended with me sitting with my fiance in our house, unable to go anywhere because it was snowing (and we can't afford snow tires) and we didn't have money to buy dinner anyway! So regardless, I'm glad to start off fresh this year. Of course, good things happened in 2009, I started dating Calvin and got engaged, we've had some good times, got Tucker the cat, and other small things, but overall, this year reminds me of being broke, having my family against me, having to move back to Spokane and traveling ALL over rural washington/idaho/oregon. Here's to a better 2010!

Welcome to the doghouse

Believe it or not, this actually won't be an animal-oriented blog. I mean, I do have animals, but it's not an animal-centric blog.

The name, squinty-eyed dog describes my own dog, named Hiro. He has this way of squinting his eyes when he's tired or weirded out by the goings on in the house. It cracks me up. I got him a little over a year ago from a small dog rescue in the Seattle/Bellevue area and he is my favorite animal in the world. Sure, he's kinda creepy and doesn't like anyone else, but I love him very much. He's 11 years old now and doesn't do a lot besides sleep, but he's very attached to me and never feels quite comfortable unless he can see where I am. He was abused in his other life (or lives) and is scared of a lot, including most other humans, dogs and cats (and the puppy and kitty we have skittering around), so most people don't like him, but I do.

Anyway, this is going to be a random blog. I have a lot going on and yet nothing at all, so we'll see what I come up with!

this is me and Hiro back when I first got him:

This is a cell phone picture of Tucker the cat. He was actually sleeping, out cold, for this picture.