Half Baked, Twice as Good

So lemme run this down for you, real list-like. The last few days since I got home from New Orleans have sucked in a special way, and because I was all Pollyanna this weekend with my “Hey! Let’s help people!” rant, I feel entitled to bitch now.

1. I have something. It’s some kind of snotty, nasty, energy-sucking thing that’s also causing panic attacks. I wish I were kidding.

2. I have to teach a class at 5:00 today. It’s technically the 3rd week of class but I’ve only laid eyes on these people once, and I swear to you, for all I know they are Joan Rivers look-a-likes. Yes, people. I am THAT good at education.

3. I have fallen out of favor with the socialites, and I wish I could say that I didn’t care, but I also wish I could say that I did. In reality, most of my frenemies need AA. Just a little message. (Did you like my Danielle Staub reference there? What? You don’t know who she is? Get thee to a television NOW.)

4. My hair is dirty and it’s possible that I also smell, showers notwithstanding. I think when you’re sick AND you’re in a bad mood, stink just seeps out of your pores.

5. I just lost 5 readers and 1 Twitter follower for that graphic and vaguely disgusting imagery.

6. The heat, y’all. The goddamned heat. If Hurricane Earl comes this way, and it’s kind of looking like it, there better be rain and at least 5-degree cooler temperatures. OR ELSE I’M MOVING TO MAINE. Consider yourself warned, Maine.

7. On a good note, the friends loyal and true to me are ones who warm the cockles of my heart. I have this one lovely friend who flew to NC this weekend just so she could host some friends for dinner at her mother’s house. She had me print up menu cards and she cooked a three-course meal, in the grand tradition of Southern hostesses. I swear, Yankees, I’m just not sure you know what you’re missing.

8. Hey, did you watch the Emmys? The dresses were ridiculously ridiculous this year. Actually I’m just talking about January Jones. The rest of them were kind of boring. Woo, but do you know who’s NOT boring? Tom and Lorenzo. The love I have for those boys is just ginormous and I think I need to up the gay quotient in my life. I really think that’s what might be missing, y’all.

January Jones, looking ridiculous at the 2010 Emmys in Atelier Versace.

9. I’m all done with the listing for today, mostly because the Diet Coke has kicked in and I’m a twirling, nervous wreck. What is it about illness that brings on the panic attacks? I’ll never know.

Have a great Tuesday, dolls. In the words of the ever-profound New Jersey housewives, I am not garbage.

Happy Wednesday which is actually my Friday because I’m off tomorrow through Monday so really it’s kind of like a Sunday night for vacation week! Hope you all have fun and fabulous and sunshiney plans for the 4th. I’ll be home…

…painting. Redecorating. Organizing. Spending money I don’t need to spend.

So – and I’ll post some pictures to really illustrate my point – our third bedroom, which we’ve been using as an office, has become a dumping ground for junk. Like, real live junk. Amongst other things, there are plastic bins full of photographs, baskets, old bank statements, Christmas ornaments and random paper. There are stacks of things to be recycled; DVDs that actually get watched on a regular basis and remote controls that don’t work or need batteries. There are shoes, an old rug, two suitcases and a computer monitor. I swear we’re not hoarders, though that’s what this is starting to sound like. We’re just two people with stuff we’re not sure what to do with that live in a house with three closets and virtually no attic space. Who can blame us?

To boot, this room is painted army green. No, seriously. Like, look at a tank, lighten up that green a notch or two, and that’s our room. It’s hideous and I can’t believe I ever agreed to paint it that color. It’s beyond awful. This green looks like moldy mud and it makes the room even more drab and miserable than it was to begin with.

Solution? Paint it darker! Bear with me here, because I know this sounds a little unconventional. We’ve decided to go with a dark navy blue for the walls (we already have off-white trim and molding) and a pale robin’s egg blue for the desk and maybe a side table. I want something rich and bold, but also something that will stand out behind the stacks and stacks of paper I’m accumulating from my business. (And before you complain, the paper is NECESSARY. This is a stationery business. It’s mostly envelopes and miscellaneous sizes of stationery.)

The plan is to get steel shelves from the home improvement store for either side of the window. I think the chrome color will look good against the blue and will give it kind of a modern edge that the rest of the house really doesn’t have. The baskets and bins will go up on the shelves – which means off the floor! – and I will become at least somewhat more organized.

All of this is just a picture in my mind; I haven’t drawn anything out or done anything except get paint chips. BB isn’t so much on board with painting it ourselves because he finds painting to be mundane and peasant and he’d rather spend his day off watching All in the Family. He’s such a party pooper.

So here’s to the 4th of July: the perfect time to work on house projects, grill something delicious, and watch Real Housewives reruns. Hope yours is just as fun.

36 years ago today, your mother lay in a hospital bed staring out the window at the Chowan River. She was 36 years old. She had three older children, one of them 15 and rebellious. She had a 5 year who wanted a baby sister and instead got a brother. She had a 10 year old who had no time for babies, only time for riding bikes.

And she had you, a ball of energy from the start, a head full of dark blonde curls, and brown eyes that twinkled.

Now she is 72, a happy grandmother to 7, a woman with a more active social calendar than Lindsay Lohan and who wears the same perfume she did when you were a child.

You are a grown up, with a head full of dark brown curls, brown eyes that twinkle, and a line on your forehead that comes from too much worry and not enough vacation. My friend at The Daily Snark wonders what life it too short for, and I took the liberty of answering that for you.

Life is too short to…

…Let your bank account determine your station in life.

…Watch others get what they want and not grab some for yourself.

…Let your wife erase “Good Times” from the DVR.

…Spend your days off clipping hedges.

…Worry about what you can’t change.

…Not change the things you can.

…Let other people get away with things they shouldn’t.

…Not pick your battles.

…Take birthdays for granted, even 36^th ones.

Holy crap, it’s Tuesday. Somehow I turned around realized that I hadn’t posted in a week, and that’s why I couldn’t get my head on straight in the mornings. TOTALLY MAKES SENSE NOW.

So how are y’all? I, for one, am still under the influence of last night’s Ambien, which means that I am super sleepy and not at all alert and aware. Please do not sneak up behind me today; most likely I will be all Whaaa? and it will ruin the surprise and not be fun at all for you. Sorry.

It’s been kind of a busy week since last we spoke. Molly and Jason from the Bachvomit got married on TV last night, the tail end of which I was able to catch after I got home from business class. THAT’S RIGHT, I’m taking a BUSINESS CLASS, bitches. Check your jealousies at the door. (More on that in a minute.) Last week we were getting the kiddies all ready for their spring break, the one where they get to go home and do whatever it is that they do there, and the one where I HAVE TO BE HERE. AT SCHOOL. IN MY OFFICE. I’m totally not bitter, y’all.

In other news, our fun friends Butt Pirate and Rump Ranger came over for dinner Saturday night. There were lots of laughs but I’d say there wasn’t nearly enough name-calling, so I call a do-over RIGHT NOW. As a hostess gift, Pirate and Ranger brought us a rain gauge. It is 8 kinds of awesome. Yes, you should be jealous. (Except I think I told you to check your jealousies at the door, so…we’ll work on that.)

Do you see? DO YOU SEE? This is what the Ambien does to me in the mornings. I cannot be held responsible for my written actions. (Did I just steal that from a Kennedy kid? It sounds familiar…) Anyway, so then we finally went and bought a dryer on Sunday, which is just in time because this morning I went to get my jeans and they stunk like mildew in the cold dryer, which is when I realized that the stuff in there was STILL DAMP and it pissed me off and made me almost cry when I had to wear some other pants. The new dryer comes tomorrow night, and it’s not really the dryer that dreams are made of, but it’s fine. We searched four hours for that damn thing, and by the end we were all Yo, pack that shit up. Even if it’s a Maytag.

So back to my new bidness! I’m so excited about it, and you should be too because it might mean that I have extra dollars to do stuff with. Except that last night my friends and I went to this class on how to write a business plan, and apparently people who start their own businesses start out with like no money and wind up with even less money until 10 years later when they collect an annual salary of like $50. THESE ARE MY ASPIRATIONS.

It’s going to be a stationery and invitation printing business, where you’d come to my house, tell me what you need said invitation for (your divorce is final, your 40th birthday has come around again for the 7th time, your kid managed to make it another year without breaking a limb, or whatever) and we sit down together to design it and make it happen. Or you can be boring and flip through some books and order crap out of there, too. Except it’s TOTALLY not crap. It’s fine, expensive but affordable paper that you and everyone who sees it will love. My goal is to build a base of satisfied and loyal customers who will return holiday after miserable holiday to buy their paper goods from me because I am skilled, personable, and offer competitive prices.

Or at least that’s what I’m telling people.

I have decided right this second that I’m going to have a contest! With a PRIZE! Like a real.live.giveaway y’all. I need a name for this business that is going to rocket into the universe at lightening speed and return to earth with buckets of cash. I’m not sure that “Buckets O’ Cash” is quite catchy enough for an elegant invitation business, do you? Well, maybe you do.

Anyway, cough up your ideas in the comments section, and the one I like best (but am not contractually required to use) gets a gift card, probably to iTunes. Woot woot, ’cause who can’t use an iTunes gift card, yo?

So get to it: put on your thinking caps, get creative and do my work FOR me already. Sheesh. And also do it for the iTunes card. You know you want it…*said in sexy come-hither voice that is NOT AT ALL creepy.*

Thank you all for your great comments about self-worth and how you define it. I want to keep the conversation going, so please continue to let me know what you think.

Now onto far more serious business: The Over-Saturation of our fair Bachelor, Jake Pavelka.

Or as I like to put it: VomitFest 2010.

I know a lot of you don’t watch The Bachelor at all, and therefore have no real interest in this post, but for the rest of you, let’s recap. Jake was originally on The Bachelorette seeking out the love of a cast-off from a previous show. Cast off himself, Jake became the sole recipient of dozens of expressions of love from like, 1,000 slutty-looking girls. He weeds the intelligent, Harvard-graduated group down to three and then two, and he’s left with Snow White and the Wicked Witch of the West (or east, or whatever.)

Snow White is Tenley, a really sweet-seeming girl from Oregon, who’s divorced but apparently dreams in cartoons and shits rainbows, according to her bachelorette roommates. She’s all googly-eyed for the square-jawed pilot and can’t help but fall in love with him on date after date after date after date…all on some island or in some swanky hotel or on some petal-strewn picnic blanket.

Wicked Witch is Vienna, tabloid-proclaimed trailer trash from BFE Florida, with a tattooed father, a Harley riding stepmother, a previous job as a Hooters girl, and a lovely hip tattoo herself. She’s “fun” and “passionate” and murders the English language every time she opens her mouth. (“Jake and I’s relationship couldn’t be better. I can’t wait to meet his sister-in-laws.”) She’s cast as the villain from the get go, arguing with her roommates and making enemies along the way.

And then, folks, there’s Reality Steve. I don’t read Steve’s blog or really know anything about it, but apparently he’s some guy who has predicted – correctly – all 10 winners of the Bachelor franchise. So he comes out early on with his prediction, and damn if he wasn’t right again. So mostly no one was shocked last night when Snow White dreamed her last Disney dream and was sent packing in tears. And Witchy got all weepy and accepted a fat Neil Lane diamond that will probably last on her finger, oh, six months. Tops.

Reading the Internet fallout this morning, I noticed that people kept saying that The Batch was “so sincere” and that the proposal seemed so “heartfelt.” And I thought to myself, I don’t know, I was too busy gagging myself with a spoon to notice, but they’re probably right. When you’re set down in the middle of a gaggle of blond blue-eyed girls whose eyes are only set on you, how hard can it be to find someone you kind of love? If there were 25 adoring people throwing themselves at you, would you be able to resist picking one out of the group to be your favorite?

I seriously can’t stop watching this show because it is such an addictive train wreck, and it boggles the mind as to how many stupid people there really are in this country. One of Jake’s cast-offs will be the next Bachelorette, and I’ll probably watch that, too, because she endeared herself to fans this time around, and now we all want to see what happens. But will Ali find love, we wonder? Will she be Cinderella and find her prince?

Truth be told, no one really cares.

What we do care about is the suspense of watching one guy or girl pick the lesser of 25 evils to spend the rest of their lives with. Out of all the fish in the sea, are these 25 the only ones you could ever possibly love? I guess we’ll see on May 25, or whenever that craptastic show comes back on.

In the meantime, the other favorite ABC reality show – Dancing with the Stars – has gone to the dogs by hiring the likes of Pamela Anderson, the almost-octomom Kate Gosselin, AND AS IF WE WEREN’T ALREADY SICK TO DEATH OF HIM, the newly-engaged Jake Pavelka.

For the love of God, ABC, these people are the stars of nothing and you should treat them that way.