When you care enough to send the very best

Ok, so last night, I watched the hallmark hall of fame. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, as I love not only Hallmark Hall of Fames themselves, but the awesome commercial breaks where they only show ads for Hallmark, and also this particular HHOF was the one where the girl that played Felicity had to marry some guy she had never met because she was pregnant. And I do so love Keri Russell and her lovely lovely Felicity Hair. She's one of those " I wish I was her so I kind of have a crush on her" girls. And of course I cried three times during the commercials, and in between crying and watching Felicity I told Erik all about how back in the day my best friend Sara and I would watch Hallmark Hall of Fames, and we loved the commercials more than anything. I don't even remember any of the movies we watched, I only remember the commercials. I wish I could go back and watch the ones from the eighties but I've looked for them online and I can't find them. One time my mom watched it with us and during some commercial where a girl got married and her best friend gave her a card, my mom was all "this makes me think of two girls ten years from now" and we looked at her like the complete freak that she was and we were totally embarrassed and freaked out and of course ten years later we both totally got married and gave each cards, so I will say that those people at Hallmark and my mom both totally know their shit. Anyway, the first commercial last night was about this card that this girl got from her best friend on her birthday, and I totally cried, and Mr. E just LOOKED at me and was like "OH MY GOD I cannot imagine you AND Sara watching this together." It ruled.
The other fun part of the night was when I was talking out loud and I realized how freaky it was that I never start getting my period at night, only in the morning, and Mr. E told me it was because of the tides and the moon and cycles and other stuff that people and scientists totally do not get. And it kind of freaked me out, like, I don't believe in all that moon tides chanting at night listening to Stevie Nicks and being pagan or whatever shit, but dude, how else do YOU explain it?

Little Anne

Although there are many many many sad and traumatic dog movies, including Old Yeller, Sounder, and the Summer of the Monkeys, I 've always felt that Where the Red Fern Grows is the best. It is mad depressing. It was the first movie my mom ever rented me and my brother, like two days after my parents got a VCR, back in 1983 or whatever when they were first invented, and she turned it on and left the room. When she came back in the room my brother and I were sitting in the middle of the floor clutching each other (we were like 6 and 4) with tears streaming down our faces, just distraught, and we looked up at her like she was the worst woman in the world for renting such a thing. Which of course, she was.

Ever since then, the only dog I've ever wanted was a coonhound named Little Anne. Today Mr. E showed up at my office, out of the blue, holding a seven week puppy in his arms. There's not a lot of things cooler in the world than your super cutie husband showing up at work to surprise you with a super cute puppy. Maybe the only thing better than that is finding out that the puppy is half coonhound, and that her name is Little Anne. As in, she was already named that, by the humane society. Somehow it just seems meant to be, don't you think?

PS Gravey is not happy about this turn of events, from what I've heard.

Edited to say that actually, she didn't come with the name Little Anne, Mr. E gave it to her because it "just seemed right". I found that out later. I now refer to her as Pig Dog the majority of the time, because she looks just like a little pig. However, as my sister's name is also Anne, Pig Dog's official name is Annabelle. Or Little Anne. Or Pig Dog. Or Pee Factory.

Party with the Haitians

I have to say, January has been a super craptacular kind of month, so far anyway. Mainly because I just cannot get a good night's sleep, and work has been super stressful and I am pissed off about gaining weight and having to go running in sucky get dark early Lincoln Nebraska and my husband wants to get a dog which we totally cannot afford because he broke another muffler off the car and did you know that Jettas have two mufflers? Jesus, the man is like, a muffler killer, you would think he would be a little more careful with the car since it costs twice as much to replace the two stinking mufflers. But my point is that no matter how much things suck or how many jerks get inaugurated or how many people ignore all the other problems in the world to have stupid award shows for stupid movies about howard hughes, I can always always always get in a better mood, just by watching a. Try it, it totally works, I promise!

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechclueless.html

I must, I must, I must decrease my bust

My lovely rude and flat chested and therefore totally not sympathetic husband chanted that at me this morning on the way to work. After I started bitching about how I have lost 25 pounds and none of it came off of my boobs and I was sick of nothing ever fitting in the chest area, mainly cardigan sweaters. How can I fulfill my wasp fashion destiny if I can't wear cardigan sweaters?! It's so frustrating. I have another 20 pounds to go, according to me, and I am hoping it all comes off my chest. I've been back to counting points for about two weeks now and the scale isn't cooperating. No loss yet. Although Mr. E says I look thinner, which doesn't really help, thanks. I don't want to look thinner, I want to BE thinner. I know that makes more sense probably, but it makes sense to me. I'm giving it until V-(Valentines) Day, and if nothing happens by then, I'm going to have to try something else.

Gotta love the Fabulous

After receiving an urgent phone alert from my husband (I so married the right man!), I hightailed it over to yahoo movies and played the trailer for Miss Congeniality 2 - Armed and Fabulous. Woo hoo does this movie look crappy! I am SO there.

Oooh, we're halfway there.

Today, using some sketchy calculations involving my fingers, Excel, my cat's birthday, and Google, I realized that we have arrived at the halfway mark. Halfway between when we got here, and when we get to leave. Even though we have no idea where we're going, which is really fucking scary, to tell you the truth, I know we can't stay here. I just can't do it anymore.

It's not that lovely Lincoln, Nebraska is all that bad. It's not. It's just not where I want to be. I have discoved some things about it that are actually pretty cool...did you know that this is where Arbor Day was invented? Pretty cool to be able to plant a tree on Arbor Day right where it all got started. Ok, so I've had to sort of redefine what "cool" means of late, but that's kind of my point.

I am tired. Tired of the midwest, tired of cold, tired of Republicans. Tired of redefining. But mostly, I am tired of making the best of things. I don't want to have to scavenger hunt my way through a town and tell myself that things aren't as bad at they first seemed, that they do have good bbq and some Democrats, or that boring holidays that no one cares about were started here.

I am tired of trying to find something good in a place I don't like. I just want to be somewhere I like, and have the something good come easily.

Could someone in lovely Santa Monica, California please offer my husband a job? He's really good at, um, looking at mud? 'kay, great! Thanks!

Free meat filled buns, yeah!

There's this weird Nebraska fast food sandwich thing called a Runza. It's like loose meat baked in a roll. I don't know. It's not like I'm going to eat one, so I'm just going on what it looks like in the commercials. Apparently they sell them at Cornhuskers games instead of hot dogs. Freaky. The point is that I always hear these radio ads about how you can get a Runza for whatever temperature it is at 8 am that morning. This morning it was zero freaking degrees! Does that mean I would have gotten a free meat bun sandwich at 8 am? I certainly hope so.

Which brings me to my main point, which is that what better day than today, the day of zero freaking degrees, to finally commit and buy our airline tickets for our super lovely fabuloso spring vacation? The vacation where we will lie in the sun and think about how we are not in freezing ass meat bun land. Thanks to Orbitz and Mastercard two tickets to Cancun have been procured. Sweet! Due to my "I won't lie on a beach anywhere MTV has ever had a beach house" life rule, we'll actually be lying on the beach 40 miles away from Cancun in Playa del Carmen. If you're stalking me, that's where I'll be. And if MTV has had a beach house there, since I've had good cable, please don't tell me. And obviously I'll be needing a new bikini, which brings me to this, yo. I'm quite excited to rock the floral tropical print in Mexico.

http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-9858375-3654269?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B0006MBXVW

And by the way, my only other life rule, as of right now, is that I don't watch Friends reruns, so if I'm coming over to visit your house, turn off the goddamn tv. Oh, and I don't watch Robin Williams movies, as he is my mortal enemy. Suck it, Patch Adams.

Back on track

Well, I am back to counting points, excercising, drinking my stupid water, and not eating any old crap that I feel like shoving in my mouth. And I feel a lot better. It's a lot more work, and sometimes it's stressful, but it's nice to have a hopeful feeling again, instead of a guilty one. Last year I made my first weight loss goal at about this same time, and I made it, by September. So this I'm going to kick it up a notch. My official goal is to weight 120 pounds by July 15th. I have a deal with my friend SP and with Mr. E that I won't go below this, or below a size 6 in Gap jeans. I'm looking forward to buying my first pair of really overpriced beat up jeans at Hollister. And yes, I am 13 years old. Hey, I just really love their jeans, ok?

Cat - Spayed

Kate Spade

I am sure all the "butter chews" I snarfed over vacay have nothing to do with it, but is it just me or does my ass seem larger this morning?

After returning from the fat farm known as my in laws house, my pants are fitting a bit tighter and there's a little too much junk in my trunk. Last year I lost 20 pounds, and this year I want to lose another 25, and now I'm starting in the hole. Which sucks, but I am going to use it as motivation to get off my ass and finish this thing already. So I need to start back counting points, which sucks, but works, and excercising, which also sucks, but works. There's so many little things you have to learn the hard way when you are in the middle of trying to change your lifestyle. One of them is that you always do better when you plan ahead. So this Sunday I thought I would try to make the pumpkin bread from the most recent Cooking Light so that I would have breakfasts ready made for this week, and I really thought it was going to be awful, since I am not good at breads, etc, but it was YUM! And it's a great way to use up any extra cans of pumpkin pie gook you might have lying around from when your mom brought a grocery store's worth of crap to your house for Thanksgiving because of course they don't have stores that sell canned pumpkin in the wilds of Nebraska! Sigh.


I cut this in half, beccause I didn't want to make all that much bread, and I substituted Splenda for half the sugar, so I'm calling it two points a slice.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

2 cups sugar
2 cups canned pumpkin
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup fat-free vanilla pudding
4 large egg whites
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Cooking spray
Preheat oven to 350°.

Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture, stirring just until moist. Stir in chocolate chips.
Spoon batter into 2 (8 x 4-inch) loaf pans coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on a wire rack, and remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack.
Yield: 32 servings (serving size: 1 slice)
CALORIES 152 (30% from fat); FAT 5g (satfat 1.2g, monofat 2.5g, polyfat 1.1g); PROTEIN 2g; CARBOHYDRATE 26.5g; FIBER 1.1g; CHOLESTEROL 0.0mg; IRON 1mg; SODIUM 137mg; CALCIUM 10mg;

 

Have you been recently oiled?

Because we live in Nebraska and there's nothing fucking to do here AT ALL, Mr E and I spend a lot of time fighting about what in the hell we're going to do on our Saturday nights. This weekend he asked me if wanted to go see The Life Aquatic, which I don't, because I have a fish phobia, so I said "Actually, I was thinking we could rent Hellboy and Troy and get really drunk." Which we did, and it was AWESOME. We bought a bottle of Jim Beam and the last copy of Troy left at the video store. Here are the official rules to "TROY, the drinking game". I would also like to add that seconds after Troy was over, I drunkenly stated that I thought that I hoped Brad and Jen would make it but I had a bad feeling about things, and when I checked Defamer the next morning it turned out that THEY HAD BROKEN UP FOREVER. To which I say "OH MY GOD, I HAVE CELEBRITY RELATIONSHIP ESP". I will try to use my powers for good rather than evil. By which I mean I really wish I could use this talent to get really rich, but like all my talents, I suspect it is financially useless.

Rules of the game for getting drunk and watching TROY:

1. Drink every time your friend/husband/cat asks "Which one of them is TROY?"
1a. Drink everytime someone says "That's ALOT of ships. Hee hee. "
2. Drink every time someone has their shirt off. Drink twice if it's Brad.
3. Drink every time anyone speaks with a vague unplaceable accent.
4. Drink every time anyone freaks out over the horrors of war.
5. Drink every time any one whines on and on about the loss of a loved one.
6. Drink whenever Priam looks disheleved or cries.
7. Drink whenever anyone slanders the gods and gets called out for it.
8. Drink whenever that faux Titanic woman chanting background music kicks in.
9. Drink ALOT whenever Brad does it.
1o. Drink during any gratuitous butt, leg, or crotch shots. Argue heatedly with spouse over "leg double" rumors.
11. Drink during any impossible physical feats.
12. Drink whenever the cat farts.
13. Drink when any of the Greeks appear to have been recently oiled. (WARNING, this rule is DEADLY.)
14. Drink when someone is chained. Only this rule sucks, as people were only really ever tied up, and we decided that maybe they didn't have chains back then.
15. Drink whenever swords clash. Drink two if it's symbolic. Don't ask me what that means, I think it's a guy thing, this is Mr. E's rule.

Resolved

1. Be More Fearless
Therefore, get my drivers license
2. Lose the last 25 pounds I want to lose to go with the first 20 pounds I lost
Therefore, Start back up with counting points, and eat healthy delicious exciting food.
3. Allow myself to order and buy books, to make up for the shitty book selection available here.
4. Take the time to really BE interested in other people’s lives.